The darkness wasn't black.
That was one of the things the plain had given me that I never asked for and could never return. Twenty years of moving through nights without electricity had recalibrated something behind my eyes.
Even now, in total darkness, I could still make out the faint shapes in the room — the outline of the bed, the slow rise and fall of Azure's chest, the gentle pulsing of the red stripes across her blue skin that gave off their own soft, living light.
She was deeply asleep.
I could tell by the heavy, trusting weight of her fingers resting on my chest and the complete looseness of her body, the kind that only comes when someone has given everything the day demanded and has nothing left to offer the night.
She looked so innocent like this.
