[flashback] haven. (lillis)

[Caelum]

7th of Summer 506 AV

It had been a difficult day at the university clinic. In the palm of his hand he could still feel a fading heartbeat, the sensation punctuated by the clop of horse hooves on the cobblestones outside. The door to the little town home he shared with Lillis De'Nerys was closed firmly behind him and he sagged against it, eyes closing for a moment as the last of Syna's rays twinkled in the windowpane. Their flat was tucked above the antique book shop they ran together the majority of the time, defraying the cost of living with Caelum's medical work that both was part of his research as well as pulled him away from it.

It was a haven, this place they had built together with the shreds of precious sanity and a great deal of driven dedication. There were walls filled with books and copper bottomed kettles hanging above the butcher's block in the kitchen. There was a handful of day lilies bursting brightly from a rusted in can and half a carafe of wine still sitting on the sideboard. There were paintings and sketches and drawings everywhere, of course, filling the place with Lillis' artistry.

They had remained together, he and the girl he had found amidst white ruin. Then, after a fashion, she had found him there as well. The road away from horror had been a long one, too many pieces of themselves left behind in a mass grave with starfish and pale, white hands and the swell of an unborn child. More pieces of Lillis, he knew, than himself. He was still fragmented on the shores of Black Rock with the goddess of death ruled even the day. That left him thinking again on his day. of the patient he had lost, the life that had ruptured in his hands.

Slowly, the screams and gasps, the death rattles and gurgles of his day faded, leaving him blinking down the narrow foyer, listening for her.

[Lillis]

She was painting the windowsills gold. The windowsills and the frames that held the panes of glass -- all gold, a tiny garnish to further brighten their rooms. She'd spent the majority of her morning in the book shop, and when a fellow painter came in looking for an outdated text on an archaic style, she assisted him in finding it. And when he could not afford it fully in gold pieces, he offered her gold paint. It had been an easy sell.

Lillis' personality was slowly seeping out into these rooms in the way of sketches, murals, dots of paint and streaks of charcoal in places she had not intended them to be. To improve her style (and, indeed, sharpen her divination), she had procured for herself a beautiful set of Tarot cards, and had been copying the major arcana -- The Hierophant, The Lovers, Strength, The Star. The more successful renderings of these images hung proudly in simple wooden frames throughout the house alongside portraits of Caelum and not a few sketches of a stray kitten to whom she'd taken a liking. There were other pieces, too. These were not hung on the walls or left out on display. They were created with a fast fervor that often resulted in a muddled composition. But they were stunning pieces: her mother's eyes, her elder sister's hair and profile, the clasped hands of the twins, the first vision of Caelum's face.

Lately, however, other images began creeping into her normal repertoire, foreign and often violent images depicting the suffering of strangers. She painted those only at night when sleep abandoned her and had only just begun to understand what they were: her gift from Avalis had changed somehow, and a gesture as simple as exchanging a jar of paint for an archaic book left her in the throes of a vision she had never hoped to see.

But her mind had keenly developed that invaluable tool of pushing the horrific into the periphery, a skill that allowed her to greet Caelum with an unabashed kiss and a warm, welcoming smile upon his return home from the clinic. Well, typically speaking, anyway.

On that particular day when she heard the front door close, she scampered on the balls of her feet to shut the bedroom door until she'd finished painting the windowsills. "I have a surprise for you!" She shouted. "Don't move, just... give me two minutes."

She'd straightened up the room as well, spreading a new quilt over the featherbed and putting away abandoned clothes and shoes and knickknacks in an attempt to create something beautifully serene. Funny how quickly they'd filled these rooms with remnants of themselves. She filled in the final empty nail hole with gold paint and took a moment to step back and admire her work: It made the whole room shine.

Sidling around a chest of drawers, her cheek smeared with gold paint, she stepped out of the bedroom and walked up to him, curling her fingers around his wrist and dragging him forward. Two delicate dimples framed her smile as she gestured into the bedroom. "Go see."

[Caelum]

A soft chuckle stirred the air. Her shout brought the suggestion of a smile to a mouth that, otherwise, was often considered to be cruel. A quiet thunk had one of his horns clunking against the door, tangling with hair he had shoved his hands through one too many times today. He read auguries in the stripes of late afternoon light tangling on the floor and felt peace seep into him, leaving little room for broke-bone, death to life again miseries of a healer's inglorious day.

"You've been kissed," he commented when she popped out, releasing his satchel with one hand, leaving it on the floor so as to step forward when she urged and to touch her cheek and that smear of paint.

"What is it?" He wanted to know next, but curved the corner into the bedroom all the same. The sunlight struck the freshly painted windowpane and filled the room with orisons.

He exhaled.

[Lillis]

"Do you like it?" She asked, lacing her fingers with his, gently swinging their entwined fists. "I thought, this way, there'd always be a little sunlight on our windowsills, even at night." A pause, before she added: "I traded one of the books for it," and hoped he would not be cross with her for doing so. She glossed over that detail rather quickly before moving on to draw his attention to the new quilt. It was true patchwork, boasting a rainbow of different colors and a variety of textures. She ran her left hand along it, smoothing out one final crease, and smiled. "I just fell in love with it," she said quietly. So in love, in fact, that she'd traded a glimpse into the future to procure it.

