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There’s a war going on.
A war that Stina isn’t involved in.
Her parents, who were themselves members of the Black Swan, had said that she wasn’t allowed. She could help out with research if she really wanted to, but she was in no way allowed near the Neverseen, no matter what any of the other kids her age were doing. She was staying home and taking care of the unicorns and getting her homework done.
Stina had never wanted to be part of a war. (She wonders if her parents would have ever predicted needing to tell their teenage daughter that she wasn’t allowed to fight in a war. She wonders how they feel about that.) She’s happier this way.
And she doesn’t care much about what “the other kids her age” are doing. Or, well, she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to fight in a war, doesn’t want to get involved in any of the genetically-engineered-chosen-one bullshit that the Black Swan’s got going on, but stars, she’s tired of being looked down on. Maybe she’s a bitch sometimes, and maybe she’s weird for not wanting to be involved, but it’d be nice to have someone to talk to once in a while.
But then again, things have changed.
Now, Sophie isn’t involved in the war either. She had been, of course she had been— it was her destiny, her purpose (or whatever bullshit the Black Swan came up with to justify their child soldiers).
But Sophie had come home one time too many times beat up and bruised and scarred. Her parents were done with her waking up in the middle of the night with horrific nightmares that were really just memories.
And so both Sophie and the Black Swan were told in no uncertain terms that she would not be playing their games anymore. It took some negotiating, but the Black Swan gave in eventually.
Sophie was furious.
She couldn’t do anything about it.
And the war had been so consuming, so isolating, that she realized that she didn’t really have anyone anymore, had never made any “normal” friends in the elvin world.
And she wasn’t talking to Keefe much, not after they’d broken up— they were just too much for each other. Sophie had liked him and he had liked her, but the timing wasn’t right. They were too similar in the wrong ways and they couldn’t quite get it together and make things work.
And things were still awkward between Sophie and Fitz, and Biana by extension. (And besides, Sophie had told Stina that she wasn’t totally sure if she’d ever even liked Fitz anyway— after all, she’d always thought Biana was the prettier of the siblings by far.)
And she never really hung out with Dex anymore (he was still so involved in the war— not actively, not dangerously, but he made gadgets and his mom was a part of the Collective and Sophie just couldn’t be around all of that.)
And she’d never been close with Tam, or Linh, or Marella, and they were their own little group anyway.
So, somehow, it was Stina and Sophie. Two friendless fuck-ups.
Stina found that she liked Sophie— she was funny, with her sarcasm and weird references, and she didn’t seem to mind too much when Stina was mean. (It wasn’t that she didn’t like people, it was just that she didn’t really know how not to be bitchy. Sophie seemed to get it.)
They did things together.
They talked, about nothing, mostly. Things they’d liked as children. Favorite books. Classes (since Sophie was going to Foxfire again).
Stina taught Sophie how to ride and take care of unicorns.
Sophie taught Stina some English, and it became almost like their secret language.
(Stina realizes, after a while, that the quiet jealousy and resentment of Sophie that has always been in the back of her mind is not exactly jealousy.) (Sophie’s pretty, is what she realizes. Sophie’s pretty and Stina likes girls and this is going to make her life harder, and won’t that be fun.)
The more time they spend together, the more Stina learns to read Sophie. Her body language, her voice, the emotions that Stina’s Empathy can always feel drifting towards the air to her.
Behind the quiet glow that Sophie has, some combination of confidence and power, there’s always anger. There’s always fear. There’s always guilt. Stina’s not even sure if Sophie knows it’s there, but she does everything she can to try to make it go away. She doesn’t like to see Sophie hurting.
(Sophie’s always hurting.)
One day, Sophie is at Sterling Gables. (Sophie’s always at Sterling Gables; they never go to Havenfield. Stina thought for a while it was so Sophie could distance her life from Stina, that she was only even talking to her because she didn’t have anyone else— but then she realized it was so Sophie could distance herself from her life.) (Stina stopped worrying about whether or not Sophie actually liked her after that.)
