Eris Morn looked up at the spiraled heights above her. It extended into an endless void, the library of her soul coiling beyond sight. All that she was, every moment of her past and her present, everything that could yet unfold inside her.

"My throne," she whispered. There was a frisson of excitement in her voice when she said this, a small tremble as her body tensed and relaxed. It thrilled her, still, to find herself here.

Drifter came to stand beside her. His hand moved to reach for hers, but he hesitated, uncertain.

"This place can be anything you want?" he asked.

"Anything," she answered in a sigh of comfort.

"So what do you want?"

An earnest question. She turned and met his eyes.

"Joy," she said. "Joy, at last."

For the first time in centuries, the thought of the future made Eris smile.

"We shall explore this place together. Map my interiority. See what wonders I possess."

She reached out and laid a palm on his chest, feeling the stutter of his heart. He put his hand over hers and twined their fingers together.

"You want that? Me, here?"

"Yes."

He saw the delight in the turn of her mouth, saw bright feeling in the rise and fall of her breath. Her throne was all she was and could be, and she had invited him to see it.

"Then I'll follow you," he said, warm and genuine. "For as long as you want."

"Then follow."

Eris turned and made a sweeping gesture with one hand. In that movement there rose up a set of stairs that coiled upwards beyond sight. Their stone steps were bowed with the impressions of centuries of use. She had imagined something worn, and something worn had sprung from her thoughts.

She began to climb the stairs. She did not know where they led. He took a few steps after her, then paused.

"Moonlight," Drifter called. Eris turned to look at him. His eyes were filled with wonder. "Can I kiss you?"

A starving man, she thought, who had found sustenance at last. And she, too, found something she had lost long ago. Something she thought irrecoverable.

She closed the space between them.

In these vast landscapes of her mind, in these endless halls of her design, they declared what was unspoken with the joyous press of her lips to his. And when they parted, she held out her hand. He took it, then let her guide him up the stairs and into a world neither of them knew.