Stars Dancing [Dreams-To-Lovers Romance]

** This story is free to read on RoyalRoad.com **

If you are reading this on another site it is a pirated copy. If you enjoy the story please read it on RoyalRoad.

You can find the official updated story here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/122374/stars-dancing-dreams-to-lovers-romance

RYST

Journal

Relapse Day 1: It's supposed to be my honeymoon on Floria. Everything hurts. I can't believe this.

Relapse Day 2: Still can't sleep. Sweaty. I hurt all over. I hate my body. I hate my life. I hate that I never get better. I don't want Nayth to know how much I hate myself. I want to hide from him. I feel him loving me and saying with certainty, It's fine if you need to hide for a few days, Ryst. I'll be here when you get back.

Relapse Day 3: I'm crying on Nayth's heart, hating that he knows everything. Hating that he loves me exactly as I am. Hating how sure he is that I'm gonna make it through this.

Relapse Day 4: I got up to go to the kitchen in our rental, and Nayth handed me a bottle of costamelon juice. I hugged him and told him with our private language, Thanks for loving me. I love you back.

I know, he replied. He held me as I fell asleep on his chest.

PEYDRAN

"Yeah, Day 4. She drank juice and is asleep now," said Nayth over my video screen.

Nayth Carmidee did not look like I would have looked if it had been Ren in a four-day inconsolable pain fest. He was relaxed, clean shaven, and wearing a tidy blue t-shirt. I would've been a disheveled mess if it'd been Ren. I cocked my head a little, studying him. How was he so calm? What went on in that head of his?

"Nayth," I asked, "you're like Ren, right? You compose music. You have—"

He had a wistful smile on his face, "In my dreams, Peydran." Then he started chuckling and looked a little surprised when started laughing outright.

"Yeah, yeah, I can only dream of composing music like Ren!" And he laughed so fully and freely that I started laughing even though I had no idea what was funny. It was like that when Nayth laughed— like there was some source of joy fountaining out of him that I couldn't ignore.

"Ryst," I thought, "every time you relapse, I'm gonna make Nayth laugh like that. I'll keep him laughing for you when you're lost in the dark."

"How is Ren?" Nayth asked.

"Day 2. He came to bed for three hours last night, so he got a little sleep."

After we got to Nayth's family's estate on Floria, Ren went to tour the grandpa's music studio. The second he walked into the room, he grabbed my arm and said, "Three to four days, Pey'o. I'll try to be fast."

He'd gotten a warning out to me, and then he was lost to a compositional fever. Music had been raging in the studio ever since.

"Have you sparred with Freya yet?" My eyebrows rose at Nayth's question. "She's a different monster in the dojo. Formidable fighter. She can probably take you."

My eyebrows climbed further up my forehead. Nayth must've noticed how competitive I was. My eyebrows narrowed in suspicion. He must've wanted to distract me by getting me into the dojo with his sister.

My eyebrows quirked, and I allowed a tiny, wry smile.

"Ren would love the video."

"Then you'd better not lose," Nayth challenged. The screen went dark.

That was how it was going to be, eh? Me making Nayth laugh. Nayth giving me a to-do list.

RYST

Journal

Relapse Day 5: I got up to go to the kitchen of our rental, and Nayth was slicing honeydew melon. I ate a whole bowl. Then he made love to me, reminding me what it's like on the good days.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Play Dusk Til Dawn by Zayn And Sia

Two-hundred pounds of solid muscle was very, very heavy. It was a first: Nayth asleep on top of me. He was so heavy, all over me; just dead weight. I could feel little twitchy movements. Fingers flexing against my skin. Legs shifting on mine. Shoulders jerking.

I relaxed my mind, wondering if I could see into his thoughts while he was in REM sleep. I let myself become Nayth.

I felt my body twitching— shoulder, fingers, calf. I relaxed my mind. There were white sheets undulating and moving around each other. No, they were off-white ribbons.

No! They weren't cloth. They were opaque light— like moonstone that had turned into solid light. Undulating, coming together, twirling around each other. Then moving apart and coming back to wrap around each other.

My Ahtah was dreaming of dancing light! Happiness and contentment. One of the lights spun away and the other kept twirling, knowing she was about to coalesce with him again. His light stilled, confused. Did the dance end?

Darkness. There was darkness everywhere, but a thin, fading light far, far away. He hurled himself at it, but the darkness was a barrier. He threw himself at the darkness— frantic, desperate, in terror, pounding in desperation.

Then he stopped and gathered himself. He couldn't break it down, so he melted against the darkness, barely able to see her fading light anymore. He made himself become like the darkness. He sank into the darkness as though he were a part of it.

Tears flowed from all of him as he became the dark and never took his eyes off that fading light— so far away from him now. As he melted into darkness, he became grey dust. The grey dust slowly sank towards the ribbon so far, far away.

