09-13-2020, 09:32 PM
He hides his secrets so well, keeps them pulled down into the darkest depths of those dusted gold eyes that she does not even suspect for a moment how he is so deliberately keeping something from her. She can sense the quiet, the way it lingers over him and softens those eyes so they are just a shade duller, but she has not noticed the dark that fills the cracks in him, has not noticed that he is made of these cracks.
She is too busy exploring the shape of his smile each time he gifts it to her, and the way it almost always chases a lightness into his eyes. Except not this time, and it makes her eyes narrow ever so slightly in silent wonder, her delicate head angled to the side in unasked question.
It stays unasked, because then he is speaking and it isn’t about that flicker of static she had seen in his eyes, the weight of a man instead of a boy, with a whole world weighed down upon shoulders not yet strong enough to hold it. He’s using a voice that doesn’t quite sound boyish anymore either, too husky like he enjoys the heat that creeps into her face when he uses it. “I’d like that too.” She says in a whisper, imagining a place she could come find him each time his world grew dark and his lids heavy. But the idea of this, of him, of a strange new ache blossoming in her delicate chest has scattered a war of butterflies into her stomach all over again.
He makes it so hard to think straight.
Where should we start? He asks, and she shakes her head so hard that even her delicate chestnut ears make soft thwacking sounds. She is trying to loose those fluttering wings, but all they do is swirl inside her until she feels shy and warm and more than a little confused because that smile on his face is louder than any thought she can seem to pull together. “First you have to stop smiling at me like that,” she insists so softly, plaintive as those luminous navy eyes shine shyly with unfamiliar heat, “it is very distracting.” But she can’t smother her little sunshine smile either.
She stands, shaking her whole body again like she can shake the magic of this boy off too. Her wings unfurl to catch a breeze that appears suddenly to ruffle the red and blue feathers. The air smells of ocean now, because it is one of her favorites, but it overlaps with another smell of damp forest after rain. She doesn’t realize the two don’t go together, has only even known the eccentricities of the dreamscape, not the limitations of reality. “First you tell me all the things that feel like home. When you close your eyes before you sleep, where is it you want to wake up?” And she waits for him to close his eyes and tell her what he sees.
She is too busy exploring the shape of his smile each time he gifts it to her, and the way it almost always chases a lightness into his eyes. Except not this time, and it makes her eyes narrow ever so slightly in silent wonder, her delicate head angled to the side in unasked question.
It stays unasked, because then he is speaking and it isn’t about that flicker of static she had seen in his eyes, the weight of a man instead of a boy, with a whole world weighed down upon shoulders not yet strong enough to hold it. He’s using a voice that doesn’t quite sound boyish anymore either, too husky like he enjoys the heat that creeps into her face when he uses it. “I’d like that too.” She says in a whisper, imagining a place she could come find him each time his world grew dark and his lids heavy. But the idea of this, of him, of a strange new ache blossoming in her delicate chest has scattered a war of butterflies into her stomach all over again.
He makes it so hard to think straight.
Where should we start? He asks, and she shakes her head so hard that even her delicate chestnut ears make soft thwacking sounds. She is trying to loose those fluttering wings, but all they do is swirl inside her until she feels shy and warm and more than a little confused because that smile on his face is louder than any thought she can seem to pull together. “First you have to stop smiling at me like that,” she insists so softly, plaintive as those luminous navy eyes shine shyly with unfamiliar heat, “it is very distracting.” But she can’t smother her little sunshine smile either.
She stands, shaking her whole body again like she can shake the magic of this boy off too. Her wings unfurl to catch a breeze that appears suddenly to ruffle the red and blue feathers. The air smells of ocean now, because it is one of her favorites, but it overlaps with another smell of damp forest after rain. She doesn’t realize the two don’t go together, has only even known the eccentricities of the dreamscape, not the limitations of reality. “First you tell me all the things that feel like home. When you close your eyes before you sleep, where is it you want to wake up?” And she waits for him to close his eyes and tell her what he sees.
iridian
we are infinite as the universe we hold inside