As people started getting up around them and leaving, Jacob leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “What happens now?”

“Parsh sort of explained this to you a while ago, but now that you’ve seen the pageant, it probably makes more sense. The story goes that those couples who capture one of the water spirit’s candles have the King of the Reef’s blessing for one night of marriage. When the sun returns, the spell is broken.”

“Sounds like an excuse for people to make love.”

“It is,” Rena conceded with a smile, “but it’s a romantic one, don’t you think?”

Taking their cues from those around them, Jacob and Rena stood; she folded up their blanket, packed up a pair of wine-glasses they never used, and slipped on her shoes. Halar grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her out of earshot of both Jacob and Parsh.

“I want Parsh to bring me a candle,” she confided.

Rena blinked her surprise, but quickly gave her approval by enveloping her friend in a big hug. As she broke away from their embrace, she saw Parsh coming toward them, a candle cupped in his palm. She spun Halar around and wished her luck.

When Halar and Parsh had vanished into the crowd, Rena started toward the line of departing audience members, quickly realizing that Jacob wasn’t with her. She scanned the throngs of people. She knew that the odds of finding him in the dark were slim, but she hoped his height would give him away. When he didn’t immediately appear, she began calling for him, feeling a low level of panic start to rise within her. Logic took over. If we accidentally separate, we should meet back at the hostel,she recalled the four of them agreeing yesterday. Since most of the audience appeared content to linger around the candlelit ruins, Rena met little resistance as she raced down the hill and gravel road to the hostel.

The yard surrounding the hostel was nearly empty. The banquet tables held the skeletal remains of their earlier feasting. Sprays of starlight appeared between the tree branches. Low, throaty laughter came from the dimly lit porch, where groups of festival visitors had gathered around tables to play games or drink wine or talk late into the night. Still no Jacob. Circling around back and through a tree grove, Rena nearly tripped over the legs of a couple who hadn’t bothered to find a more private place to begin their celebrating. She was about to start down the path to the beach when a hand touched her sleeve.

“Rena.”

Jumping nearly out of her skin, she spun on her heel. “Don’t you ever leave like…” Her voice trailed off when she saw that Jacob carried a candle between his hands.

She didn’t know what to say. In her heart, she had known this would happen—hoped it would—and now he stood before her, his face cast in warm yellow candlelight, and she had to decide.

“I know you’ve made promises to Topa. I know you feel like you have obligations to Mylea,” he said, his voice quaking from nerves. “You have to believe that I’m not asking you to walk away from those commitments—”

“I know,” she whispered. She knew from the story he wrote for her, from the inspiration she felt to create when she spent time with him. Through his eyes, she saw Bajor and life more clearly than she ever had. The tightness in her throat released and in its place heat tunneled through her. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

“Whoa—” he sputtered, holding the candle away from his body. “Let’s not follow the legend too literally or we’ll be glass by morning.”

Smiling, she kissed him again; then, wordlessly, she led him inside.

Jacob had time only to place the candle on the dresser and lock the door before Rena had pulled him down to sit on the bedside.

“If this is going too fast for you, we don’t have to—”

Placing her finger against his lips, she shushed him. She slipped off her sandals and sweater and she sat beside him on the edge of the bed, resting her head on his shoulder. Because they were comfortable that way, they sat in silence. Jacob traced circles on her bare arm and shoulder with his finger; his feather-light touch became more exploratory, and she shivered.

To halt him, she flattened her palm against his chest. With trembling fingers, she unfastened his shirt, parting it to expose his skin, and pressed her cheek against him. He smelled like musk and candle smoke and the field grasses above Yyn. She began a delicate trail of kisses up his breastbone, murmuring his name, until he captured her face in his hands. The inscrutable expression on his face worried her for a fraction of a second until he claimed her mouth with dizzying intensity. We’re going through with this,she thought over and over again. He wants this as much as I do.

Breaking away from their kiss, Jacob reached over her to deactivate the lights, wrapped an arm around her waist, and pulled her down onto the bed. Lying side by side, they faced each other, at first not touching, having only the candle’s sepia glow to see by.

My turn.Sitting up, Rena reached for the tie of her blouse, loosened the neckline and pulled the blouse over her head. She felt his gaze. Before, when they had been together, it had been under the cover of darkness. Now, having him look at her, she imagined the way she studied the subjects she painted, and was filled with nervous excitement.

From behind, his hands went gently around both sides of her waist, fanned against her hips, and he buried his lips in the slope between her shoulder and neck. Arching into his touch, she cradled her neck against his shoulder and closed her eyes, feeling at last that things were as they should be. Complete.

When the midmorning sunlight woke Rena, she rolled onto her side to find Jacob watching her. She must be a sight: her hair in its customary wild and bushy morning style, her lips swollen, and virtually every centimeter of her aching from exertion. She stretched, raising her arms above her head, and then, feeling oddly shy, pulled the sheet back up to cover her fully. “Hey,” she said, offering him a drowsy, crooked grin.

“Hey yourself,” he said, looking at her expectantly. Resting his head on his elbow, he seemed a little too self-satisfied for Rena to be at ease.

Wrinkling her forehead, she said warily, “You look like you’re going to explode if you don’t say whatever it is you’re thinking—”

“I…I think I might be in love with you,” he blurted out.

She arched an eyebrow in surprise.

“I know it’s sudden and all—”

And then instinctively Rena knew, without being told, that his declaration came from genuine feeling and not from the emotional miasma of sex. Smiling, she leaned over and planted a firm kiss on his lips and pulled him on top of her, relishing his weight. “Besides that other thing, what were you thinking just now?”

“Words…ideas…the nucleus of something I want to write later. I don’t know if it makes any sense, but I feel like I’ve been seeing life through a broken lens that’s suddenly sharply focused.”

Rena smiled knowingly against his chest. “That’s an artist’s job: to see the truth of the world and people and communicate it. Often, we fall back on what we know, not what we see. There’s a difference.”

“You sound like someone I used to know,” Jacob said. “She died. One of Dukat’s men killed her. It was…” He inhaled deeply, then sighed. “I miss her.” Looking down at her and leaning in toward her, he touched his forehead to hers. “You would have liked her. Ziyal was an artist, too. There’s a display of her work on the station. Have you heard about it?”

Rena shook her head. “No,” she said. “I haven’t paid much attention to what was goes on up on the space station. But I’m certainly going to look her up now.” As he drifted into memory, she felt a brief flash of jealousy. She asked, “Did you love her?”

He considered her question then said, “In another time and place, I might have, eventually. But no, we were just friends, for the short time we had togteher.”