His tone was clipped, controlled, to all outward appearance, but his magic buzzed around him in restless waves, bending the edges of the golden bubble she was in and affecting it with his reddish aura; the little particles of time shivered with dissatisfaction.

Aurela tilted her head, studying him the way one would study a wounded creature pretending not to bleed.

“No,” she said softly. “It isn’t time.”

He frowned. “Then what is it? What the hell was that?! I know you saw it too. I could sense you there.”

“Yes, I was watching,” she admitted.

“Well?” He pried.

“It’s you.”

Silence fell. Even the sands paused their hum, and she got the very adorable sense as if they had all turned to ‘look’ at her, though none of them had eyes. She had to be careful not to laugh because fate would very much think it was him that she was laughing at, not the amusement her little dust bunnies were offering her.

“What?” His voice was low, dangerous.

“Your doubt,” she said, focusing back on him. “It’s making your power unstable.”

He gave a short, humorless laugh. “My doubt.”

Aurela’s golden eyes flickered. “We are our own worst enemies, Byung. Sometimes, lying to ourselves isn’t the answer.”

His expression hardened. “Tell that to Mara,” he said coldly. “He seems to be doing just fine with lying even after a thousand years.”

The name hung heavy between them. Swan looked away, wings shifting uneasily.

Aurela closed her eyes, that agonizing, overwhelming cloud of sadness and grief that had started to follow Byung around, cycling into the world around him, bit at her shields pressing in and causing her power to ache.

When she opened them again, Fate was already gone.

The air where he had stood shimmered faintly with his residual agony before collapsing back into that muted little hum of her mischievous sands. She reached down, touched a finger to the pile at her side, and it shivered a little golden halo that rippled through all the little particles before they all melted away.

Swan exhaled. “Is that really the answer?”

Aurela’s gaze lingered on the fading ripples of magic. It was a long moment before she spoke, “Yes, I suppose it is. Though I dislike my answer as much as he does, I cannot think of anything else to explain what I just saw. I may have been here longer, but I have never seen that before, not even when Fate and Mara were different, as different as that world below us. It is sad, it pains me, but we cannot govern anothers choices, can we? After all, I am only time. All I can do is observe.”

Swan’s feathers rustled. “And yet it always feels like more than that. Observing, sometimes, it feels like that dust is coming from your heart. It hurts me when it hurts you.”

She smiled faintly. “I know. I’m sorry, my love. I fear that is the curse of awareness, a roaring headache and a fractured heart.”

He moved closer, his shadow brushing over her delicately, as delicate as a whisper of a breeze on a single petal. Then, with careful tenderness, he leaned down and pressed his lips against her forehead.

Her lashes fluttered. “Don’t.”

He blinked. “What?”

“I know what you’re thinking.” Her tone was light; she fought everything inside her to keep it that way so he wouldn’t worry. “I’ve seen many things… and nothing at all when I looked. I cannot tell what I saw; it would not be good, not even for you. I know you want to ease my burden. But…”

Swan’s gaze lowered. “Yes,” he said quietly. “ I want to. But I know you cannot, I wonder if that isn’t what makes all of this so dangerous. Seeing. Maybe we shouldn’t have looked, Rel.”

Aurela shook her head slowly. “No. If I had not done what I did, I fear the outcome would have been far worse.”

The sands rippled beneath her as if in agreement.

Swan frowned, his jaw tightening. His long satin-black shirt billowed softly as he turned away, the motion fluid, too human for a being of shadow detached from what he once was. That lingering languidity was the exact reason she could not tell him. He was half between the two worlds, the two choices, until he let go of what once was; he wouldn’t become what she knew he would become.

“But if you had said nothing,” he muttered, “if you had let things go… You wouldn’t be wounded either.”

Aurela chuckled. She tried her best to twist it, but it was not a happy sound, but a knowing one. “And since when,” she asked, “have you seen me choose myself first… over the sands?”

He didn’t answer. The silence was its own confession.

Aurela rose, nodding as if that settled the argument they had slipped into and out of without Swan ever realizing they were arguing. It was as always. Him a step behind. The golden dust sliding from her body like water. Her gown, all gold and black layers churning and shimmering with the light of a thousand unseen stars as she moved. The fabric wasn’t really fabric but her magic woven from her own powers; each step she took left a faint trail of constellations that faded as soon as they formed.

Barefoot, she walked across the shifting dunes of time, her steps creating ripples that the sands eagerly chased, rising up like little children clawing for attention, waves of the little particles clinging to her ankles. They loved her — the sands always did — and she them.

She bent down as a small creature formed at her feet, sculpted from glittering dust: a soft, blobby thing with wide eyes and too many tendrils. It made a trilling sound when she cupped her hands around it. She smiled, it was briefly luminous, and made a sort of soft tinkling sound, imparting what she had asked of the sands when she had reached out before. It gave her one final trill, then dissolved into her palms.

She looked up at Swan again, who was still standing there, black against gold, anger melting slowly into something weary and tender.

“But if I hadn’t acted,” she said softly, “Sometimes the smallest choice shifts eternity.”

Swan’s throat worked, his wings twitching once.

“I know,” he said finally. “I know why you did it, I know your heart as well as you do.”

“Maybe better.” She said.

But knowing doesn’t make it easier to watch you get hurt.”

Her eyes softened. “Then don’t watch.”

He gave a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “You make that sound so easy.”

“It isn’t,” she admitted.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything else, and she didn’t answer. Only the sands whispered, curling gently around Aurela’s feet, climbing her gown affectionately.

Finally, she turned away, her voice light again. “I’m tired.”

At her words, the golden grains stirred, moving toward her, building up higher and higher, gathering her into a swirling cocoon that glittered with the faintest echo of starlight.

She gave her beloved a soft smile caught somewhere between unbearable calamity and a calm sense of peace. Whatever was to come was starting, and she would need every particle of time to ground her if her instincts were right. And her gut was telling her, she was.

The dunes sealed around her, glowing faintly.

She closed her eyes, the taste of dust still on her tongue, and his as well. She could taste him through it, as closely aligned to the dust as she was; she could see the entire outside of her bubble, even with her eyes closed and the swirling cocoon blocking the way. He stood looking absolutely withered and forlorn.

My pretty little Swan, I am sorry it will only hurt more from here.

“Rest well, my love,” he whispered. “Even if none of us can.” Swan’s whisper carried through the dust, cradling her in its warmth, and she let the tears of exhaustion out that she had been hiding, even though she knew he could feel her sorrow swallow her whole.

The sands whispered back, carrying her heartbeat through eternity and out the other side to wrap around him, and he turned into the giant bird form he was forced to resume when she was gone.

He flew away, little droplets of sorrow falling into her dust immediately swallowed whole, like the tasty morsel of power they were to the little bunnies.