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The lonely, irregular tracks in the sand were slowly erased by the waves that caressed the shoreline on an especially bright full-moon night. An imp with large, expressive eyes and skin weathered by sea salt and the scars of a past too anguished to name watched the strange pattern they formed with fascination, unable to match them to any creature he had ever encountered before, yet unsettled by the way they stirred memories that were in no way familiar to him. The trails of light caught within them were the result of the bioluminescent marine life of that forgotten coast, of its warm, gentle waters.
There was something in them that urged him to follow.
Something lodged in his memory that had no clear place, no explanation.
He reached into his pocket, and the star trapped inside a bottle, bearing a small note inscribed with his name, seemed to glow with a light of its own, pulsing in time with his racing heart from the moment he had set foot upon these ancient, uninhabited shores.
Only he knew the way to this stretch of ocean and this small island.
His knowledge of astrology had guided him here. Him, and only him.
He had searched for this place for millennia, hidden among puzzles he did not understand and prophecies that spilled into his mind like acid, feeding him fragments of all kinds: things that had already happened, things unfolding in the present, and things that might yet come to pass. Prophecy was a suffocating burden when one had never been given a mentor to bear it.
Why him?
Imps were not meant to be magical beings, nor eternal.
And yet one day he had woken up cursed with an immortal body, burdened with thousands of prophecies crowding his thoughts, and gifted with the sudden ability to read and write flawlessly after a lifetime of dyslexia.
And the dreams that crowded his mind every time he closed his eyes.
Dreams of feathers and warm bodies, and of a voice that whispered words of love over and over again, words he would never have believed in another life, yet now guided his navigation like a compass with no true north to follow.
He was certain they were connected to the treasure he had been searching for across millennia, the one that slipped through his grasp time and time again, the same one that had caused his crew to lose their way more than once, just as he had lost his memory.
The pain of it had accompanied him for more years than he could count, until the ache of a wound reopened again and again over scarred tissue hardened his soul, leaving him numb to the passing of years, to people, and to the world itself. At some point, he found himself without a compass to follow, adrift in a life hollowed by emptiness.
Until that small bottle carrying a star and his name found its way to him. The first time, he dismissed it as coincidence. The second time, he no longer could.
“I will be bound to your love forever.”
Who would have taken the trouble to write something like that? He was genuinely intrigued. It was a mysterious phrase, and for his own sake he needed to uncover what it meant. Why did it make him strangely happy? It was a dangerous note, filled with love, something he had never been willing to try, yet it sounded exquisite all the same, condensing in a lover’s language a meaning greater than the world itself. And it was addressed to him. To Blitz, who had not had a lover in an eternity.
How much time had passed since the last one?
He could not remember.
Something stirred the heart he had thought long withered and gave the world back its meaning, even if it remained gray and desolate. A strange and contradictory happiness settled in his chest as he read and reread the words; his hands began to sweat, and his cheeks warmed with an unfamiliar blush. His heart pounded when the star inside the bottle seemed to flare with a multicolored glow, and he realized with fascination that it heralded the nearness of another of those mysterious bottles, just like the one before. He ran to retrieve it and looked at the glowing tracks with hope, certain that the being who had left those notes was also the one who had made the tracks.
He opened the container and tipped it over, but when the contents spilled free, the note and its star were not alone. Alongside them lay several oval jewels of translucent, opalescent white. Pearls, perhaps. He carefully gathered them back into the bottle before turning his attention to the note.
“Every time you draw closer, I cannot help but sigh for every kiss I have yet to give you.”
The handwriting of the first line was confident, traced with the sensual certainty only an experienced lover would offer their beloved. He could not help but blush at the boldness implied in those words, his thoughts circling again and again around the certainty that this was someone he had seen many times before. He swallowed against the tight knot in his throat, took a steadying breath, and prepared himself to read something even more daring.
Instead, he froze.
The handwriting shifted in the following lines, appearing scratched over again and again, though the words were still legible.
“Come back. Don’t forget me. I need you. Come back. Just come back.”
The message sounded sad, desperate. Whatever this was, it had clearly gone beyond the scope of a harmless jest, taking on a far more hidden and troubling weight. Who was this person who sought him with such anguish? He traced the message with his fingers as his gaze drifted to the final line. This time, the paper was smudged, as though its author had been crying while writing it.
“Remember the ship, please. Remember me.”
A ship?
What exactly was that note referring to?
He chose to move forward, fragmented and incomplete memories driving into his mind like shards of broken glass when he caught sight of the first piece of wood, rotted, darkened, and corroded by the sea, the salt, and time itself.
He began to run, because whatever stirred inside him was far more urgent than curiosity, more urgent than desire alone.
A longing for something greater burned through his veins.
His heart raced wildly, exhilarated, setting the rhythm for his steps and for the bottled stars clutched in his hands. He had to follow the tracks, where more and more fragments of decayed wood began to appear.
A soft song drifted through the distance. A melody that spoke of love and freedom, of promises.
On the horizon, a vast and dark silhouette emerged, eroded by time and relentless exposure to the sea. It was a ship encrusted with blackened coral, gleaming beneath the stars of a sky that seemed to stretch on into infinity. The air burning its way into his lungs felt unwilling to stay there, each breath scorching his palate with the concentrated salt of the air and something else besides.
A trace of ozone, of lavender, of rosemary.
Something that made his skin prickle and his insides twist with longing.
And there, upon the stern, cut sharply against the sky, stood the one he had been meant to reach.
Treasure.
