06-28-2021, 10:42 AM
At first it had been impossible to go more than hours without picturing his face, his smile, the laughter in eyes so green they put emeralds to shame. To wonder at his kindness and the way he had seen the cracks in her chest, her heart, had seen the way she hurt to be so physically fragmented and made himself match her, promised her it wasn’t odd. She wasn’t odd. He had called her the inspiration, and though she would never admit it aloud, he had looked beautiful in some strange way. Fractures of light and gold collided with the dark. It hadn’t looked as broken as the way it felt inside her chest, like one whole that, in her, could never be united.
But as time had passed without any new encounters, she found that the shade of green in his eyes was getting harder to picture. She knew it had reminded her of raw stones buried in the earth, of summer grass after a rainstorm. But when she closed her eyes and tried to remember, the only thing she saw was green. Vague and vibrant but absolutely just an echo of the shade she’d thought she would never forget.
After that the rest of the details had started to fade too - and while none of it was entire, nothing erased completely, she knew the loss for what it was, felt it like an ache inside her chest. A fear that someday she would forget all of it, everything but the name and the memory of what it felt like to want someone. To want to know them, want to be the reason for one more of those twinkling smiles, want to know what had made them who they were. It had been too little time together, and she was foolish to have dwelled on it for so long as it was. She could be certain that he didn’t wonder about her in the same way, not when he had a life and a family and children.
So she forced him out of her mind, and though she did her best not to wonder, the memories visited her at every flash of chestnut she glimpsed through the trees, every muted rumble of distant amused laughter.
But it was good that they had not found eachother again, because as much as the memory of him continued to change, so did she. It had started with a halo hanging like a pale crown above her ears, glowing and silent and beautiful in a way that made warmth blossom inside some secret place in her chest. It made her feel as beautiful as her mother, as good and lovely. It dredged up old feelings of wanting to be an angel when she was just a girl, things she had buried as soon as she was old enough to realize the impossibility of it. But this, this had sparked a flicker of wonder again, of something like hope that kindled inside her.
Then a second halo had appeared, this one dark and crooked, overlapping the first on only one side as it hung unevenly above her head. She had stared at it for hours in the reflection of a small, dark pond, not understanding why or how or what it meant. She had hoped it would just disappear, and while she had understood that it was an empty kind of hope, it had still crushed that spark inside her chest when instead the changes grew worse. Or more. Maybe both, she was too numb to tell.
She hadn’t noticed the dark aura inside the shadows of the forest, but when she next ventured out into a small spot of sunshine, the dark had remained around her like a hazy black and grey fog too fond to let her go. Even her wings had changed, those metallic golden under-feathers now stained and smeared darker, tarnished by whatever this new dark inside her chest was. Whatever had changed her so quietly, so quickly. So completely.
There were other changes too. Moments where she had been walking in one place and disappeared only to reappear several yards away and markedly more tired. Instances where others seemed to know her fury and her pain, seemed to know more than they should about the things she was so careful to keep from her face. The shadows had remained though, darkness that pooled and simmered at even the slightest urging from her. It felt like only the good parts, the parts from her mother, were the ones that had abandoned her. Like the healing. The healing had gone, and once when she quietly took a wound from a child who had hurt themselves while playing, she had been shocked to feel the wounds erupt across her own knees instead.
She is lost in the reflection of whoever this thing is that she’s become, busy tracing the twin rings of light - one dark, one bright, one crooked, one right - when a voice finds her as if out of the haze of a dream. She doesn’t realize she’d done it, but the moment her mismatched gaze of black and gold lift from the surface of the small pond, she blasts him with the emotions that rise strangled inside her chest.
Shock.
Relief.
Affection.
Wariness.
Then the emotions are quiet again, receding like a tide inside her chest as she turns in the half-dark of the forests of home to greet someone that feels like a ghost. “Hello Nashua.” Of all the times she’s wondered about him, never once did she ever allow herself to imagine what she might say or do. So for a beat she is quiet, made so quiet by the wariness that feels like a rock wedged between her ribs, this giant cold thing she cannot breathe around. Then she takes a few steps closer, stopping before she thinks he’ll be able to make out the aura of dark or the tarnished gold beneath her wings. There is nothing she can do about the halos though.
“All this time and you haven’t managed to come up with something better than No Name?” The dark pain in her eyes recedes, pushed away by the faint warmth of amusement as she shamelessly studies his face and those eyes and that specific shade of chestnut like burning copper ore. “Well?” She says, and there is a note of expectancy in the delicate quiet of her whisper-soft voice. “Did you manage to keep up your end of the bargain?” Her eyes drift from his face to the places his wounds had been, careful in their silent study before moving on to take in the rest of his decidedly unmarred body, perfect wings. He looks so different in this half-light of day. His chestnut is brighter, the gold stripes less distinct but somehow more a part of his body without the dark to disembody the light of them - and she can see the detail of wings that are tawny and brown and deep mahogany, almost flaxen underneath in their lightness.
