Page 112 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
Luna clapped her hands to her mouth. “I am so sorry! I completely forgot. Let me take those away—”
“You don’t need to do that. Have one yourself. I quite enjoy the smell.”And the company.
Luna smiled, settling herself down on a nearby hay bale, her small feet skimming the ground. She dug into one of the muffins, but her face didn’t brighten in the way he expected. Her periwinkle eyes looked red and stuffy.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Luna blinked. “Do I not look it?”
“Your eyes. They look… forgive me. I thought you might have been crying.”
Luna looked down. “We lost someone,” she explained, “on the journey here. We finally had time for a funeral of sorts. It was… difficult for us all. But necessary.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dillon, with an earnesty he couldn’t quite fit into words. “What was your friend like?”
“Funny, mostly,” Luna said. “And I think we all thought she was a little bit invincible because of it. But humour can’t protect you forever.”
“Agreed,” Dillon responded. “It certainly makes life worth living, though.”
“She did. She… she really did.”
“If you’d rather not talk about her—”
“Idowant to talk about her,” Luna said fiercely, “but I also don’t want to wallow. I want to go out and hit the town and dance and drink and be merry—”
“Well, by all means, don’t let me stop you.”
“Will you not come with me?”
Dillon froze.“Won’t I stick out a bit?”
“I’m not sure there’s much we can do to disguise your height…”
“I was thinking more about the undead part.”
“Oh, right!” She paused. “Are you really worried about that?”
“I don’t want to alarm anyone…”
“Hmm. Right. Yes. All right. Stay here.”
Luna raced out the door, leaving her basket of muffins. She was gone for several minutes. Dillon supposed it took a long time to navigate the palace. He was just beginning to think she’d forgotten about him when she burst back into the room with a bag filled with cosmetics.
“These should do the trick!” she said, holding up a sponge. “May I?”
Dillon consented, feeling nothing as she seized his face and started to paint, and desperately wishing he could.
“Took me a while to find a foundation that looked anything like your skin-tone. Dwarves don’t tend to make it so pale.”
“You are an exception, I take it?”
“Yup!” she beamed, brushing over his cheeks, his eyelids, his lips. She was very close to him. Too close. And although his body couldn’t feel, something fluttered across his insides—a ripple that sounded like her name.
Luna. Luna. Luna.A whisper through the trees on a starry night.Luna.
It was almost enough to make his heart start beating. “Did it really not occur to you that walking around as I was might be a terrible idea?” he asked, as she started on his hands.
“Umm, not really,” she said, her brow wrinkling in embarrassment. “I think I stopped noticing after the first few hours.”
