The night sky glittered overhead, shining with countless jeweled stars, their thin, wavering light doing little to illuminate the silvery grass beneath.  Ajani Goldmane lay on his back and looked up at the stars, thankful that on this plane, at least, the sky was filled with nothing but those cold, distant watchers.

	He had been trying to fall asleep for some time, but it remained as elusive as ever.  He sighed and went back to counting the stars, in the hopes that the repetition would either send him drowsing off, or that at least it would prevent him from dwelling too much on things lost.  

	The stars began to shift and move before his tired eyes, performing a slow, spiraling dance, and he growled in dizzy impatience.

	'Are you trying to summon sleep by frightening it?'  It was the kind of thing she would sa—have said—with one of her small, rare smiles.  She might even have touched his shoulder with her battle-roughened palm.  But if she could not sleep, she would have tossed and turned alone, certain that it was some failing of hers that was causing her difficulty.  Now it seemed some failing of his that she might have died believing that.

	The stars seemed to twine and shift again, forming a figure whose rippling cloak was blown out behind her by some mysterious astral wind.  It wasn’t until he heard her soft footfalls that he realized the woman approaching him was not—or not only—a product of his star-dizzy eyes.

	“Elspeth,” he croaked in disbelieving frustration as she knelt before him.  Stars shimmered along her shoulders before they settled into a more mundane, hunched-over shape, and she put her finger first on her own lips, then on his, in a slightly nervous gesture that plainly meant hush.

	Ajani felt shivers run from his spine to his belly, as his lips touched Elspeth’s finger.  He wanted to pull her into a spine-crushing hug, but he was afraid to move too quickly or roughly, afraid to break this strange, dream-like spell.  

	She turned his hand palm-up and kissed it, looking at him with a question in her eyes, and a little fear.  Her hand was trembling slightly.  He stared at her in confusion and astonishment for a moment, and then he smiled through sudden tears, took her hand and nuzzled his nose gently into it.  She smiled, mostly with her eyes, shrugging off her cloak as she did so.  

	As it fluttered to the ground, she fell into Ajani’s arms.  Her sudden, solid weight made him catch his breath, and now he did embrace her, close to his chest.  The beating of her heart was a heavy cadence against his own, and her breath tickled at his mouth, before she tentatively closed the inch between them to kiss him on the muzzle. Ajani’s own breath caught in his throat as his hands caressed her sides, tugging her ragged tunic up to expose the hairless skin beneath.  She caught it before he could finish taking it off, blushed, then drew it the rest of the way off herself.

	He had seen Elspeth in various states of undress before, primarily after battles, when her wounds were being cared for, but he had never looked at her this way.  The corner of her mouth turned up in a fond smile, and she leaned back, letting him have a better look.  The starlight limned her breasts, catching the sporadic little ring of light hairs around the nipples; in her arched-back position, the planes of her muscles were flat beneath her ribs.  He paused for a moment at the sight of the round, white scar that sat squarely beneath her breastbone, reached out with one clawed hand to rub across it.  Elspeth’s mouth turned down at the corners again, and she took his hand and moved it from the scar to her breast; intrigued, he squeezed experimentally, and she tipped her head back in a silent moan before leaning forward once again.  This time, she anchored her feet in the dirt and shoved him onto his back.

	He rumbled low in his throat and reached out to tug down her leggings as well; she helped him dislodge them and kicked them off to the side before straddling him and leaning down to kiss the edge of his mouth again, burying her face in his mane to draw her lips down the side of his neck, which felt both strange and tantalizing at the same time.  He tipped his head back to give her better access and bucked up into her, managing to draw a sudden gasp from her parted lips as his groin knocked clumsily against hers.  She smelled of dark earth and sweat and arousal.

	Desire spiked through his body, only partly sexual.  There was an urgent hunger uncurling from his belly—he needed to touch her, needed to touch everything to make sure she was real.  His hands slid down her back and then round her waist, one of them slipping across her inner thigh and upwards as the other continued down to the back of her knee.  She was slick and wet against his fingers, and the desire spiked fiercely through him again in concert with her ragged sigh.  He brought his head down and nuzzled against her face; it made her giggle and gasp breathily in the same moment, before he started licking down the side of her face and her neck as she rocked on his fingers, her own hands tangling ceaselessly in the fur of his chest and back.