The two of them are at Sterling Gables, and Sophie says they should go for a walk— there are miles and miles of pastures and forests around the house, and all of it is currently in shades of wintry blue and white and green. It’s beautiful, and it’s Stina hasn’t explored nearly enough of it. She tends to stays close to home, with her parents, only venturing out when the unicorns need her.
So they go for a walk.
It’s late December, and it’s cold, and Sophie’s wearing this puffy maroon coat that looks lovely against her skin, which is tinged pink with cold, just around her ears and nose and fingertips. (It’s closer to human winter coats than it is to Stina’s thin elvin-style one, made of some gnomish fabric that locks in heat while still being practical and slim-fitting. Stina thinks that Sophie wears it because it’s familiar, because if nothing else in the elvin world is like the world she grew up in, she’ll wear a coat that reminds her a little bit of home.)
They start walking.
“Why does it snow here?” Sophie asks, looking around at the trees, branches weighed down with fluffy white. “It never gets cold enough most places.”
“Well, unicorns do better with a full range of seasons, so we have the weather set up to mimic their natural habitat.”
Sophie looks at Stina, a clear expression of what-the-fuck on her face. “Set up?”
“You know— how it’s always nice in the big cities, it never rains. And it’s always warm at Havenfield, right? ‘Cause Grady and Edaline get the warm-temp species.”
“No, I don’t know!” Sophie says, voice rising. “This is basic elvin knowledge that I never learned because I didn’t grow up here and no one thought to tell me about.”
“Shit,” Stina says, very eloquently. “I—“
“Yeah, I know, I know, you forgot I didn’t know the stuff you learned when you were five. It’s fine, Stina.” But Stina can feel that Sophie’s closed off again, retreating into herself.
They keep walking, snow crunching under their boots.
“Do you want me to explain it?” Stina asks.
Sophie’s silent for a moment, but Stina can feel a hint of a warm emotion coming from her. Gratitude. “…yes.”
“Ok,” Stina tries to remember what she knows about weather control, which admittedly, isn’t much. “I think it started with the whole time zone problem. With all the light-leaping around and stuff we couldn’t have everything on different times like humans do, so we had to figure out something else, which ended up being illusions to keep day and night the same everywhere. I’m pretty sure that’s mostly a Flasher thing.”
Stina can feel Sophie’s eyes fixed on her (and stars, her eyes— a rich warm brown like chocolate, sweet and addictive), but she does her best to ignore it and continue with her impromptu weather lesson. “And then we kept expanding into weird places where nothing can fucking live, including us, so then we had to fix that. That’s like… Hydrokinetics and Frosters and Gusters and probably used to be Pyrokinetics— all the elementals, really. Then that expanded to animal preserves, like this, and then eventually the cities and just people’s houses got it. It’s kind of dumb, honestly— it’s more work than anyone needs to be bothering with to make sure it never rains at inconvenient times in Eternalia— like, get an umbrella, it’s not that fucking hard— but, you know. Elves are weirdos sometimes.”
Sophie snort-laughs. (It’s sweet, Stina thinks. She wishes she could make her laugh more often.) “Elves are weirdos.”
But she says it in a way that sounds so overly serious that now Stina’s laughing, and that gets Sophie going, and every time one of them manages to catch their breath they see the other’s face and crack up again, and then they’re both doubled over in the middle of the woods from how funny absolutely nothing is.
“You—“ Stina gasps out between bursts of laughter. “Shit, Sophie—“ She doesn’t even know what she’s trying to say.
“I—“ Sophie meets Stina’s eyes and then collapses in laughter again.
It takes a while, but they do stop laughing. But then it becomes awkward between them again. Stina doesn’t know what to say. Sophie doesn’t seem to either.
So they keep walking, side by side. Stina usually walks faster than Sophie does (a hazard of having long legs), but she slows down so they can stay together.
(Stina wishes she could think of something, anything, to break the silence.)
