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“Is it nice, flying?” Melinoë asks one night during a momentary respite. The rotting wooden warship beneath her lurches back and forth on the harsh waves, dancing in tune with the distant reflections of ghostly ships. Just for a few minutes, she told herself.
At her side is Icarus, who tilts his head at her question. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.”
“You know what I meant. What’s it like?”
Icarus lets out a short chuckle and looks off into the distant sky, each inch covered in an array of dark clouds. Behind him, his folded wings start to twitch and shift as if eager to fly just upon hearing the word. “Well, it’s… freedom, I suppose. Ironically enough it makes me feel alive. I can zip from here,” he points from one corner of the sky to another but she looks only at his hand, “all the way there in a matter of seconds. Nothing can hold me and I can go whenever I want, do whatever I wish. I know I said it before but I do hope you can experience it yourself someday.”
Melinoë makes a noncommittal noise. “About that…”
Icarus raises a brow and motions for her to continue.
“Eris took me on an impromptu flight the other night, without my consent, might I add. She just… scooped me up after an argument and dangled me by my arms whilst she flew around. I thought she was going to drop me at one point. It was… a lot.”
It was thrilling, she cares to omit. The logical part of herself she prides herself on doesn’t know why she went after Eris that night, why she went headstrong into an argument she knew she could not win. The emotional part does; she wanted the last word in after such a thorough defeat, cursing Eris’s use of her wings and the limited shorefront Melinoë had in comparison.
“Ah,” Icarus winces. “That’s very Eris of her. At least you made it out unscathed,” he looks over her once, “from the looks of it, I mean. Maybe there’s a bruise somewhere I can’t see? Which… don’t— don’t show me, actually.”
He fidgets with one of the loose straps around his waist, avoiding her amused glance. “Worry not, Icarus. I checked myself twice over after she set me down. I’m fit as a fiddle.”
“You do look the part,” Icarus murmurs into his hand.
Melinoë doesn’t hear him, or takes mercy on him and pretends she didn’t. She looks off into the distant sky, shining stars reflected in her mismatched eyes. “I hope I get to know what you feel when you fly someday. I bet it's nicer than my experience.”
Icarus lowers his gaze before it becomes a stare. He shifts uncomfortably in place as he recalls the previous times she’s said something like that, possible invitations to take their short encounters further. He was always a coward during these times, saying some throwaway lines about how they don’t mix anymore or how she needs to get going and punching himself mentally when she looked disappointed by his answer, which was always followed closely by one of her cover-up smiles. Occasionally she pushed farther but he always shut her down, and to her credit she took it in stride each time, likely holding out hope for something different next time.
Despite lacking the need to — his mouth and throat only for show — he feigns swallowing his nerves and shakily opens his mouth.
“I… I mean, I could take you on one. Now, if you’d like. Just a quick one, and then you could get back on your way.”
Melinoë perks up, hair wizzling around her as she turns to look at him. Though after a moment she deflates. “Do you happen to carry around an extra pair of wings for me to use?”
Now or never. Don’t back out now. “No, but… I could— I could carry you. My wings can support us both. It won’t be the same as doing it with your own wings, but it may suffice.”
Melinoë’s eyes widen with pleased surprise. Her lips smooth out into a giddy smile. “I’d like that, but how are you going to carry me?”
Icarus makes a noise in the back of his throat, looking at his arms and then back up to her. After a moment of quiet contemplation — though he knows it’s not possible anymore — he feels his face warm when he comes to the best solution.
“I think if I carried you like this,” he sticks his arms out uselessly and tries to mime what he means, “supporting your back with this arm and holding your legs with the other, it would work.”
Melinoë looks over his position and her giddy smile turns knowing. She nods in agreement. “A princess carry it is, then.”
Otherwise known as a bridal carry, Icarus’s mind unhelpfully supplies.
