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Claude is not at the dining hall tonight.
Dimitri does not mention this to anyone when he notices, only stows the knowledge away and continues to dig a fork into his dinner. It is far from unheard of for students to skip meals—Dimitri has done so himself on the occasions that training ran away from him—but still. The table the Golden Deer habitually occupy is right across from that of the Blue Lions, and he had grown accustomed to accidentally meeting Claude’s eye every once in a while over the course of a meal.
Claude usually gives Dimitri a small smile or, when in an especially joking mood, a wink. And Dimitri wouldn’t go so far as to say he missed it, but… he’s used to it, is all.
So he notices that Claude is gone. Sylvain continues recounting an outlandish anecdote, Ingrid savagely corrects him on his embellished details, Felix scowls, and the rest of the table steadfastly ignores him, all while Dimitri tries not to stare too much at the extra space at the Golden Deer’s table.
He almost forgets it entirely until dinner is over and they begin the walk back to the dorms, and he catches a flash of yellow out of the corner of his eye.
He stops walking, and Dedue halts beside him.
“Your Highness?” he says.
Dimitri frowns, looking in the direction he thought he’d seen it. Squinting in the darkness yields little when the monastery’s pathways are so poorly lit. He’ll need to move closer to get a better look.
“I apologize,” he says when he turns back to Dedue. “I’ve forgotten something. I’ll return to my room once I’ve retrieved it.”
“Shall I accompany you?” Dedue asks, already stepping forward.
“There is no need.” Dimitri raises a hand to stop him. “I assure you, I won’t be long.”
Dedue regards him, not looking entirely convinced, which doesn’t surprise Dimitri—both he and Dedue know he’s a poor liar.
Dimitri tries to aim closer to the truth, then, to reassure him.
“It isn’t anything to worry about,” he says. “I promise I will be back before the hour is late.”
Dedue’s lips purse as he contemplates it, but he finally nods.
“Very well. But rest is important, Your Highness. Take care to get a proper night’s sleep.”
“As you have told me often.” Dimitri smiles. “Thank you.”
Dedue nods once more, and Dimitri takes off in the direction of the blur he saw.
The path takes him towards the horse stables, and at this hour there is hardly anyone about aside from the occasional sentry and stable hand, neither of whom pay Dimitri any mind. And still no sign of the yellow he came all this way chasing. Perhaps he was mistaken, his eyes convincing him that lamplight or something else was a golden cape dashing in the night. He ought to turn back now and retire to his quarters.
Just as disappointment settles in Dimitri’s stomach, he notices the bridge leading away from the stables and towards the wyvern tower.
At the end of the bridge lies the tower’s entrance, the doors of which are cracked open.
Dimitri strides towards it.
The doors creak when he pushes them, thoroughly destroying the possibility of a surprise entrance. He hadn’t intended to sneak around, but he can’t help but feel like an intruder here. The horse stables are far more familiar to him than this place. Overhead, the tower stretches up and up and up, fading to darkness at the ceiling. And all around it, a staircase climbs along the tower’s body, leading past an endless number of wyvern stalls that line the walls. At every level, there are gates that Dimitri has seen open during the day, wyverns stretching their wings and dropping out of them, soaring out into the skies. They’re closed now, and the tower is mostly quiet save the occasional huff and rustle of the sleeping creatures within, but he can almost imagine it in the daytime: the sound of beating wings, the whistle of wind, great dark shapes casting shadows from above.
But right now, there’s little to see in the darkness but one thing: lamplight, a few stories up. Someone stands in front of one of the stalls, and the lamplight glints off their yellow cloak.
Dimitri’s pulse picks up, and he begins to climb the stairs.
Claude doesn’t turn his way when Dimitri finally reaches him, too focused on the wyvern inside the stall door. He leans over it, far enough to make concern prickle up Dimitri’s neck, but Claude doesn’t seem to be in any trouble at all. On the floor by his feet is a small, rumpled sack, and the concern Dimitri feels amplifies sharply when he sees bloodstains on it.
“Don’t worry, it’s just food I hunted for her,” Claude says without looking at Dimitri.
Dimitri halts, the wooden flooring creaking under his boot. He’s slightly breathless from climbing as well as the journey it took to even find this place, and after all that, he doesn’t know what to say.
He never really does, when it comes to Claude.
