TITLE: Star-Crossed
AUTHOR: XmagicalX
DATE: May, 2001
CATEGORY: Angst, Romance: Daniel/Sha're
SEASON INFO: Post-movie, pre-pilot
SPOILERS: the movie, Children of the Gods
RATING: PG
CONTENT: Odd metaphysical meanderings. And it's sad.
SUMMARY: Sha're considers her husband and the workings of destiny
DISCLAIMER: (once more, with feeling) "Stargate SG-1 and its characters are
the property of Showtime/ Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and
Gekko Productions. This story was written for entertainment purposes only and
no money whatsoever has exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is
intended. The original concepts, situations, and story are the property of
the author. Not to be archived without permission of the author."
He returned in the late afternoon, when the sun was a deep orange, low above the dunes. She met him inside the city gates, and he followed her up the stone stairs to their rooms. He began talking before they set foot on the first step, hardly pausing to take a breath to bid the two men accompanying him good rest before addressing her, "Sha're, you have to see this! It's incredible, the whole room--"
"I saw it yesterday," she reminded him, "when you discovered it. And again this morning."
"I know, but we hadn't cleared all the vines away then--I wonder why they left that opening in the roof, it does make it easier to see but they would've had artificial lights, not just the byres. Though if the roof hadn't been open we wouldn't have found it at all--"
She could not help but smile at the way he stopped on the stairs, so taken with his thoughts that he forgot to lift his foot to mount the next step. Shaking her head, she took his hand and pulled him into motion again. With an embarrassed start he continued to ascend with her, apologizing, "Sorry, hadn't thought of that before. Of course it might not be the sun at all, they might have wanted to see the stars. Especially given the constellation patterns on that section of floor. Only they're not all the same constellations, I don't know if they're just different from the ones you look at now, or maybe they're from elsewhere--they don't look like Earth stars but they might be, I should've studied more astronomy..."
He wasn't talking to her so much as at her, which gave her a good idea how fatigued he must be, even if he didn't sound tired. Even when she sat him on the woolen mats on the couch, the words didn't stop pouring out until she placed a steaming bowl in his hands. Then he blinked down at the fragrant stew, said, chagrined, "Oh. I'm sorry. Wasn't it my night to cook?"
"Yes," she said. That division of labor had been solely his idea, and one she never admitted to her cousins. They thought her husband odd enough without having to know that he in fact did take part in every womanly chore. But in all honesty he cooked better than her--she had never had much skill at the fire. And he tried such interesting and sometimes delicious combinations of meat and vegetables and spices. She didn't tell anyone they shared the duties of preparing meals, but she enjoyed it nonetheless. "It was your turn, and I was thinking we would both starve. Fortunately my aunt took pity on me and brought us this bounty."
"Oh," he said. "Would that be Aunt Ashenhi or Betheb'da?"
"Revered Elder Betheb'da, of course. You know how she sympathizes for me, with my husband always playing with the boys as if he were not of age. She still thinks we should slave in the mines all day."
"Keeps people out of trouble."
"Mm. Rather than exploring temples and almost falling through open ceilings." She pushed at the bowl in his hands. "At least the meat is tender. Eat, my boyish husband."
He tasted a sauce-soaked morsel, then began gulping down the rest of the bowl with a haste that proved he had not eaten for some time. All the same, he found a way to keep talking around mouthfuls. "You have to see it now, Sha're, with everything cleared away. The walls are covered with those cartouches--hundreds of symbols, thousands. And look, look at this." Still chewing, he rummaged in the sack he wore under his robes, pulled out the sheath of ragged hide he had tied together in imitation of the paper notebooks brought from his world, which he had long since filled. Flipping through the stretched skins, he displayed a sketch in bold black charcoal of six symbols. "I found this, prominently placed near what I think is the main wall."
She touched the page, curious. "These are words?" They didn't resemble any of the pictures of her tongue she knew. "Are they letters you know?"
"Not letters, exactly--they're some of the hieroglyphics for the Stargate--the Chaapa'ai. Constellation patterns. And these in particular are special. This is the combination I used to send Colonel O'Neill and the others back home. These six symbols are the address for Earth."
"I thought there were seven--" She cocked her head, remembering what he had told her of his travels. "No, the last symbol is special, is it not?"
"Right," he confirmed. "It's not part of the coordinates, it's the point of origin. On this world it would be the same no matter what the address was."