The forest really is beautiful out this way, greens and blues fading into the white of the snow and the blue-grey of the sky until everything is one quiet, glittering snowscape, Stina and Sophie the only two things in it that feel truly alive.
Every time Stina opens her mouth to say something, the words stick in her throat.
They end up walking a while longer.
Then Sophie sees something through the trees and takes off running towards it, off the path, and Stina follows. (She doesn’t think she knows how to not follow Sophie.)
They reach a break in the trees, at the top of a hill. It’s nearly sunset now, and everything has begun to turn pink and golden in the fading light, the fields and trees below them becoming like something out of a dream. Sophie’s hair looks like a halo around her head as she takes it all in.
“Oh,” Sophie says.
Stina steps closer to her and she can feel some emotion radiating from her, something strong. Wonder, maybe? But there’s more, something beyond that, something more complex that she can’t quite place. “Oh,” she echoes.
They stand in silence. Sophie looking out at the view, Stina looking at Sophie.
“Thank you,” Sophie says, out of nowhere.
“What?”
She starts to speak, then falters. When she finds her voice again, she continues in English. (Stina wonders if it’s easier for her that way; would it be easier to say something hard in the language you grew up speaking, a language that has been a part of you since you were small? She’s not sure.)
“You—“ Sophie takes a deep breath. “You have been the one thing in my life that has kept me going.”
“I…” Stina doesn’t have any words. She never thought she was important to Sophie, just that she was there. Just that she was good enough.
Sophie turns to Stina, an unreadable, far-off look in her eyes. (The brown catches the light of the sunset in a way that makes it look like there’s a whole universe in them, just waiting to be discovered. Stina’s mesmerized.) “There’s been… so much, lately. And you’ve been there. So. Thank you.”
Stina moves closer, catching Sophie’s hand in hers. (She feels Sophie’s pulse skip, almost imperceptibly. Her emotions spike, then drop back down to the quiet hum in Stina’s senses that they normally are.) (Stina wonders, if Sophie were reading her mind right now, what she would find.) Sophie looks down at their conjoined hands, then back up at Stina. A shiver runs down Stina’s back from the sheer intensity of her gaze.
Stina leans in, just a little. “Always,” she whispers, and she means it. She means it more than she thinks she has ever meant something. She will always be here. Just for Sophie.
She can feel it the moment Sophie comes to a decision. Her emotions crest again, like the tide coming in, waves crashing just a little harder on the shore of Stina’s Empathy. Sophie closes the last bit of distance between the two of them, her free hand reaching up to Stina’s face, and Stina doesn’t know what to think. (She’s not sure she is thinking, anymore.)
And then they’re kissing. It’s warm, safe: the press of Sophie’s lips against Stina’s, the soft touch of gloved hands against her cheeks. It feels golden, the glow of the sunset combining with that constant inner glow of Sophie, and the emotions of it are doubled, skin pressed so close against skin amplifying everything Stina is already feeling from Sophie, and there’s happiness and bright warmth and relief and a dark pit that she is teetering just on the edge of and—
Stina pulls back, suddenly.
“We should talk about… this.”
“We can talk about it later,” Sophie says. “Let me have this.”
She says this, but Stina hears you. And she wants it. She wants Sophie, knows her self-control is weak at best, but she hates that Sophie’s feeling like this, hates that she can’t do anything, and she doesn’t think that kissing her is going to solve anything.
Stina realizes that she’s just been staring at Sophie. “I…” she says, not knowing where she’s going with the sentence.
“Please,” Sophie says. “Call it a gift. It’s Christmas.”
“It’s what?” Stina asks, and she sees sadness in Sophie’s eyes, a certain quiet distance that she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to breach.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sophie says, and she kisses Stina again.
For a moment, she wants to draw back, press more, try to get Sophie to talk. But then Sophie’s hands are in her hair, pulling her closer and closer and closer, and her mouth is so warm against the snow surrounding them, and any reservations she may have had are gone.
And her world is nothing but Sophie.