	Images and impressions rushed to him, faster and faster.  Elspeth’s thick hair, tangled with dust and sweat, hanging into his face as he pulled back for a moment to look into her dark, eyes, filled with trouble and love in equal parts.  Her breasts, reasonably sized for a human, but fitting almost small beneath his hands.  Her arms, as she held him and pulled him closer, and the taste of her—earth, again, and salt, and slightly-sweet musk.  Blunt human teeth closing on his shoulder, hard enough to bruise, as he entered her with a finger, and she bucked and shuddered against it and rode the palm of his hand until she climaxed, with another silent cry, clenching around his hand.  He held her and steadied her with the tail he had wrapped around the top of her thigh.

	She collapsed on top of him, then looked up.  There was a heartbeat as they stared at one another; then Elspeth touched his face, her own concerned.  He caught her hand and pressed it against his cheek, and when she drew it away, it was wet with tears.  She shook her head quickly, looking almost angry, and then reached firmly for his clothing.  He helped her strip it off, and then he lay naked beneath her, and held her close.  He was half-drowning in Elspeth’s scent by now, his breathing thick with arousal and desire; she crooked a finger at him and dragged him up into a sitting position again, arching herself backward again and spreading her legs wide in invitation.

	He entered her tentatively, so tentatively that she gave him an impatient look and thrust herself forward to meet him, and he groaned, a deep rumble that reverberated through his whole body and twined with the soft, almost inaudible keening of Elspeth’s breathing.  Her scent overwhelmed him, and his hands grasped her waist and held her tight, pulling them both over backward; he reached up and caught at her breasts with his tail as she rode him, the warmth inside her sending tingling spasms through the sensitive spines of his penis.

	His movements became urgent, then erratic; Elspeth tumbled them over the other way until she was lying on her back and he was in control, thrusting inside her as she bucked up to meet him.  With a last desperate motion, the orgasm crashed over him, and he was swallowed up in the scent of her and the living-breathing-heat of her, until he collapsed, breathing hard, on top of her, and she kissed him again, all along the muzzle and then, carefully, once on each eye.

	They lay twined together, neither making any motion to disengage, as the sky above them turned dark with clouds and then light with the first rays of dawn on the horizon.  Elspeth turned to him, her dark eyes intent, her gaze fierce, and she took his hand with the strength of a promise.  He blinked once, and she was gone, and there was nothing beside him but her cloak, covered in the early morning dew.

	No.  It couldn’t have been a dream.  He brought the cloak to his nose, inhaled—but there was nothing but the scent of grass, the stink of his own sweat in his nostrils, and just the barest, aging hint of earth and sweetness.  Ajani threw back his head and roared, sending several birds on terrified, spiraling flights toward the heavens.

	“Such intensity,” said a voice from behind him, and he turned in frustrated grief, to see a tall figure cloaked in black.  Smoke or early morning mist obscured its feet, and its face vanished into a curling cloud.

	Ajani reached for his axe, quite prepared for the prospect of violence.  Maybe even a little happy about it, but the figure held up a hand.

	“Is that any way to treat your benefactor?” asked the creature.  

	“Who are you?” Ajani growled.

	“Although perhaps I might more accurately be described as her benefactor, I suppose.”  It spread its hands meditatively.  “But then, she did a beautiful job negotiating the challenge, and therefore I must applaud her.”

	Ajani’s patience snapped.  He grabbed the cloaked figure and shook it.  “Is Elspeth alive?” he roared.

	“No,” it said.  “But she communicated with you the night previous, did she not?  What, pray tell, did she say?”

	Ajani bared his teeth.  “None of your business.  Now who are you?”

	“I am the one who brought a dream of your Elspeth to you, as she requested, and, as I requested, she did not speak a word to you.”

	“Why would you ask that?” Ajani demanded, thinking back to her strange silence.	

	The figure melted out of his hands, dissipating like mist under the morning sun.  “I am Ashiok,” it murmured.  “I do not need a reason.”

	With that, it was gone, but Ajani was certain that he was awake now, and there was a fierce, hard hope suddenly blossoming inside his heart.  What did she say?

	She might not have spoken words, but her eyes had been very clear.  'I miss you.  And I’m coming back.'