Chapter Text
You might have thought Rain would leave, immediately. Take to the sky and abandon that churchyard prison, where he’d passed through year after painful year.
He did not.
Not because of Lena, mind—he could have taken her with him.
No. It was habit, pain, and disbelief.
Had the spell really worked? The collar was gone, true enough, and he could feel it, feel the curse's absence like a missing tooth, like missing step in a staircase: conspicuous. He kept tripping over the feeling in his head. It has been there; now it was not.
But his curse had been so long that his mind and body could not, at first, truly understand he was free. He kept expecting it to come back.
As the world turned towards sunrise, cruel habit drew him back to the plinth. His body didn’t tingle, like it used to. No pain. No indication that he was going to transform, just his internal clock honed by long decades of cursed subservience.
But the sun rose.
And he saw it rise. He was awake to see it rise.
First pearl-blue light edged up over the trees, turning what had been flat darkness into silhouette. A line of red, like the whole earth bled, tinged the base of the horizon.
And it brightened. Blue rose, up into the sky. Dark streaks of cloud stretched above him, clean-cut against the brightness of the day.
The sun’s white fire rose painfully up. The clouds lightened, and color flooded the landscape, the morning shadows long and dark.
It hurt. There was so much light in the world. His eyes were not used to it anymore. He squinted, narrowing his vision, stubbornly refusing to go inside.
Lena took his hand. Neither of them said a word.
But she took his hand, and he could feel it. He could hold her little hand in his large one, and move his fingers, and tilt his head down to look at her.
And he felt the sun on his skin. How many years, since he had felt the sun on his skin? At first the morning was cool, and damp, and the air filled with birdsong that he had forgotten. How could he have forgotten the songs birds sang? They had not existed for him, except through a hazy barrier of stone, a muffled, distorted perception of the world that he now perceived with aching clarity.
The morning warmed. The sun licked dew from the grasses and inched higher.
He spread his wings, and felt its warmth against them. Lena squeezed his hand. Dan leaned against his other side, tail wrapped around her front paws.
He had always been a creature of the night, even before. But oh, how he luxuriated now, feeling the sun on him.
Now it felt real to him, truly, deeply, that he was free. Free. Not a gargoyle; just a demon.
The churchyard prison had no hold on him. He could leave without disintegrating.
“Canary,” he murmured. “I want to go… Far away.”
It was the first word either of them had spoken since the sun began to rise. The moment had felt too powerful, too perfect, to interrupt.
“Where?” she asked.
“I don’t care,” he said. “Will you come?”
“Of course, Rain,” she said. She smiled, and stood, planting a gentle kiss on his forehead as he remained sitting on the stone that had been his tomb.
She bent, and lifted the leather-bound spell book from where she had sat it.
“Wherever you go,” she added. “You know I’ll follow.”