Page 113 of Mountain of Mirrors and Starlight
“Quick adjustment period.”
“Dwarven speciality,” she admitted.
“I think it might just be a Luna one.”
Her white cheeks flushed with pink. “Are all knights as flirty as you are?”
“I wasn’t—I’m not… I was just trying my hand at a compliment—”
“Oh,” said Luna, sounding a little downcast.
“I mean, I’m not averse to flirting in general. Or, you know…”
“I know?”
“I’m not averse to flirting with you. If… you’re not averse.”
Luna smiled. “I am not.”
Dillon was quite sure he would have blushed if he could. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I am a bit dead—”
“You seem alive enough to me.”
Their eyes caught for a moment, and Dillon felt a little like a flag being hoisted, like there was nothing he could do but stand there, staggering in the wind.
Luna bit her lip.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I wish I could help you,” she said. “I really, really like helping people, but I don’t think there’s much I can do to help you, and now that I’m saying that, I’m worried I’m making your problems mine, like I’m complaining that you have them and how it affects me, which is very unfair—”
“Luna,” said Dillon, cupping her flailing hands, “youarehelping me.”
Her body stilled. “Right,” she said. “Of course.”
She pulled his hands away from her to inspect her work. He hoped they weren’t too cold, or hard, ordead.He had no idea what he felt like to others and he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask.
“There we go,” she said, as she finished smoothing cream into his hands. “Not much we can do about your eyes, alas, but folk will probably just assume they’re normal, for a mortal.” She paused. “Your eyes. What colour were they?”
“Brown.”
Luna smiled. “I like brown.”
Dillon swallowed—or at least, he thought he did. “I like blue.”
Luna tidied up her equipment, gathered up her muffins, and seized Dillon’s hand. “Come on.”
They walked out of the stables together, Luna offering a muffin to everyone she met. No one refused. Everyone waved cheerily, no one mentioning Dillon or his crude appearance. It made a certain degree of sense; he’d been sitting in the stables for only a day, and during that time he’d seen all manner of dwarves—dwarves with clockwork legs or metal hands, ones with giant lenses attached to their eyes or contraptions over their ears or limbs. Everyone was different here. Difference was not a thing they stared at.
“I wonder if we’ll see any of the others,” Luna mused, as they slid out of the palace and into the wide, stony streets. “I think most of them will be heading out…”
“Not all of them?”
She shook her head. “Flora will stay in, I think. She’s older and has never quite had the drive we do. Plus… there isn’t really anyone apart from us she knows, anymore. We’re the only family she has. The downside of living so long.”
Dillon paused, amazed at his heart’s capacity for tightness even when it wasn’t beating. He’d imagined he wouldn’t live for very long, not like this—but what if the reverse was true? What if he lived forever in this unfeeling body, watching everyone live and die around him?
Luna placed her hand on his arm. “That won’t happen to you.”
