This wasn't happening.
"Ara, I really think we should find someplace el-"
He snapped his mouth shut at the proceeding glare the fiery young werewolf threw him. Ara glazed over him with her eyes curiously (maybe even a bit hungrily) and pressed on after a moment or so. Luka let out a deep, slow breath but it did nothing for his nerves. He'd mentioned living on the beach once in passing and Ara instantly set her sights on finding a house there at once. It was best to indulge in Ara; at least, that's what Luka thought at the time. That is, until she found the very place on God's green Earth Luka spent as much time trying to avoid as his birth home up for sale.
Of course it was.
Ara started rambling like a child in a candy store, saying who knew what, but Luka couldn't hear her. Stepping over the threshold into the heart of the house twisted the Time Demon's stomach into a mess of knots. He could swear the room was starting to spin and he squeezed the door handle tighter in his grasp to keep him leveled. Jesus, it was just as Luka remembered it. He blinked several times, mistaking the vivid avalanche of memories as visions, but they refused to cease their assaults all the same. Although the walls were bare and the furniture absent, everything began to appear in Luka's mind's eye as he once knew it to be. The couch that had so many food and drink stains, the dining table with it's scratches and colored marker streaks, and the tree - it all came back to Luka in the span of time it took Ara to walk to the glass wall overseeing the bank of a small beach. How many times had he'd washed up on that accursed land, as the waves washed away a new aspect of his life with every crashing wake...
"Luka?"
The Time Demon shifted his attention back to Ara, her brow drawn in confusion and concern. It could be that Luka was practically ripping the door handle out of its socket from all the weight he had been applying to, but he was only spitballing on that one. Thoughts of anxiety licked at the edges of Luka's mind but he smiled in reassurance, hoping it would distract Ara as he set up walls around those memories in a portion of his mind.
"Sorry, I, uh... stomachache." Which wasn't a total lie but a lie nonetheless.
Ara regarded him again but shrugged, the excitement of being a new and beautiful home consuming her thoughts. "Look, Luka! Isn't the view wonderful?"
Luka stared at Ara, who's back was turned to him as she watched the swell of the waves upon the beach. She was so full of life and spirit, a striking contrast to the Ara he first met and knew... the one who had helped learn to love again. It was fortifying, seeing her so happy with a unmistakeable spark of light behind those amber eyes...
Yes, thought Luka fondly, the view certainly is wonderful.
