"I knew I'd find you up here."

Anwyn tore her eyes away from the stars in their celestial dance. But only for a moment. Only long enough to be sure that her cousin remembered the ladder's missing step. But a moment was long enough for the stars to go still.

Another night then.

"And I knew you'd come," she answered, throwing the wolf skin about Kodak's shoulders as well as her own. "Though I did think Rieka would have kept her claws in your hide longer ..." the words died upon her lips at the somber gaze Kodak leveled at her.

Ever since her cousin Rayna drowned, Anwyn had done her best to fill the place of the sister Kodak had loved more than anyone else. After a year, he'd first joined her on the castle's rooftop for their nightly discourses. After two, he'd begun calling her Ayn, the same nickname that had once belonged to Rayna.

Anwyn knew that by claiming Rayna's spot in Kodak's heart, she'd kept the wound dealt by her loss from fully healing. But she was greedy, not for the companionship her position afforded—though she cared for Kodak and enjoyed his company—but for the thoughts he had only confided in Rayna.

She needed Kodak's vision.

Yet, after his years away at sea, Anwyn realized that the wound may have healed into a hardened scar and she may have lost her hold at last.

"I don't love Rieka like I used to, Ayn." His dark blue eyes released her from their merciless grip as he too, turned to look at the stars. "I forgot about her within a month of leaving and I told her so tonight. Her claws had no hold to sink into." The moonlight shone stark on the planes of his face, as if he'd been cut from the harshest ice.

Don't tell me he's turned into a stranger—that I don't know him anymore.

Anwyn tucked her white hair behind her ear, biting her lip. He'd changed quickly, but she learned quickly too. She would not mention his desperate, spurned lover again. "The sea has treated you well, I see," she teased, placing emphasis on the wordplay she'd managed to think up on short notice.

He caught the joke, and laughed. The clear-cut planes softened as dimples appeared in his cheeks. "As terrible a comedian as ever, I see."

"Only to break the ice." Anwyn smiled.

"The sea is a kind mistress when she wishes to be," Kodak answered. "And I've never slept so well as on that ship." A wistful expression flitted across his face like the lightest brush of snow before it melts away.

Anwyn had almost forgotten what a romantic her cousin could be. "I'm sure that with you, the sea did not always wish to be so gracious."

He was back now—it was as if he'd never left. The stars glimmered in his twinkling eyes and Anwyn wanted to ask what he saw ... but not yet. "Perhaps not," Kodak said. The corner of his mouth quirked upwards. "But the sea is a far kinder mistress than you."

Anwyn gasped in mock offense and elbowed his side. "I'm surprised you came back at all then, ungrateful boy!" As soon as the sentence left her mouth, something similar to a jab hit her in the side—not Kodak's elbow either, but the realization that her beloved cousin wasn't a boy anymore.

He'd changed so much and here she was, staring at the same stars every night on the same rooftop, while thinking the same thoughts.

That was half the definition of insanity, wasn't it?

"Believe me, it wasn't my idea to cut the voyage short. I could have done without your jokes for another few years." Kodak grinned, but Anwyn felt another pain—this one like being stabbed in the heart.

She hid it with an easy laugh. "You should have stayed away then. It's quite tiring playing the tyrannical mistress."

"I'm sure she's been keeping herself amused while I've been gone," Kodak said. "After all, she's quite the accomplished historian from what I've been hearing."

Anwyn smiled bitterly. Her interest in history was a ruse—a cover for her actual research. But if her theories proved valid, then the myths she studied would change history forever. She leaned back on her pile of soft furs and let star-gazing swallow up the silence.

Against the midnight tapestry of night, a brilliant light streaked across the sky.

"Why did you come back?" she asked softly.

Kodak fell back with a sigh. "My father called me home. We're leaving for the Pyro Empire tomorrow."

Anwyn heard the panic lace tracks in her voice but she couldn't hold it in. "Tomorrow? You just got back tonight! Why does he need you with him?"

Because he's the king, Anywn, she scolded herself. It doesn't matter why, only that he does. Taras doesn't need your permission to command his son to accompany him.

The stranger had returned to her side. It wasn't like her cousin to take so long to answer. Thinking was her forte. Kodak's was ... well, it had been dancing and girls. He hadn't earned the reputation of being a lady-killer by playing the philosopher with her.

When he spoke, each word was like a quiet scream—as if she held him on the torturer's rack. "He wants me to go with him for the same reason you want me here." He sat up. In the darkness, the unearthly azure glow floating about his eyes like fog couldn't be mistaken.

