Luna sleeps like rain after thunder—spent light tucked into itself, hair spilling like a dark-violet stream across the pillow Arthur carried her to. He left the door half-closed and walked away on quiet feet. Good. He knows what to guard.
I sit on the central rise and listen to my lair breathe. The crystal sings when he moves. It hums a different tune when she heals. I have lived with these sounds long enough to tell mood from footstep, pride from pain. Today the lair sounds hopeful and tired at the same time. That is an Arthur sound.
Not the first one. The first Arthur made Luna—stitched a being the world had never seen from dragon marrow, basilisk nerve, and phoenix heartfire, then steadied the seams with his will until the world accepted it and wrote a new word for it: qilin. Some would call that "fake." I call it craft, and duty, and love shaped like a person.
