She was the world. Colors and excitement and beautiful poetry. He would not lose her to mortal death. He knew now where his ability to play, to create, had come from. It was her half of his soul. He had been left with some small part of her light when they had been split, to find their way back to one another. He felt the songs in her, the music. It was in the way she walked, the way she flowed through a room, her small, slender figure so balanced. It was in the turn of her head and the way her smile lit up a room.
There was something about Corinne, something that had drawn his eye immediately. Lisa was beautiful, tall and blond and quite obviously a model. She belonged on the covers of magazines. Corinne’s light shone from the inside out. Just watching her made Dayan smile. When he touched her mind to share her thoughts, he found she was thinking of others, how they felt, what they needed. She was happy despite the fact that she had recently lost someone she loved, and believed she herself was going to die soon. Corinne lived each moment as it was given to her, determined to see beauty around her, even while she grounded herself in reality.
Dayan found the way her mind worked interesting. She often used telekinesis without thinking about it. She would glance at an object across the room that she needed and she would start to draw it to her. He could feel the difference immediately in her brain, a warmth, the building of the image and the focus on it. The image was always sharp and crystal clear, and then she would remember she was not alone and would heave a small sigh.
“What?” She was smiling up at him, her intriguing dimple mesmerizing him, so that he had no other choice but to lean down and kiss it.
Butterfly wings fluttered in her stomach at the touch of his mouth against her skin. “You have to stop doing that,” she told him softly, without much conviction.
“I thought I should practice as often as possible,” he replied, rejecting her idea immediately. “I am without extensive experience, and I must make certain I do not lack in the area of a lover. After all, I wish to make you happy.”
His voice was a whispered caress feathering over her skin. Corinne looked up at him, her large eyes dancing. “You know very well you don’t need any practice at all. And you make me very happy.” She reached up to touch his chin, a gentle brush of her fingers. “Tell me about your life.”
“I am a wandering musician. That is the truth, honey – a poet who has found his missing heart. I have long been without it.” It wasn’t simply the words he said, it was the way he said them, with hunger in his eyes.
“Do you love playing?”
“It is who I am,” he replied thoughtfully. “When I pick up my guitar, it is a part of me, like my arms. The notes and the words are somewhere deep inside me and they just flow out. I was born with this ability, a great gift bestowed on me.”
His humility surprised her because he was usually very confident, so much so it bordered on arrogance. But not when it came to his extraordinary talent.
As much as she was enjoying walking with Dayan, she was already exhausted. She became aware of the way her heart seemed to struggle to find the exact rhythm of his. She smiled up at him as he bent down to swing her effortlessly into his arms. “You really can read my mind, can’t you?” The sound of her own voice was more of an invitation than she would have liked.
“Of course.”
“Do you have to be touching the person?”
“No. I was not always touching you when I was reading your mind. And I have never touched Lisa. It is easy to read the thoughts of mortals.” He said it casually, so comfortable in her presence, he didn’t think to censor his words. In the short time they had been together, he was already thinking of them as one, a partnership, life-mates rather than two separate entities.