31_days | [January 27] [Strange Magic] No Less Beautiful

Title: No Less Beautiful

Day/Theme: 27. More Strangely Than The Moon

Series: Strange Magic

Character/Pairing: Marianne/Bog

Rating: G

The moon made him silver. It glinted down all the edges of his armor and struck brightness out of all the chinks and score marks in it. That was what shining armor should mean, she thought. He had been through so many battles and every one was written in silver scars over him. Roland, as usual, couldn’t compare. That miserable excuse for a knight had been careful to never get a scratch on his polished surfaces or a hair out of place.

Bog, on the other hand, gnarled and rough as hickory bark, had never backed down from any battle, except for maybe once or twice for her sake. His wings were tattered around the edges, but the moonlight lit them up too. Little veins of iridescence flickered over them like magic. As strange as it was, magic was the best word for it.

Seeing him in sunlight would’ve shown all the crags and marks just as well as the moon. It would’ve shown him to be as dark and hard as the forest he was lord over. It wouldn’t have made him any less beautiful. Rainbows would still gleam along his wings. His eyes would still be the same color as the open sky. It was the moonlight that made him shine though, and when she had been love-struck enough to tell him that, he had sheepishly told her it was her own fault.

The moonlight lit up her wings too, he told her. It softened the shadows around her layers and made her eyes glow all the more golden. Dark flowers bloomed under the moon and she was surely the loveliest of those. If he was beautiful in the moonlight, it was only because she was more so. It reflected off him back to her, like the moon and sun. It was the only reasonable answer.

“But not the only answer, “she told him back and kissed him.