Claude steps away from the stall door and turns to him, finally, and even in the sparse light, his green eyes glint.
“To what do I owe this visit, Your Princeliness?” he says, a familiar smile curling on his lips.
“I thought I saw you come in here,” Dimitri starts to explain. It suddenly feels embarrassing to admit he followed Claude on a hunch, a whim. So he says, “You were absent at dinner.”
“Thought I’d give Daisy her dinner first.” Claude beckons his head towards the stall. Dimitri hesitantly walks forward and peeks inside.
There is a wyvern, unsurprisingly. At first glance, Daisy looks much like the other wyverns bred at Garreg Mach. But upon closer inspection, she is smaller, her body taking up less space in the stall than the other wyverns he passed by on the way up.
“Is she a young one?” he asks, watching curiously as she munches on the remnants of a small animal Claude must have tossed in there.
“Nah.” Claude props an elbow on the stall door. “Most students think she’s too small though, and choose other wyverns to ride instead. But look at her wings and claws.”
Dimitri does. They seem almost too large for her, and though he is no expert, he would wager her wingspan rivals or even surpasses those of her fellow wyverns.
Claude continues in a fond voice, “She just needs a little more time to grow.”
She looks up at Claude when he speaks, tongue flicking out over her pointed teeth, her yellow eyes wide like a puppy’s. Claude’s smile grows wider, and he reaches out to pet a hand over the scales on her head. She rumbles contentedly. Dimitri blinks in surprise.
“I must admit I rarely visit here,” he says, leaning closer to watch Daisy roll around in the hay of her stall. “My skill in flying leaves much to be desired.”
“Huh.” Claude regards him amusedly. “I seem to recall Ingrid trying to rope you into flying practice.”
“Oh, she did. And she quickly realized that was a mistake.”
Claude snickers. “Ever try a wyvern, then? Perhaps they would suit you better.”
“I am willing to… test it out.” Dimitri swallows against the nervousness that rises up his throat. At least pegasus are still mostly horse-shaped, which he is far more comfortable with. Wyverns, however, are entirely foreign to him. “Flying is certainly a valuable skill that I would do well to nurture.”
“There’s nothing like it.”
Claude says it like a sigh, one that Dimitri dares to call wistful. Claude’s picked up a stray piece of hay off the ground and is toying with it in front of Daisy, smiling as she tries to nip at it. But his eyes seem far away, like he’s imagining himself somewhere else, somewhere much higher and brighter than here.
He must sense Dimitri staring at him because he turns and looks, finds Dimitri waiting patiently for him to say more.
Claude clears his throat, rubs the back of his neck with a hand, and Dimitri realizes it’s the first time he’s ever seen Claude look embarrassed.
Then he speaks, in a voice so soft, like he only wants Dimitri to hear this.
“Everything is… quiet, when I’m up there,” he says. “It’s nice. And when you’re high enough, it feels like you can see clear to the edge of the world. I don’t think about country borders or alliances or politics. You can’t tell the pieces of land apart, they just are. They’re just one. And I like that.”
Claude meets Dimitri’s eyes, and his smile takes a turn for the self-deprecating. “Forgive me for sounding maudlin.”
“No.” Dimitri shakes his head, shifts closer. “It is clearly important to you. Do not apologize.”
The earnestness bleeds out of him, he knows it. But he can’t help it—Claude so rarely speaks about himself, and Dimitri is loath to make him shutter himself away again, disappearing behind smoke and mirrors. This is the most Dimitri has ever learned about him besides what everyone else already knows: that Claude is not from Fódlan, that he rose to his position in the Alliance very suddenly to the severe displeasure of many nobles, a great number of which attend the Officer’s Academy.
He suddenly feels ashamed that he’d never thought to ask more about Claude, to learn what his likes and dislikes are, his hobbies outside of academic life. Dimitri wants to know more.
“Is that why you came to visit her?” he asks. “Do you want Daisy to be yours, someday?”
Claude is silent, seeming to mull over something in his head with a furrowed brow.
When the silence stretches on a little longer, the realization hits Dimitri. Hesitation is obvious in every line of Claude’s expression and body language. Of course. It makes sense that he may not feel comfortable sharing more with Dimitri, with—with someone he is not especially close to.
Dimitri has overstepped, that much is clear.
“I apologize.” Dimitri straightens his back. “It isn’t any of my business.” He begins to step away.
