Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

She studied his profile, then settled herself more comfortably and obeyed.

"I’m going to reach for you," he continued. "I’m not certain how…" He paused again. "Tell me to stop right away if I hurt you, and try not to shield-stun me."

Madeleine realised that part of the reason for the hint of reserve in his voice was an unspoken: "Or mash me into paste".

"Okay," she said, deciding to postpone some serious thought on a life of being uncomfortably dangerous.

Warmth. A delicate thread which was somehow a thing to capture all her attention and make her want to shy away, to push back, but also light her up, a spark to a bonfire. It wasn’t simple heat, was a presence, a piercing tenderness, underlaid by anger and fear.

"It’s like I’m breathing you."

The warmth faded, and Fisher moved so he could tangle fingers with hers. "Did it hurt?"

"N-no." Pain was the wrong word, but she didn’t have any proper equivalent. "Like drowning, but not," she tried. The sense of his presence as a thing additional to the physical was fading, leaving her as alertly roused as a jolt of caffeine.

"Try it on me. As lightly as you can."

This was far from simple. The power she used to shield and punch was something tangible to her, and her awareness of containing it was strong. Trying to locate and manipulate something presumably intrinsic to herself – perhaps literally her own self – was a bit like attempting to look at the colour of her own eyes. But in a way Fisher had held up a mirror.

He drew in his breath, hand tightening on hers, and she faltered, then reigned back the outpouring of self to a thread as delicate as gossamer, a thistledown spiritual embrace. Fisher reached back with a thread of his own, and that was something new again, fragile and overwhelming.

They couldn’t sustain it, and drew back, panting like runners. Not tired, like feeding Nash would leave them, but instead feeling powerfully alive.

"There’s no way I’m practicing that with a group," she said when she could speak, and he laughed, but the sound had a bereft note to it, so she kissed him and that was an easier, more familiar path to follow, but made different again by their intense, lingering awareness of each other.

Madeleine wondered if this was something non-Blues would be able to do, something related to the spirit or the soul, or if it was merely another newly discovered difference to make her less human. And whether she could possibly cope with the way she was feeling about this boy she’d known a bare few weeks.

"What are you thinking?"

She didn’t answer, shifting against him.

"Tell me. You’re bothered by something."

"I was wondering," she said, very slowly, "if we would have gotten together if all this hadn’t happened."

"No."

The answer was immediate, unhesitating, and she shrank a little. His arms tightened around her.

"We would never have met," he explained, voice dropping to a husky note. "I would have gone about my life and not thought I was missing anything. You would have – you would have painted obsessively, all those transformative images, and I would be someone unimagined and unknown, and I cannot decide whether it would be trite to call that a tragedy or if I should resent you for making this – all this death – somehow bearable, tolerable for the tenuous joy I have gained. You steal my anger and leave me dazed."

He stopped, took a shaking breath, then laughed.

"I sound like Pan’s understudy, failing to channel Shakespeare. There’s no way to do more than guess what would have happened if Fisher Charteris and Madeleine Cost met one day in a world which had never feared dust, any more than we can be certain of surviving two years, or two days. I can’t speak to what-ifs, but I know I will always be glad to have been here in this moment with you."

"When I’m having an apocalypse, I always insist on six star accommodation." Noi waved a gloved hand languidly, and turned so the skirt of her dress coiled and swirled. She considered herself in the mirrored wall dominating one side of the store. "Maybe a little too Grande Dame?"

"Try the yellow one," Madeleine suggested.

"All I can think when I see that is Fire Hazard."

"Which makes it a good thing the cooking’s all but done. And, plus, aprons."

"There’s not going to be any winning of arguments with you today, is there?" Noi’s smile was indulgent, and she disappeared into the dressing room with the fringe-covered yellow dress just as Emily emerged in a ruffled satin gown. "No, Millie, absolutely not," she said, before tugging the curtain across.

Emily eyed herself in the mirror and evidently agreed, selecting a white dress from the store’s limited range of evening wear and retreating once again.

The day had already been full. Madeleine and Fisher had emerged in time to help decorate the small function room chosen for the night’s festivities, and only smiled at teasing looks and comments. After lunch there had been swimming, and then a group effort at preparing an evening feast, Pan insisting on joining in because: "What fun is there in sitting by myself while you’re all off together?"

With only a few things needing last-minute heating, they’d separated to clean up and take advantage of finally locating the security codes to the foyer’s selection of expensive stores. Party clothes.

"Pity there isn’t a shoe place," Noi said, emerging to eye herself doubtfully. The yellow dress, a tight-fitting sheath covered in tiers of gold-shot fringes, shimmered with every tiny movement, emphasising her curves. "But I can live with barefoot in sheer silk stockings."

Madeleine looked down at her legs, glimmering blue through the semi-transparent skirt of the icy flapper-style dress she’d fallen for on sight. "I’m not sure stockings work for me any more."

"Mm. You’ve got a point. Shall I take the time to point out that you’re suddenly no longer trying to hide every inch of your starry starry skin?"

"Would there be any way to stop you?" Madeleine asked, and wondered how Noi would react if Madeleine shared her discovery that breasts were like tickling: a concept not fully appreciated until someone else was involved.

Noi took a few dancing steps, watching the fringes at her hips shimmer, then plumped down beside Madeleine.

"Okay, less teasing, more congratulations. You think you’ll work out? Long term?"

"Maybe." Madeleine had to admit to wanting there to be a long term. "If the Moths give us the chance. I…I think I fell in love with him this morning."

"What, not till then? Not that I’m arguing against try before you buy, mind you, but it took him all the way till morning to impress you?"

"Before, I knew I really liked him. A lot. But this morning when he woke up I was drawing him, and he asked if it was okay to move. And then fetched me stuff, instead of expecting me to stop. Most people, when they meet me, it’s completely obvious to them that drawing is important to me. But Fisher, he treats my drawing as important. The way that makes me feel…"

"Are you looking for a boyfriend or a groupie?"

"I’m not sure I could really…belong with someone who treated my drawing the way my mother does – a nice little hobby, admirable enough, but always to be put aside in favour of everything someone else thinks is important." Madeleine sighed, then gave Noi a steady look. "And are you ever going to give Pan a chance?"

Noi lifted brows in exaggerated surprise. "What, you think I’m falling over for want of someone warm to hold? You don’t get trapped with a small group of people and have one of them just happen to be your one true love. Or–" She broke off, and gave Madeleine an apologetic grin. "Well, the odds are against it, and I think you’ve used all the good luck up. Pan’s just a nice kid."