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Karolina is the colours of the sky.
Orange that starts a fire in Nico's chest; blue that intensifies her hunger for the ocean; yellow that threatens the sun.
Nico feels her in her chest. In her very bones, in the too thin paper that is her skin.
Blonde, blue, pink. Karolina's hair is a gentle halo that dances with the wind, beckons and plays a teasing game.
Is she an Angel, or God herself? Nico wonders. The thought is a flash of words through her mind, and she is not shocked by her own blasphemy.
"Wow—" Is all Nico manages the first time Karolina turns herself into an image of the galaxies. A breathless exhale of breath, born of her mouth that is a black pearl.
Karolina is every colour to exist. She is space beyond space.
"Pretty cool, right?"
"Karolina—" An intake of breath. "You are... extraordinary."
Bare feet hover inches from the ground, a honey sweet smile dusts her lips. And, beneath her skin that is the most perfect dawn, Karolina's skin is dusted a pale rose.
✴️
Dark gold curlicues, intricate vines, frame the mirror. Her mother's, her grandmother's, hers.
Nico stares at herself in its gleaming surface. Deep brown eyes stare back at her— rich and similar to what coffee looks like in a coffee pot sat out for too long. Lukewarm and alive, rimmed in black.
Midnight hair tucks into place, behind her ears, with a swift movement of her hand.
A rustle of bedsheets. She spies Karolina through the mirror, curled on her side.
Her lips to the shell of Karolina's ear, skin to fragile skin, Nico had whispered. Sweet voice, rough voice, the kind of voice to call people to a culling, Nico had spoke.
"My beautiful sky," she had said, each word a reverence. "My eternal and my everything."
She knows what they are willing to do for each other: spill blood and destroy entire civilizations, burn humanity to the very ground it stole.
And her lips were a flutter of butterfly wings on the petals that were Karolina's cheeks.
"My eternal and my everything," Karolina repeated.
They worship at the altars that are each other's minds, each other's souls.
Their words an oath; a binding promise.
✴️
Tea. Its smell floats on the current of a mild wind, sickly sweet it carries through the windows.
She is alone in an empty bed. Blankets wrap around her, but it is an artificial warmth and grants Nico no peace. In this cavernous room they had rented— its bed too big, its shadows unfamiliar— it is an alone she is no longer used to feeling.
Tonight, in this delicate German town neither of them knew of before, Nico is Andrea Clarke. Karolina is Sahara Leone.
Sahara, like the desert, when she is everything but.
"Karolina?" A non-urgent call. The pitter of her bare feet, the patter. "Karolina?"
Karolina is like the sky. The colour and feel of it. Morning and afternoon and evening sky— a promise, she gives and gives and gives.
Karolina watches the night sky, almost every night, for a post planet she may never revisit. She gives, and what she receives is almost nothing.
Nico catches sight of Karolina. A light in the darkness; floating, a star amongst many others. As if she belongs.
Karolina and Nico. Blood and bone. The veins, the vessels.
"Come back in, Kar." The gentleness in Nico's voice would shake her mother to the very core of her being. "Whenever you're ready."
The windows are high. Open wide.
Nico turns away from them. The pitter of her feet, the light thud and patter of another's.