When she slid into his arms and easily rested herself back against him the memories came back with a spark of life and consumed her like fire to paper. Koe had been in her thoughts many times since she'd last seen him, it was hard not to think of someone like Koe. Hard not to smile, to blush, or to even shed a few tears. She thought everyone was dead, and how she looked. High and low, and to every country Ithunvel had ever sent her to she did look. Did ask, did hope. Sometimes she'd stumble across a page of notes, or lyrics and find his name there. But they were so few and far between. And the years, humans must not have taken much time to notice how long it was that Koe Tiraq the bard had been alive.
Either that, or they simply did not care about age as long as the music was still as beautiful. Light danced in his eyes when there was no light to reach them. Heat that did not cause her to be uncomfortable radiated around him and she felt.. at home. At one with him. With him. Vedette had never had any illusions about being with him, or trying to keep him close. Both of them had been wanderers, both of them still could be. She would not hope. She would not worry. She was just glad that right now he was there, and right now he was right here with her. With her.
Her fingers tangled themselves in the shirt he wore, but did not tug or pull at it, simply were. And she pressed as close as she could, without burdening him with her weight.
"It feels like forever, and yet it feels like yesterday too."
Softly, it was if she were afraid. Was she? Could he be a dream, just simply a dream. Just something she imagined because the hurt was just as strong, because her life was even more hopeless without him and with this weight that settled on her shoulders when she thought of Faustben. She wanted nothing more than to forget everything she'd ever known and lose herself in him again. In eyes, and face, and tender verse. In Koe. His touch was as tender as she remembered it, and though he smelled of cold mountain rocks and timber she could still smell him. All of that ink, and the delicate scent of reeds and strings that only found their way into music. Koe.
She could not think of his name, nor sit there in his arms without wanting to sing for him, even if she was a poor singer, she wanted to share with him everything he enjoyed. Everything she did. She wanted to run away with him and write a thousand songs about everyday things, and love, and laughter, and have mulled wine and just listen.
"I would ask where you've been, and I will. But I suppose it's only fair that I should explain where I've been first." She looked up without moving, up at his chin, and in turn his face. He was looking at the stars and Vedette turned her eyes to look at them too.
"I've been living in Faustben for fifteen years, pretending to be what I am not. Pretending to be nothing more that a soldier because I owed their king my life. He rescued me from a cave in, the same cave that claimed the lives of my family, my clan." She did not sound as sad as she should have, mourning was not so drawn out for dragons, though she mourned she believed that if Bahamut had not wanted her parents to return to him that he would have saved them all. She might have cursed it once. But now.
She had some purpose, did she not?
Without wanting to burden Koe with it, she still told him as much as she could right then. Her pause was to breath, to let the memories of those she lost take flight again. She closed her eyes and pressed her face back against his chest and breathed.