Another Sunset

"I hope Jeri and Aidne haven't burned the camp down yet," Tyda said offhandedly.

I was finding the smell of her clean hair mildly distracting, so I didn’t reply.  Instead, I turned my attention to the banks of clouds encompassing us, their pastel hues already shot through with gold near the horizon.  I decided that today, I felt like I could reach up and touch any one of them.

I nudged Tyda with my elbow, because she didn’t seem to be paying attention.

“It’s changing colour.”

“It usually does, doesn’t it?”

She sighed deeply then, that sort of sigh you make when you’re dismissing the thoughts from your mind because you’re too weary to think about them any longer.  Then she put her head against my shoulder, so that her full weight was leaning up against me.  I forgot to breathe for a few moments – terrified that if I moved, she might be startled into flight.

She’s tired, I thought, very rationally.  That’s all.  Then I started to pick apart her day in my head, trying to decide which of its events had been difficult enough for her to be this exhausted by sundown.  My mind remained hopefully blank, and I tipped my head against hers for a brief second.

“Keeyon,” she murmured.

I chanced a glance down and saw that her eyes were closed.

“Yeah?”

A heartbeat’s pause.  “You would trust me, right?  If I needed you to?”

“Of course I would.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Hm.”  She shifted slightly, but did not move her head.  “You might just be the first to ever say that.”

I couldn’t come up with a satisfactory response to that either, so again I let the moment pass, feeling a strange giddiness that I would later be ashamed about growing inside of me.  And when I looked up at the fury of colours painting the sky, it was almost like their fire was spilling from my own heart.

“It’s beautiful,” Tyda said quietly.

“I know,” I answered, resisting the urge to wrap my arms around her.  “It’s perfect.”