Claude’s hand moves to rest atop Dimitri’s own, where it lays on the stall door.
Dimitri freezes.
Claude says, “Today’s a holiday, where I’m from.”
It stuns Dimitri into silence. As little as Claude talks about himself, he talks even less about his life before coming to Fódlan. His hand stays where it is. It is warm.
“Flying is a significant part of Almyran culture,” Claude explains. “There’s a holiday dedicated to the bond between riders and wyverns. There are festivals all around the country and competitions for the best fliers, to see whose bond with their wyvern is the strongest.”
He looks at Daisy, who slowly blinks with the beginnings of sleepiness. A smile plays at Claude’s lips again. “But there are many,” he continues, “who prefer to take their wyvern and fly far away, just the two of them. Some remote place where they can be together and just… bond. That idea always suited me better.” He turns to Dimitri. “Spending time with someone who understands me so well.”
Dimitri stares, not knowing what to say. “That sounds like a wonderful tradition.”
“It is.” Claude’s hand pulls away so he can interlace his fingers and rest his arms behind his head, as he’s done so often before. “Anyway, Daisy’s not mine. She’s just my favorite of the monastery’s bunch. My own wyvern is leagues away from here.”
“Back in Almyra?” Dimitri raises his brows.
“I got to choose her when I turned fifteen. She hadn’t hatched yet. The egg was pearly white and almost too big for me to carry.” Claude flashes a grin at the memory, but it quickly softens at the edges, turns wistful. “I left before I got to see her hatch.”
“I’m sorry.”
Claude shrugs. “It’s not like I really got to know her.”
“That doesn’t mean you cannot miss it, or long for it,” Dimitri says.
Silence settles over them again, and Dimitri frets. He’s never considered himself very good with advice, and Goddess knows it’s only more difficult to pick his words around Claude.
But then Claude turns his face, and there is a smile there. It’s different from the others. A little soppier, a little less immaculate. More real. Claude bites his lip a little as he smiles. There’s a dimple in his right cheek.
Dimitri notices all these things at once and has absolutely no clue what to do about it. He flushes, hot and immediate, and he prays the light in here is poor enough for Claude not to notice.
“In any case,” Dimitri says, and coughs into his hand to clear his throat. “Thank you for explaining it to me. I only regret that this is how you must celebrate such a special occasion, on your own late at night.”
“Well, the night isn’t over yet.” Claude’s smile slants towards something more devious. He reaches for the saddle hanging beside Daisy’s door. “All this talk of flying is pointless without actually riding, don’t you think?”
“Oh, you are leaving then?”
Claude gives Dimitri an emphatic eyebrow waggle. “We,” he says.
“We what?” Dimitri asks.
“Come on, you’re the one who said you’re no good at flying.” Claude unclasps the stall door, and that’s when the panic starts to rise within Dimitri. “So I’ll fly, and you’ll be my passenger.”
“I don’t think that would be wise—” Dimitri tries to reason, stumbling backwards as Daisy thumps out of her stall, stretching her body as if she’s been cramped in there all day. Her scales shudder and gleam. “I’m not certain we’ll both fit.”
“Oh we will, I’ve tried it.” Claude scratches his cheek sheepishly. “Teach wasn’t too happy when she caught me and Hilda trying it during one of our group tasks, but it’s had its uses in missions, so I think she’s forgiven us.”
“But it’s after hours now; I do not think we’re even allowed to be in here, let alone fly around the monastery.”
“And yet you followed me inside.”
Dimitri grimaces, unable to deny it. And despite all his protests, he hasn’t flat out walked away. Daisy waits patiently as Claude fits her with the saddle, her long tail swishing side to side and periodically thumping against Dimitri’s boots. When the saddle is in place, Claude hefts himself onto it with an ease that only comes from years of practice, and Daisy’s wings flick outwards in anticipation before folding back in. When Claude turns to look at Dimitri, Daisy’s gaze follows.
“Well?” Claude says and reaches a hand out. “Your chariot awaits, if you wish it.”
His tone is light, but Dimitri can see in his eyes a question:
Do you trust me?
It doesn’t take much consideration at all for Dimitri to arrive at the answer.
He takes Claude’s hand.
“Very well,” he relents, and Claude’s answering grin is worth the terror that thrums beneath Dimitri’s skin. He lets himself be hauled onto the saddle with considerably less grace than Claude.