Sobbing shook me. Agonized sobbing— grabbing towards the light that was so very far away. I opened my eyes and became Ryst, turning in Nayth's arms and pulling his head to my chest.

"No, Nayth, no! Beloved, I didn't leave you! I didn't, Nayth! Ahtah! That's not what happened." I knew it with 100% certainty. I willed him to see it. I was always uncertain about everything, but I was 100% certain about that.

"There's more to that story, Nayth. I don't know it all, but I know without any doubt that I have never left you. Never. I didn't leave you alone. Something else happened."

Nayth's sobs slowed, but his heart ached. All he could see was that ribbon falling away, and it tore him apart. He didn't know what was happening or what had happened.

"Do you doubt me, Ahtah?"

"No!" I felt his whole being rage. "No!" he repeated.

"Okay, love. Okay. We don't know the whole story, then. I promise you, Nayth. I don't know what happened, but I have always chosen you, and I always will. I will always be uncertain about everything, but I will never be uncertain about you. Do you believe me, love?"

"Yes," he moaned. As soon as he agreed that he believed me, I could see more.

"Nayth, I'm going to keep talking, and I don't know what I'm saying. This is one of those times that I talk and something comes out of me that helps everything make sense."

His whole being nodded. He knew. Keep going.

"I don't know the whole story but your dream just now wasn't a dream. It was a memory. Like these snatches we keep getting. Like the definition card of the moonstone— pieces of the soul long forgotten, needing to be illuminated. Maybe it was metaphorical, or maybe it was literal. I don't know. But it's a lot like your other dreams— the dreams of a woman who kept running into light, and you couldn't catch her, right?"

He nodded with his whole being.

"Once you finally did catch the woman, she was happy. She wasn't running away from you. She had never run away from you. Your dancing ribbon of light never left you. Something else happened to her. And Nayth, I think that's why I'm four years older than you. It's always bothered me that I'm older than you."

Surprise rippled through him, and he started to lift his head, but I held him against my chest. I didn't want him away from my heart. He smiled and let me pull him against my chest, but with his inner self asked why that bothered me.

"When I was trying to find you, Peydran asked me questions so we could get details. Were you thirty? Twenty? Eighteen? Fifteen? Nayth— I was in my twenties, and he was asking me about a kid—were you fifteen? I was horrified! I mean, I was having all kinds of dirty, dirty telepathic sex with this invisible guy, and Peydran asked me if he was a teenager?"

Nayth laughed at that. His fifteen year-old-self would've found that a very good idea. Let's keep going with this, Ryst. This is a fantasy my younger self really wants to enjoy.

You're not teasing right now, are you? I accused.

Laughing, Nayth lifted his head off my chest. "Does it really bother you, Methela? I don't care."

I looked at him suspiciously and gave him my lecturing obgyneca voice, "You do realize that when you were ten, I was a sexually-mature fourteen year old, menstruating? Capable of bearing children?"

"I don't see why that's a problem, Ryst. We could've been friends when we were kids, if we'd lived on the same sphere. Then when we got older, it could've become more than friendship. I think that's what happened, anyway. Even if we were a galaxy apart, I think your ribbon was always wrapped around my heart."

Something inside me felt like it was ripping open.

"But what about my ribbon, Nayth? For four years I was in Andromeda while you were beating against the darkness, trying to figure out how to get to me? What did I go through while we were separated? Is that why everything is so wrong in my life? Why things never make sense? Why I get sick and don't get better? What happened to me while I waited for my one and only to follow?"

Nayth wasn't upset. He wasn't confused. He wasn't daunted at all. He was certain. Just like always. He started laughing.

He rolled over onto his back, pulling me on top of him. "Ryst. I don't know. I'll never know, but I'll always know. That's how it is with me. I know, but I don't know. And I know this about you: I am always certain about you. I don't know what happened in the past, but I always knew you, and I always will. I believe in you."

"Whatever darkness there is, I am always holding onto your light. You never left me, and I never doubted you. So, keep going, honey. You keep on going into every dark corner, and I'll keep holding on. Because you are going to keep getting us through every darkness, and I'm going to be with you every step of the way."

"You can know nothing, Ryst. But I know this: I'll follow you into the dark, and we will always be okay."

Nayth held me, and there was humor in his voice. I wanted to scream and cry that I understood nothing, and nothing was fair, and everything was overwhelming, and everything sucked. But his calm certainty was a balm, and it filled me up.

He showed me two dancing ribbons of light, and that they'd been a little distant from each other for a while, but they'd never been truly separated. Whatever had happened in the past— all those things we still didn't understand— didn't matter so much to Nayth anymore because he knew that everything was going to be okay.

We'd never been separate, and we'd never be separated again. It was a certainty for Nayth, and I decided to believe him.