She blinks, and her expression is something both soft and guarded as her eyes return to his face, and because he hasn’t answered yet, and because this silence feels suddenly precarious, she asks, “Are you well?” Because she has no way to heal him now except to take his wounds, and she is quite sure that if this is the purpose for his visit, she will do it without question.
But as time had passed without any new encounters, she found that the shade of green in his eyes was getting harder to picture. She knew it had reminded her of raw stones buried in the earth, of summer grass after a rainstorm. But when she closed her eyes and tried to remember, the only thing she saw was green. Vague and vibrant but absolutely just an echo of the shade she’d thought she would never forget.
After that the rest of the details had started to fade too - and while none of it was entire, nothing erased completely, she knew the loss for what it was, felt it like an ache inside her chest. A fear that someday she would forget all of it, everything but the name and the memory of what it felt like to want someone. To want to know them, want to be the reason for one more of those twinkling smiles, want to know what had made them who they were. It had been too little time together, and she was foolish to have dwelled on it for so long as it was. She could be certain that he didn’t wonder about her in the same way, not when he had a life and a family and children.
So she forced him out of her mind, and though she did her best not to wonder, the memories visited her at every flash of chestnut she glimpsed through the trees, every muted rumble of distant amused laughter.
But it was good that they had not found eachother again, because as much as the memory of him continued to change, so did she. It had started with a halo hanging like a pale crown above her ears, glowing and silent and beautiful in a way that made warmth blossom inside some secret place in her chest. It made her feel as beautiful as her mother, as good and lovely. It dredged up old feelings of wanting to be an angel when she was just a girl, things she had buried as soon as she was old enough to realize the impossibility of it. But this, this had sparked a flicker of wonder again, of something like hope that kindled inside her.
Then a second halo had appeared, this one dark and crooked, overlapping the first on only one side as it hung unevenly above her head. She had stared at it for hours in the reflection of a small, dark pond, not understanding why or how or what it meant. She had hoped it would just disappear, and while she had understood that it was an empty kind of hope, it had still crushed that spark inside her chest when instead the changes grew worse. Or more. Maybe both, she was too numb to tell.
She hadn’t noticed the dark aura inside the shadows of the forest, but when she next ventured out into a small spot of sunshine, the dark had remained around her like a hazy black and grey fog too fond to let her go. Even her wings had changed, those metallic golden under-feathers now stained and smeared darker, tarnished by whatever this new dark inside her chest was. Whatever had changed her so quietly, so quickly. So completely.
There were other changes too. Moments where she had been walking in one place and disappeared only to reappear several yards away and markedly more tired. Instances where others seemed to know her fury and her pain, seemed to know more than they should about the things she was so careful to keep from her face. The shadows had remained though, darkness that pooled and simmered at even the slightest urging from her. It felt like only the good parts, the parts from her mother, were the ones that had abandoned her. Like the healing. The healing had gone, and once when she quietly took a wound from a child who had hurt themselves while playing, she had been shocked to feel the wounds erupt across her own knees instead.
She is lost in the reflection of whoever this thing is that she’s become, busy tracing the twin rings of light - one dark, one bright, one crooked, one right - when a voice finds her as if out of the haze of a dream. She doesn’t realize she’d done it, but the moment her mismatched gaze of black and gold lift from the surface of the small pond, she blasts him with the emotions that rise strangled inside her chest.
Shock.
Relief.
Affection.
Wariness.
Then the emotions are quiet again, receding like a tide inside her chest as she turns in the half-dark of the forests of home to greet someone that feels like a ghost. “Hello Nashua.” Of all the times she’s wondered about him, never once did she ever allow herself to imagine what she might say or do. So for a beat she is quiet, made so quiet by the wariness that feels like a rock wedged between her ribs, this giant cold thing she cannot breathe around. Then she takes a few steps closer, stopping before she thinks he’ll be able to make out the aura of dark or the tarnished gold beneath her wings. There is nothing she can do about the halos though.
“All this time and you haven’t managed to come up with something better than No Name?” The dark pain in her eyes recedes, pushed away by the faint warmth of amusement as she shamelessly studies his face and those eyes and that specific shade of chestnut like burning copper ore. “Well?” She says, and there is a note of expectancy in the delicate quiet of her whisper-soft voice. “Did you manage to keep up your end of the bargain?” Her eyes drift from his face to the places his wounds had been, careful in their silent study before moving on to take in the rest of his decidedly unmarred body, perfect wings. He looks so different in this half-light of day. His chestnut is brighter, the gold stripes less distinct but somehow more a part of his body without the dark to disembody the light of them - and she can see the detail of wings that are tawny and brown and deep mahogany, almost flaxen underneath in their lightness.
She blinks, and her expression is something both soft and guarded as her eyes return to his face, and because he hasn’t answered yet, and because this silence feels suddenly precarious, she asks, “Are you well?” Because she has no way to heal him now except to take his wounds, and she is quite sure that if this is the purpose for his visit, she will do it without question.
ILLUMINAE
we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break
@Nashua