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Your head is laid in her lap, tilted just ever so slightly to not be too annoying as it rests on her thighs while you stare out towards the sunset in Lakeland. The muscles of your mouth pull and relax, your tongue flaps, and you’re sure that you’re describing it to her, the way that the colors refract off of the water, glance off the horizon, blur together with their brilliant hues, but they don’t mean anything to you.
There’s a part of you that wonders if she would prefer to hear it from someone else, from Urianger, maybe. He could describe the stars so serenely and with such dramatic flair that it makes you, oh Worrier of Light, feel so inadequately prepared to do anything but fight. You want to take in these peaceful moments more, to be able to just flop down and act as if you were boneless and free, sinking into the soft world around you, but there’s a siren in your mind that refuses to even consider that a possibility.
As you’re ready to stop and close your eyes, to give up, to call it adequate and not say a single word more, you feel a gentle hand slide into your hair and run through it. It sends a small shiver down your spine, a small moment where your words stop anyways. Not from the fear of fumbling them up, but from lacking any to let out. And you smile. You were sure that there had been a smile on your face anyways, but now it felt earnest, it felt true, it felt right, and it felt safe.
It was her way of thanking you without a snark. All of the ribbing, all of the teasing, all of the flustering, all of it led up to this moment with just the two of you, out of sight and alone and so tired yet so very awake. You let yourself relax a bit more, not so rigid anymore, letting your cheek actually squish against the cloth of the skirt of her dress, and though your words fail for a minute more, they start coming back out.
They weave a new song, now; no longer must they just describe what your eyes see but the feeling behind them too. There’s no lapses in your tongue, the words flowing out as a silk that you’ve weaved before, the joy and hope between this world being able to see the sunset yet again, the fact that all of the fighting, all of the stress, all of the anger has lead to this moment in time where your short lives have amounted to something more than you could have ever expected them to. There’s a pain in them, but more than anything is the sense of relief. Of gratefulness from the continued fact of being alive. Of marching forward to see what lies next, to see the next day through, to keep moving on and keep understanding the world around you better. That the colors you see beyond mean so much, because they represent all of those thoughts and feelings, that they show the world can be improved, that things will get better – that you will make them so.
You feel her laugh, and she agrees. Your eyes close as you take in a deep breath, ready to keep explaining, but you feel her shift down and plant a kiss right upon your cheek instead, and she says that’s enough, and that she thanks you for being her eyes. That this was wonderful, and that she’s ever so grateful, but with all of the grace and teasing that you’ve come to expect from her. It’s nice.