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Kory loves nights like these – starry, cloudless nights, where she and Donna can trail across the sky like twin comets. Some nights, when adrenaline is high and they need to burn energy, or find and hold the simple joy of living, they race.
Tonight is quieter. It is nearing dawn, and they will need to rest soon.
Mainly Kory, as she runs on sunlight, and until the dawn, she is running on reserves. Her reserves would last longer if Donna was pulling her own weight, but tonight, Kory is doing the bulk of the flying. Not that she is flying particularly hard. If she did, it might jostle Donna, who is content and lazy tonight, lying on top of Kory, and using her chest as a pillow.
It is the kind of position that would be far more comfortable in a bed, where Kory could rest her own weight. But she doesn’t mind it. There is something beautiful in a partner who trusts you to carry them, and who is so confident in how adored they are that, for now, they don’t worry about their partner’s comfort.
Kory knows that Donna will ask at some point, though. And when she does, she can already picture the embarrassed, flustered look on her girlfriend’s face. Kory can’t help but smile, and presses a kiss to Donna’s hairline.
“What are you thinking about?” Kory asks. She twirls a finger in Donna’s dark, silky locks. “Or are you dozing more than thinking?”
“I wouldn’t fall asleep on you up here,” Donna says.
But her closed eyes and slow heartbeat say otherwise. Kory tries not to laugh, and starts properly combing her fingers through her hair. “You could. I wouldn’t mind.”
Donna just shifts and rests her face further into Kory’s chest. “I wouldn’t.” Then, “I’m thinking about the Titans.”
Kory tilts her head. “About us?”
“The first Titans,” Donna says. When Kory opens her mouth to ask, even without seeing it, Donna adds, “Greek gods.”
As Donna speaks, Kory gently scrapes her nails along Donna’s scalp, earning herself a sharp breath, then a shiver and a sigh out for her trouble.
“This is not helping me think,” Donna informs her, but makes no move to leave Kory’s chest. Kory grins, and makes no effort to stop, but does give Donna’s crown another kiss for her trouble.
“What were you thinking about Greek-god-Titans for?”
“I’ve lived many lifetimes and worlds,” Donna starts, and Kory’s interest immediately becomes more cautious. Though she always loves hearing about Donna’s perspective, her past lives have been a source of pain far more than one of peace. Kory hesitates, unsure what to ask or how to show care. Her hand stills in Donna’s hair, and starts to pull back. Before she can decide how best to proceed, Donna starts to fish blindly for Kory’s hair, as if to draw it back to her head. “No, don’t do that. You asked what I was thinking of. And it’s nothing all that bad, really.”
“You have told me about many different lives, and I have read many volumes of Greek mythology. I do not think they know a genre other than tragedy.”
At this, Donna finally comes up from her chest, fixing her with a look.
“If you know a happier story they’ve written, you are welcome to share. But I am under no delusion that this will be cheerful.”
“Well, if it’s that dour, would you mind keeping the scalp massage going?”
Kory directs her eyes to the heavens for a moment, but she doesn’t protest. Donna shifts, gets more comfortable – this time crossing her forearms over Kory’s chest and lying so that she can look down at her. Kory raises a hand back to Donna’s hair, and lovingly runs her fingertips through it once more. She can almost see the sigh, the ah, that’s better, that Donna is suppressing.
“I think I was Eos,” Donna finally tells her. “Goddess of the Dawn.”
Kory thinks of Donna, of the way she looks in Kory’s bed when the pinky dawn light breaks through the windows. She thinks she believes. She has met enough goddesses to believe that the woman she loves could have been one. “You were Eos,” Kory confirms as much as asks. “What was your life like?”
“I don’t remember most of it,” Donna admits. “And I’m not sure I’m the Eos that this world’s mythology knew. I know Dick was my brother, but Helio is the sun god in this world’s mythology, and I don’t think he was the sun god in the life I knew.”
“But what was your life like?” Kory prompts, twirling her finger in the ends of Donna’s hair. “What do you remember doing?”
“I was cursed, I think. To fall in love only with the wrong people.”
Kory’s mouth twists. “Oh.”
She very politely does not ask Donna if she’s sure that was a curse confined to Eos’s life. But she doesn’t voice it. Not all of Donna’s relationships have been terrible. And even the terrible ones were not all as bad as Terry Long. And Donna has dated several of their friends. It is not as though Kory can blame her for dating Roy when she has, too.
But Donna catches that unspoken thought. She huffs, but it is mostly good-natured. “Y’know, you’re supposed to say, ‘Wow, Donna, that must have been terrible. What a relief that you no longer have such a terrible love jinx.’”
“Well, you are dating me. I had hoped it would be obvious you are not cursed.”
Donna smiles a little, then shakes her head. “I always forget you can be arrogant.”
Kory catches her chin and pulls her into a kiss. “It isn’t arrogance to know you love me.”
Donna smiles into the kiss, and when she pulls back, it is with the dawn rising behind her. Kory watches for a moment, something fond and beautiful in her heart. There is no comparison for the halo of pink light breaking through the clouds and casting Donna’s silhouette in rosy hues.
“I do love you,” Donna confirms, leaning closer for another kiss.
But before she does, Kory stops her a moment, tilting her head to the side. “Was I in your life, when you were Eos?” she asks, because not all of Donna’s friends and lovers are in every life. Unfortunately, they were all unlucky enough that Terry Long existed in this one.
Donna furrows her brows a moment, trying to remember.
Kory almost tells her that it’s alright, she doesn’t have to try and remember if that life’s memories are too faint to recall. But Donna reaches for Kory’s cheek, and looks at her with such stark consideration that Kory knows she must be remembering something.
“You were my husband,” Donna says slowly, tilting her head to the side. “On Earth you would be called Astraeus, dusk. But I think… It is more accurate that you were the night sky.”
“Ancient cultures did not usually like the dark,” Kory says, curious. “Was I feared?”
“Maybe.”
“Did you fear me?”
Donna smiles a little. “No,” she says. “I don’t think I did. Because I knew what the Greeks did not.”
Kory can’t help her curiosity. She leans forward, drawn in by the light pooling behind Donna’s hair, the pink bleeding the outside of her silhouette pink. Drawn in even more by the pink in her cheeks, of her lips.
Donna sits up, finally. She sits properly on Kory’s lap, and Kory follows her up, drawn in by the vision of Donna against the rising sun.
“The world is round, and the night sky is endless, so far beyond what any human could comprehend,” she says, voice softer. “And of all the worlds you chose to stay on, you stayed on Earth and tied yourself to me. You protected the humans when it was dark, and you entrusted them to me when I brought them daylight. We were part of the most basic and beautiful cycles humans understood.”
Kory feels a new emotion stirring. She laces her fingers with Donna’s when she’s led, and she leans in for a kiss, softer and with more daring than before.
Kory’s lips pull from Donna’s, and she presses one to her lover’s throat. As the new day dawns, she asks, “Did we meet at the horizon there, too?”
Donna bites her lip as Kory kisses her pulse, and closes her eyes to see stars. “I think we were the horizon.”