Goddess Liv Savell (best autobiographies to read .TXT) 📖

the light and the views of Enyo and Va'al. And all that they were doing. 

It was terrible, what they were doing.

But the door looked tempting, the soft glow of sunlight a reminder of what had been. Of what it had been like to have a body, to feel the sun.

Finally, Alphonse decided to go through the door, and before she could even place her hand on the knob, she was in a clearing. A woman curled on her side by the stream, her back to Alphonse.  

Fear clutched her heart, and she turned, wanting to retreat to her haven beyond the door, but the opening was gone, and she had nowhere to hide. Alphonse spun back to the woman, and something sparked in her memory. She had dark hair, inky blue, and massive black wings. Rough hands fiddled with a feather in her hair—a familiar feather. 

Alphonse watched for an indeterminate time. Something like a warm hand pressed against her shoulder, urging her forward.  Remember, it whispered. So she tried. 

The gentle voice was right. There was something there—something tickling the back of her mind. Alphonse knew the woman by the stream. She was… She was precious. 

Remember.

Alphonse swallowed but stepped closer, her eyes following the lines of the woman’s body and her wings, the way her hair seemed to absorb the light around it, the way she moved her hand. Shouldn’t she have a sword strapped to her back? 

Finally, a name popped into her mind. “Delyth?” she asked aloud, startled again by the sound of her voice. How long had it been since she had a voice at all? It sounded small and weak to her ears. 

Staring in confusion, Alphonse stepped closer but did not cover the entire distance. Memories were surfacing. Delyth and her walking together, hands nearly touching. Delyth smiling over a steaming cup of tea. Delyth, moving closer, eyes focused as she reached for Alphonse in the darkness of a tent. Delyth’s hand moving between Alphonse’s legs. 

She shuddered, pushing the memories away. That wasn’t her life anymore. Now, all she had was the darkness. 

༄

The warrior by the stream went mountain-peak still, her hand frozen with the hawk feather held lightly between the first and second fingers. Perhaps it had been her own heart that she had buried, for it felt as though nothing beat in her chest.

It was some time before Delyth felt as though she could move again without breaking, and still, it was withagonizing slowness that she pushed herself into a sitting position and turned to look at the woman behind her.

“Aderyn bak,” she whispered, the sound catching in her throat. “My little bird.”

Alphonse appeared not as Delyth had seen her last, tired and bone-thin with the weight of Enyo on her soul, but soft and warm, her face lit in subtle pinks and her tawny hair almost gold with the light of the sun behind her. She wore a dress Delyth had never seen before—pale yellow and covered by a white apron wrapped around her hips. Below it, her feet were bare.

“Alphonse,” Delyth called, a little louder this time, her strong voice made small by the fear that this vision would disappear, so much fairy-smoke torture. Tears leaked unashamedly from the corners of her eyes, rolling down the plains of her face, the curve of her neck. She stood but dared not go closer, so afraid of losing even this much of the healer. Instead, she opened her arms, a wordless beckon.

“Am I dead?” Alphonse asked, looking around the beautiful forest. 

“No, brave one,” Delyth said, hazarding a step closer. “You’re trapped. But I’m coming to get you.”

When Alphonse did not disappear, Delyth stepped forward again. Then again. She stopped when they were close enough to touch, then stilled. Her heart was a bird, flapping at the cage of her ribs, frantic to escape. She had not buried it after all.

Confusion twisted Alphonse’s face, but she didn’t shy away as Delyth approached. She stood, staring at the warrior with an intensity rarely witnessed. Finally, she blinked, breaking the trance, and reached her hand out, palm up, for Delyth to take. To hold. 

“It’s normally dark where I am. But here, it’s so light. I like it here…” Shyly, she looked up at Delyth. “Do you think we could stay here for a while?”

Delyth took Alphonse’s hand, warm and steady in her own despite the distance between them, and pressed the soft fingers to her cheek to mingle with the tears falling there. She did not trust herself to speak but nodded, her face tilted down at those familiar eyes.

She ached to know that her little bird lived in darkness. Of course, they could stay in the light. “As long as you would like,” the warrior managed to say finally, her voice no more than a whisper. 

“I love you,” Alphonse murmured. She traced the tears on Delyth’s cheek with her forefinger and then brought her palm to Delyth’s lips, asking for a kiss.

“I love you,” Delyth said, only her voice broke high, choked with feeling. She kissed Alphonse’s palm, brushed her lips against the healer’s delicate wrist. Tried again: “I love you.” And somehow, the words slipped from her lips whole and strong. “I love you.”

Delyth tugged Alphonse closer, wrapped an arm around her waist to hold them together. She kissed her shoulder, her neck, her cheeks, then stilled, looking down into the face of her lover.

What had she done to deserve this? No gift could possibly have been greater, more welcome. And what had she done to earn it but fail Alphonse on the mountain top and again on the plains? She had not freed her little bird, but here she was, just as gentle and beautiful as Delyth remembered.

The warrior let her eyes trace the contours of Alphonse’s face with an air of tremulous reverence, then leaned close to kiss the woman she loved, tugging her down so that they could lay pressed together on the meadow loam. 

❀

With her head nestled against Delyth’s shoulder, Alphonse stared