"But isn't there only one...'address'?" Then she realized it, recalling all the columns of symbols embossed in yellow stone, hidden under the sand and drapings of dark vines. Hundreds, he had said, or even more. "Are they all addresses?"
"I don't know." Behind his glasses, his strange light eyes were wide, shining with eager fascination. The parchment and the half-full bowl drooped in his hands, forgotten. "They might be--I really think they might be. We could have been wrong--the Stargates weren't just a way from Earth to here and back again. They were meant to go anywhere. Who knows how many there might be? How many worlds--good god, if Ra knew about it...he could have brought people elsewhere. He must have traveled other places in his ship--maybe he's enslaved people across the galaxy. Maybe they don't even know he's dead, and they're safe..."
She took the bowl and the makeshift notebook from his unresisting grasp, and set them both down on the table across the room out of reach. Then she took his glasses off his nose, folded them carefully and placed them on top of the parchments. He trailed off as she returned to him, blinking up at her like a kanth owl in bright sun. "I should go back," he said. "It's not dark yet--come with me, Sha're, I can show you--"
"No," she said, and set her hands on his shoulders as he made to rise, pushing him down again. "You must sleep."
"But, Sha're--"
"How many centuries ago was this chamber made?"
His brow furrowed. "I don't know. Millennia, maybe. It's well-preserved, but you and Skaara and the other boys told me you've never even heard stories about it. I should ask our father--"
"In all those years, sandstorms did not bury it. The people did not damage it. Even Ra did not destroy it. This said, it is reasonable to believe it will be there one night hence. Yes?"
"But, Sha're, it's not even nightfall--"
By now she should have learned that words could not quiet him--his reservoir of language was even greater than the oldest of the elders. Before another syllable left his lips, she pressed her own to them, to swallow whatever speech he might attempt. He didn't give more than a token resistance, and was helpless to prevent it as she pushed against him, until he toppled backwards onto the thick mats spread over couch. With her on top of him, he couldn't rise, even when she broke the kiss and rested her cheek on his chest.
"Sha're," he said, half-protest, half-teasing, one hand winding idly in her ebony hair. "I don't think I'll get much more rest this way."
"We shall see," she murmured. "Close your eyes and lie in silence." Gently she caught his hand, entwined her fingers with his and set them at his side. Then she closed her own eyes, and listened for the thudding of his heart through his robes.
In ten minutes, unable to defy the warmth and soft comfort around him, he was asleep. She would have been insulted if she hadn't known that he had not slept since two nights before. Last night she had laid down on the mats she brought to his newly discovered chamber, but he had never joined her on them, instead spent the night striding around the room with a torch. She had fallen asleep listening to the echo of his footsteps and his mutterings as he scratched symbols on the parchment with a charcoal stick.
She knew there were many who envied her, that she was the wife of a hero, though none denied that it had been a wise choice on their leader's part to ally themselves with such a man. The elders, both the men and the women, respected his knowledge, and the boys adored him for the time he was willing to spend with them, for the new games he taught them. Only her kin noticed his faults, as family always does with those who share relation but not blood. She didn't care about their opinions anymore than she thought of those who were shocked that she would ever have an unworshipful word for her husband. Her cousins might tease her about his strangeness, and her aunts might bemoan his sometimes seemingly irresponsible behavior, but she was forever grateful for her father's choice.
Not because he was a hero, however, or a wise man, though she loved both those parts of him. But she loved him most because he was her Daniel, a unique man. There was no one like him. It wasn't that he was foreign, because she did not believe there could be any in his world either of his like. The men who had accompanied him were not the same. He told her they had been soldiers and he was a scholar, and that there were many scholars on his world just like him, but she doubted that was true.
Even here, Daniel hardly seemed aware that he was different, except in knowing what skills he lacked that the others did easily. His own faults he realized, but that he could be anyone's better was a concept as foreign to him as his light hair and sky-shaded eyes were to her people. Shortly after he had come, she had heard this humility as an argument for why he could not be a god, as many insisted Ra's slayer must be.
She had also heard it given as proof he was a god, while proving Ra the false one.
She always had to laugh at the thought of her Daniel as a god, and also at how he invariably reacted to such an accusation. Until she met him, with his so pale skin, she hadn't known a human face could turn that color. No, he was no god, powerful and capricious and cruel. One could not love a god. Not as she loved him.
