Work Text:
Sometimes there are things in the world that fit together perfectly. Often things come in pairs, but too often those pairs are equals and opposites. The sky and the sea. Darkness and light. The sun and the moon.
Hate and Time.
But for two things to exist, parallel but never truly coexisting without losing bits of themselves, was a lonely life indeed. Julienne felt sorry for them, in a way. In a world she used to live in, laws of gravity could keep two bodies orbiting in a steady and ever-moving dance around each other without ever allowing those two bodies to touch. She wasn’t sure if gravity were quite so strict in this world, as it did pull her ever towards the ground below, but the sun surely didn’t care for a regular orbit. Or, well, the Light didn’t, at least.
Gravity tugged at sugar-floss wings, though she knew she could power through and stay airborne for several hours yet. There were no signs that the Light’s master had any intention to let it fall away into night anytime soon, and on a day as clear as today she could nearly see straight from one side of the world to the other. The sky was liberating, but these days it was empty. She was often the only one for miles, if at all. Those who flew were only too wary since the sky itself had caught fire. Their numbers had fallen dramatically that awful day, and the market was the only place most of her feathered brethren felt safe anymore. It wasn’t that she blamed them, no. They had all lost so much in the fire. But she simply couldn’t allow herself to remain cooped in the market. It was a bright and colorful and crowded place at ground level, and short visits were always nice, but the dark and deadly ceiling loomed too low, too heavy. Even with the danger, she preferred the open sky any day.
Below, there came a call more compelling than gravity, and at this Julienne angled downwards. Her new flight brought the ground soaring upwards as she grew closer and closer to her lover’s cadenza. It was a beautiful song, a melancholy thing played mostly in strings that Julienne had never heard before. Melody was a hell of a composer. She had been even before she became the walking ensemble that she was, always plucking out new tunes and juggling instruments in an attempt to capture the depth of the songs that played inside her head. Her final form had been shaped around that habit. Melody could now play as many instruments in tandem as she wished as easily as if they were extensions of herself, for the simple reason that now they very much were.
The song shifted as Julienne swooped into frame. Less melancholy, more dulce, a tone Melody saved exclusively for her. Julienne’s chocolate heart threatened to melt as it swelled with affection. Her wings beat a couple more times, easing out of her relative dive to make a soft and easy landing beside her wife, placing both of them in the same octave.
“Hello to you too, my love,” she said, nuzzling the side of the lyre face with her own. Melody’s song drifted off on a fond note.
Those who did not know them well often inquired how the two of them ever managed to hold a conversation. When one half of the pair spoke only in what tones and rhythms could be provided by her symphonic form, it was easy for an outsider to question how anything meaningful was ever said.
Julienne called those people idiots.
The harp plucked out a questioning tone, Melody’s hollow eyes tilting upwards towards the blue sky above.
“I could see all the way across the Sea of Limen today. It’s a lovely view, I only wish I could share it with you.”
Drums beat out a bouncy rhythm in reply, Melody’s tempo becoming more of a skip.
“Ah, yes, the elastic valley still stands as surely as it ever did. The fence does it well, but,” she faltered a moment, which Melody noticed immediately, letting out another curious note.
“There’s Nothing where the Forest of Wisdom used to be.”
A horrified clatter, the glockenspiel on the crown of Melody’s head shaking like leaves in a stiff wind.
“I know, but at the very least if I can see it I know where it is, or at the least where it isn’t.” She nuzzled further into her wife’s accordion neck. “We are safe, and that’s what matters.” She didn’t mention the grief she’d seen in the Plains of Hesitation, probably plaguing some unfortunate soul, nor did she mention how empty the land seemed these days, with few wanderers still left. So long as she knew where the threats were, she could keep the two of them far, far away from those places. Not that they were incapable of holding their own, but there was no need to tempt fate, especially now when She was getting more bold with each passing day.
Melody made a soft sound, angling her head up and back. Julienne understood and accepted the invitation, climbing aboard. She sent a small thanks to the long-since-fallen stars that their forms seemed so perfectly matched, and that she was able to settle upon her wife’s back as naturally as a smaller bird might rest upon a branch.
“In brighter news, there seems to be a new type of flower in bloom,” Julienne angled the knife-point of her head towards the horizon. “That way. They seem to be growing in a great circle.”
There was a cymbal-roll as Melody shifted her direction. A brisk Andante began as they started towards the direction Julienne had indicated.
“You’re quite right,” mused Julienne. “There’s so little in this world we haven’t seen, I’d love to investigate this new mystery with you.” She rested her head atop her wife’s, resting delicately beside glockenspiels and knowing she would be safe from each mallet. Melody was large, yes, but so, so gentile, especially when it came to Julienne. She never worried at all about her own relatively delicate form when it came to her love. “Feels almost like a hero’s work again, doesn’t it?”
The accordion wheezed out a laugh beneath her.
“Wandering towards a vague and unspecified destination without reason? All we need is that electric fool filling our heads with riddles.”
The laugh deepened, light percussion falling like rain upon a roof. Julienne missed the rain, and she allowed herself to close her no-longer-physical eyes and pretend she was home in a flat resting near a window, hearing rain patter against the glass as she held the love of her life close to her, their human forms fitting together like neighboring pieces of the same puzzle.
“I love you,” she said, knowing Melody would understand despite her abrupt change of topic. “Unconditionally and eternally, for all the time we have in this dying world.”
Below her, a soft motif played, and Julienne knew it well enough to know that the sentiment was returned with all the strings of Melody’s musical heart.
As if on cue, the sky began to dull from its vibrant blue. The dulling turned to darkening, and soon the two of them knew that if they kept on they’d be travelling through the night. One should never be caught travelling at night in this world, so Melody stretched right where she was and made a soft noise that indicated Julienne should dismount.
Weaker monsters than them were often advised to find either a strong dreamer or the shelter of trees when night came, but the two of them were anything but weak. While they remained close to one another, hardly anything would dare to threaten them, and so it was no issue when Melody settled herself in a relaxed half-moon right in the middle of the open plain. Her earlier noise was repeated, a soft invitation that Julienne accepted. She settled her avian figure so that she filled the crescent that Melody had provided, resting her head beside her wife’s as she gave her wings a final stretch before they rested.
A soft and sweet lullaby lulled from Melody. It was a sleepy thing, the woman’s equivalent of humming, and it reverberated through Julienne like the affectionate purring of a cat all around her.
“Goodnight to you, too, my dearest,” she murmured, already letting the heavy blanket of sleep pull over them both. As they lay like this, Julienne’s dreams took her not quite backwards but perhaps sideways in time, where she as a ballerina had met a rather quiet musician with striking eyes and a kind smile, who spoke softly but played loudly, whose laugh sounded like the playing notes of a rain-stick overturned, and the two of them lived simply but happily in their own world of make-believe far from monsters or fears or doubts or griefs or hate.
Some things fit together perfectly, not opposites but equals. Trees and Flowers. The Moon and the Stars. Wood, Water and Darkness.
Dance and Music.
Julienne and Melody.