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“Don’t you think that’s enough?” Laughing, Aether ran a hand through his hair, knocking off the snow that had settled on him. “We can come back and take more later. Dragonspine’s not going anywhere soon.”
“You can never have enough good memories.” Lumine turned the kamera in her hands, holding her breath as it printed the picture. With each passing second, another sliver of film was born, a snapshot of the present turned permanent.
“True.”
The kamera stopped. Pinching the photograph’s edge between her fingers, she delivered it into the world.
“Look good?”
“Patience is a virtue,” she said with a breathless laugh, heart racing. “You know they all start the same.”
He kicked at the snow absently. “Yeah, yeah, I know.”
As she shook the picture, the black rectangle faded away, reborn into color to reveal the taupe of Aether’s pants. The rest of his clothes followed, alongside the outline of Dragonspine’s snowy peaks in the background. She smiled as his features began to come into view.
“Looks goo—" Her hand froze.
“Lumi?”
The cold crept inside and lined her veins.
“Lumi, what is it?”
Why this time?
“Lumine!”
The picture wailed in her crushing grip.
The snow crunched beneath his feet, curses interspersed between hurried slips and trips. Winded, he grabbed her by the shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“I… Aether, I…" She glanced up and met his worry. Her gaze fell. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d fixed everything. It shouldn’t have—” Tears gathering in her eyes, she shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” he said tenderly, as if she would flee. “Lumine, what’s wrong?”
“The picture.”
“Picture…?” The crown of his head pressed against hers as they peered down at the piece of the past. Aether let out a low whistle. “That’s certainly unlucky.”
Lumine shut her eyes. Time after time, she had been humbled. Human or not, life was fragile. She had to protect hers. Time after time, she had been reminded. Human or not, life was precious. She could not throw hers away. For them, she would go again. For him, she would live again.
“The kamera sees all.” Laughing, he stepped back.
Her eyes snapped open; her resolve broken in the frantic search for his missing touch.
“Hey, hey! Don’t cry!” He thumbed away her tears. “It’s nothing to cry over.” Plucking the picture from her hands, he held it up against the landscape it recorded. “The mountains came out fine. And there should be enough lighting, so…”
Everything had developed in perfect reconstruction, except for him. A black mass obscured half of his head, leaving only his smile.
“Were any of your other photos like this? …Lumi?”
“No,” she said, swallowing down the tang of salt and lies.
“A fluke then? Glare maybe?” He gathered her attention with a snap of his fingers. “Let’s take another!”
“What’s the point? It’ll happen again.”
“If it’s a one-off, then it shouldn’t.” He shot her a smile, wider than usual to assuage her fears. “What can one more hurt?”
“It’s the same kamera.”
“I think it’s worth a shot. If not, I’ll help you get a new one. Might be a few more commissions than usual, but it’s easy.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Well, easy enough.”
Gingerly, she took the picture back from him.
“We’re already here,” he said, smile dwindling. “Might as well try…right?”
She spared the nightmarish past a glance before unleashing a burst of pyro, burning the picture out of existence. “Yeah. One more. One more time.”
“Okay, let’s do it.” He retook his position with the mountains as the backdrop. “Ready!”
Exhaling slowly, she pressed down on the button. A click sealed the moment away, and the kamera worked its magic.
Hesitantly, Lumine gathered the new photograph in her hands and shook it. Only time would tell if it would give rise to another monstrous reality or not. She refused to look at it. Not this time.
She kept her eyes trained on her brother as he walked towards her. Her brother, Aether, the one in front of her. Smile, radiant. Soul, unfractured. Body, whole. He was alive.
If this future held the same end, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t need to know. She had come so far with all the others. He was the last.
She wouldn’t look. Here and now, before her very eyes, this time, he was alive.
“Looks good!” Aether patted her on the back. “Guess it really was a fluke.”
Dragging her eyes away from his face, she looked down at the picture in her hands—Aether’s perfect smile beamed from a head unmarred by any abhorrent nightmares—and smiled. “Not this time.”
She summoned her scrapbook with a snap of her fingers. It fell open to the bookmarked page. An assortment of pictures—of all the lives she had touched, of all the happiness she had preserved—spilled out of the pages.
“You have one of just about everyone now?”
“Everyone I’ve known.” She added his picture next to one of Ei and Makoto, smiling in their yukatas.
“You should be in there too. Let me take your picture one day.”
“No.” She laughed him off. “You know how I feel about pictures.”
He rolled his eyes. “Pictures won’t steal parts of your soul.”
“You never know what it’ll take.”
“You’ve been taking all these photos of us.” He gestured to the scrapbook. Pictured outside of his home, Dainsleif held the barest hint of a smile, two blue eyes gazing warmly at the kamera. “And we’re all here and fine, aren’t we?”
Lumine offered only a smile.
Sighing, Aether vowed to get her picture one day. “So, where to next? Please tell me we’re done with the picture taking for now.”
“For now.” She dismissed the kamera and scrapbook in a burst of stardust. “But you can never have enough good memories. You never know when you’ll need to revisit them. Sometimes, the kamera sees what the eyes do not.”