"So. What do you think?"

[Caelum]

A slow smile was born. It stole some of the glory from the day seeping through the window, was amplified by the very gold Lillis had brushed into the windowsille to allow sunlight in their bedroom even in the darkest hours of the night. It relaxed him even as the sun drifted slowly heavier against the horizon, threatening to burst into a thousand shades of blood and bone.

"I love it," he said. The words were rough. His words eternally were, however, rough as the hands of man against the face of time. The accent he bore was too exotic, unfading and unfitting; but his smile loitered, gaining ground by the second, and he stepped forward to catch her hip. Stepped forward again to back her a beat against the wall, beside the gold painted window with the sprawl of the fresh quilt in the corners of their vision.

His mouth caught her's, sinking in, letting the rest of his brain go blank, making room for the peace she was gifting him with.

"I love you," he added, lips stirring against her's.

[Lillis]

When he caught her in a kiss, her hands came up along the length of his torso, snaked around his neck and stayed there in a gentle squeeze even as she lifted herself up on tiptoe to facilitate the meeting of their mouths. She loved to kiss him, loved to touch him; he was the only safe, warm body in her orbit. He smelled faintly of the sweet, clean herbs of the clinic, a welcome change from the sharp, powerful scent of the drying paint.

"I love you, too," she murmured when they parted, basking in this stolen moment. Lillis grappled with a sort of guilt in this newfound happiness: whenever the grief of her family's violent passing truly lifted, even for just a moment, she was sucked down shortly thereafter into self-loathing. How dare she, she thought, be happy in this new life? How dare she thank the Gods for sending Caelum to her when she knew that they never would have come together if her family had not died that day. One more quick kiss and she disentangled herself from his embrace. "I'm glad you like it."

Careful not to smear the paint, she cracked open one of the windows, sending in a gust of fresh, summer air. That done, she crawled across the new quilt and peered up at him, resting her chin in her hands and her elbows on the mattress. knees bent and feet in the air behind her. "How was your day?" she asked, by way of casual conversation, pushing the creeping thoughts of guilt as far into the periphery as she could.

[Caelum]

"Difficult," came the confession, smile yet lingering in the wake of the kiss. A rangy shrug of shoulders had him struggling out of his jacket and he tossed it over the back of a chair while inhaling deeply of summer.

"I lost a patient I shouldn't have lost," he went on, flopping backwards on the bed and setting the mattress to bouncing. He sprawled perpendicular to her, head turning in the glittering arc of a horn in the waning summer light. One could almost watch it drain from him, watch him drain as the day did. "But I learned, and I won't make that mistake again," he said this last quieter, studying her face.

"The window is gorgeous," he murmured. "Bad day?"

[Lillis]

"You take on too much the sorrows of the world," she murmured and turned on her side toward him, her temple resting against one small fist even as her other hand reached out to make contact with him as he dropped down on the bed beside her. "I'm sorry you had a difficult day."

She thought back over her day, momentarily craning her neck to take in the image of the gold, and ultimately arched one shoulder in a shrug. "My day was fine," she said, bending the truth ever so slightly. She paused, curling the fabric of the quit between her fingers and added, "three of the customers downstairs accidentally touched me today, so." No more of an explanation was needed. After falling into strange fits whenever she made contact with anyone new, she'd taught herself what those visions meant, taught herself to decipher the images of death. "I wore gloves for most of the morning, but then I was reading this book about Auristics and the pages wouldn't turn with those bloody gloves on... Anyway, I took them off and forgot about them. It's silly, I know."

Another shift in her body, and she was flat on her back, her legs dangling off the side. "I think I'm starting to see Auras now, if I try very hard. You'll have to let me do yours when I get a little better at it."

[Caelum]

"There's probably someone associated with university who could assist you with that," he said after a moment, "Developing the aura bit. Maybe some sort of shielding too?" The last was quiet, blacker smoke as, this time, he shifted, rising up onto an elbow to peer down at her.

A hand reached out, brushing through pale strands of her hair, and a slow smile graced his face. "What do you think it looks like?"

[Lillis]

She gave a slow nod of her head, transfixed by the idea that there could be something to protect her from her visions, some way of controlling them -- the idea thrilled her.

When he touched her hair, she turned her head to meet his hand and smiled, lifting those wide, round eyes to his face. They traveled, then along the outline of him, seeing the natural glow that she could see emanating from any living thing and, just then, looking no further. "Well," she began softly, lifting one delicate finger to trace the line of his jaw, "for starts, I think the entire thing would be framed in a shimmering, bright red -- obviously denoting just how crazy you are about me." She grinned, pale pink lips framed by two dimples. "But mostly... yellow, dark yellow, for one who heals. Gold-laced, I think, for one who is deeply connected to the divine. And also... I think I would see some black, like your markings, after the sun goes down. I think I would see something like that in your aura, dark like ink, like veins in the light of you."