The hypnotic song came to an abrupt halt when the ethereal singer turned his face with sudden urgency, and two pairs of ruby-red eyes met his own, shining in the darkness with tears held carefully at bay. The wind rushed past and tore one of the feathers from his crown, carrying it to Blitz’s feet. Without thinking, he picked it up and pressed it to his chest, feeling his heart, that withered organ, swell and beat painfully with the first real contact with what he had longed for without ever knowing it.
“Come back. Just come back.”
The litany from the note he had found danced through his veins, giving shape to a mystery that until now had defied all understanding, as the owl, who had leapt from the ship’s stern to the sand with impossible grace, landed before him without breaking the spellbound silence that wrapped around them like a living mantle of faith and yearning.
Recognition brought him back to life, and with that life a wild passion burned through his veins.
His.
The certainty, carved in stone within the fate they shared, struck him like an ancient, mystic lightning bolt, but above all else, real.
Blitz took a step toward the tall, beautiful creature before him, who seemed to tremble between fear and longing, as if he were an apparition bound to vanish at the utterance of something as obscene as words. And so, without thinking, he reached out and took his hand.
The contact felt vibrant and electric.
Right.
He laced their fingers together with care, feeling the warmth of the trembling body before his own, watching the point of contact with longing, white pupils blown wide in the main eyes set within his heart-shaped face, now flushed a delicate shade of pink, when the brush of their skin tore a low, broken hoot from his chest, involuntary, that swept through Blitz’s ears like a lover’s caress.
The fractured sound, soft and intimate, clouded his judgment.
Without warning, he tugged at their joined hands and slid his other arm to his waist, drawing him in with a startling strength, fed by the ache to touch him, to see him up close and feel him there, real, warm, and alive.
His tail coiled around his legs to steady the hold, and in the same motion he lifted him off the ground, drawing him close against his torso as though desire itself were lending him a strength his body should not have possessed.
The movement tore another chirp from his chest, this one higher, startled and vibrant, breaking through the air like an unexpected note. It drew a smile from Blitz and made his owl blush even more, as long, elegant hands clutched first at his shoulders and then at his neck with an urgency that left no room for feigned composure or borrowed dignity.
Blitz felt fingers sink lightly into the fabric, the warm weight settling against his chest, legs parting instinctively before winding around his waist in search of balance.
There was no space left between them.
The almost magical presence coiled against his body seemed to weigh nothing at all, gazing at him with huge, pleading eyes filled with desire and with other things his slowed mind could not yet process. The only devastating certainty was that he needed to touch him more, needed to meld with him, and so the motion with which he inclined his head was hesitant and unexpectedly gentle, nearly reverent, as though he feared corrupting something sacred if he moved with too much haste.
He brought their foreheads together, feeling the tickle of feathers like cotton and silk against his skin, savoring the first true contact with the oasis he had been searching for for so long.
Treasure.
The knowledge vibrated in his bones; even so, he did not speak it aloud. There was no need.
His lips brushed the corner of the other’s mouth first, barely a trembling breath of contact, tempting fate to confirm that this was real and not an illusion doomed to fade away. He felt a faint, yearning shiver ripple through the body he held, a prelude to the intoxicating, pure touch of shared breath mingling with his own.
Then, with a slowness that felt like ceremony, he sought his mouth again and found it, in a soft, delicate brush of lips against beak, tracing its shape by instinct, by the deep certainty that this was not the first time it had happened. He sealed upon that precious beak a renewed promise, like the ones he had once sung into the air.
A memory pulled him, for a brief instant, into a shared past, to a phrase that seemed to carve itself into his soul.
“My last promise to you is that I will not forget you.”
And it burned, because it seemed he had kept it… and Blitz had not. But now, here in his presence, he had to set it right.
He drew back slowly from his lover, whose cheeks were wet with tears spilling freely down his beautiful, ethereal face.
He brought their foreheads together once more, consoling and soothing his bird, and when their lips met again this time it was with greater certainty, with the quiet knowledge that they had all the time in the universe. Blitz held him as though he were the most precious thing the ocean had ever hidden.
The kiss deepened without haste, slowly shedding its initial shyness, and when their tongues entwined Blitz tasted him like the finest of wines, savoring his trembling coos, drinking in every sound, letting himself be wrapped in the scents and colors that danced around them, sweetly tormenting his senses.
The world narrowed to his treasure.
—Stolas…
The name slipped from his lips like a long-kept secret, spoken against his beak with a tenderness that allowed no turning back.
—Blitz…
With that recognition, the universe returned to its axis, and the weight that had tormented him throughout that hollow eternity suddenly filled all at once, so abruptly it almost felt as though it might drown him.
He sank slowly to his knees, bearing the weight of his lover with reverence, and the distant sea was reduced to an irrelevant murmur as they stretched out upon the still-warm sand, wrapped in the salty air of the shore, the hush of the water, the feathers, and promises that no longer needed to be spoken.
Blitz traced his bird with slow, attentive kisses, descending with an almost ritual patience from his brow to the line of his chest, as if memorizing a map he had known in another life and now claimed once more, leaving upon each favored place an invisible mark of recognition.
When he paused, right at the center of his body, the air seemed to grow heavy with a dense, pulsing energy, and from that point rose a surge of desire so deep it sent a shiver through them both, as though something ancient had finally awakened beneath the skin.
Blitz rested his forehead there for a moment, breathing deeply, holding him with care, aware that what came next was born of surrender and unbridled desire.
And for once, the universe raised no objections.