She poured the stew he hadn't eaten back into the iron pot and covered it, and scrubbed the bowl with the clean ashes. Then she paged through the sketches in the packet of hides. Though she was learning his language, she could not read it yet, and he had told her his own writing was difficult even for those educated to understand. Still, she examined with interest the notes he had scrawled around the symbols, arrows and circles marking significant thoughts. She wondered what he had learned, what he had still to understand.
At last the shadows became too dark for sight. When she found she was squinting to make out the black marks, she folded the sheath of parchment and returned it to the table. Then, slipping out of her robes and stripping off her linen wrap, she curled up on the couch against her husband's side and drew the woven wool blanket over them both.
Sha're awoke in darkness, her lips open in a cry that never came. Beside her, Daniel snored, on his back with his mouth open, one arm warm under her.
She sat up to free his arm, and nudged him gently onto his side to quiet his breathing. Then she drew up her legs and wrapped her arms about her knees.
The dream was too clear in her mind, not fading as her eyes adjusted to the dim night, slowly bringing into focus the still room around her. She could not sleep with it before her. At last she arose from the couch. Her husband, still exhausted, did not stir as she drew on her robes and pushed aside the heavy curtain to leave their chambers.
The smooth stone was cool under her bare feet. She walked the passages until she reached the outer wall, looked out over the moon-washed dunes and the stars in the blackness overhead. So many twinkling points--more were visible in this sky than on his own world, Daniel had told her. The constellations too were different. Among the glints of white light she picked out the patterns she had learned in early childhood. The Mouse. The Feather. The Queen's Ribbon. What would it be like, to look up into the night and not see any of those old friends?
The cold season was nearly ended, but the night wind still was chill. She wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders at its nipping, leaned against the rock wall at her back and tipped her head up at the moon. Only one was in the sky now. She wondered if it would feel different to never see more. How would one group the days, without the trio rising and falling to define months? She should ask Daniel how his people had managed it...
At the thought of her husband her breath caught.
"Who's there?" a voice sliced through the night's quiet.
She recognized the watchman with a smile. "It's only me, Skaara."
"Sha're?" Her brother stepped out of the shadows around the corner, his sandals slapping on the stone. In his hand he held the traditional spear, but over his shoulder was slung one of the black weapons the Earth soldiers had left behind. Skaara was not yet a man, but he took his duties as night guard seriously. Now he frowned at her, puzzled. "Why are you here, sister? I thought you'd be with Daniel."
"He slumbers, and will for the whole night, I think. Once he stopped talking, he fell quickly asleep."
Skaara looked down, contrite. "I am sorry. I tried all day to get him to come back, or at least to sit down--when we helped him clean that place, I didn't know he would be so--so interested in it!"
"Fascinated," she corrected, using the English word which fit so well. "It's not your fault. A sandstorm couldn't stop him when he is fascinated. I know my husband."
"He told you everything we found?"
"More than that, I would say. At least he tried to."
Skaara winced, tried to apologize again. "He can talk a lot."
"I don't mind. He is your friend, but he is my husband. I would rather listen to him talk about his discoveries for a hundred days than listen to Ramidet boast of his luck with the dice for five minutes. Besides, the way his eyes shine when he speaks--he is never more beautiful..."
Her brother sighed like a love-struck girl, teasing her. Then he said, more seriously, "It's better for him to sleep than speak, though. He shouldn't catch fever again."
"The way he sleeps now, he wouldn't awaken if a mastadge started eating his hair."
Skaara's smile flashed white through the shadows. "I bet you could wake him up."
"Oh, I would win such a wager..." Her mind lit with possibilities, only to balk at the thought of returning to their bed, to the dreams she had in sleep. In spite of herself, she shivered.
"Are you cold, sister?" Skaara asked. "You should go back inside. You shouldn't catch fever either."
"I'm not tired," she denied.
Through the darkness she felt more than saw him watching her. "Why are you out here, Sha're? What woke you tonight?"
She would not have told anyone else, even her father. Even her husband. But Skaara was her brother, and they had always shared everything. "I had a dream," she said. "A true dream."
"No!" She heard the shock, the hurt in his voice, though the night obscured his face. "No, you can't. You are not our mother--you are no seer. It must have been just a dream."
"It was more, Skaara. I know the difference. I dreamed true once before, you know. I told you--"
"You should not have!"
"But I did. When I was young, when you were so little you could not even carry water in the mines--you remember. I dreamed that strange men would come and the sun would fall. And they did come, and Ra is gone. And now I've dreamed again."
