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The sun was reaching the close of its arc. A faint, yet vibrant flame, suspended on that slice of firmament like a benign and vaguely challenging eye, still coloring the clouds despite the hour.
And under that blaze of pink and orange, the village hummed with life.
The summer solstice bore many names among humans, mostly compound ones. Drawn from the poets' language, graceful in sound and stuffed with consonants, they turned easily twisted on the youngest tongues. But labels were fleeting. Simplifications, reductions… and Ekko didn't really care what they called it.
He was the solstice.
In his throat crackled the last sigh of the day, and his eyes fused with amber held the sunset's gaze in them, cast over endless fields of wheat.
Ekko, son of the Sun, walked unnoticed among the crowd. The ivory robe was crossed over his chest, skin dark and warm like the fertile earth kissed by the light, gold shining on his wrists and around his neck.
He let himself be surrounded by the children's laughter, who ran through the streets and thanked the day for the postponed curfew. A smile played on his lips. He knew, in fact, that as soon as she arrived (it wouldn't be long, now), the noisy mouths would stretch into slow, lingering yawns, and each one of those rebellious souls would call for their beds like for their dearest friend.
His attention was caught by one of them: a brown-haired girl, fumbling with a paper lantern. Tiny hands were furiously scraping a match against the rough surface, failing to light it up. The group had left her behind, but Ekko stopped, intrigued by that display of youthful stubbornness and that spark burning in eyes so like his own. It ceased to be amusing when resolve melted into frustration, hands turned shaky, and a mist of unshed tears started to blur her gaze.
Ekko moved a hand beneath his sleeve. A circle in the air, and a moment later the match head ignited.
Eyelids fluttered, tears dried up, and lips twitched, revealing a teeth gap beneath. The little girl wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress and scurried off, disappearing among gowns, tunics, and legs taller than hers. Excitement back in her eyes.
The demigod looked away and, with less interest, began to watch the religious functions. As the golden hour passed, the temple emptied and the square grew crowded. Sun dipped below the horizon.
Ekko wandered between the festival stalls, picking up a fruit now and then and bringing it to his lips, tasting the flavors of a world he had helped to grow. But his mind was elsewhere. Anticipation simmered within him, a different kind from the one that filled the others. One that no dish or glass of wine could hope to ease…
Then he felt it.
When the sky started to pulse with shy stars, something shifted. She didn't reveal herself right away, but her presence was undeniable.
As usual, children were more sensitive: infants slumped on their parents' shoulders, while the older ones started to rub their eyes, sitting on haystacks, heads lolling and fingers still sticky with dates. But that night their effects clashed with one another. Youths and adults held sleep at bay, trading it with dancing, wine, and music. For them, dreams came with open eyes.
And there, among drifting incense and flickering shadows, he saw her.
She was sitting at the square's edges, on the rim of a fountain. Her fingers gently ran through the hair of a familiar victim: amber hidden beneath her eyelids, cheek resting peacefully on warm stone.
His first instinct was to approach her, but breaking that scenery felt like sacrilege, a crack in a sacred picture. So he kept watching through the little waterfalls, until she rose and blessed him with her whole shape. The dress slid smoothly over her skin, seamless, as if the night itself had woven it directly onto her body; strands of pearls dangled from the sleeves, brushing against her elbows and bare back.
Jinx, daughter of the Moon, felt his gaze on her.
Behind the veil, a magenta glow shimmered with recognition. She looked at him, and her smile sharpened. During that brief exchange, the first drumbeat broke the silence, one by one, the torches along the square flared to life, and that was the moment.
The dances had begun.
People gathered in circles around the brazier, they joined hands, then broke apart and found each other again in pairs, twirling to the sound of violins and flutes, as if life was all there.
They moved at the same time, eyes still locked. Bodies gave way naturally at their passing, like clouds blown by the wind. They danced. Not together, not yet... For what are the first fruits of a field without the toil and waiting that came before? What the reunion of two lovers without time-fed desire?
And so he waited (heavens knew he would give every second of his life for just one touch from her).
Jinx danced like a candle's flame: sinuous and never still. Her feet were weightless, long hair swirling with every spin, wrapping her in the hues of sky and ocean. The music's flow brought them inevitably closer, to the point where Ekko could hear her breath in the pauses of drumbeats.
