She smiled when the figure slipped into the room, her eyes tracing over him through the mirror she gazed into. He was beautiful in the way broken pottery can be fixed with melted gold. Every wrinkle and scar on his face told of endless trials, the wavering line of a smile flickering across his lips.
She barely moved a whisper. Allowing him to float in and dance across the room towards her. He removed a black glove, resting his fingers on her bare shoulder. His long fingers drummed there, yet his eyes, his eyes the colour of a cloudy day bore into hers through the mirror.
“You expected me.” He murmured.
“Of course.” She smiled gently, a harp string vibrating under his touch. “You were a friend in my childhood. You were a confidant as I grew to adulthood. And now?”
Her body shivered just as he offered her his handkerchief, pressing it into her hand. The cough rolled through her body, splattering crimson waves across the pristine fabric as she held it to her lips. He bent down to where she perched, pressing a gentle kiss against her neck.
“You have seen me in every mirror for a long while, now.” He purred. “Most would be frightened of me, or begged me to go. Others would bargain or expect me to cut them down where they stand. But not you.”
“You have been my longest companion.” She smiled. A sad smile. The type that gently swayed in a summer wind.
A sharp intake of breath, a narrowing of the eyes as he realized Aria had chosen him. Waited for him. Wanted him. A thrill of an electric current zinged through him, a merry thought. Not a demand. A gentle ballad of a battle cry. No less powerful. He was her last words. Her closing song.
She looked him in his smokey eyes through the mirror, standing from her place before the vanity table. Then she turned, her satin dress twirling as she stood before him. He kicked the vanity stool out of his path, replacing its presence with a deep bow. He knelt before her, offering her his naked hand.
A deep breath. Then two. Her warm fingers sliding down his palm. He looked up and the expression he saw there fanned something inside of him. A longing, a relief, a joy. She was a shooting star amongst the brightest of constellations. He rose and swept her up into his arms, pressing a hand into her back as he drew her into a dance.
She laughed. Bright and explosive inside a frail form. A caged bird freed. He held her firmly, his robes changing into court wear, his hair swept back, his beard trimmed as they spun.
She looked up, squeezing the hand that held hers. Music only they could hear filled the room, carrying them across time. Before his eyes she transformed back into an awkward creature, her limbs flailing a little. Then a child, wrapping her arms around his waist as she shrunk down still wearing her satin dress. All the while she opened her mouth and laughed. A birdsong of a victory. He shrunk down with her, two children laughing together as they danced in a circle.
A life lived to its body’s conclusion. A book reaching its final pages, wrapped in the cover of an old, dear friend.
He spun her once, twice, three times. They returned to themselves. She looked up at him, offering him her hand. Her eyes beheld him with wonder and an edge of curious wanting. Taking all of him in and wishing to dance within it.
Age melted off him, the anguish of death falling off him like a heavy fur coat. Replaced with the love she offered him. She had not chosen this ending. But she had written in the margins. She had seen him and greeted him with an ageless kindness.
This was not a death march. This was the gentle promise of a long-awaited spring.
He bent down to her, cupping her chin so to pull her into a kiss. She deepened it, pulling him closer to her. Her response surprised him, even now. Her limbs no longer frail, but glowing in the beyond. Tears streamed down his face, dripping onto her dress and remaining as diamonds stitched into the fabric.
“Let us go, Aria.” He breathed against her lips. “You will be my queen, my gift beyond the anguish of death.”
“And you will be my muse and my joy.” She whispered, “let the gold bleed from it’s place and find hope within me. You have been my constant in life. Be mine in death.”
He lifted her into his arms, no longer grey with age, but the silver linings of dawn. His eyes brighter than starlight. Lonely no longer. The darkness of warm velvet rather than the hollow sighs of a haunted building.
“As you wish.” He murmured, casting one last look upon her vanity mirror.
Her body lay peacefully by the table, a small smile like the first whisper of a laugh brushing her lips. Courting death had never been so wonderous.
Soon someone would find her here, blood splattered across her chest from a cough not caught in the waking world. Her laughter crossing over into a realm no living being would be blessed enough to hear it.
Only a hint. The gentle smile from a girl long loved by the reaper. And she, courting him back.
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