"No," he said again. "I cannot hear this--"
"I cannot tell anyone else. Skaara, last night I slept in the chamber you and my husband found. Tonight as I lay at his side, I dreamed that Daniel walked through the wall of that chamber, through the symbols which he told me mean his own world, and then the wall crumbled to dust, so he could never return."
"It was just a dream." Skaara sounded too wise for his years. "I searched the chamber. The walls are solid; there are no tunnels behind them. He couldn't go through them."
"The symbols on the walls are what matters. Daniel believes they are 'addresses'. Ways to make the Chaapa'ai open a passage to other worlds."
"No. No! The Chaapa'ai is buried. It can't be opened. And even if it could, Daniel wouldn't. He would never walk through it. He wouldn't go back to his world, or any other." Skaara took two quick steps forward, so he was right before her. Leaning the spear against the wall, he took her cold hands in his and clasped her fingers tightly. "He wouldn't leave us. He has told me he was never once as happy on his world as he is here, with us. With you."
"But I dreamed he walked along a road," she told her brother. "I dreamed he walked away from us, and though it hurt him, he kept walking." Now her hands squeezed his. "Skaara, he is not ours. Was never meant to be ours."
"He loves us, Sha're. He loves you--I have never seen a man love his wife as Daniel loves you."
"He loves us so because his heart is given only to us. On his world he had no one to share it with, no parents, no brothers, no wife. All his heart is here, offered to our people. To our land he gave his mind, his will--he reads our words, he teaches us what we should not have forgotten. He freed us--he gave our world his freedom."
"And to you he gives his flesh," Skaara said, mischievous as only a brother can be.
But she only smiled. "Yes. With me he shares his body. And he loves me, more than any husband should. As I love him. But his soul, Skaara." Her smile fell away. "His soul was never ours. Never to be ours, or mine."
Her brother made to turn away, but she gripped his hands firmly, not letting him escape. "You know it is so, my brother. You saw it too. What Daniel could not see himself. His people do not have the word, I don't think; they don't understand, but it is still true. He is ina'kalesh. Soul-bound."
"Oneil," Skaara said quietly.
She nodded. "O'Neill, bound to Daniel, now and always, for all their distance."
"But they were not even friends--"
"You know that friendship is not always the way of the ina'kalesh." She dropped her brother's hands to fold her arms around herself. "They may even be enemies. My Daniel may be doomed to die at O'Neill's hand. Or O'Neill by his. It is not simple affection which joins them. But you cannot deny what you saw between them." And saw still. Her husband spoke of his home world whenever she asked him of it, but for all the wonders he described, he never showed a single sign of regret, not a hint that he missed any of the life he had abandoned. Automobiles, universities, trees and oceans and television--he had sworn for some minutes when his final pen ran out of ink, but he laughed even louder than she when she suggested unearthing the Chaapa'ai to purchase a replacement. And he wrote his journal in charcoal on cured hide without a word of complaint.
But occasionally, when they were gazing up at the stars together, or discussing her relatives, he would speculate what had happened to the men who left him, those who returned to the Earth he had deserted. And especially the man Jack O'Neill. Daniel would wonder how he was, whether he was well, whether he was a soldier still, whether he lived with his wife again.
They weren't friends, Daniel has assured her, when she asked. They had barely known each other, had worked together only to come to Abydos. They had nothing in common, came from 'completely different walks of life.' "He hated me," Daniel confessed frankly, easily, and Daniel had not liked O'Neill much himself, to hear him talk. He was only curious about how it might have gone, he said.
And yet that was the only time she ever heard regret in her husband's voice, when he talked of what might have happened to that man who was not his friend. The only time he ever sounded like he might wish to return, to learn what had become of O'Neill.
Ina'kalesh. She understood it even if Daniel did not. Did O'Neill, whatever had happened to him, have any idea? When he looked up at his own night sky, that single moon, those stars so far away, did he guess why he thought of that man he left behind? Not friends. Not lovers. Not kin. But bound together, long before their souls were born into the lives they now lead.
"Skaara," she said, "you know the soul-bound must do what destiny demands. It is the price they pay for their bond. The reason the universe allows them to join. Two can do what one alone cannot. No one has the right to stop them."
"Perhaps they already did it, Sha're." In Skaara's fingers flashed O'Neill's silver lighter, gift from a comrade further away than the stars above. It never left his person. He turned it over and over in his hand as he spoke. "Have you thought of that? Maybe that is why they were born this time. To open the Stargate, to come here and destroy Ra. To free us. Is that not a great destiny? Is that not a task worthy of ina'kalesh? They could not have done it alone. Only the two together could have succeeded. And now maybe their lives are free to live as they chose."
