Great gusts of black smoke erupted from my back, smoke twisting into wings, outstretched and hiding us from everything.
My hips slammed into hers, combining a furnace and blizzard into one.
“Look at what you do to me.” My smoke consumed her light like a solar eclipse. “Look at what you make me become.”
“Oh God...ohGod.” She tightened around me. Her light flickered. The snow snuffed out and with a short, sharp scream...she came.
My matching orgasm tore through me like lightning, sending a shockwave of fire across the flowing river and shooting up the waterfall.
I could die from this.
I could happily die from how good she felt. How good we felt together.
“Rook.Fuck.” My body jerked in ecstasy. A guttural groan tore from my throat as my release wrung me dry.
I sagged against her, breathless and shaking.
We stayed like that for a while, breathing hard and slowly coming back to life.
Her light extinguished and the fire that always stalked inside me was snuffed out as easily as if she’d reached inside my heart and pinched out the candle wick that lived there.
The valley went still.
The waterfall continued to crash.
I slowly lifted my head, and my mouth fell open at the impossibility.
The valley was no longer frozen or burnt.
It didn’t drip with melted snow or choke on clouds of ash.
Everywhere I looked, new life sprouted in the moonlight. Tiny buds on the bushes and branches, unfurling with bright green.
Rook squeaked in my arms. “I...have no explanation for any of this.”
Even the rotting leaves on the riverbank were eased aside by new shoots, swiftly turning the barren river edge into a thick meadow.
The air came alive with the scent of newly bloomed wildflowers. Burnt bark peeled away from tree trunks in curling ribbons, revealing living wood beneath.
Something brushed my calf.
I looked down, peering through the dark water to find a school of zippy fish.
Pushing me off her, Rook waded to the edge and climbed out. A cluster of white flowers bloomed at her feet.
I went to join her, unnerved and questioning everything.
Turning to face me, she dripped with river water. Her voice dropped to a whisper as if she was petrified of someone overhearing us. “You burned it and I froze it...”
“Yet together...” I trailed off.
She turned to look down the serpentine valley.
Further up the river, trees that’d been utterly consumed by flames were now fully whole with branches overladen with leaves. Flowers released a cloud of pollen so thick, it covered everything in yellow dust.
We’d both destroyed this valley, sohow?
Somewhere in the distance, an owl called. Followed by the cicadas singing.
