Orbit

"I have received a missive. It is conclusive now; the Lunarian moon has left us."

Rosa glanced at him over her shoulder before bowing her head once more.

"All signs pointed to this outcome," she said as she tended to her flowers. "But I had hoped it would not come to pass."

He sighed and walked to her side. He could not see her expression, for her hair (it grew more like spun gold every year) hung around her face like a veil.

"The blue planet will miss the silver moon," he said.

"And the white moon will be lonely without its twin."

"And still it circles the blue planet, does it not?"

He moved to push aside a strand of her hair, but she shook her head, her hands still wrapped in flowers. "Shall we end this charade? It is not the dance of planets that we speak of. Forgive me. I cannot do that which you ask, not while my grief lies so newly planted."

"I loved him dearly as well." He plucked a flower from the garden, felt a thorn prick his finger, saw blood welling from the wound. "But he chose to leave us."

"He would always be between us, if I chose to be with you."

"It has always been so," he said to her. "The silver moon and the white moon, pulling at the tides of the world."

"Please," she begged him, "give me time."

"He will not return." His voice was harsher than he meant it to be. "He chose his brother, and his father's people. He chose sleep."

Her eyes filled with tears then, for Cecil's sake, and he knew that she would never love him.

He wondered if flowers grew on the silver moon.

-End-

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Silly author's note: I should have named the fic "Orbituary."