It’s more of a squeeze than Dimitri had anticipated. He’s practically plastered up against Claude’s back, his knees bumping behind Claude’s own. He foresees a blush being permanently displayed on his face for the entire duration of this bad idea. Claude doesn’t seem bothered at all. He glances back at Dimitri to ask, “You alright back there?”
“As alright as I can be,” Dimitri grunts, trying to find a handhold somewhere, anywhere.
“Don’t be shy, Your Princeliness.” Claude reaches back, grasps Dimitri by the wrist and pulls his hand forward to rest at the side of Claude’s waist. “Don’t want you falling off now. Ingrid’ll never forgive me.”
Dimitri can’t even find words to reply, his thoughts whirling and sputtering in incoherent bursts. He doesn’t pull his hand away, but he curls his fingers so that he clings to the fabric of Claude’s clothes rather than the body beneath them. His other hand follows suit on Claude’s other side.
“A-Alright,” Dimitri says once he’s settled, his heart thundering inside his chest.
Claude gathers the reins, makes a gesture familiar to Dimitri through his experience with horses, and Daisy lopes towards one of the gates along the wall. A looped strap hangs beside the gate and Claude snatches it and pulls. The gate opens with a long, scraping sound that does nothing for Dimitri’s nerves. If the guards haven’t noticed their presence yet, they certainly have now.
The gate opens to a landing that juts out from the tower wall. Above them hangs the night sky, wide and endless and flowing with stars. It has always been a beautiful sight to Dimitri, but in this moment, the expanse of it looks intimidating. He feels like he’s about to fall rather than fly, and it twists his stomach into knots.
Daisy’s wings unfurl in their entirety, indeed stretching farther than her small frame would suggest.
Dimitri distantly hears Claude say something like, “Looks like great weather for flying,” but he barely hears it, his every sense focused on Daisy stalking towards the edge of the landing.
Her wings flap once, twice, the sound of it sharp as a whipcrack in Dimitri’s ears.
“Like I said,” Claude says, raising his voice over the sound of Daisy’s wings, “don’t fall off.”
Daisy leaps from the landing.
Instinctively, Dimitri gives up on only gripping Claude’s clothes and wraps his arms fully around Claude’s waist. The temptation to squeeze his eyes shut is almost impossible to resist, but Dimitri forces himself to look, holding on to the belief that he trusts Claude not to send them hurdling down to the earth. He watches the landing disappear from beneath them, sees the monastery grounds far below. It grows farther, and farther, and farther.
They’re soaring.
Claude whoops in delight. He looks at Dimitri over his shoulder and his hair blows wildly across his forehead and cheeks. He is beaming wider and brighter than the moon shining down on them.
“What’d I tell you?” Claude gives Daisy a firm pat. “Folks are wrong to underestimate her.”
Dimitri thinks he hears Daisy huff smugly, but that may have just been the wind.
“She’s doing great,” Dimitri yells, partly to talk over the noise of the wind and partly in abject terror.
He realizes he’s still holding Claude by the waist.
“Ah, sorry—” he starts to say and moves to release him.
Claude grabs his hands. “Hey, it’s okay.”
“I’m not the best at watching my strength,” Dimitri explains. “What if I injure you?”
“You’re not going to injure me,” Claude laughs. “And you have to hold on, remember? I’ll tell you if you’re squeezing too tight.”
“Claude…”
“Dimitri.”
Claude tilts his head back until it bumps gently against Dimitri’s shoulder. He stays there for a second, a suspended moment between one heartbeat and the next. His hair tickles against Dimitri’s jaw.
He called him Dimitri.
Dimitri brings his arms closer around Claude’s waist again, and finally lets himself relax. Claude relaxes, too.
“Okay,” Dimitri says quietly, and hides a smile in Claude’s hair.
Daisy takes them in a wide, slow circle around Garreg Mach. They pass over the nearby village, its streets darkened aside for intermittent glints of distant lamplight. Daisy swoops by the mountains that rise around the monastery, round the cathedral and Goddess Tower reaching up towards the heavens. Dimitri wonders if anyone can see them, and he sincerely hopes no one mistakes them for an enemy and fires arrows their way.
Claude mostly keeps Daisy at the same elevation, but then he cues something to her and she beats her wings, taking them higher and higher. Dimitri yelps and tightens his grip on Claude. Claude doesn’t protest.