Their auras touched before they did. The thermal shift made air quiver and blood foam, and finally, finally, her hands found him.
Jinx lifted their entwined fingers in position for the next song, and his free palm laid on her back. He let out a sigh, drunk on her presence.
"You're late," he scolded, in a poor attempt to gain some composure.
Her smile grew wider.
"Right on schedule, considering the occasion." She leaned in closer, brushing their chests together. Her cool breath blowing on his lips. "Maybe you just took too long to find me."
Ekko opened his mouth to talk back (or maybe just to feel more of that coolness on his tongue) but the orchestra resumed before he could do anything.
She tilted her chin proudly, as if she had won a game, before pulling him into the orbit of her dance. But he wasn't about to give her control for too long. In the middle of a spin, he tightened his grip on her, bent his torso and dipped her to mere inches from the ground.
The gasp he got was an exquisite reward, her nails in his shoulder a fleeting ecstasy.
He pulled her back up, and she laughed, all breeze and shards of glass. They danced together, teasing and chasing each other like children, like their divine counterparts did since the dawn of time; they danced until the moon was high in the sky and the wise chants began to mix with tipsy, off-kilter notes. And when they finally slipped away from the crowd, no one noticed their absence.
In the unspoiled night, Jinx was radiant. The moon poured glowing milk over her skin, and her presence alone was enough to light their path.
They followed the slope leading to the temple, now silent, embers cold beneath the incense plates, whose scent still lingered in the air along with pollen and wildflowers. Jinx climbed the steps and moved between the columns, trailing her fingertips over them as she looked curiously around. He saw her stop in front of the altar and turn.
"Come here, gorgeous," her arms open wide toward him.
Ekko didn't need persuasion.
He closed the distance with calm steps. Her hands traced up his chest, while his rose to her face.
"Can I...?" he asked, sliding the veil between his fingers.
Jinx's expression softened. "You know you can."
He knew. Just as he knew how much that apparently simple gesture meant to her. He lifted the veil with reverence, deeply aware of his privilege. To see her whole: hazy blue beside shimmering magenta, a reminder of what the Moon had never touched. Of what was still human. Vulnerable.
He kissed her eyelids and then her mouth, like the precious bride she was. She tangled her fingers in his hair, responding to his tenderness with the urge of who found pure water in the desert. And how could he possibly deny her what she needed? What they had both craved for so long?
He parted his lips and welcomed her tongue. Rain on searing stone. Her nails dug into his nape, a brief cue he had learned to read.
Sing for me.
And he did. He moaned against her lips, fingers in the shoulders of her dress and throat aflame. Pale blue clouds showed up gradually as the fabric fell. The dress pooled at her feet and he held her close, sighing. The coldness of her body always felt unfamiliar to him, yet extremely soothing. A rare balm for the fire that never left him.
He laid her on the altar, and there – where priests knelt with their foreheads pressed to the marble – he knelt before her. But his head wasn't bowed. Not for an instant did he stop looking at her, as he parted her legs and kissed the tender skin within.
Jinx sighed, tilting her hips forward. Offering, asking…
"Ekko."
Her scent hit him, but he willfully clung to patience. Instead, he lifted an ankle on his shoulder.
"You'll let a man of faith worship what he prays to, won't you?"
She chuckled hesitantly.
"Technically, this isn't my temple."
"Practically," he replied, easing her leg out, "you're sitting on my altar."
He pressed his mouth to the jut of her bone.
"And you're everything I'm praying to right now."
The words pulled a sigh from her chest as his mouth resumed its quiet rite.
He mouthed her ankle, gently playing the bone between his dental arches. He glided up her calf and caressed its curve beneath his palm. He sank in the hollow behind her knee, kissed her kneecap, then returned to her thigh, where clouds curved beneath his mouth.
Jinx panted above him, breasts rising and falling jerkily with her breathing. He took in the sight as he caught a flap between her teeth and began to suck. She made a sharp sound, like a whimpering growl, and for a moment Ekko feared the touch of his mouth was burning her.
"Hot?" he asked, apprehensive.
Jinx murmured in assent, trying to bring his lips back to her skin.
"It'd be hotter if you stuck that tongue inside me…"
"I was talking about temperature, love."
