Nocturne

☼ Chapter Four ~ Aurora ☼

Echoes of that final click rang through Aurora's mind long after the air had stilled. Sounding so painfully final, it had rippled through her very brain and heart as if they were more fragile than fire, more delicate than liquid water.

Diurne's father had stormed out, his furious curses and venomous words unintelligible and distant to Aurora, their blaze drowned out by the echoes of Diurne's words.

Every time she came close to justifying herself, her mind fled to the image of Diurne, face collapsing, the love and hope that had always lingered behind her dark eyes transforming into the pain of betrayal, curling in on itself. So afraid, so alone. And her words... they reverberated through Aurora's head, cutting deeper than any blade ever could.

I thought we promised not to lie to each other.

Aurora felt she as if she would scream. I DIDN'T LIE! she wanted to cry, she needed to yell, she longed to chase after her friend.

Friend. Could she call her that anymore? Friends didn't call each other traitors. Friends didn't betray each other. Friends trusted each other. Friends knew what each other needed. Friends knew who the other was- and didn't destroy them when they saw something new in the other, even when they didn't understand it.

Aurora remembered Diurne's gentleness, her wisdom, how her shyness and discomfort could vanish when talking with someone alone about something important to the both of them. She remembered the peace that seemed to come over her entire self when she played her beloved darkwood flute, and she remembered everything she had loved about her friend, from the way her long dark hair looked loose to the way she stared inwards when lost in the Faerieland of thought. The way she could listen for hours and say only what was important, the way their conversations together were always far more meaningful than when with any of Aurora's many other friends. The way they trusted each other.

It was always the pure darkness in her that Aurora had loved, the quiet lullaby of the moon.

That was the moment she realized she didn't dislike the new in her friend at all. Because it wasn't new. It shimmered in the unique shade of her deep purple eyes and it danced on the bow of her lips. Aurora feared her friend's darkness and she loved it, she tried to crush it even as she stood awestruck at its blossoming serenity.

Diurne deserved better than her, she saw that now.

Was it too late to earn her trust again? Was it too late to win back the right to look her in the eyes? Was it too late to learn?

No. It couldn't be. She couldn't believe that.

She stood and started towards the door, but Diurne's mother's tentative voice creeped out towards her like a low fog slithering across the ground. What was her name? Ravi? Yes, that was it.

"Aurora?"

Hurried footfalls hesitated. Ravi's brittle blonde hair was covering her face in a distinctly un-Solar way. "Yes, Madame Ravi?"

"You're going to find her, aren't you?"

Aurora wondered how the older woman had known, then dismissed it. It wasn't hard to guess.

"Yes."

"Tell her..." Ravi's blue eyes were like fractured ice as they met Aurora's, so afraid and sorrowful. At first, Aurora had hope. But what she had to say was worse than anything Aurora could have ever expected could come from any mother's mouth.

"Tell her she can't come home. For her own sake. Cyrus... It would upset him to see her." Ravi looked at the young girl, pleading and desperate.

Disgust clouded Aurora's vision and bile rose in her throat. "I'll keep it in mind." She tossed her words behind her and her voice was forceful and cold.

Ravi's emotions were a thick fog leaking out and stifling everything around her. Aurora could almost see the thick snow piling up around her, a choking scarf of frozen air.

If she wasn't a guest, Aurora would have spat at her feet.

As it was, she whirled out the wooden door. Splashes rayed up where her feet landed on the cracked stone. Buildings towered over her like fingers grasping at the sky, some built to be tall, others that way by chance and a growing population, most still elegant and short, built into open courtyards where the families living there could gather.

She knew she might be casting aside her welcome place in those gatherings. They had once been so important to her, but now she pushed them aside. Diurne was more important. True friendship was more important. The words she'd left unsaid were more important.

She sped up, darting around corners and swerving around people. She knew where Diurne would be, where she always would be, the place she'd found solace from the noises of the world.

She just hoped it wasn't too late.