He asks, “Too high?”
Dimitri says, in more of a squeak than he’d like to admit, “No. I’m fine.”
“Don’t worry, this is the highest I’ll take us.” Claude sweeps an arm out, gesturing around them. “The view is pretty sweet.”
Dimitri was too focused on clinging to Claude for dear life to really look at his surroundings, and when he does, the air is stolen from his throat.
Stars. More of them than he’s ever seen before. They’ve never been so close, either—not even the highest towers in Fhirdiad can compare. Shadowed clouds wind through the darkness, black and blue swirling with grey, their edges glowing with moonlight.
“Oh,” he breathes.
Claude says nothing and simply watches the stars with him. Daisy glides lazily, flapping her wings periodically to keep them steady. Dimitri feels weightless, like he can float right up and catch a star in his hands. He feels, for the first time since they leapt from the tower, that he’s looking up at what’s beyond them instead of down towards what they left behind.
“You were right,” Dimitri murmurs while he stares at the stars. “It is quiet up here.”
Claude slides a glance his way, and emotions flicker over his face too quickly for Dimitri to parse.
Claude says, “This is what it’s about.”
“Hm?”
“The holiday. At least to me. It feels like a chance to get away from it all. The chance to be… at peace. If only for a day.”
His voice is pensive and subdued, a stark contrast to the giddy weightlessness just a moment ago. He is looking down at Daisy and gripping the reins in tight fists. He looks tense all the way through his shoulders and back. Dimitri doesn’t understand it. He thought flying was something Claude loved, something that made him happy.
Flying must be one of the few moments he gets entirely to himself. Dimitri can understand that kind of solitude, how it feels like one of the few moments he can truly let his guard down and loosen the hold he has on his emotions. Perhaps that’s what flying has come to be for Claude.
And if that’s the case, is this a hint of what Claude really feels inside? This anxious awareness of the future, this belief that this kind of peace is only temporary, fleeting, soon to be gone.
Dimitri’s heart squeezes. He doesn’t want Claude to feel that way. He doesn’t deserve it.
He says, “You should try flying in Faerghus, someday.”
That has Claude blinking at him.
Dimitri quickly elaborates. “Particularly Gautier, where Sylvain’s family is from. That’s the northernmost part of Faerghus, you see.”
“I have a vague understanding of Faerghus’s geography, yes.” Bemusement threads through Claude’s voice, but he looks interested in what Dimitri is proposing.
“Well, it’s far north enough to see the lights.”
“The lights?” Claude’s brow furrows, then rises in realization. “Ah, Sothis’s Lights.”
“Yes.”
It is one of Dimitri’s most salient memories, and one that fills him with wonder at every recollection. He was very young when it happened during a visit to House Gautier. Sylvain had boasted to all of them about seeing the lights on multiple occasions, and aside from the annoyance of hearing the story over and over again, Dimitri couldn’t help but feel curious. They were a phenomenon that attracted visitors from all around the continent, after all—hundreds of people every year trekking through the snow and frigid cold to get even the briefest glimpse of Sothis’s Lights. Is it worth it, he had wondered.
And then he saw them.
Swirls of blue and green, so bright and vivid as to be otherworldly, weaving through the starry night. Felix cried when he saw them, which he was teased relentlessly for in subsequent years, but truthfully, Dimitri could not blame him.
He’s never forgotten them. And it’s been a long time since he's made the trip to see them again. It would be nice to make the journey with a friend.
So he says to Claude, “They’re beautiful. And seeing them on wyvernback is surely even more beautiful.” He flushes when he goes on to suggest, “So you should come and see them. Bring your wyvern, when the time comes that you are reunited. Perhaps by then I will have mastered my own, as well.”
“Or we can share again,” Claude teases.
“That, too.” The flush worsens. “I… wouldn’t be opposed to it.”
Goddess, his face must be terribly red. But when Claude grins and looks away, Dimitri spies hints of red on his own cheeks, and it fills him with relief. Relief, and another giddy, fluttering emotion that he cannot name.
It emboldens him enough to hold onto Claude a little tighter—only a little, still careful of the strength he wields so ungracefully. Claude does not complain. He hasn’t complained all night. In fact, he relaxes in Dimitri’s arms, the tenseness that plagued him earlier having floated away, lost somewhere in the winds. All the better for it, Dimitri thinks. Peace suits Claude much better.