She paused for a second. A puff of air parted her lips, then she ran a hand through his locks and set his worries aside. He hummed at the feeling, but didn't get distracted.
After all, a sacred ritual wasn't something to be left unfinished…
He soothed the bruise with his tongue and continued his ascent, leaving crimson blossoms on her inner thigh and hip joint. He lingered there, finding that hollow spot especially delicious to tease.
"You want me to beg?" she breathed out, a hint of frustration.
Ekko smiled.
"No need," he pulled back. "Besides…"
His eyes fell briefly on her slit, wet and glistening, and then met hers again.
"It's something more fitting of my position."
She slid her fingers back into his hair, lashes lowered and gaze intrigued.
"Then do it," she urged.
Ekko didn't hesitate. He brought his lips to her sex and took a deep breath, inhaling her.
"Please," he uttered, without breaking eye contact.
Her fingers tug again.
"Please."
Jinx's lips twitched with satisfaction. A flush of pink on her cheeks.
"Go ahead," she said, "show me how much you want it."
That was it.
Ekko put his mouth on her, giving in to both her demand and his hunger. He gathered the moisture from the outer folds, slowly, deliberately, then dragged it vertically and pushed it back in.
"Fuck," she hissed.
He prodded her entrance a couple of times in order to repeat the sequence, but the pressure on his nape brought him higher. And he knew her too well to mistake her intent. So he closed his lips and suckled, bathing her sensitive pearl in that mixture of arousal and saliva. She moaned. The sound echoed through the ancient stone.
"Yes– yes, stay there," her grip tightened on his hair, "stay fucking there."
Ekko clung to his name and everything she said like it was his gospel. With loose and soft tongue, he latched onto her clit, moving his lips and working her like waves work glass. A hand moved beneath his chin, feeling more slick leaking from there.
Such a waste…
He didn't dare disobey her. Keeping his tongue where she wanted, he curled two fingers to save the spill, and then – with sacral grace – trailed them along the column of his throat, down to his chest. He affused himself with her, watching her moan as he did so, his member throbbing beneath the fabric.
No religious hymn, no scented oil could ever do this to him.
He brought his fingers back to the source, this time applying pressure, testing the resistance. She was a shell offered to the sea: the water slid effortlessly up the channel, following its shape and curling naturally into the spiral. He thrusted his fingers inside, gently, again, and again, pleasuring her as if the gods had charged him with the task, relishing the way she clenched around him with every movement; desperate to show her his devotion, make her feel worthy of it.
With his free hand he held up her thigh and brought her closer, until she was all he could touch, and taste, and breathe.
"Mmh–more…"
He sped up with her, eagerly welcoming the lift of her hips. His tongue stretched over the little nub, pressing and circling in time with his fingers. Jinx nearly whimpered, her hips bucking wildly against his mouth.
"Talk to me," she said, a plea dressed as a command, "tell me to come."
He drew back with a lewd sound. Just few seconds. Just to talk.
"Please," he began, to remind them both who was allowed to beg. "Come on my fingers."
Her body responded to him. Her back arched, thighs trembled, heels dug into his back.
The feeling of her release melting over his knuckles sent him into a frenzy. He found himself panting like a desperate, heart pounding so hard it was almost painful. And when he was sure the last ripple was settled, he licked his fingers and replaced them with his tongue, drinking every drop of her pleasure as if it were ambrosia. He closed his eyes for the first time, trying to sharpen other senses, while the fluid calmed the fire in his throat and fueled the one in his abdomen.
He couldn't pull away. Couldn't stop.
Unconsciously, his tongue stirred again, eager to drink more from that source, willing to draw a second orgasm from her. Maybe a third…
Gods, he would've spent his life feeding between her legs if he could, but a light tug on his hair forced him to move. A translucent thread still connected him to her. He gathered it in his mouth, before finally withdrawing and looking up.
Jinx was a vision in her afterglow. He could see the remnants of a starburst in her left iris, pink shimmering along her neck and collarbone, like northern lights beneath the skin, and her silver freckles, shining brighter across her cheeks and shoulders.
He looked at her with dazed wonder, then rose to his knees and laid her down.
"You want me here?" he whispered, his body hovering hers.
She answered by undoing his belt. Frantic hands that grabbed, pulled, clawed. Then threw leftovers to the floor.
