Auron could have slept longer, but the Pyreflies woke him, wagging his brain until it was thrumming in torment. Propping up on his elbow, he ground the heel of his hand into his good eye socket to pacify the Pyreflies and buff the sleep out of his face. It helped marginally, enough so she could at least squint around the inn room.
"Raine?"
Vocal cords gritty from sleep, he cleared his dry, prickly throat and dragged himself onto his hip, but as a dreadful thought gripped him, he examined the room with new effort. The bathroom door was open and the light was off. The bed was vacant.
Bracing an elbow on the bed, Auron snapped to his feet. "Raine!" he barked.
Of course she left him. Raine had limits and Auron had attacked those limits like a fiend in heat. No excuse for it. Even if he was in the midst of a near-sending. Even if he was desperate to stay out of the Farplane.
He stumbled to his leather plate on the chair and then swung around disoriented to find his cloak, which was missing. Strange. Popping his head into the bathroom, Auron scanned the floor, looking for Raine's pajamas. Her boots were gone, too, but her coat made of dingo hide was still slung over one of the stools, at the table where she had picked over a dinner of pork roast and strawberry cobbler. He realized she didn't intend to go far. If she was going to leave him, he expected her to have enough good sense to dress for the cold.
Space. A little would do them both some good. She needed to get used to the idea he was an unsent and he prayed it wasn't a deal-breaker, although part of her must have known. After they had tinkered with the shower's water temperature for ten minutes, she must have at least had a hunch something was wrong. Ignorance was bliss, he reasoned. She didn't want to admit he was dead as much as he didn't want to admit he was in love with her, ever since the night at the stadium, when she smelled of gum and hairspray. Eventually they would both have to face it.
Wrestling into his armor, he snapped the buttons on his collar. He yawned and massaged the back of his neck, throwing back an arm to stretch his shoulder. As he stood in the light sloping in from the main room, he gave the dark bathroom a casual glance. Earlier this evening, he had strode with stern intent to this spot, closing the door on Raine's naked back as she readied for her first shower. Thinking back, he should have compromised and only closed the door halfway, at least until he was better adjusted to their new phase of intimacy. After all, it was what married people did; they left the bathroom door open. She was bounding through the stages like a rabbit to a field of clover, and digging his heels in was the only way to slow her down.
He noticed Raine's kinked garter on the side of the sink and gave it a dry smile as he picked it up. He had promised her he would take it off her later. Zanarkand had some marital customs that differed from those in Spira and he wasn't familiar with all of them. This morning, when he saw the garter tying back her hair, he knew she had been expecting a wedding night customary of Zanarkand and it scared the shit out of him. Sure, he had spent the majority of his time at the houseboat staring at her ass when she wasn't looking, but she was still the little girl who once patted his knee to get his attention before she asked if he had any kids for her to play with. It took work to separate the two Raine's. But now that she was his wife, daydreaming of her in her cheerleading uniform didn't feel as immoral, although he speculated that had been part of the appeal.
Honestly, he didn't know what he was supposed to do with the garter but he meant to invent something when the time came. Something racy and derogatory that would probably involve his teeth. Just the thought of it made him smirk. Sniffing the garter once, it smelled like her hair and he nostalgically pressed it against his nose on his way back into the bedroom.
A wintery draft curled around his bare arms and Auron regarded the window inquisitively. It had been left ajar and wind was whistling through the crack. He approached the window to latch it.
However, what he saw outside made him forget about the escaping heat. The garter landed gently on the carpet. His boots were grabbed from under the table. The open door banged the wall on his way into the hall.
*
On the train to her wedding, Raine missed her stop and she wasn't entirely sure it was by accident. The instant it zoomed by, the pull of regret was sudden and unexpected, as if part of her had gotten off, while the other part stayed rooted to her seat.
As Raine grappled with her thoughts, the train stopped anyway, so swiftly she had to catch herself on the seat in front of her and slap a hand on her dress to keep it from slipping to the floor, although it didn't appear to have moved from its spot, despite the universal laws of inertia. She leaned over to the window, waiting for the poor sap that had missed the train to come running up alongside, but no one came. Instead, Raine's attention was drawn to an older woman in a sunny-yellow coat sitting stoical on one of the benches, hands in her lap, zoning out on some distant distraction and Raine became entranced by her impressive concentration. She did not move a muscle. Raine's scope of vision panned out, encompassing more of the train platform and she gasped, her hands clawing the glass in shock and wonder.
Everywhere, statues in mid-step were on their way back to work, their lunch hours almost through. A girl who had been swinging her purse with every stride was stopped in place, her bag defying gravity as it was swung out in front of her and a woman with a leash paused to let her scruffy dog scratch its ear and it was left in that pose, squinting at its own back foot. One man was waiting for his train, his head bent, his wrist up to look at his watch, literally looking at time as it stood still.
Only Raine could move, initiating in her a strange sense of solipsism in a world where only she existed. She shifted in her seat to look at the back of the train, the other commuters frozen, staring out the window or to the front. Some were in mid-conversation, their hands up in a stationary gesture, their mouths hanging open on a vowel sound. She became aware of the air. It was syrupy, like clear honey, unmoving, hardening to preserve the moment.
Across the aisle, in the train seat beside Raine, there had been an older woman sitting by the window, knitting something long and emerald green, like a fashion scarf, but now she was frozen, her needles motionless in her fingers. She had been sitting alone before, but now someone was sitting next to her, a little boy. The air around him was particularly shimmery, always moving, a colorful transparent fog shifting around him, comets of changing light wandering around him in an aimless orbit. He sat with sage-like patience, even if his feet dangled and didn't reach the floor, his androgynous nose and chin visible under the purple hood as he turned to face her.
"Can you see me?" Raine asked. Her voice echoed abnormally, like she was in an empty room with high ceilings, instead of a tightly packed train car.
"You missed your stop," he said smoothly, lightly. It was more than just an observation, though. It seemed bizarrely like a second chance.
"How do you know what stop I intend to take?"
"That's not important."
"What is important?" she asked, rigid with distrust.
He gave a soft giggle at her suspicion. "That you get off the train and go to the Dome."
"To my wedding?" Raine laid a hand protectively on the bag with her dress inside. Raine's second wedding dress she picked out by herself, her only aid came from the clerk who helped with the zipper in the back and answered affirmatively when Raine asked about bringing up the hem.
"To Auron."
"You—you know Auron?"
"Of course." He grinned cheekily. Raine noticed with interest he had all his teeth and they were in perfect proportion. A boy his age should be shedding his primary teeth, smiling with awkward gaps and a mixed dentition, but he seemed strangely timeless.
Inexplicably, Raine felt the heat go to her face. Maybe it was the way the little boy was looking at her like they shared a provocative secret. "What makes Auron so special?"
"He will always be loyal and he'll always protect you."
"I don't need protection," Raine said stubbornly.
