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you there, any - jarris - 06-07-2019
and at once i knew
i was not magnificent
Sometimes the breath catches.
Sometimes the cage of his ribs aches and his head swims, weak and weary.
For how long has he traveled? How far has he gone?
What does he have to show for it?
He cannot remember now how he felt when the nerves hummed and the blood pulse and he learned that he would live forever. But there are gone now, all of them, everyone he ever loved. And he has walked until his knees ached, gnashed his teeth on rocks until his mouth bled. He has walked until there was nowhere left to go but home.
He speaks their names sometimes. Plumeria, he murmurs, just for the taste of it. Charity. Just to remember that he lived once. Kensley and Kennice and Vaticana. He has had plenty of time to think about them all. They are precious, stolen moments, when he does not have to feel alone.
But he is alone. Dreadfully. Irreparably.
He stands now at the edge of someplace he doesn’t recognize. Is it fate that has delivered him here or merely habit? It is not the home he remembers and his beloved Tundra is gone. But there is a pulse in the earth that feels familiar.
There is some roucous stirring in his pulse as he blinks into the light streaming through the canopy of trees. There is no one left to remember him, the once-king, the ice-king, so he hangs his head and contents himself for the moment with simply imagining all of them here.
Perhaps he’ll make his way down to the beach later, as if he might find them there, preserved in some way. As if they exist anywhere other than in the cavern of his mind. For now, he is here and they are not and his permanence in a world that is otherwise temporary puts a vicious ache in his heart.
son of caden & fray
once-king of the hidden tundra
RE: you there, any - Plumeria - 06-07-2019
She isn’t dead, but she feels like she might be.
She isn’t a ghost, but the way she feels so paper-thin, like the wind can slip right through her, she thinks she could be one.
His wanderlust had never been something that she could tame. No matter how hard their hearts tried to keep them together, no matter how fiercely their souls were intertwined, there were some things about him so wild that not even she could subdue.
And she would have never wanted to.
She had loved him for who he was, even if his gypsy soul could never fully belong to her. She had loved him even when he left, and every time that he had returned, even if a little piece of her shattered each time. She is broken and half-stitched back together, countless times, until this is all she knows, until she is just a tattered shell of something that had once been vibrant and beautiful.
She doesn’t stay here, where they had once called home, because it feels empty without him. She doesn’t stay because every flash of silver makes her heart jump into her throat, and when she spins in hopes of catching those familiar eyes with her own, she is always disappointed. She had always been one to starve herself on hope and wishful thinking, but eventually, even that flame was diminished.
She disappears along with it, and as the years go by, she doesn’t even miss herself anymore.
When she returns, she doesn’t know why. She cannot explain the magnetic pull that brings her back here. She does not notice the way the lands have changed, or that every face is a stranger, because she is only looking for one. There was a reason that the wind brought her here, and foolish girl, she lets that ember of hope spark inside her chest.
She finds him, and her breath catches in her throat.
Jarris. She thinks his name, because when she goes to speak her voice turns to ash on her tongue. She doesn’t realize that she is moving towards him, and that she hasn’t dared to blink since first finding him — so afraid that this is some delusional reverie, that her heart has finally found a way to play tricks on her mind.
She is different when she stands before him. The lines of her face are harsher, from years of solitude and waiting and hoping. But her dark brown doe-eyes are still rich and sweet when she stares up at him through a tangled red forelock, and she reaches to touch him, slowly, carefully. But her skin never finds his skin, as she withdraws cautiously, afraid that this apparition might disintegrate before her very eyes. “It’s you,” she whispers in a voice so soft, so scared and yet so hopeful, her delicate heart kick-starting into a nervous hum. “Do you remember me?”
P L U M E R I A
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
She isn’t a ghost, but the way she feels so paper-thin, like the wind can slip right through her, she thinks she could be one.
His wanderlust had never been something that she could tame. No matter how hard their hearts tried to keep them together, no matter how fiercely their souls were intertwined, there were some things about him so wild that not even she could subdue.
And she would have never wanted to.
She had loved him for who he was, even if his gypsy soul could never fully belong to her. She had loved him even when he left, and every time that he had returned, even if a little piece of her shattered each time. She is broken and half-stitched back together, countless times, until this is all she knows, until she is just a tattered shell of something that had once been vibrant and beautiful.
