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Iris wakes up to darkness.
She squints up to the sky—dark and void of any stars that should be dancing along the curves of the universe—and sighs, a gust from her lungs to the world, brushing against the branches on trees and long blades of grass, bringing leaves into the air to replace the missing stars in a whirling dance.
Willows bow to greet her and she threads a branch between her fingers with a smile before shaking Eddie awake. His eyes open with a roll of thunder, his eyes the color of a swirling nebula. His eyebrows furrow in confusion, blearily looking up at her through blond eyelashes.
“The stars are missing,” she murmurs to the tip of his nose, presses a warm kiss on soft lips. He hums thunder to her mouth, a sound away from falling back to sleep. “Someone’s restless.”
“Winter Solstice,” he replies sleepily, “what do you expect? Longest night of the year.”
Iris smiles and climbs to her feet, slow, languid, tugging on Eddie’s shoulder to encourage him to follow her. He does, his eyes on her, like she’s the force of storms and the singing mountains. He’s taller than her, a towering white birch in one of those storms, but he leans into her, pressing his cheek against hers, a rumble in his chest echoed in the sky. There are no clouds, no lightning, just thunder.
Rolling, rolling thunder.
There’s a moment when they just stand there, swaying to the music of the world, before Eddie pulls away, dragging the tips of his fingers up her arms as he goes, bringing goosebumps and a shiver from her, a smile gracing her lips.
He smiles back, teeth white in the dark, nebulous blue eyes crinkling at the corners, glowing brighter. “Let’s go see what our little star-stealer is up to, hm?”
Their chosen forest for the night—the week, the turning year maybe–is a mixture of giants that would never exist together in any other parts of the world, but here they do, and they chose to rest on the outskirts, close to the edge of the world that if they jump—if they jump, they’d fall forever.
A field–scattered with long grass and blooming flowers and a single twisting of oak and wisteria and hazel into one reaching tree–a field stands between their new forest and the town’s scattered lights. Not even the humans dare to shine too much of their artificial light on the night of the Winter Solstice, the night all the stars going missing, from the sky to the earth at their feet.
Barry sits just under the branches of the trinity-in-one tree, stars scattered around and on him, glowing with their beaming light, divine lightning bugs fluttering to him. Constellations dangle from his fingers as he twists the strings of connections around them, to them.
They’re still far away, but they can hear his delighted laughter as he raises his arms above his head, creating a canopy of new constellations to fall like a curtain. His face is bright, a reflection of the light around him and the happiness from his soul, his smile wide, splitting. Stardust sprinkles his hair and shoulders, settling over the freckles already scattered on him like the universe wanted to give him his own galaxy when the sun goes down.
Stygian darkness follows them in every life they live and it’s nice to have a night were they don’t have to worry about it all.
Barry flings his hands and his new constellation flies from his finger tips, drifting up, up, up until it’s in the sky, twinkling happily down at them. If Iris squints—which she usually has to do with his constellations, something she’s told him many of times though he never changes—she can see a warrior kneeling, fire in hand.
“Ronnie,” Eddie whispers next to her. “The Firestorm.”
“Down in history,” she murmurs. “Another one lost.”
“A memory,” Barry returns, his smile never faltering even at the reminder of grief. “One not to be forgotten now, yeah? No one ever stays gone anymore.”
No one every stays got anymore, not with how long they’ve lived now. There’s a flash of friends and enemies in everyone they meet. Sometimes their loved ones remember them in return, sometimes they don’t and then it’s time to forge new friendships.
The only constants in the universe are them-as-three–and him-as-one.
It doesn’t hurt all the time, only some times in a flutter of grief, longing. Their normal lives are long gone, lost in a time no one remembers anymore. They no longer mourn the lives they had, they are content with not doing so.
Besides, they will always have each other.
“Come on,” Barry says, patting the space next to him and sending a cloud of stars dusting up. “Give star weaving another try. Maybe this time you won’t end up making a new nebula.”
Eddie laughs loudly. “Nice try,” he replies. “I’m not even going to bother. The universe doesn’t need another one.” He gestures to his eyes. “I still have that one plerion reflecting in my eyes.”
Iris takes the spot, folding her legs gracefully under her. She flips her hair over her shoulder and the branches above them whisper in the resulting breeze. “What should I make?”
“What about the priestess you met a few years ago?” Barry suggests. He’s reaching up to tug Eddie down on his other side, hand shaped prints of stardust lingers on his golden skin when Barry pulls away. “Chay’ara,” he clarifies. “The one with the wings. The angel.”
She can’t help but chuckle. “Barry, Chay’ara was more than a few years ago. That was hundreds of years. But, sure, I’ll give her a whirl. I’ll need your help on the wings.” Of the three of them, time has lost its most meaning to Barry alone.
It’s hard to find the will to bother about something so pointless when the him-as-one looms over Barry the most, an overcast of darkness and despair that even so much time later since the beginning they have a hard time keeping it all back.
He lets her try on her own for a little while. The last time she made a constellation was many years–another hundreds of years–ago in Greece, side-by-side with a woman who called herself a goddess and ran with the Hunt.
When she looks back up from the last knot tying Chay’ara’s trusty mace to her hand, Barry’s curled up against Eddie. They’re taking turns telling whispered stories, Barry’s of the legends behind the many constellations and Eddie’s of the wars won through the eras of life. They’ve been there for them all, but he tells them in such a way if feels like a new story every time.
“Wings, please,” she says sweetly.
Barry laughs and untangles himself from Eddie, crawling over behind her to take her hands, to guide her carefully. “Too many stars and you make it cluttered,” he tells her, his breath hot on her ear. “Too little and you make it just as abstract as you blame all my creations to be.” Eddie laughs then, a roll of thunder, hushed in the darkness.
Iris ties the last of the stars together and, with Barry’s hands still over her own, lets it drift to the sky, seemingly only a few feet from the Firestorm, but, in reality, miles and miles away in its own glorious place as the Hawk Priestess. It will take a few years, but the new constellations and their names will be known throughout the world, spoken by many tongues.
“See,” Barry says. “Perfect.” He twists around her and kisses her deeply, smearing stardust across her dark lips. He laughs when he pulls away, pressing a thumb to her bottom lip and smearing the shine even more.
Eddie crowds them now that their hands are free of star-weaving, the left over stars scattered around them, waiting for Barry to shoo them back to their homes. He kisses her just to the side of Barry’s lingering kiss, flicking a tongue to capture the majesty that is infinity.
It tickles, the spark of lightning on her nerves, the taste of ozone when she licks the spot as he pulls away. Stardust glitters on his bottom lip, his eyes a swirling hue of mostly blue, but green and gold and black and bronze and pink and orange.
Barry doesn’t even have to ask before Eddie’s turning to him, kissing him fully, fingers sliding into Barry’s hair and holding on so tightly—so tightly that when they finally pull away stardust coats his hands to his wrists, knocked from Barry’s hair even more when the star-stealer pressed closer.
Now they’re all covered in stardust, their smiles bright and framed by the glow of the scattered stars.
“Send them home, Barry,” Eddie says softly, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. He gestures for her to come a little closer and she does, shuffling until he can pull her closer with his other arm. “Send them home and let’s get some sleep, hm? Tomorrow is dawning yellow.”
Barry sighs, losing a little of that happiness, and does so, lifting his arms slowly, reverently, his hand reaching for the sky as the stars drift back home, as if he’s wishing to go with them just this once.
He could.
But he never does.
They stay here, together, rolling with the passing waves of time.