At night, a tiny orange glow shone through the tent, its fabric resembling a backlit screen, though no shadows moved across it.
"Ha." Skyl lay on his side beneath the covers, gazing at Millicent's face, when he suddenly chuckled.
"What is it? Is there something on my face?"
"I just remembered a bunch of movie clichés."
"Hmm?"
"Look at us. We're snuggled up under the covers, gazing at each other in the lamplight. Doesn't it feel cozy? In a lot of movies, when a widowed protagonist remembers his wife, there's usually a flashback to a scene just like this."
"You're being mean to me," Millicent chided softly.
She was being playful, though it was difficult to tell from her gentle tone.
"I'm just imagining a scene from the future, remembering you. It might be something that won't happen for many years, but perhaps tomorrow, or even the next time I close my eyes, I'll remember this very moment. There's certainly something different about looking at you while we're tucked away under the covers."
A complicated mixture of emotions flickered through Millicent's honey-colored eyes. She looked away from Skyl, then sighed and pulled down the blanket, poking her head out to breathe the filtered air inside the tent.
Skyl's magical fragrance smelled of freshly washed linen, evoking the sensation of midday sunlight streaming through a glass window onto a balcony.
He had once told her that he particularly loved this scent. Smells, after all, could evoke remarkably powerful and profound memories.
Skyl poked his head out from beneath the covers as well.
"What's wrong? Are you angry?" he asked with an amused smile.
"I have every reason to be angry. You can't keep doing this."
"What do you mean?"
"You're always immersing yourself in visions of the future or reminiscing about the past. That's precisely why you've distanced yourself from the present. You look at your own life as though you're sitting in a movie theater, watching everything unfold on the screen. You always maintain that detached, objective perspective, and that's why you say such infuriating things. Is the woman right in front of you really less moving than the woman you see in your prophecies?"
"That's a good point. You've hit the nail right on the head, my Millie."
"You certainly know how to say the sweetest things!"
Millicent's cheeks grew burning hot at his affectionate nickname, and her attitude softened.
"But that still isn't sweet enough. Do you know what I'm thinking right now?"
"You're undoubtedly trying to figure out how to persuade me."
"Then you're completely wrong. It seems you don't know absolutely everything after all."
Millicent gently twisted her hips and slid sideways into his arms like a snake. She pushed him onto his back and promptly settled on top of him.
Her red hair fell around them like the velvet curtains of a four-poster bed. Lamplight filtered through the strands, casting a lattice of warm light across her cheeks. Her eyes were hazy and dreamy.
Skyl rested his hands behind his head, his smiling expression filled with a calm understanding.
"I'm not going to try to persuade you. People who know too much are never happy, so how could I possibly blame you for being omniscient? I just want you to understand what I see."
"What do you see?"
Skyl felt as though he were reading from a script, playing the straight man in a comedy routine, while every affectionate word Millicent spoke was a spontaneous improvisation.
"You."
"Well, of course it's me. If there were a third person in this tent, we'd be in a horror movie."
Millicent burst into laughter. She lowered her head, giggling quietly for a moment before looking up again. The honey in her eyes seemed ready to spill over and coat his face in a thick layer of amber.
"I haven't finished yet."
"Oh, please, go on."
"I see Skyl."
"Yes, me."
"Stop interrupting... I see your face, your eyebrows, your eyelashes."
"Not my nose hairs, I hope?"
"Pfft!"
Skyl could feel Millicent's supple yet resilient body trembling with laughter.
"Go ahead and keep fooling around. I can repeat myself a thousand times, ten thousand times if I have to. I see you, Skyl, and the sight of you captivates me endlessly. I want to gently stroke your eyebrows with my fingertips. Would they feel as soft and delicate as a cloud of warm dust? I want to cup your cheeks in my palms and gently tug at the corners of your mouth until that profound, aloof expression of yours turns into something ridiculous.
"Skyl, I want to press the pads of my fingers against your lips and feel the heat of your breath brushing across the backs of my hands. I want to squeeze your earlobes a little harder and breathe into your ears, just like you do when you whisper those little secrets to me. I want to press my chin against the tip of your nose and trace little circles over it, letting your breath flow down my neck and slip beneath my collar.
"That's what goes through my mind whenever I look at you. I want to become a carefree little puppy, content to cuddle up beside you without thinking about what the future might bring. Just living one day for you would be enough.
"If I imagined us parting, imagined myself growing old and feeble, shriveling into something like a damp, wrinkled rag while you remained as radiant as ever beside my sickbed... If I imagined you saying one day after my death, 'If only Millicent were still here.' If I imagined you traveling countless light-years, meeting countless wonderful people and changing countless lives, only to discover that, after all that time, there was nobody left by your side...
"Skyl, I won't think about those things, because the longing I would feel for you would crush me. Even mentioning them in passing is enough to make me want to cry right now. But whenever I look at you, my heart is filled with nothing but joy. How could there possibly be room for tears?"
The words spilling from Millicent's lips fell like a shower of pebbles, striking the still waters of both their hearts at once.
Skyl could feel her excitement, her burning, passionate soul, like a white-hot iron core melting through the loneliness he had endured while gazing across the ages.
Even though he could perceive the infinite versions of Millicent that existed across infinite futures, witnessing those possibilities unfold before his own eyes was infinitely more profound and piercing than observing them with a detached glance through history.
He realized that something was terribly wrong.
Very, very wrong.
"Look!" Millicent exclaimed delightedly, keeping her voice down, of course. "You're blushing!"
"Ah..." Skyl sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "So that's why."
"Why what?"
"I can see everyone else's possible futures, but I never appear in any of them because I've transcended the timeline. And that's exactly why I never expected this. I never imagined that hearing you say these things to my face would hit me so hard. It's more dizzying than taking a headbutt straight to the face. Millicent, you really are..."
"What am I?"
She asked eagerly. Her body was burning as though she had come down with a fever, her ten fingers trembling uncontrollably, and her lips were dry and pale.
She had already laid her very soul bare before him. Her breath seemed to give that soul physical form, intertwining with his in the foot of space separating their faces.
"You're quite the sweet talker. Much more eloquent than I ever imagined. You certainly don't sound like a girl who's lost her memory."
"I can be quiet if you want. I can go back to how I always was, sitting silently and stealing little glances at you, counting my heartbeats through every second we spend together in the same room. You know how many books I've read. During your Christmas vacation, when I was in another world, there wasn't much for me to do besides helping run the tavern and reading.
"I like books because reading means I'm doing the same thing you do. Before I knew it, I'd read an enormous amount of poetry. If you'd like, I could recite Shakespeare's sonnets for you. I like Adonis, too.
"'When my gaze sinks into your eyes, I glimpse the depths of dawn. I see an ancient yesterday and all the things beyond my understanding. I feel the universe flowing between your eyes and mine.'"
At that very moment, Skyl found the girl before him utterly extraordinary. Her red hair blazed like wildfire, and her pale, slender face was more vibrant than the peach blossoms in a sunlit orchard.
The story of her life was like an immense collection of poetry, and Skyl had already read every line. Yet now, he discovered that every line's annotation was himself, strange yet unmistakable notes written by a ghost floating beyond the dimensions of reality.
They were verses Millicent had offered Skyl with her very life.
He answered softly, "'I command the stars. I cast anchor and gaze. I crown myself king of the winds.'"
"Skyl... Oh, Skyl, please, have mercy on me," Millicent sobbed.
Skyl gently sat up, withdrawing his hands from behind his head, and wrapped his arms tightly around her.
The light inside the tent went out. Two silhouettes moved together in the darkness, like a pair of translucent jellyfish drifting through the ocean waves.
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