"And what reason is that?" Anwyn asked, hardly daring to breathe.

"For my second sight," he said.

When his jaw clenched, she knew her face had given her away.

"It's true, isn't it? That's why you've listened to me all these years? To collect knowledge for your collection?" His voice came out hard as ice, but it cracked like ice too.

Pushing herself up to her elbows, Anwyn shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears. "That's not it at all, Kodak. Maybe I was curious at the beginning" —her heart ached as he turned away from her— "but you have to understand that I'm trying to help you. I'm so close to a breakthrough."

Please don't slip away now. I need you more than ever. And you need me too.

When Kodak didn't speak, but didn't move to leave either, Anwyn ventured to ask, "Why is your father interested in your ... gift all of a sudden?"

He barked a rough laugh. "Call it what it is, Ayn. You've never softened your words with me before." Kodak glanced over his shoulder at her and she froze at how light his pupils had become. "It's a curse, and you know it," he spat.

Anwyn knew it more than Kodak himself did. When he was born, the attending midwife wanted to drown him. The woman had called him a monster clothed in human flesh. Through research, Anwyn had found that the superstitious view of the second sight wasn't without reason, but she suspected the true one to be far more complex than a mere curse.

"Your father has never called it a curse," Anwyn argued. "If he believed it to be, you would have been murdered as an infant."

Kodak closed his eyes, but the blue mist continued to flow like water, like tears. Anwyn had never seen Kodak cry though. "Sometimes I think that would have been better," he whispered.

"You don't mean that."

He looked up at the stars, as if there were something up there beyond the countless pinpricks of light. "Ayn, I have something to show you." Kodak turned and a chill swept through her. The deep blue of his eyes had turned a ghostly white. "But you have to promise to tell me everything you know in return."

When he spat in his hand, Anwyn's nose wrinkled in disgust. Maybe he hasn't grown up.

"Don't be a girl, Ayn," he laughed with a wink.

As always, he knew how to get under her skin. She pretended to spit and shook on it. "Deal."

Anwyn had seen through Kodak's eyes only once in the past and knew how much exertion it took on his part. But she recalled his instruction from then, intent on making it as easy for him as possible. Preventing his fatigue would mean longer in the vision for her.

"Eyes on mine," Kodak said.

Anwyn nodded. As she stared at the frozen-over pools of his eyes, the wisps of fog lazily drifted to hers and began to collect like dewy tears. Much as she wanted to wipe them away, she forced her hand down and let the moisture coalesce.

He studied her face before giving the next step of instructions. "Now blink. And when I tell you to blink again, you do it. No questions asked."

Anwyn smirked. "Aye aye, captain."

She blinked.

✧ ───── ✧ ───── ✧

Relax. Go with the flow.

The stars in her head stopped spinning and Anwyn's vision focused on a ship's deck. The vessel cut through the calm ocean waves. Crystal glaciers floated within sight like mountains in the sea.

Besides sight, all other sense of her surroundings had vanished. Even so, she had no control over where her eyes were directed. It was all memory—Kodak's memory—though far more vivid and accurate than recollection had a right to be. Her imagination had to compensate for the lack in her other senses, filling the mute mouths of the ship's crew with shouts, her own nostrils with salt and brine.

The deck must have been lurching beneath her—Kodak's—feet, but they walked without misstep to the rail. When her view was directed upward, millions of stars lit the daylight sky.

Is this what it's like to see with eyes unclouded? To have nothing between me and the heavens?

If she looked closely, the world appeared sharper, more colorful. But there was also a foreign element that she couldn't define. It was as if a veil had been lifted. The fabric between realities torn, she mused.

Another voice joined hers, like a distant echo. You're talking out loud you know, Kodak said, sounding entertained. Her periphery shifted at the same moment he added, See that speck on the horizon?

Anwyn tried to nod when she caught sight of the white and brown dot before realizing the action meant nothing. Is it another ship?

No. Just watch. I want your guess without telling you mine.

Anwyn had no trouble watching since past Kodak must have honed in on the mysterious object that marred the untouched waters as well. It neared the ship at a steady pace and after a few minutes, Anwyn determined that it was a figure. Water walkers weren't uncommon in the Hydro kingdom, but such an ability could not often be used in the open ocean. The wielder would tire after a nautical league.

Still, the person drew nearer and Anwyn guessed that perhaps they wished to board the ship.

It's a man, Anwyn thought, not caring if Kodak could hear. Tall, with hair as white as snow. Those are spears, ice crystal-forged judging by the light refraction. Warrior's wolf skin over his—

The man halted his strides and stared up at her. Anwyn's blood froze like ice in her veins.