Icarus takes a few steps away to give her room to move (and maybe to run if she wished) and squats down, readying his arms to hold her. Melinoë is smiling as she steps up to him, far, far too close for the memory of his heart to keep trying to remain still. His arms hesitate around her so she takes the lead and maneuvers them into their places, one on the small of her back where she lets it rest as she moves the other to her thigh. Icarus takes it from there, his fingers curling securely around the graceful muscle. He swallows hard and wills with all his strength that his hands don’t sweat from the pressure, of both having her in his arms again and this night on the line.
You won’t drop her, he reassures himself in the depths of his mind, you won’t.
He lifts her up in one slow movement. Melinoë keeps one arm in her lap as her feet leave the deck and places the palm of the other — the ghostly emerald green one — on the centre of his chest. The resting arm comes to curl around his shoulder and neck, fingertips lightly brushing against the skin as her hand passes, electrifying in its casualness.
“Fitting for a princess such as yourself, I suppose,” he barely manages to mumble.
Melinoë leans over and looks at the rotting deck she no longer stands on, settling back in his arms once she’s had her fill. “Much more comfortable than the deck,” she says, gazing up at him with a gentle smile.
Icarus looks away as if burnt.
With a practiced flourish, his wings open and whir to life. With two beats they’re sent into the air, hovering inches away from the deck. Melinoë’s grip on him tightens and he holds her closer in turn. He shivers and tries to tell himself it’s the cold.
“I’ll warn you now, the lift off will be windy, but I promise it won’t take long,” he reassures her, “just— trust me, but it wouldn’t hurt to hold on extra tight as well.”
Her grip already tightened, she opts to lean into his shoulder. There is no blood left in Icarus’s body and yet his face warms.
Icarus flaps his wings once, twice to gain more height, and then a third for a rush of upward speed. Melinoë braces herself in his grip that stays ever tight, the grip on her thigh almost bruising in its tenacity to keep her in his hold. She wonders for a brief moment — the longest she can spare — if there would be a vestige left behind when he inevitably lets her go, and something inside her flutters.
His wings tear through the air as he wills them skyward. The rush of wind against his face is everything he always dreamed of. He ascends up and up and beats his wings faster and faster—
And then all at once, he pierces through the clouds, little wisps of it catching his updraft and spouting upwards when he breaks from their parent's hold. The burning reflections of warships and the gloomy grey hues of the rift are far below them and hidden beneath clouds, their world replaced with gentler shades of blue and grey.
Icarus slows his speed, hovering mid-air. “You can open your eyes now, Meli.”
Melinoë twitches an eye open, her red eye being the one to brave the storm. She’s met with dark clouds all around her, enveloping her and Icarus in an ethereal embrace. She slowly straightens herself in Icarus's hold to better look at the scene before her as she fully opens her eyes. She cannot help but gasp.
The soft clouds forge the mountains up here, with the few and far shades of blue that break up the continuous pattern of grey reminding her of waterfalls cascading down a cliff face, carving its own path through the hazardous terrain. But up here where there is no hazard to speak of, it is soft and somehow intentional in its gentle chaos.
Icarus begins the true flight. The wind starts to thread through Melinoë's wheat blonde hair like fingers Icarus wishes were his. His grip on her tightens instinctively as he flies them into a cloud. There is nothing for her to see here, Icarus knows this, but this is part of the experience of flying, so he shows it to her anyway. Too intent on making it through the cloud, Icarus doesn’t notice that there is something for her here; or that he is that something.
They come out of the other side of the cloud and Icarus thanks all that is godly that there was nothing to crash into. He whispers to Melinoë to hold tight and flies downward to a clearing in the clouds that give them sight downwards into the rift. From this distance, so high up and away from all the chaos, the burning hues of warships against the grimey blue-green of the water looks almost beautiful.
He flies back up, seemingly intent on going further beyond. As they go higher, Melinoë reaches out her free hand to touch a cloud at their side but she doesn’t quite reach. Though dauntless in his flight skyward, he leans ever so lightly to the side as if he sensed her want. Her hand threads through the cloud and cuts a ravine through it as they ascend. Melinoë knows that clouds don’t have a real feeling, that the tales she was once read as a child that said they were soft were only lies for children to believe in, that clouds are nothing more than fine mist and water droplets, but in this moment they are ethereal, formless yet tangible enough to caress the tips of her fingers with dampness.
