He expected, somehow, to leave years between them and yet find the same girl waiting for him when he bothered to return. Not a conscious decision, but a cruel one. If Caneo recognizes the error now, his features betray no hint of regret. Mild confusion lingers in those wide, bright eyes; this is not how he dreamed their reunion. In the past, when he thought of it, they stood beneath the laughing stars and she burned with warmth and kindness and he was, again, free of the hole in his heart. Now he wonders if she will rebuke him.

        Caneo doesn't react to the savage darkness passing so briefly over her features. He is half lost in himself, warring against what was and what is, and half afraid any mention of her anger will only stoke it higher. Has he done wrong? He cannot bring himself to pull away just yet, so it is with relief he moves toward her instead, glad when her face is Tandavi again. When she speaks once more, at last, he wants her to never stop. A spark of laughter lingers in her voice and slowly heats the emptiness of her eyes, and Caneo is no longer lost, no longer struggling to breathe. His smile is brilliant and genuine at the sound of his name: summer starlight, full of laughter, forgetting all bad dreams. For once he shines as brilliantly as she, not in reflection but here with his own light, pale and brilliant to match the soft heat of her glow. Caneo does not move away when she closes the distance between them.

        His heart, heavy before, beats like a small, excited bird against his ribs. Not fear; it trembles full of something else, something building into an electric tremble as it works its way outward. Blue eyes shift to trace the long, smooth contours of her face, and she smells faintly of firelight on the dusky sand or stories told amidst the swaying grass: a sweet, dusty smell that makes a nameless muscle inside him clench. His eyes narrow to slivers as they touch, velvet on velvet, an astonishingly innocent thing for all the cold flame burning inside him.

        "I lost you."

        It occurs to him now, in fragments: the pain he has caused. Caneo never considered it before, and it hits him with a newness, and one ear twitches back, but that is all. He can't stand it any longer, can't be here or he might burst, might shudder right out of his skin, he is so full of nameless feeling. Sharply, Caneo pulls away, but he's smiling, and it's hard to tell if it's his lying smile or a true one (they both look the same). “Tandavi,” he says. I didn't know I was lost. But his voice is a bright thing, and cloven hooves dance a thoughtless jig in the grass beneath him. Does it matter where he went? Does it matter why? He is here now, and he can't contain it, and he wants to run until they are both nothing but bodies.

        Caneo leaps aside, tail snapping, mischief in his eyes. His heart already beats like thunder. “Run with me,” he breathes. He is too often a still thing, a statuesque observer, but now life limns him in cold light and he is clearly made of moving parts. He doesn't quite wait for an answer, but feints boldly toward her and then darts away.