It was late by the time Taurus finished explaining tomorrow. The dark and eerie kind of late that left drunken men passed out on the streets, hovered over your doorways, and could be chased away by none but the rising sun. The fire grew somber in the hearth, almost quiet as the embers ate away at the last of their night meal. Even the humming in the back of my head slowly grew lower so that I was listening to not but a droning long note that could almost be ignored.

"I bid you both a fair sleep," Taurus murmured as he rose to his feet.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

He froze. "Nowhere."

"You could have fooled me."

Aldyth looked between the two of use for a long moment before shaking her head and also getting to her feet. "Goodnight to you both then."

"Ahyi valor son sevén alleyaair," the elf murmured back distantly and nodded his head toward me. "Ivehen."

"What?"

"Sorry," he raised his hands. "It's an elvish night call, I meant nothing by it."

"What does it mean?" Aldyth asked just as quietly.

His eyelids drooped which diminished a bit of the glow in his inhumanly large eyes. "May water always be beneath you."

From then on there was silence.

[[]]

My dreams weren't dreams anymore, not in the slightest. I saw no images and no faces appeared in the clouds. In their stead rose the steady beat of fire licking against the trees and the gallivant shatterings of ice splitting open to the deepest pits of the earth. I awoke suddenly to the marcado impressions of sound ringing in my ears and my breath flying faster than the wind.

I raised my head up from the rolled up blanket to gaze upon the quiet room in its midnight hour. A mangled sliver of moonlight forced its way through our curtains, illuminating the room in a variety of deep blacks, muted greys, and dark blues. I sat up slowly and looked about with the caution one would use on the grounds of an intruder. Taurus laid curled up in a corner with his head tucked into his arms and his legs pulled to his chest in a fetal position. He was suddenly so much smaller that I almost rose to approach him when I heard a low whimper rise up from upon the bed.

My knees protested as I shuffled to the bedside and peered over the edge opposite of the door.

Her voice dimmed audibly as she snuffed her face down into the pillow. I could feel my jaw drop slightly as Aldyth rumbled indistinctly in her sleep, ever now and then, muffling the gibberish with a faint sob. "Leave me," she hissed and threw her head. For a moment I was certain that she had awakened, but then she returned back to her ghostly mumbling and dying cries. Her head snapped back toward me, making her entire body jerk and the springs in the mattress creak. I stole a quickly glance back toward Taurus, plainly surprised that he yet to awaken from all the noise.

"Aldyth," I breathed her name as gently as I could. Her neck twisted away in retaliation. My fingers trembled as I reached out to place my palm down over her forehead. Her skin was cold to the touch and clammy with sweat. She flinched visibly when my hand brushed her face, then not a moment later her lashes fluttered beneath my fingertips. She whispered my name so quietly that I was sure that was still sleeping, but then she followed it with, "What are you doing?"

"You were tossing," I explained as I quickly withdrew my hand.

"I woke you up? I'm sorry --"

"I doubt one could really say I was sleeping, " my mouth curved upward in a small smile. "Nightmare?"

"I assume so," she whispered. "I don't remember any of it now. It's all just an echo of feeling...terror, loneliness, isolation..."

"Are you alright now?" She nodded slowly, her skin pale under the shallow light. "Try to get some rest then." I was just rolling back to my makeshift nest on the floor when I heard Aldyth call my name again. After a brief pause I turned to look at her over my shoulder. "Yes?"

"Can you stay over here until I fall asleep?"

"Are you sure?"

She dipped her head downward in a nod and held her arms out expectantly. With the greatest care to remain quiet, I rose to my feet and shuffled to the bedside. Aldyth moved over and patted the blanket beside her lightly. As soon as I was by her side, Aldyth rested her head down on my arm and breathed in deeply. Enough time ticked by that I was certain that she had fallen asleep again when she murmured. "We can never go back there, you understand?"

"Back where," I slurred in my half-sleeping state.

Aldyth moved her eyes so that her eyes caught what little light there was. "Home." Tears shimmered off her lashes as she laid her back down. "We can never go home again."

Her hair was grimy yet soft under my fingers as I blinked the weariness from my eyes. "Places can be rebuilt," I whispered.

"But it will never be home, not without Noah." Her entire frame shuddered in disdain as she pressed her face into the crook between my neck and shoulder and let a few tears stream into the collar of my shirt.

"Hush," I soothed and wrapped an arm over her shoulders comfortingly. "There is no need to look down upon the now when the future could be so much better."

"Or it can be worse," she grumbled. "All future is uncertain; the earth never ceases to shift."

"But we won't know that until it is upon us," I grew impossibly still as she snaked her arms around my chest and held me locked in the iron grip of a madman.

"Do you know what they say about immortality," Aldyth whispered after a long moment of silence. The music in my ears dimmed until all I could hear was the loud echo of air rushing in and out of my lungs. The stable girl appeared to be waiting for some sort of response, but when none was offered, she continued on. "Those who seek it, sacrifice everything to get it. Everything -- yet no one understands them. They don't know why they walk so silently. They don't know why they travel alone, so they continue on in solitude."

"Yes," I murmured. "There is truth in that."

"Well they're wrong. No one is immortal. No one is. Once everything is gone and everyone has made a home in a different place; it doesn't matter if your heart still beats or your body still moves. Everyone dies, including the immortal, even if he lives on forever."

The silence that followed was blue. It was the color of the ironic night after a massacre; the color that one saw when they didn't want to see anymore. The silence was the final gasps of the breathing man when he realizes that he's buried under a bloke of earth. It was blue, like the sea before the storm.

"This is true."

Taurus's voice came in sharp contrast to the crippling silence, yet it was also a kind of relief. Aldyth's breath washed over my throat as she relaxed at last. The glimmer of her dark irises disappeared under her eyelids as she laid her head down on the pillow with her chin resting upon my shoulder and whispered, "I am immortal."

A/N

#Eldyth/#Elyth
*so cute* Taurus tho, he was listening the entire time XD. So what do you think! This one is for you Tami, even though you won't see it now, can't wait to have you back.