Ekko joined her on the marble surface, clad in nothing but gold and the traces of her arousal. Jinx kissed him, her tongue still cold, nails dancing over his vertebrae. She slid down his carotid, chasing the light (wingbeat of a little moth). Claw-tips traced arabesques, lips whispering, sighing, licking his name like something sweet and utterly vital, and his heart overflowed with honey and blood.
He placed his mouth on her temple, elbows bent and fingers in her hair.
"I love you."
The words instinctively rolled off his lips.
And yet, what he felt for her was so raw, so intense and visceral, even that declaration didn't seem enough. Always a simplification, always a reduction…
He tried to fill those voids of meaning with his body, pouring the letters over her shoulder, over her diaphanous breasts, over her nipples, and then back into her mouth, making sure she swallowed, that she took them in, let them seep into the wiring of her being.
"Ekko," she called again, "–need more."
Tongue teasing his lower lip and hips raising.
"More of you in me."
Everything.
He would give her everything.
Ekko loosened his jaw; they met, tasted each other, rocked together in search of friction. When he filled her they'd already reached thermal balance: his warmth was hers, his pulse was hers, his taste was hers. Two opposites fused into one.
Jinx held his face. She ran her thumbs over his cheeks, along his jawline, his brows, around his eyes – as if to carve the tenderness of his gaze into her memory. And in the shared silence, he could hear it.
Love you too. Love you too. Love you too. Love–
"Kiss me."
And he did. Like plants reach for water, and sunflowers for the dawn.
"You're so beautiful," he whispered, his forehead resting against hers, "...so perfect."
She let out another moan. Different. Bitter.
"I'm not–"
And he understood. He always did.
"Don't," he cut in. His hips slowed down. One hand reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Our flesh may not be made of ichor."
Tongue on her heart.
"Our bodies not unbreakable."
On her lungs.
"Our time not endless."
On her skull.
"But if what makes a god is the faith and worship they're given..."
On her mind.
"Then you are one."
Jinx turned her head to the side, spasming and moaning like a wounded animal, hungry and reluctant at the same time. She writhed beneath him. Her hips bucking, humping, velvet pulsing, holding tighter, tighter, tighter…
"You are my goddess, Jinx."
Her nails promised crescents on his skin, but that only pushed him further.
"Say it."
"I'm–ngh… I–"
Her voice cracked, her left eye reduced to a blinding ring.
"Say it," he repeated, matching the words with a harder thrust.
She sobbed, her whole body straining toward him, still chasing him, even though he was right there. Then he heard it. A rough whisper in a stream of moans.
"I'm… your goddess."
Ekko stilled. He looked at her, caught in that exquisitely agonizing limbo between anticipation and release, completely overwhelmed in body and soul. And he smiled.
"That's it" he kissed her neck as his thrusts resumed a steady pace. "And I consecrate you."
Her claws dug into his back, sinking and drawing blood beneath the surface, but he didn't falter. She could tear him open and rip out his heart if she wanted, and he would chant his pleasure louder.
"Ekko," she called, unable to say anything except his name. "Ekko."
He held her close, slipping a hand between the marble and her spine. And when she dragged him into her rapture, Ekko felt himself die and be reborn in her arms like a phoenix.
The paintings on the ceiling watched them, silent accomplices to that unfamiliar ritual that wove two bodies in such a profound way.
Jinx released her grip, her arms falling from his back, hips limp and breath ragged. Ekko licked the salt from her neck before pulling away and releasing her from his weight; the aftermath of their act spilling onto the marble.
They didn't give much thought to precautions in that regard. Not anymore... Not when their bodies had been so thoroughly reshaped. Temperatures and energies within them were just too strong, too harsh for anything to take root. When they came to conclusion, Jinx had masked it with irony, her lips twisted into a frozen grin, brushing it off as just one less thing to worry about. But Ekko had seen it: the same grief mirrored in his eyes, quiet and thin, like a splinter lodged between your ribs. One that you don't notice until you swell your lungs too much.
He lay on his side to keep watching her.
"You okay?" he asked, gently brushing away the strands of hair stuck to her skin.
The answer came as a lazy smile.
She was okay. They were okay.
"Mh… I think we've officially defiled this place," she stated.
