Ever So Evanescent

For the moon is in the east, and you are what the earth can only try to reflect.

* * * * * * * *

On the Ashenborn Academy campus grounds here, in Essensia, the capital of the Provinces of Aideyll, there stood a spectacular oak tree near the top of a hill. It wasn’t on the top, but a bit off to the side, facing the view of the markets by the Academy grounds leading all the way to the ports of Essensia. To the right, a far stretch of green meadows eventually led to forests. To the left, hills and farmlands as far as human eyes could see, all of it hugging the shoreline.

Summertime, for her, meant the days were spent beside Iago under this tree.

Well—not exactly. She had only known Iago for two years. And she would never admit it, but as infuriating as Iago was, there was a part of her that did yearn for him to stay by her side. As unfitting as it were.

“Eulylia! Seph!”

She, at the bottom of the hill with her dearest friend beside her, turned to look up at him. In that same moment, a cool gust of wind, undoubtedly his, blew past them, pushing all of her yellow and ivory hair behind her face and shoulders. Iago waved at them from beneath the shade.

And again, a cooling breeze unnatural under the summer heat twirled around her, and she knew it was his invitation to come closer.

Her left arm hugged a pile of books. Her right hand held her friend’s. She turned to her friend, short pink hair resting on a freckled face with hollow and grayed eyes, and squeezed her hand.

“Let’s go, Seph.”

Sephria nodded. Eulylia started up the hill with her, and when she yelled back, her voice danced with the melody that one could only find in moments of midsummer. “How many times must I tell you to call me Lyly?”

“Not sure,” Iago called back in honesty, holding a sly smile as he shrugged his shoulders. “But definitely more than you have already.” He heard her scoff as he walked down the hill to meet her halfway, and his smile grew. For him, today, she looked as beautiful as always and never before.

“Everyone else has found the capability to listen and call me Lyly.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t accommodate, love. I’m far from being ‘everyone else,’” he laughed, taking the books from her arms, careful to not touch her. But even though he didn’t, Eulylia could feel it—could feel the cold that surrounded him and threatened to steal the warmth from her body the same way he stole from the warmth of the summer day and from the force that came with the revolving earth. Eulylia lost her retort.

Iago kept a smile up, even though that smile had changed. A second passed before he could recompose amidst the awkwardness and continue. “I personally think Eulylia is a beautiful name. I don’t understand why you hate it so much.”

Eulylia rolled her eyes. “You are welcome to call me by my full name when you learn of its correct pronunciation.”

Sephria giggled at this. “That sounds rather fair.”

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But even as Eulylia spoke as terse as possible, she enunciated each sound with such soft particularity that Iago felt pulled to keep prodding, keep pushing. Anything, so that he could keep hearing her, be it in anger or in joy.

“Oh, what’s in a name?” he shrugged. “Whatever I call you would never change your graceful disposition.”

“If that is indeed so, it would not matter if you actually called me Lyly,” she snapped back. They stopped under the shade, where Eulylia helped Sephria sit on one of the lifted roots before continuing. “Has it not occurred to you that, perhaps, I would be far more graceful beside you if you simply adhered to my preferences for my own name?”

Iago sighed as he sat down beside Sephria and set the books beside him. “Can’t I be the only man that calls you Eulylia?” He motioned for Eulylia to come sit down and join them. “It’s your actual name. Think of it as… a new level of intimacy.” He smiled.

Eulylia roll her hazel eyes in elegant annoyance as she sat down on the grass between the two, facing both of them. “Save your flattery for other girls. I do not want it.”

“What?” A sarcastic surprise highlighted Iago’s gasp. “Other girls!” He turned to Sephria. “I don’t know what she’s talking about, Seph.”

“I don’t believe that for one second,” Sephria scoffed with a sarcastic smile.

A pause—it did not total more than three seconds, but time found a way to stretch itself thin through the air. Iago thought of everything he could choose for him and Eulylia, and everything that should never be possible between them.

“My words wouldn’t be any less true,” he finally said, handing Eulylia one of the books on the pile. She took it in silence and opened it. “I see no wrong in giving compliments. People love compliments—other than Szak, I suppose.”

Both Eulylia and Sephria giggled at this.

“Szak is impossible.”

“Yes,” Eulylia nodded, agreeing with Sephria. “He is quite the disagreeable sort.”

Sephria groaned. “Not worse than Bladen.”

Eulylia squeezed her face into a kind of disgust at the sound of that name, and Iago couldn’t help but laugh.

“They’re from the same province,” Iago said. “Maybe that’s how it is, when you meet someone trained in the Twinkling Hearth.”

“How anyone can sustain a sane life in that province where multitudes of those men grow and gather and become fathers is beyond me, then,” Eulylia shook her head. Sephria nodded and Iago chuckled. “But even so, the two of them are not comparable. Bladen—oh, I despise how that name passes through my lips—”

“I can let something else pass, instead,” Iago winked.

“Oh, ew. Not when we’re supposed to study, please!”

He turned to Sephria. “It’s not like you’d see anything, anyway. Relax, sweetheart.”

“Oh, shut up!” Sephria pouted.

“Kidding, kidding,” Iago laughed. The winds immediately ceased when he patted Sephria on the head a couple times. She still felt the cold that lingered on his fingertips, but she also felt waves of intense heat from the rest of his body and felt obliged, just a bit, to forgive him.

Eulylia made a face that demanded he be serious. “It is awful that there exists a Commander in Aideyllian lands more unbearable than Szak.”

“Yes, I absolutely agree,” Iago nodded light-heartedly. “Let’s not linger on this anymore, then, love. Like Seph reminded me, we’re to get ahead of our next season of studies.” He gestured at the book in her hands. “Sing for us, please?”

A new cool breeze danced along Eulylia’s cheeks. She glanced up at Iago one more time. Their eyes met, her hazel ones against his golden ones, and they both paused to take in as much of each other as possible. Eulylia took in what she wanted to believe could be sincerity, against all of Iago’s jesting character. Iago, on the other hand, was convinced that Eulylia’s talent was not only in her siren’s song—of which he constantly sought after—but also in her ability to let him know of gentleness and soft skin without the need to touch her. It was as if he could feel her just by looking at her, and he never wanted to pull away. Could never bring himself to, so Eulylia always did so for the both of them.

Both of their next heartbearts twisted in their chest when she looked down to the page she had flipped to in her history book.

And then her lips parted.

And then she inhaled.

And then, careful to not cast anything more than sound, she read the words on the page, and her friends listened to the tale of a twenty-five-year war unraveling through the air and coming alive, entranced by its people and places dancing in song for the better half of their afternoon.