She doesn’t stay here, where they had once called home, because it feels empty without him. She doesn’t stay because every flash of silver makes her heart jump into her throat, and when she spins in hopes of catching those familiar eyes with her own, she is always disappointed. She had always been one to starve herself on hope and wishful thinking, but eventually, even that flame was diminished.
She disappears along with it, and as the years go by, she doesn’t even miss herself anymore.
When she returns, she doesn’t know why. She cannot explain the magnetic pull that brings her back here. She does not notice the way the lands have changed, or that every face is a stranger, because she is only looking for one. There was a reason that the wind brought her here, and foolish girl, she lets that ember of hope spark inside her chest.
She finds him, and her breath catches in her throat.
Jarris. She thinks his name, because when she goes to speak her voice turns to ash on her tongue. She doesn’t realize that she is moving towards him, and that she hasn’t dared to blink since first finding him — so afraid that this is some delusional reverie, that her heart has finally found a way to play tricks on her mind.
She is different when she stands before him. The lines of her face are harsher, from years of solitude and waiting and hoping. But her dark brown doe-eyes are still rich and sweet when she stares up at him through a tangled red forelock, and she reaches to touch him, slowly, carefully. But her skin never finds his skin, as she withdraws cautiously, afraid that this apparition might disintegrate before her very eyes. “It’s you,” she whispers in a voice so soft, so scared and yet so hopeful, her delicate heart kick-starting into a nervous hum. “Do you remember me?”
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
RE: you there, any - jarris - 06-07-2019
and at once i knew
i was not magnificent
How peculiar, the way the wind shifts. How strange that when he lifts his head and shifts his gaze and sees her standing there, bathed in a beam of light, his expression does not register surprise. There is no pulse of shock and adrenaline does not pollute his sordid bloodstream. The expression softens, though. And there, in the furthest corners of his mouth (stained faintly still from all that blood), there is a stirring. The muscles quiver but he does not smile, though he tries.
For a moment, he simply studies her.
How beautiful she had always been. And even now, the angles of her face sharper, the fading light behind her eyes.
How fiercely he had loved her.
But they had learned the hard way, the two of them together, that love was never enough.
And this is what they have to show for it.
The wanderer and his ghost come back to him.
He does not react because he does not believe her real. He looks at her and he knows that she is nothing beyond a mirage constructed from all the wishing he, too, has done. All the pining. The vicious longing. His want has teeth and it has torn him apart, shredded what of his heart he had taken with him when he left (leaving the rest of it behind, of course, because it belonged to her).
She speaks and the sound of her voice is so sweet that it sets him ablaze. He had clung to it as fiercely as he could but it, too, had eventually been eroded by the passing of time and all the miles he’d wedged between them.
“Plumeria,” he whispers, the expression soft still, “of course I remember you.”
His beloved Plumeria.
“I miss you,” he says and admitting it out loud, telling her ghost, it cleaves his heart in two.
son of caden & fray
once-king of the hidden tundra
RE: you there, any - Plumeria - 06-07-2019
When she stands there, face to face, it breaks her heart in two to realize how much his memory had faded. She had been so sure that by thinking of him everyday, and dreaming of him every night, that she had managed to preserve what she had left of him. Just an image, but an image so clear that sometimes it felt real. She hadn’t realized until now, with him so close, that even that had been lost. Frayed at the edges, and the picture worn and tired, and she has to concede that a memory can never serve as a replacement for the real thing.
Her heart is nervously fluttering in her chest, rising up in her throat until she might choke on it, when his eyes finally meet hers. She had fought so hard all those years to make him hers, even if it was just a fraction of him. He was never meant to belong to anyone, but there were moments — some of them fleeting and electric-charged, and others that were slow, lingering, and sweet — that made her think that maybe he was hers. The idea that he might not remember her was unbearable.
He says her name, and it sends a rush down the ridge of her spine, firing along every nerve until she feels almost breathless with it.
“You don’t have to miss me,” her voice is impossibly soft from being alone and never needing to use it, but somehow it still sounds so loud in her ears. This time she steps forward, and she lets the softness of her lips find the familiar groove of his jaw. She breathes him in, and he smells of forests and ice and everything that she has been looking for and everything that she has lost, her soft brown eyes closing as she says in a way that is almost pleading, “I’m right here.”
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
RE: you there, any - jarris - 06-07-2019
and at once i knew
i was not magnificent
If you had asked him – though no one asked anything of him anymore, really – he would have said that when your ghosts return to you, they come back to you just as you remember them. He has never known her this way, angular and quiet, the edge of her voice barbed from disuse.