Ekko returned her smile, infected.
"As I've already implied," he corrected her, "nothing inappropriate was committed here."
She looked up at the ceiling and chuckled, pink creeping back to her cheeks.
"It's not fair though," she complained. "Your parties are always more fun."
"Do you remember how it was?"
He brushed a strand from her breasts, letting it fall past the edge of the altar.
"When we were kids?"
Jinx's smile grew faint. He saw her bite her lip and narrow her eyes, like she always did when she was deeply focused on something.
Ekko allowed the silence to stretch. Divine touch gave as much as it took, and this was just another slice of what it had taken. Fading human memories, stray sensations, a reflection in the glass of something that was no longer there.
Seconds later, she spoke in a lower voice, cautious.
"I remember the taste of stolen figs," she began, "Vander's songs, the smell of cedar, Vi on top of some girl in a hay cart… though I'd rather forget that."
Ekko let out a quick laugh through his nose.
"And our first dance?" he asked. Voice quieter. Hopeful.
Her face lit up.
"A total disaster," she declared, nostalgia glimmering in her eyes. "You moved like you had two left feet."
Amusement and relief spread across his features again.
"I beg you pardon, but I was thirteen, and my dance teacher was Benzo" he replied. "Besides, I was nervous."
She gave him a questioning look.
"Nervous?"
"Obviously," he confirmed. "I'd just asked my best friend and secret crush to dance, and she said yes."
Jinx's eyes widened and she looked away. And Ekko really did feel like a kid again, loving so fiercely without knowing what love was, bugs in his stomach and everything else. Silence settled between them, during which he kept combing his fingers through her hair, parting strands and watching them slip in a blue cascade that reached the floor.
"We dance a lot in my dreams," he whispered suddenly, thinking out loud.
That brought her attention back to him. She shifted, tilting her head toward him, waiting for the rest.
"Sometimes, your hair is shorter," he went on. The memory so vivid he could almost see it now, could almost feel the absence of weight between his fingers. "Sometimes, it feels like the last..."
He expected some irony, a witty comment about her aesthetic sense and him being dramatic, but his tone must've unsettled her, because irony never came. Instead, she propped herself on an elbow and looked down at him, her eyebrows slightly furrowed.
They stared at each other in silence. Ekko paused with his hand near her face, suddenly and irrationally distrustful of his own senses. She leaned into his touch as a hand reached behind his shoulders, grazing the scarred skin there. He felt a finger trace over the swelling, then curl, and press.
He jerked, but didn't pull away.
"Does it sting?" she asked, still holding his gaze.
He nodded, then offered a genuine smile.
"In the best way possible."
The nail lingered, scraping tiny droplets of blood from the split. Then she stopped and rested there, hand open on the fresh scratches, as if trying to seal them.
"When you wake up tomorrow, they'll still be there," she said. "No dream leaves marks like these."
Ekko exhaled slowly. He took in the pain and her words like a soothing lullaby, a child being tucked in, and that should've been enough. It should've been...
"Stay tonight?"
A broken whisper.
He was always like that with her. Always greedy. Always one step beyond his control.
Jinx bent an arm under her head and lay back down. Silence fell once more. Her fingers started toying with his golden necklace and Ekko waited, just like he'd waited all night. Because despite the way his heart pounded eagerly in his chest, despite the way they played, he knew it would be foolish to push her into a rhythm other than the one she had chosen.
It was just the way they worked, like wind and windmill: whenever she moved or stilled, he'd follow her accordingly.
Then the silence broke.
"Take me to a real bed, shining boy," she said, lifting her gaze, voice sharp and playful again. "We could both use some water and clean sheets."
Ekko couldn't stop the joy that spread across his lips. He softened his eyes and kissed her forehead, feeling something heal inside him. His lips drifted to her nose, her cheek, the spot behind her ear, and when she giggled against his shoulder, hooking a leg over his hip and nestling closer, he knew that this – this, was exactly where they belonged. Their purpose for being.
The reason why the universal forces kept shaping them so differently from one another, making them opposites, placing them at the two ends of the same magnetic line, aligning the other's ridges exactly where one had recesses.
They completed each other. Their union was balance. And no matter how much distance their stories could put between them, they would always find their way back home.
In this life or another.