"I wish it to be so," she whispered. "I hoped it was so. But you found the chamber, my brother, and now I know it is not true."
"No!" Skaara threw down the lighter. It clinked against the rock floor, skittered into the deeper shadows. "It cannot be! Daniel would not leave us, leave you--he fought a god and won, Sha're. He will fight fate to stay beside you."
"He would fight the calling of his own soul?" She knelt, felt the smooth stone until her fingers located the lighter. Picking it up, she stood and handed it to her brother. "The soul-bound support one another, but O'Neill would not ask for his help unless there was great need of it. And my Daniel cannot refuse one in need of help."
"Oneil is too far away to ask him for anything," Skaara said, taking back the lighter and clenching it so tightly his nails left imprints in his palm. "The Chaapa'ai is still buried."
"Yes," she agreed. "But O'Neill will ask regardless, and my husband will go. There is more he has to do. Tonight, before he slept, he was thinking of all the worlds, all the places the Chaapa'ai may lead. Ra may have enslaved others--he would free them all."
"If every symbol is another world--Sha're, there's too many. Too much for one man, for two, too many even for ina'kalesh. Even for Daniel and Oneil, and they are the greatest men I know."
"But if Daniel may help--how could I stop him? I want to, Skaara. I want to beg him to stay with me--"
"If you ask him, he will stay, my sister."
"But how can I ask him? He doesn't want to leave, you're right. He doesn't want to--but he will have to. He may be forced to leave, and because I love him I will have to let him go."
She felt the tears, burning in her eyes but cooling her face as the wind whipped them away. Then her brother's arms wrapped around her, holding her tight, and she dropped her head to his shoulder, his layered robes absorbing her sobs. Skaara rubbed her back comfortingly, and asked, "What could force him to go? Even if his soul is bound, what could force his heart to leave you?"
"I don't know," she gasped, still crying. "I don't know. But..." She caught her breath, pulled away from her brother and wiped her damp cheeks with the rough wool of her shawl. "Skaara, we...I...I am the beginning. I am how he will start along the road he must take. I saw this in my dream, and in my dream I saw he is not the only one on that path. We cannot follow him, but he will not be alone."
"Oneil."
"Yes. The ina'kalesh walk together. And two others with them. Beside them."
"More soul-bound?"
"I couldn't tell. I could not see their faces...but I would know them, if I met them." She couldn't help but shiver, and not just with cold. The ina'kalesh did what was most difficult, the deeds which one hero, however powerful, could not achieve. The trials which required more were the stuff of the greatest and most terrible legends...
And her Daniel, already a hero, had yet to set foot on the true road he was destined to travel.
"What are they to do?" Skaara asked the question burning in her own heart. "What is he destined for?"
"I dreamed how the road begins," she said. "I saw him walk upon it. But I couldn't see where it leads. And I can only hope when he reaches the end, that I can be there."
She felt another tear slip from her eye, and then Skaara's gentle fingers brushed it from her cheek. "That is one thing, sister. The ina'kalesh are so rare that they are always easy to track, in the lands past the river if not in life. Whatever happens, we will be able to find Daniel again, and Oneil. Even if they leave us, we will not lose them. Not forever."
She had to put her hand to her mouth not to sob again. He couldn't know; that she would not tell even Skaara. She had seen her own pain in the dream, and it had not been the pain of losing her husband, but something else, something worse. Something which drove Daniel away--or lead him onto the path, she could not tell.
But she knew when he left, when his soul rejoined that bound to it, that she would never again be his wife.
She would have hated O'Neill, but it was not his fault; they were born ina'kalesh, a decision made long before she met Daniel Jackson, long before he or Jack O'Neill even existed. They had chosen freely this way, knowing when they chose that they would have to undergo harsh trials for the right. Even if neither of these men now had any memory or knowledge of that agreement. It was not their fault--and she had known, from the moment she saw the two of them, what it could mean.
She loved Daniel, could not, would not forsake that love, though it might hurt her. And it was worth it, because ina'kalesh or not, destined or not, he still was a man like no other, a husband like no other, and the joy they had now would be worth the pain later. So she hoped.
Still, she was afraid. For her husband, who did not know what was to come. For herself, who knew only enough to fear it. And for O'Neill, and those unknown others, who would be facing with Daniel what she could not.