How could he have known to imagine her this way?
The mind surprises him, he thinks, with all the things it’s capable of.
She touches him and he sucks in a sharp breath and he realizes that this is home. It is not the land and all the ways it’s changed. It is not the distant feeling of familiarity in this forest or the meadow along its gilded edge. It is the way she touches him and how it chases a tremor down the ladder of his spine.
This is home.
She is home.
His beloved Plumeria.
His weary eyes drift closed and the touch arrests the air in his lungs and, for one split second, the bastard heart in the cavern of his chest.
How long has it been since he felt it?
Years. So many years.
“Will you stay with me awhile?” he asks.
He knows that ghosts are vulnerable to the shifting of wind and the fickle wiles of the mind, but he asks it anyway. Because he cannot bear to watch her fade away. Because, for the moment, she is here and he does not have to think about what it means. He does not have to think of her on the beach, alone.
And then he touches her, too. Lays his weary head heavy on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Plumeria,” he says. “I’m sorry that I did not come back for you when there was still time for us.”
son of caden & fray
once-king of the hidden tundra
RE: you there, any - Plumeria - 06-07-2019
He doesn’t think she is real.
She isn’t sure when that finally clicks into place. Something in the way he looks at her, perhaps, like he could pass through her the same way the wind does. Like he is looking at her, but not at her. It makes her want to break down, and the sudden surge of anguish that builds in her chest like a wave nearly drowns her. She hasn’t felt anything for years, and now, suddenly, every emotion is running rampant. The extreme high of first seeing him was followed too quickly by the crashing feeling of realizing he truly thought her to be gone. And maybe apart of her feels like she should have kept it that way. He would eventually disappear, and he would go with the notion of just leaving behind a ghost, melancholy but accepting that she had never actually been there. A bittersweet memory of something that had once existed.
And she, she would be left to dissolve into dust, and maybe this time, he really would be leaving a ghost.
“Of course I’ll stay,” she says to him, and she wonders if he can feel the way her voice aches. Every word stings across her heart, because even feeling the way she does, she would never tell him no. She also could not deny the selfish feeling of want and need, and caving into it, she completely closes the gap between them.
The feel of his head against her shoulder melts her, and she rests her forehead beneath the arch of his neck. “How do I convince you that I’m real?” Her lips are against the slope of his shoulder, tracing the curves and ripple of muscle, and wondering how she has survived so many years without this, without him. The warmth of her breath fans across his storm-gray skin, and when her chest presses into his own, she cannot comprehend how he can’t feel the way her heart beats so hard and loud, so very much alive, and so completely still his. “Tell me what to do, Jarris, and I’ll do it.”
P L U M E R I A
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
She isn’t sure when that finally clicks into place. Something in the way he looks at her, perhaps, like he could pass through her the same way the wind does. Like he is looking at her, but not at her. It makes her want to break down, and the sudden surge of anguish that builds in her chest like a wave nearly drowns her. She hasn’t felt anything for years, and now, suddenly, every emotion is running rampant. The extreme high of first seeing him was followed too quickly by the crashing feeling of realizing he truly thought her to be gone. And maybe apart of her feels like she should have kept it that way. He would eventually disappear, and he would go with the notion of just leaving behind a ghost, melancholy but accepting that she had never actually been there. A bittersweet memory of something that had once existed.
And she, she would be left to dissolve into dust, and maybe this time, he really would be leaving a ghost.
“Of course I’ll stay,” she says to him, and she wonders if he can feel the way her voice aches. Every word stings across her heart, because even feeling the way she does, she would never tell him no. She also could not deny the selfish feeling of want and need, and caving into it, she completely closes the gap between them.
The feel of his head against her shoulder melts her, and she rests her forehead beneath the arch of his neck. “How do I convince you that I’m real?” Her lips are against the slope of his shoulder, tracing the curves and ripple of muscle, and wondering how she has survived so many years without this, without him. The warmth of her breath fans across his storm-gray skin, and when her chest presses into his own, she cannot comprehend how he can’t feel the way her heart beats so hard and loud, so very much alive, and so completely still his. “Tell me what to do, Jarris, and I’ll do it.”
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
RE: you there, any - jarris - 06-08-2019
and at once i knew
i was not magnificent
He has never encountered a ghost before.
Does not know how to convince a ghost that she is a ghost.
It has been so long since he last saw her, touched her, felt her, that she cannot possibly be anything but a ghost.