When the clouds thin out, they are higher up than they were, in a new layer of the sky hidden to them before. When Melinoë opens her eyes again, she first sees Icarus staring off into the cloudless sky above them with a look of absolute wonder, and then the mystical colours reflecting in his honeyed eyes. An aurora borealis waves through the sky, painting them both in glowing shades of green and pink. Melinoë rests her head against him, a gentle, nostalgic smile on her lips as she looks up at both him and the colourful beams that shine in the air. Selene’s bright silver shines down upon them from a full moon. In this familiar light, Melinoë gathers her thoughts.
It’s beautiful, is her first, and safe, her second. The warmth of Icarus’s arms around her lulls her into a sense of security she drinks in eagerly, a welcome refuge from the nightly onslaughts of Time’s forces. There is no thrill to be had (except for the one of being with Icarus) and she is safe in his arms. It is everything that her flight with Eris wasn’t.
Eris’s grip on the underside of her arms slips, Icarus’s grip on her thigh tightens, the skin moulding in-between his pale fingers. Eris laughs as Melinoë scrambles to grab what little she can reach of her, “Loosen up, babe! You didn't really think I'd let you fall, did you? I’m hurt,” Eris looks down at her with a pout and Melinoë thinks she would put a hand on her own chest if both of her arms weren’t occupied, Melinoë reaches out to the sky, her ghostly green contrasting the deep blue of the sky yet matching the lights, feeling free to do as she pleases because she trusts Icarus to catch her if she were to fall.
“Icarus, it’s…”
He slowly comes to a halt. “Time to go?” he asks quietly, unable to hide the hint of disappointment that seeps into his tone at the end.
“No— well, yes, it most likely is, but that’s not what I was going to say.”
“Oh, sorry. Continue then.”
“I was going to say,” Melinoë looks up at him with a smile so unbearably lovely Icarus dares not to look away, “that it’s beautiful, and thank you for bringing me up here. This has been wonderful.”
There’s a pause, only made unstill by the beating of Icarus’s wings. Not even the distant sounds of the war raging below them can find its way up here, the night itself ever silent in its breathtaking splendor. He has no doubts the view is beautiful, but he has seen it a thousand times, he need not look at it. Icarus doesn’t look away from Melinoë when he murmurs to her, “It is beautiful.”
Only with great reluctance does Icarus pry his eyes from her. It’s time to go.
“This will get breezy, best hold on tight.” He draws her closer and waits. Melinoë puts both of her arms around his neck and presses against his shoulder. For the first time in possibly ever, Icarus is grateful for the lack of a heart pumping in his chest, but he feels it all the same — a phantom organ pumping its place. Thankfully, Melinoë cannot.
Their descent into the sea of clouds is over before both even know it. They’re back amongst the ghostly warships far too soon.
Icarus lands on the deck of a different ship, one closer to the shorefront where Eris surely awaits the Princess’s arrival. The warship lurches underneath the sudden weight and he quickly steadies himself before he squats again, letting Melinoë down onto the deck. She, too, stumbles when the ship staggers beneath them. Icarus briefly considers reaching out to help steady her, but just as he reaches out, his arm falls limp at his side. He’s done far too much tonight.
“I hope it was everything you thought it’d be,” he says with finality once she’s steady.
Melinoë brushes stray strands of hair from her face and smiles in return, once again taking his limit in stride. “It was more than that, Icarus. I hope we can do it again sometime.”
Icarus readies himself to take off again. “I’d like that. Maybe a longer one, once all this Chronos stuff blows over.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Melinoë says, “and I’ll be very upset if you don’t come through.”
Icarus swallows nervously. “I will, Meli. I promise.”
Would it be so wrong of him to hope it takes a while for her to kill Time? He wouldn’t dare let Melinoë down, not again, but he hopes this promise won’t have to come to fruition soon.