His eyes were a pale, pure white. They reminded her of the drawing she'd seen of an empty-eyed rusalka—a wraith-like mermaid that had given her nightmares for days. But all rusalki were female.

Blink, Ayn.

While he stood still, the ocean froze beneath his feet and tendrils of fog wafted from his fingertips. The man smiled at her and the feeling that he was distinctly inhuman hit her like a rotten fish in the face.

Ayn, blink!

The vision collapsed around her like splintering glass shards.

✧ ───── ✧ ───── ✧

Kodak was coughing up blood.

Anwyn pressed her handkerchief into his shaking hand. Guilt overwhelmed her as she took in how grey his face had gone. The mist around his eyes vanished and the blue slowly filtered back into his pupils.

"I'm sorry," Anwyn said over and over again.

Her cousin tried to his best to muster up a grin, but it wasn't very convincing with the flecks of red spotting his pearly teeth. "Dam it, Ayn. Didn't I say to blink when I told you?"

"You can keelhaul me for it," she pleaded.

"I'm going to keep your hankie is what I'm going to do," he said, wiping his bloody mouth. "I don't think you'll want it back now and it'd be too much work to drag your sorry ass to the closest shipyard."

"I'm not that heavy." Anwyn sniffed.

Kodak cleared his throat but his voice remained hoarse. "But your books are, and stars help the man who tries to haul you anywhere without having to pack your whole dam library with you."

With anyone else, she would've taken the joke as a good sign, but with Kodak she knew better.

Her codfish of a cousin had a habit of laughing in the face of fear.

"Someone needs his mouth washed out with salt water," Anwyn muttered. 

"What was that?"

"I think that man was Nodon." As soon as she'd looked into the water walker's eyes, Anwyn had known who he was. It was the implications of his existence that had struck her dumb.

Kodak quietly folded the handkerchief and tucked it away. "That's not what you said the first time, but I'll ignore it for now. It's time to fulfill your end of the bargain. Talk."

"Was that your guess too?"

Kodak propped his chin on his hand, looking somewhat haggard but fully attentive.

Anwyn tucked her hair behind her ears and reached for the silver spectacles resting on her stack of books and journals. "Fine then. I'll start." Where to begin though? She tapped the temple of her spectacles on her lip. "But Kodak, what if you don't believe me?" she groaned in a last-ditch attempt.

Kodak frowned. "From what you just said, I had a run-in with a god—and not just any god, Nodon, the King of Wolves and Tides. I can't see how anything you say next could be more" —he waved his hand vaguely— "than that."

"Alright. Settle in for a lecture," Anwyn answered, adjusting her spectacles on her nose. "We both agree that the ... person you saw at sea matches the description of the god Nodon in our legends, right?"

Kodak nodded.

Anwyn picked up the journal at the top of her stack, the fourth one she'd filled that year. The familiar feel of the leather comforted her and she unbound it with practiced hands, her fingers brushing the runes she'd etched into the cover: Unmasking Gods.

Since she was supposed to tell Kodak everything, Anwyn figured hitting the most important concepts first would prove efficient. "You do understand that all of what I'm presenting is theory? I can't prove any—"

"Yes, yes." Kodak rolled his eyes. "I know."

Anwyn cleared her throat with the odd feeling that she was about to embark on the most important venture of her life—giving her first professional lecture to an audience consisting of a single person on a rooftop under the stars. She took a deep breath before taking the plunge.

"The gods and goddesses, as we call them, are fallen stars."

In her mind, voices arose. Those of her parents, of girls she used to call her friends. "You're chasing myths and children's fairytales! Grow up, Anwyn." With harsh resolve, she choked them into silence.

Kodak watched her, his expression inscrutable.

Without hesitation, she flipped to a certain passage of notes. "My first hint of this was from a haiku written by the Nakaishian dragon poet, Daji:

"Your whip is silver

But how far you have fallen

From star to dark snake"

Kodak blinked at her. "Am I supposed to understand what that means?"

"No, I didn't understand it at first either. The point is that every culture on Elementon has a unique set of deities. We have Nodon and Asterin." Anwyn continued to skim her writing. "The Terrons call their dozens "patron guardians"—one for each terrene. The Aerons have a sole deity: Aeterna, Celestial Mother of Winds.

"This poem referred to one of the three Flameland goddesses, Nemesis. The other two are Ash and Phoenix. Collectively, the title of these superior beings is Immortals. But I have my own." Anwyn shut her book for a dramatic pause. "The Fallen."