But her breath is warm as it shifts along the slope of his shoulder. And she smells so sweet that it puts a new ache in that bastard heart of his. He thinks that perhaps there is not enough room in the cavern of his chest for both his heart and his grief.
But she said she’d stay and that is enough for now. It is enough simply to stand here and remember their time together. He is selfish (of course, he always has been) in his refusal to think about anything other than how happy they had been once. Just the two of them.
“You can’t possibly be real, Plumeria,” he murmurs without lifting his head or opening his eyes. He does not want to think about the world beyond them. He does not want to think about the curious, prying eyes and bent ears, yearning for a glimpse of the storm-cloud muttering to himself.
“Everyone is gone,” he tells her and he sighs and it is a world-weary thing. “Our children,” he says, though he has not looked for them. So many years have passed between them. And, though he cannot possibly know it, so many terrible things have happened in the interim. “I hope you’re taking good care of them.” He lifts his head then, rests his chin on her withers.
“You were always so much better at it than me.”
son of caden & fray
once-king of the hidden tundra
RE: you there, any - Plumeria - 06-09-2019
She could have never predicted that actually having him here was just as painful as being away from him. Even with her lips against his skin, even with her heart beating in her chest, he still cannot grasp that she is here, and it breaks her. She can feel herself splintering apart, she can feel a cold desperation spreading in her veins until it ceases hold of her heart, and that painfully soft plea returns to her voice when she says into the tangled strands of his mane, “But I am real. I’m just as real as I’ve always been.” As real as the first time she had met him in the meadow, and all the hundreds of times in between. As real as the last time she had held him, however long ago that had been. There was no way in knowing that it was going to be the last time; there never was.
But even when she stands there with a pain in her chest that it is almost tangible – a feeling so strong it could manifest itself into something physical enough to hand to him – she marvels at the fact that nothing has changed. How many countless times had one of them stood before the other, withering and broken, seeking forgiveness or some other kind of mercy that only the other could provide? There is something distorted and nostalgic about this familiar anguish that fills her up until she’s no longer empty, until she is full of memories that had once been so painful and yet had now somehow transformed into something sweet.
The only thing she has ever known is how to fight for him, and it is still the only thing she knows will never change.
“I know,” she agrees with him quietly. Most of their children she has not seen nearly as long as the last time she saw him, and sometimes recalling their faces is more painful than even his own. “I don’t know where they are, but I like to think that they’re fine. We raised them to survive anything.” She answers him truthfully, even though it contradicts what he thinks; she’s not dead, and she has no idea if their children are or not.
His last words bring a slow smile to her face, one that he cannot see with her head resting where it does near his chest, but it is evident in her voice all the same when she disagrees with him, “You have always been a great father. Our children were lucky to have you.” He still cannot see when the smile fades from her lips, or when the melancholy returns to her dark brown eyes that now close as a sigh shudders from her chest. “I’ve been lucky to have you, too.” Whenever you choose me, she doesn’t say, and whenever you come back, remains a sorrowful thought inside of her head.
P L U M E R I A
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
But even when she stands there with a pain in her chest that it is almost tangible – a feeling so strong it could manifest itself into something physical enough to hand to him – she marvels at the fact that nothing has changed. How many countless times had one of them stood before the other, withering and broken, seeking forgiveness or some other kind of mercy that only the other could provide? There is something distorted and nostalgic about this familiar anguish that fills her up until she’s no longer empty, until she is full of memories that had once been so painful and yet had now somehow transformed into something sweet.
The only thing she has ever known is how to fight for him, and it is still the only thing she knows will never change.
“I know,” she agrees with him quietly. Most of their children she has not seen nearly as long as the last time she saw him, and sometimes recalling their faces is more painful than even his own. “I don’t know where they are, but I like to think that they’re fine. We raised them to survive anything.” She answers him truthfully, even though it contradicts what he thinks; she’s not dead, and she has no idea if their children are or not.
His last words bring a slow smile to her face, one that he cannot see with her head resting where it does near his chest, but it is evident in her voice all the same when she disagrees with him, “You have always been a great father. Our children were lucky to have you.” He still cannot see when the smile fades from her lips, or when the melancholy returns to her dark brown eyes that now close as a sigh shudders from her chest. “I’ve been lucky to have you, too.” Whenever you choose me, she doesn’t say, and whenever you come back, remains a sorrowful thought inside of her head.
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
RE: you there, any - jarris - 06-13-2019
and at once i knew
i was not magnificent
Finally, he smiles. It is a rueful thing, steeped in sorrow.
