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" “Uh,” said Ziri. He moved his shoulders, rolling them, and shook open his wings. They flared, seeming in the close space as vast as a stormhunter’s, and he said, clearing his throat, “One of the worst things about being the Wolf was not being able to fly. I’m going to, now.” He was awkward, his voice halting, as he gestured out through the crescent opening where the time of purest blue had passed to black, and the stars were thick as sugar.
Oh. Okay. Liraz was almost—almost—relieved to have this ended, so that she could slink away. Melt. Curse herself. Die a little.
Ziri cleared his throat and looked at her. So earnest. So hopeful. “Do you … want to come?”
Flying? That was something she could do. She didn’t even have to risk the syllable it would take to say yes. She just had to nod."
(Laini Taylor - Dreams of Gods and Monsters)
Flying. She was flying in the dark blue skies of the Kirin lands, amidst the mountains and the meadows and the fresh smell of pine trees. And love. Love was in her heart and nervousness too, mingling themselves into a feeling of newfound joy not like anything she’d ever felt before.
Love, she laughed internally, at the marvellous unlikeliness of that feeling that coursed through her right now. Love of this kind of variety had never been something Liraz thought she’d feel, or even wanted to feel before.
Love.
So maybe it wasn’t a full blown ‘I would move the world for you’ love, it wasn’t Karou and Akiva, burning with the intensity of a thousand suns. But it was candlelight burning where there had only been darkness, with the potential to light a thousand candles more. It was an ‘I’m beyond glad you’re alive’, an ‘I trust you’ and … an ‘I want to hold your hand’. Godstars, when had she ever felt the pull of needing to touch someone so bad together with the uncertainty and excitement? Never before, never for anyone, never like this.
She’d had love, she had it for Akiva and for Hazael, but they were family and the love for them had brought comfort, trust, joy, a way to survive in their bleak circumstances – and sadness too, she thought as she felt the pang of emptiness that still followed every thought of Hazael – but never this excitement, never that feeling of … fluttering in her stomach.
Butterflies.
She’d once flipped through Karou’s sketchbook and seen a drawing of a whole lot of butterflies inside a stomach. At the time, she didn’t understand and thought it was just some strange artsy thing – because if there was one thing she knew nothing about, that thing was art – but she thought she got it now. And those marvellous and bedamned little creatures had managed to make her blush and tangle up her words and given her the miracle of feeling alive for some reason other than vengeance, given her a reason to believe in the existence of happiness in life, for the first time since Hazael died.
And so she looked at the Kirin boy beside her, and Godstars, was she actually smiling? She could feel it forming on her lips and accompanying it also came laughter, and it seemed to spread through the air, because right after Ziri was smiling and laughing too, and he flew faster and she raced him, and felt the wind and the freedom and the lightness of that moment and she knew that day would be marked in her mind always, the beginning of a counter point to all the sorrow, pain and endurance she had to spare. And one day it might just be enough to surpass it.