Dipak's eyes flicked open and he jerked his head up so he could look at the Life Tree. Darkness seeped out from its roots. They gathered and created an undulating cloud from which Raven stepped out. Dipak burst into a thousand rainbow lights and enveloped Raven. His voice rang out like small bells as he laughed and repeated Raven's name again and again.
"You know me," Raven croaked.
Raven lifted his arms with his hands out stretched and easily caught the child as he reformed.
"I will die a thousand times and I will know you," Dipak declared quietly as he placed his hands on either side of Raven's white face.
Raven bowed his head so that their foreheads touched in a comfortingly familiar way. Dipak sighed. It was like coming home. The only home he had ever known.
"I don't have long," Raven whispered.
"I know," Dipak answered.
"I just wanted you to know..." Raven said.
"I've always known."
Dipak pulled back and looked into Raven's eyes. He could already feel their time ending. He wanted to see Raven up to the last second. This was another moment that Raven had touched and he wished that there could be an unlimited more. But then he simply faded away and Dipak dropped from the thin mist that his arms had become. Gytha reached out and caught him, but Dipak had not been concerned. Moments after she had him in her arms, his body broke apart into an agony of black skittering motes. He could not focus himself into any kind of order. He hung in the air like a swarm of gnats.
There was nothing that he could know but the familiar despair that came with parting from Raven. Was it love? He'd asked himself that question a thousand times and he could still not answer the question. There was a time that he would have said yes, back when he had been Horse. But now it had become something more complex. There were layers to their relationship now that had not existed when he had been Raven's wife. So many roles had been played out between them. But whenever their lives touched, things were better. Maybe that's what love is.