As she insist that she is real and he begins to think that certainly she’ll begin to blur at the edges soon.
If it is a dream, though, it is a dream he has never had before.
How many times has he prayed for it? Just a glimpse of her, that was all he needed.
Do ghosts have heartbeats?
He can feel her pulse in her skin. How it jumps up to greet him when he skims his tired, wretched mouth along the fine slope of her shoulder. What a blessed thing it is.
He remembers, quite fondly, the countless hours he had spent committing that heartbeat to memory. Focused so hard on it that his own pulse rearranged itself to keep time.
It occurs to him – on the back of a half-formed thought – that maybe he’s a ghost, too. And perhaps this is some kind of purgatory where he must make amends. This is where he repents. This is where he kisses her fiercely and carves the apologies out of his chest.
It pains him too greatly to dwell too long on their children and how they raised them and how he was absent for most of their lives. Chasing something he’d never catch and didn’t have a name for. What was it that had spurred him into motion all his life? Why wouldn’t it let him just stand still?
He drags in a shuddering breath and the smile dims at its edges and he presses closed his eyes. He swallows thickly and tries hard to steady his swimming head. He had never been a great father. And nobody who ever held him should have considered themselves lucky.
“I was no good to you, Plumeria,” he says and the words are barbed and they cut his throat and they throb in the air between them. “I was never any good to you.” Never any good to or for anyone, he thinks but doesn’t say. Just lays his cheek wearily against her shoulder again. “If there was ever anything in this world I didn't deserve, it was you.” The words hurt so terribly to say out loud that the effort furrows his brow but his voice does not waver.
“There are so many things I would do differently,” he murmurs. Were their fleeting glimpses at happiness worth all the pain that separated them? If he could go back and change things, would he have spared her?
son of caden & fray
once-king of the hidden tundra
RE: you there, any - Plumeria - 06-15-2019
His lips against her shoulder makes her tremble, and it sends a warmth that spreads like wildfire through the network of her veins. There has never been a time that she did not want for his touch, for any glimmer of hope that he loved her, that she meant something to him. Sometimes it was so abundantly clear that she wondered how she ever doubted him; other times it left her confused and wilted. But she had never begged him to stay. She had never pleaded with him to love her, or to change in a way that was better suited to her. She had loved him instead with every piece of her shattered heart, even if she cut herself repeatedly on the edges of it. She had never recoiled when his skin smelled of someone else, had never questioned when she met children with the same wayward spark in their eyes as his.
There was some small fragment of him that was hers, and she clung to it, as she does now.
He says he doesn’t deserve her and she can feel fear begin to thread its way into her mind. He has done this before. He has pushed her away in an effort to save her, but it had never done her any good. All she did was wait for him, wavering and heartbroken and desperate for a spark of hope. “Don’t say that,” she whispers into his neck, her voice impossibly soft as she tries to keep the tears at bay. She can feel them beginning to burn the back of her eyes, but she wills them away as she presses her face into the storm-cloud of his mane.
“I wouldn’t change anything about you, or about us,” her voice is stronger now, hiding the way she can feel herself beginning to break apart. But she has always been a poor liar, and has never been very good at hiding the broken heart that beat furiously on her sleeve. “There is no one in this world that I would have ever wanted to replace you with.” She doesn’t know if the same could be said for her. She was nothing remarkable, not in comparison to the vibrant beauty he was always surrounded with, but it didn’t change the fact that every little piece of her was his.
P L U M E R I A
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
There was some small fragment of him that was hers, and she clung to it, as she does now.
He says he doesn’t deserve her and she can feel fear begin to thread its way into her mind. He has done this before. He has pushed her away in an effort to save her, but it had never done her any good. All she did was wait for him, wavering and heartbroken and desperate for a spark of hope. “Don’t say that,” she whispers into his neck, her voice impossibly soft as she tries to keep the tears at bay. She can feel them beginning to burn the back of her eyes, but she wills them away as she presses her face into the storm-cloud of his mane.
“I wouldn’t change anything about you, or about us,” her voice is stronger now, hiding the way she can feel herself beginning to break apart. But she has always been a poor liar, and has never been very good at hiding the broken heart that beat furiously on her sleeve. “There is no one in this world that I would have ever wanted to replace you with.” She doesn’t know if the same could be said for her. She was nothing remarkable, not in comparison to the vibrant beauty he was always surrounded with, but it didn’t change the fact that every little piece of her was his.
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.