Kodak scratched at the stubble on his jaw. "Ayn, this is fascinating, but I could really use something practical. Like why I can see one."

Anwyn's shoulders slumped. This would be difficult to explain. "I think ... there are two co-existing realities, the physical and the spiritual. The Fallen exist in the spiritual reality and we exist in ours. Except for ... special cases."

"What kinds of special cases?" Kodak asked, his eyes narrowing.

Yet again, Anwyn thought of losing her only friend. It wouldn't be the first time, but with sudden insight, she knew that Kodak abandoning her would deal a wound so deep that she wouldn't be able to continue her research. Kodak was the only one who'd ever believed in her.

But it was the truth of her careful study that would drive him away.

"I think you have the ability to see into the other reality, Kodak," she whispered.

He hadn't gotten all the blood with his wiping. The smallest bit had dried into a crust at the corner of his mouth. "You're not telling me everything."

"I don't know everything." And she spoke the truth—she only suspected that the Fallen bestowed gifts on mortals. Gifts that were curses because the mortal vessels were too flawed to bear them and would crack from the strain.

She didn't want Kodak to know that she thought he was dying.

Kodak didn't push her on it, in that way—despite his rough exterior—he'd always been a gentleman. He closed the topic with a sincere "I hope you can tell me more when I come back".

"Don't be gone for too long. I prefer it when you aren't a stranger." In the dark, tears streaked down Anwyn's cheeks. Perhaps she should confess, because she'd lose him either way.

But she knew she was greedy and that she'd fooled even herself.

If she could have exchanged her knowledge of the forbidden for Kodak's good health and lifelong friendship, she would have. He meant more to her than his second sight. When each of them had struggled with the shame of being a lost cause among their family, the other had helped them to find purpose.

She wiped away the tears and pulled an item out of her pocket. "A penny for your thoughts?" She laughed and offered the silver coin to Kodak.

He took the penny, flipped it in the air, and caught it. When he opened his hand, it had disappeared from sight—an old trick dating back years to when they'd thought his ability to be nothing more than a magical fluke. The tell-tale trace of mist dissipated in the air.

"I always thought they were dreams," Kodak reflected. "Now you're telling me what I see is real." A light sparked in his eyes. "That means the bridge is real too though."

Anwyn leaned towards him. "What bridge?"

Kodak grabbed her hand and pointed to the sky. It didn't take much for him to show her what he could see in the present.

She gasped at the brilliance of the stars as they flared to radiant life all around her. "Kodak, I don't see a bridge."

He pointed again. "It's right there."

When she squinted, Anwyn thought she could make out a vague outline that could resemble a bridge, high up beyond the stars. "Where do you think it leads?" she asked.

Kodak let his hand fall and released his grip on hers. "I don't know. Maybe to another world, maybe to nowhere. All I know is that it's seemed closer in the past year." He smiled sleepily, tucking his hands behind his head with the furs as an added pillow.

Anwyn stashed away his words like a raven with its hoard of useless treasures. A bridge ... that leads to the great beyond. She yawned.

Even with notions of gods and death whirling about in her mind, the stars kept shining. The idea calmed her—that they would be there longer than her.

Kodak's breathing evened out as he approached the shores of sleep.

Anwyn waved her hand and a clear ice ceiling crystallized above their heads, providing shelter without inhibiting her view.

Her second to last conscious act of mind was to wonder that if there was a bridge, who had built it?

And her last one, upon catching sight of a falling star, to marvel at its fall from grace and at how fleeting the beauty of its life had been.

✧ ───── ✧ ───── ✧

This short story takes place in the fictional universe of Elementon, the same universe that the novel Whisper of Blade is set in. However, this short story is part of Set Azure, the counterpart to Set Crimson. The fictional swear "dam" is not a typo, it's me attempting wordplay based on Hydro culture (Yes, I'm as terrible as comedian as Ayn).

Word Count: 3,370

This story was written for avadel community's Stars and Short Stories Monthly Competition and is the 1st Place Winner for the month of December! The chosen prompt was #2:

"I looked straight up and just took in the stars shining above us, with nothing blocking their view, and suddenly regretted all the nights I'd slept with anything between me and the sky .... I had a feeling [my brother] was about to fall asleep, and I knew I wasn't going to be far behind him. I closed my eyes only to open them once more to make sure it was all still there—the riot of stars above me, this whole other world existing just out of reach."

- Since You've Been Gone by Morgan Matson