Swiftcurrent Creek Promise in the dark you'll be my nightlight

Note: this thread is going to be taking place on the date it receives a reply, so currently it doesn't exist icly LOL

Reverie dreamed of her brother, and so many gilded feathers.
She dreamed of his voice, the song he'd sung for her that day in the valley. She dreamed of dancing for him, dancing forever, until the light faded from the world for the last time and it was only them. So when she woke to the sight of a familiar golden bird;
What could she do but follow?
Reverie was careful this time; in broad daylight anyone might see her pursuit, and so she wound her way through the Creek at a steady pace. And she thought of The Gilded Sea. She wondered if it would ever leave her, or if she would pass this curse to her own children. The newest generation, those she had been raised to guide and protect, except they were not supposed to be hers. And she had not realized she would need to protect them from herself.
She let out a little gasp, gripped by a sharp pain through her belly, but she did not stop. The bird was flitting further away, and she caught fewer glimpses of it through the trees. Reverie knew she could not let it slip away. There was a familiar scent on the wind, something she ached to recognize here of all places, now of all times. But she needed him, didn't she?
She needed him more than she ever had, and of all of them, she thought that he perhaps had the best chance of really being what she needed. When the golden object of her pursuit slipped through the trees and past the border and into nothingness, and Reverie found at the end of it all a brother she'd left and a love she'd discarded and a breathless hope in her throat, she realized she knew what it meant.
@Everett, She stepped forward and wrapped him in her embrace, and promised herself that she would never let go again.

The gilded bird was him in these hours of waking day. Soaring ever eastward, on and on, and long disappeared, but he could feel it’s wingbeats churning the air before him, behind him, all around him, as though it’s movement moved him along, spurred onwards, all the more, by that now gentle voice which had roared in his dreams and echoed into daylight and pushed him forward, forward, by strength not his own: Go! I am sending you.

Everett couldn’t see the gilded feathers anymore, but he noticed the place around him now. Unfamiliar — though weren’t all places these days? Unfamiliar, until that familiar flutter of wings strummed up again, and the bird burst from the tree line.

And more than that.

Ophelia.

He didn’t say her name out loud, but when she fell into him, he collapsed against her. The weight lifting once again from his shoulders. The fear of having left them — Tybault, Evander, even — melting into far memory that didn’t seem as consequential in the light of his sister’s embrace.

You found me, he said — and a strange noise danced from his throat. Untrained, and like the land, quiet and wholly unfamiliar.

A laugh.

And here in that laughter and the warmth of his sister against him — broken, as he was, healing, as he was — he might have stayed there forever.

Of course I found you, Her own breathless giggle joined his, a light kind of magic in the air. Your light shines for miles, Everett. And she kissed his cheek and pulled him into a slow twirl, knowing he was no dancer but wanting to feel just a little of that art with him all the same.
There's so much I haven't told you, Reverie admitted, turning a little shy now. But I want to tell you now. I want you to know me as I am now. My name is Reverie. I'm a dancer. And...
She told him everything. From that first day when Riverclan had chased her and Bjarna had found her, even those pretty little moments when she'd first met Lestan. She told him about all her sins and the wounded woman and the bear and her curse, her curse, her children. She told him how she'd found a sister and a father and lost them both. How she'd loved a man who danced by a lake of fire, and how she'd watched him hurt Tybault to protect her, and how in the end he had taken her heart and left her with his children.
And finally in quiet tones she spoke of Moss, and their future, and her fears. Moss, who had stepped in so readily to fill the space left by the father of her children.
I'm not ready, She confessed at the end of it all. But... when I think of The Gilded Sea, I know I wouldn't trade this for anything.

His light shone.

He had a hard time believing that when he considered himself and the life he had lived, but when he heard it spoken from his sister’s lips, he almost believed he could.

Like a tree, he swayed with untrained paws, as she moved like fire around him. She held beauty in her step. Mystery. Similar to the sister he’d known before Rose had… before she had left them, but in a way, so very…

… different.

And finally, she unravelled why.

And piece by piece, his own puzzle clicked together.

He stayed silent for her, listening, watching, hearing, seeing, this whirlwind his sister had already gone through, this strange new life she had already begun to build.

This was where his sister had been running.

Is this what Tybault had tried to take her from?

Sorrows and grief and songs of love he didn’t understand — and some he didn’t agree with — and some he wished to rescue Ophe — no, Reverie, from.

They could start over.

They could start over.

They could start over.

He needed time to think.

I wouldn’t, either, he finally said, and then — I had a vision, Reverie, her name felt strange, but to finally have a name to call her again — he felt the warmth like a secret shared between children, not of anything from the Gilded Sea, but — of something different. Someone, I… I think, she would think him crazy. Would she think him crazy? I followed it here. Him. A golden bird. Followed it to you.

In whispers, they spoke, in whispers, she would share that she had seen the bird, too. They would spend the time together and then, would go their ways.

And Everett was left to wonder at the meaning of it all.