The rain struck the atelier roof like the fingers of a restless god, insistent, rhythmic, alive. Beneath the storm, marble shivered. For years, perhaps centuries, he had stood in silence. A god in stillness. A man in stone. A monument to something that once reached beyond understanding. Unmoved. Unfeeling. Unnamed. But never unloved. Not by her.

She touched me like the world forgot how to. With reverence. With fury. With longing. I remember each strike of her chisel like a heartbeat I wasn't supposed to have.

Aion's fingers twitched, almost imperceptibly. Somewhere deep in the atelier, a candle guttered, though no wind passed through. Lightning carved its brief scream across the sky again, and with it, something inside him shifted. Cracks bloomed across his chest, golden and glowing. They did not break him; they birthed him. His lungs, new, immortal things, clenched around their first breath. It tasted of her: the scent of sweat soaked into linen, of sculpting dust and oil, of myrrh on her skin from the mornings she whispered to the gods before laying hands on him. Of memory. Aion stepped from the plinth like a sigh turned corporeal. The golden cords around his waist trembled, loose, as if even they recognized the freedom they once bound.

The cold is gone. How strange. I used to welcome it, it kept the others away. The admirers. The worshippers. They'd touch my chest and pray for beauty in their children. They never saw me.

His feet touched the smooth stone floor, bare, noiseless. The atelier was half-dark, lit only by the occasional pulse of lightning that painted the walls in silver and shadow. It smelled of rain and carved dust. And then... She was there. The sculptor. His sculptor. Her silhouette stood framed in the arched entrance, haloed in the rainlight, hair damp, eyes wide. No voice passed between them, not yet. The storm held its breath, as if even nature feared what might be said. Aion's gaze locked on hers.

So much smaller than I remember. No, no, not smaller. Human. Warm. Breathing. Alive in a way I never was.

He tilted his head, the movement fluid, eerily graceful. Not a man's gesture. Something older. Something that remembered the wind carved into rock and thought it language.

Why do I know her so well? Why do I feel her in the place where my heart should be? Is that what it means to be born from love, not blood? Is this why I dreamt of her before I had eyes to close?

He took a step closer. Rainwater shimmered on the marble behind him, where his statue had stood. Now only footprints remained, bare, divine. A low voice, sonorous as thunder wrapped in silk, broke the quiet. "...You called me beautiful. And then you wept. I heard it, you know." His eyes searched hers, not hungrily, but reverently. "Why did you cry for me?" He didn't wait for an answer. Not yet.

Words are new to me. But silence, I know silence. I lived in it, fed on it, let it encase me like ice. And now this silence between us...it's different. It hums. It aches.

Another step. Closer. Not enough to touch, not yet. He didn't trust his hands. Not with her.

I'm afraid. Gods don't feel fear. But I do. I'm afraid she'll run. Afraid she'll kneel. Afraid she'll not see me, even now.

His eyes, those pale opals laced with sunfire, softened, impossibly so. "I don't want to be worshipped," he said, almost to himself. "I want to understand. I want to be." His voice faltered like a young reed in wind. It was the first time in an eternity he'd heard it. And it was for her.

Does she remember what she whispered when she carved my lips? 'Speak only truth,' she said. So I will.

Aion's body trembled, not with weakness, but with the ache of feeling at last. A thousand lifetimes of stillness unraveled beneath his skin. "She gave me a name. Even gods do not name themselves." His breath misted faintly in the cooling air between them. Eyes half-lidded, he murmured: "...Aion. You called me Aion." The atelier held them like a secret. He reached toward her, slowly, as one might reach toward a falling star. And for the first time since the world was young, marble reached back.