"Perhaps they will not come," Skaara murmured, as her own heart was whispering. "Perhaps he will not go with them. Perhaps he will refuse."
"And perhaps he will have no choice, my brother," she said. "It will be what is meant to be. Not for our good, but everyone's. There are more worlds out there than sand in the desert. More people than any sage could count, if he lived to a thousand. I know my Daniel. It is for them he would do this. For their sake he and O'Neill were born. Not us, Skaara. Not only us."
"But will anyone love him as we love him? As you do?"
"Some will. They must. He will be happy, Skaara. For all the pain...he has to be."
"He's happy now."
"And he is happier still that he has found this chamber. He was searching for it--for something. He is happy with us, but he could not be content here forever. In his soul, he knows. And in his heart--we cannot tell him."
"Sha're--"
"In the end, it will be more painful for him if he knows--and he will still have no choice. We have no choice. Please, Skaara. Forget this. Don't think of when he must leave us. I'll never speak of it again."
"Nor I," Skaara said. "But I won't forget."
"You don't need to remember. You only need to love him. As I will love him. Anything else we cannot change. So this must be enough." She touched her brother's arm. "I must go back, before he wakes to me gone--he needs a full night's sleep. Good watch, Skaara."
"Good rest, my sister," Skaara returned, and picking up his spear again he bowed to her, and continued down the passage along the wall. He looked back only once, and she kept gazing out at the dunes below the stars, so he could not engage her dark eyes and come back.
She knew he never would mention this to her again, and he might forget in time, or at least put it aside, as he had the other secrets she had told him, the secrets only women were supposed to share. But he was her brother, and there were some dreams he must hear, and some she would entrust to no one else.
Her thoughts freed of the dream's burden, she returned to her chambers, to lay beside her husband, and fall asleep listening to the steady rhythm of his breath.
For a first, he woke before her, so when she opened her eyes to the pale dawn she found him on his side, with his elbow crooked and his head propped up on his hand. His eyes were on her face and though she knew he could not see every detail clearly without his glasses, whatever vision he had made him smile. His other hand rested on her back under the blanket, inscribing small circles on her bare skin. "Good morning," he told her.
"Good morning," she said, blinking as she roused, still too involved in sleep to move yet. "Have you been awake long?"
"Since a little before sunrise."
She made an effort to sit up. "Your parchments--your glasses--"
"Are on the table where you put them, I believe. Unless Babiyi's cat knocked them down in the night. But I was more comfortable here." She was barely upright when he wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, burying his face in her hair. "Warmer, don't you think? Morning's too cold."
"Yes," she agreed, though his rough cheek was cool against hers.
"And as you told me last night, that room was there for at least a few hundred years. It can wait another day." He nudged her and she obligingly twisted in his arms, so their lips could meet, heat to heat in the dry, chill morning air. When they broke apart, he paused to gaze at her. This close he could see as clearly as any, and she could look into the depths of his eyes, pools of black ringed by the cloud-hued iris. Dark as the night sky, but without stars, except for the light in the depths she could not see but only feel, like the sun too bright to look upon.
"I love you," he said. "I love you so much, Sha're."
"I love you, my Daniel."
"Let's stay here forever," he suggested. "Or at least until we get hungry."
"Or until you get bored and anxious to peer at your symbols again."
"Interested in the symbols again, maybe. Bored? Never." One hand played with her hair; the other slipped lower, until she gasped and he laughed. Only to draw his own breath sharply when she proved she knew him equally well.
Hours later, when they rested on the couch, entwined together, the blankets discarded on the floor in the midday's heat and more exhausted than when they had gone to sleep the night before, she lifted her head from where it rested on his shoulder and said, "My husband, about your symbols..."
"Yes?" he asked lazily.
"In the night I thought...you will need to test them, to know if your idea is true."
"My theory about them being addresses? I guess I would, if I wanted to prove it."
"You will need the Chaapa'ai to be unburied. We should ask our father for the permission to do so, tonight."
"You think so?" He ran his fingers along her cheek and down her neck, so lightly she trembled. "Maybe we should."
"I will ask him," she said, and then she leaned forward to kiss him, closed her eyes to concentrate. She made herself forget that too soon the kiss they shared would be their last. Instead she tried to remember every taste, every corner of warmth and wet and acceptance. Every expression of love in his touch.
Cherish every feeling, this moment, and not lose this joy in knowing that what she would take now was all she could ever have.