“Ever the charmer, aren’t you, Your Highness?” Claude says airily.
Dimitri grimaces. It will take ages for this embarrassment to leave him. “Not at all. I only say what I think is true.”
“Ah, but that’s what’s charming, you see.” Claude laughs when he sees Dimitri hiding more and more behind his bangs, too flustered to look at him anymore. “Alright, I suppose it’s time for us to head back now.”
No rises to Dimitri’s mouth quick and unbidden. He doesn’t want to go back yet. But the hour grows late, as do the chances of their absence being discovered, and he isn’t at all in the mood for one of Seteth’s lectures.
“Alright,” he says, lifted like a weight out of his throat.
Claude pats Daisy. “Take us home, girl.”
Daisy begins the slow, downward spiral back to earth, and the stars return to their faraway place.
There is no one waiting for them when they reach the wyvern tower, no one to scold them about stealing school property or entering the tower without permission. Daisy lumps back to her stall without a sound except for a small whine when Claude tells her goodbye.
“Only for a little while,” he says, scratching her head. “Flying practice is later this week, I’ll see you soon.”
Reluctantly satisfied, she paces around in the hay before curling into a ball to sleep.
Claude and Dimitri quietly make their way out of the tower. It’s difficult to guess how long it’s been since dinner ended and Dimitri found himself here, but sleep is beginning to fog his senses, so he assumes it must be late. He should return to the dorms soon before Dedue truly begins to worry, as he is certain Dedue won’t go to sleep until he knows Dimitri is back in his own room.
But despite his tiredness, he doesn’t want to go yet. Not at all. Not when Claude closes the tower door behind them and flashes him a grin like they’ve gotten away with something special. And certainly not when Claude catches his wrist and tugs him along, and Dimitri fights the urge to slip his hand into Claude’s own.
As it is, Claude pulls them towards the dormitories. They do not encounter anyone on the way there, for which Dimitri is grateful: running into someone else might make Claude let go of him. Every step closer to the dormitories brings closer the reality that this night will end soon, something Dimitri realizes with faint sadness.
They tread lightly through the dormitory hall, careful not to wake anyone in the rooms they pass by. Dimitri’s room is closest. They stop in front of his door, and Claude finally, to Dimitri’s dismay, lets go of his wrist.
“That’s enough adventuring for one night, I’d say,” Claude says, leaning casually against the door frame.
“We do have class tomorrow; we can’t spend all night flying.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad to me.”
Dimitri smiles. “Truthfully, I feel the same.”
Claude smiles back, and Dimitri doesn’t know if he’s imagining it—it can only be wishful thinking, surely—but there is a fondness to his gaze. It makes Dimitri feel warm beneath his collar.
“Well,” Claude says, stepping away from the wall to give Dimitri an exaggerated bow. “I must bid you good night, Your Highness.”
Dimitri shakes his head. “And good night to you, Claude.” He opens the door.
“Wait.”
A hand falls on Dimitri’s shoulder, stopping him. Dimitri turns around.
Claude pushes onto his toes, leans up very closely. Dimitri’s breath catches in his throat.
A kiss—faint, feather-light, fleeting—lands on his cheek. Claude’s hand is on Dimitri’s chest to steady himself, his palm pressed directly over Dimitri’s thundering heart. He is close enough for Dimitri to see his surprisingly long eyelashes, fluttering against his cheeks as his eyes have closed to kiss Dimitri. He’s kissing Dimitri.
His lips pull away almost as soon as it happens. But Dimitri is blushing harder than he has all night. He feels heat all the way up to his hairline, and down to every fingertip. He might be gaping, but he can’t bring himself to stop.
“Thanks, Dimitri,” Claude whispers, and Dimitri expects a wink, something to break the illusion and show him that Claude was only kidding.
But instead, Claude smiles at him, small and secret, just for him, and he turns around and strides over to his room.
Dimitri enters his own room in a daze. He leans against the door once it’s closed, and even though they were dozens and dozens of meters up in the sky tonight, it’s now that his stomach feels like it’s swooping. He’s flying all over again.
He touches his cheek. He smiles.
His dreams that night are of lights, great colorful arcs of it, twisting in ribbons around the moon and stars. He can’t wait for Claude to see it.