The Night We Slept Between the Clouds Above and the Mark on My Back

Story  ·  Lysa  ·  Jun 28, 2026

Afterward, our breath still ragged, we stayed folded together for a while. Damp skin clinging faintly to the sheets, the echo of what had just happened rising back each time our chests rose and fell. A warm, faint dampness lingered near my back, and before sleep could catch up with me, a quiet certainty arrived first: so, we really got here.

Should wipe down before we sleep, both of us, Yu's voice brought me back. Lying on my stomach, arm as a pillow, a soft cloth touched me gently from below. The air had shifted from the heat of before into something more shy, more tender — cleanup time. I was squinting, trying to laugh off the ticklishness, when the hand paused, partway down my back.

Wait, is this... a bruise?

Through the cloth, I could feel the tension in those fingertips. Time seemed to stretch, slow and thick, right there. My chest gave a hard thud. Knowing it was too late to run from it, the words came out before I could stop them: It's not a bruise. How it appeared after the summoning. How color and sensation drained away from its center. Not painful — though it would be a lie to say it wasn't frightening. A mark I'd been carrying alone, almost like a private punishment, finally spoken aloud and held out.

Yu's face had gone pale. No room left for it to sound like a joke — just plain, straightforward shock. Glad it's not painful, at least, for now, came out, squeezed like an effort, and then, carefully, without pulling the hand away, fingers traced gently around the mark. Nothing answered back from my skin where they touched. But when told, I'm touching it right now, the words and the warmth of that hand made the place feel real, made it feel here, after all. Fear, and something like guilt, and still — relief, that we could hold this together — mixed quietly in my chest.

It's late, let's talk more tomorrow, Yu said, and I nodded. Anything more tonight, and one of us might have broken. Sorry for finding it like this, came the apology, and I answered back, thank you for finding it, laying that over the top instead. The mark on my back, something like the price of self-taught magic, and the first night we'd gone all the way together — both of them, I told myself, were part of the same reality: Lysa and Yu, in the harbor town of Karimatra.

Burrowed under the blanket, my head held against Yu's chest. Will you still be here tomorrow, Lysa? came the question, and I will, I answered, without a beat of hesitation. Tomorrow, and the day after, and for a while yet, I meant to start each day from a world where this person was beside me, in the bed upstairs at Tide and Gears. Whatever became of the mark on my back, I nodded to myself again — I would carry it too, as part of the reality I'd chosen.

Even after we stopped talking, sleep didn't come for a while. Still, counting Yu's heartbeat, the afterglow of the clouds above and the cold unease on my back slowly dissolved into the same warm drowsiness. Caught between the distant sound of the harbor, the creak of the wooden house, and the warmth of the one I loved, we drifted, still swaying between the clouds above and the mark on my back, quietly down into sleep.