Beguiled by the Moon
Sera's body was darker: she was sun-touched, a mood he was never allowed. He would trace the star's travels upon it: polaris on her breast and the moon along her hipbone. When he saw her, perhaps he knew what it was like to live in the sunlight. At least there are no shadows in darkness, he thought, for when he was with her he could feel his stretching out long behind him.
He would not have said he was in love with Sera: no more than he would have claimed to love himself. In truth he did both, and the path of constellations upon her body was echoed on his own. She was a comfort, a calm, but he was always too aware of his following shadow. Sometimes he thought maybe he was Sera's shadow, to mimic her appearance exactly, her sillouhette distorted, and flat: not alive.
She told him about the sea and he thought would down in her words, the image she created of something he had never seen, yet was achingly familiar. When he died, he decided, it would be in the ocean's grasp. It had him in its pull as surely as it was beguiled by the moon. Or maybe it was the moon pulled, though he saw it channelled through bitterness. Sera. Shadow. He would at the beg of ocean as surely as if it were a creation of his own tears, ebbing and flowing at Sera's whim.
She told him stories he could not fathom, gave him dreams he'd never have known could be dreamt. He felt so small: a tear in an ocean. Sera was his ocean, and he drowned in her.
Someday, he promised, he would break free of the night's pull and taste the sunlight. And he would sink a fathom or more before letting the starlight touch him. It would not reach him, under the sea. But down there the moon would still pull, and in his dreams she drew him down. The starlight would be nothing to the moon's reflected glow, and a reflection was all he ever needed.
On the dark side, staring at unsullied stars with no shadow to speak of: he had seasweet nightmares about that. Sera was his nightmare and he had never felt pain before she rose in his life. But he had never felt joy either, and now she burst with it. She was a glow of joy, and he could reflect hers, maybe believe it was his for a little while. He never imagined the light could be his own.