10-25-2021, 06:08 PM
iridian
Realization blossoms inside her in shades of pink and gold and orange, far brighter than any earthly sunrise. It wraps delicate fingers around that beating thing inside her chest, that fragile heart caged like a bird within the curve of her ribs, and it squeezes and crushes until she is not sure she still remembers how to breathe. Until she’s not sure she wants to, not sure she can stop.
It is how he holds her so easily when she returns to the curve of his warm golden chest, how he reaches down to touch her neck and promises her something she is sure she does not deserve. That she matters, of all things. She realizes in this moment that it does not matter how or when she leaves him, because she thinks her sudden absence will leave ripples in this tangle of their friendship. Echoes that will outlive her long after she’s gone. It feels like a shade of arrogance to think this, but she feels suddenly sure that one day he will look back and wonder why she never came back.
She knows she would wonder.
She would wonder if it was something she did wrong, a choice she made that broke the ties that had so easily bound them in the first place. His absence would draw hairline fractures of doubt over the delicate white of her chest, and one day those fractures would break apart into something more.
But he is not like her. He is strong and he is good, and he is brave where she is all wide-eyes and worry at the thing he says next.
“I am real.” She says with some uncertainty, and that voice is like summer, like starry nights filled with fireflies and the whisper of a passing breeze. She is wide, luminous eyes, a shade too dark to be sapphire, too bright to be gray. The color of late summer storms and the downpour of rain when it feels too cold for the season. “I don’t have a body, Firion. I don’t know what I would be if you took me from the dreamscape.” But it’s thoughts of an untethered spirit not unlike a ricocheting ball of burning white light that fills her imagination now, and the wonder that he cares enough to try and keep her. To make her something real and tangible.
She presses her cheek to his shoulder, tucks her wings in tight like it might help her fit more easily against his chest. Because this is the only place she would ever have the courage to be so honest with him. “I think the dreamscape is dying, Firion.” She is whispering now, buckling under the weight of horror and relief and burning guilt. “I think maybe I’m dying too.” She says the words like she is telling him she’s sorry, like she is asking for absolution from the guilt of this confession, like if she speaks any louder than this brittle whisper the whole world will fall apart around them.
Maybe it already has.
“I wish you could.” She says the words without thinking, without testing the weight of them before they land like stones upon his back. “I wish I could stay with you forever.” Though the words are sad, she looks up into that familiar gold and dark face with a gentle kind of smile born from the affection inside her chest, from the gratitude of this gift of friendship when she had no one else. “You made everything worth it.” She says, and there is a shade of sorrow that slips into those rainy blue eyes, a shade of grief she had not meant for him to see. “Thank you, Firion.”
It is how he holds her so easily when she returns to the curve of his warm golden chest, how he reaches down to touch her neck and promises her something she is sure she does not deserve. That she matters, of all things. She realizes in this moment that it does not matter how or when she leaves him, because she thinks her sudden absence will leave ripples in this tangle of their friendship. Echoes that will outlive her long after she’s gone. It feels like a shade of arrogance to think this, but she feels suddenly sure that one day he will look back and wonder why she never came back.
She knows she would wonder.
She would wonder if it was something she did wrong, a choice she made that broke the ties that had so easily bound them in the first place. His absence would draw hairline fractures of doubt over the delicate white of her chest, and one day those fractures would break apart into something more.
But he is not like her. He is strong and he is good, and he is brave where she is all wide-eyes and worry at the thing he says next.
“I am real.” She says with some uncertainty, and that voice is like summer, like starry nights filled with fireflies and the whisper of a passing breeze. She is wide, luminous eyes, a shade too dark to be sapphire, too bright to be gray. The color of late summer storms and the downpour of rain when it feels too cold for the season. “I don’t have a body, Firion. I don’t know what I would be if you took me from the dreamscape.” But it’s thoughts of an untethered spirit not unlike a ricocheting ball of burning white light that fills her imagination now, and the wonder that he cares enough to try and keep her. To make her something real and tangible.
She presses her cheek to his shoulder, tucks her wings in tight like it might help her fit more easily against his chest. Because this is the only place she would ever have the courage to be so honest with him. “I think the dreamscape is dying, Firion.” She is whispering now, buckling under the weight of horror and relief and burning guilt. “I think maybe I’m dying too.” She says the words like she is telling him she’s sorry, like she is asking for absolution from the guilt of this confession, like if she speaks any louder than this brittle whisper the whole world will fall apart around them.
Maybe it already has.
“I wish you could.” She says the words without thinking, without testing the weight of them before they land like stones upon his back. “I wish I could stay with you forever.” Though the words are sad, she looks up into that familiar gold and dark face with a gentle kind of smile born from the affection inside her chest, from the gratitude of this gift of friendship when she had no one else. “You made everything worth it.” She says, and there is a shade of sorrow that slips into those rainy blue eyes, a shade of grief she had not meant for him to see. “Thank you, Firion.”
@firion