He is struck by a wave of emotions at her words, feelings that conflict and combat each other. Selfishly, he does not want her gone from this earth, he wants her here, because even if their meetings currently are strange ones, with children sired by others at their sides, he can think of – hope for – a future where perhaps they are together in something like joy, where there are perhaps more children. Children created from love and not a momentarily lust (or, far worse, coercion). But who would he be to deny her such a thing, if it was truly her wish? For did he himself not walk into the ocean at Tabytha’s heels, leaving their children on the beach? Did he not spend years waiting passively for death, thinking of it fondly?
(Do such thoughts not cross his mind, still? Sometimes, he looks at deadly things – a cliff face, the dark sea waters – and thinks maybe this time, I wouldn’t come back.)
So he doesn’t beg her not to – not yet – but he does ask a question.
“Do you think you could find peace here?”
Here means alive, in Beqanna, but here means more, too. It means with me. But he doesn’t say that. He’s such a coward.
He smiles softly at her question, and thinks of the choking taste of saltwater. How he had cried out their names before going in, the names of those he had loved and wronged, not knowing the list would only grow.
“Once,” he says, “someone I loved went into the ocean, and I followed. I was very old, and long past my time.”
He pauses, wondering how to word the rest of it.
“I don’t know if it was peaceful or not. I don’t remember anything, except then one day I woke up in the meadow and my body was young again. I couldn’t remember much of my life before, though most of it has since come back to me. When I woke up, I very much wanted to go back. Now...I don’t know if I do.”
There are moments. But he has a son to look after. He has her, for however long she chooses to stay, either with him or on this earth. That’s enough, isn’t it?
@[Agetta]