03-23-2023, 11:39 AM
There had been a world before this one.
He thinks that certainly there will be a world after it, too.
He knows nothing but change, this constant metamorphosis, seas rising and skies splitting open. There had been absolute darkness once, too. Creatures have emerged from each of them: the risen sea, the cleaved sky, the terrible darkness. And he has watched it change, unmoved.
There has been some other cosmic shift, he can feel it, but it is as inconsequential to him as the rest have been. He is a constant, Hadrien. Not an immovable force, no, but a thing seemingly immune to the way things have changed.
He has found the forest to be the most comfortable place to loiter, but he has chosen instead to roam today. Spring is in full-swing, he can tell it in the way the meadow blooms. However, it is not the flowers that catch his attention but a glint of gold in the sunlight. He has seen many unfamiliar things, but this is perhaps the most compelling and it beckons him further from the edge of the forest.
How blinding the light that surrounds her.
He stops, head tilted.
He sees then that she is smiling and he hesitates.
(He is no joy-thief, Hadrien, he does not want to disturb her.
But then, isn’t it too late?)
“Sorry,” he says, not a greeting at all. “You just—”
But he cannot finish his thought, if there had even been one at all.
He thinks that certainly there will be a world after it, too.
He knows nothing but change, this constant metamorphosis, seas rising and skies splitting open. There had been absolute darkness once, too. Creatures have emerged from each of them: the risen sea, the cleaved sky, the terrible darkness. And he has watched it change, unmoved.
There has been some other cosmic shift, he can feel it, but it is as inconsequential to him as the rest have been. He is a constant, Hadrien. Not an immovable force, no, but a thing seemingly immune to the way things have changed.
He has found the forest to be the most comfortable place to loiter, but he has chosen instead to roam today. Spring is in full-swing, he can tell it in the way the meadow blooms. However, it is not the flowers that catch his attention but a glint of gold in the sunlight. He has seen many unfamiliar things, but this is perhaps the most compelling and it beckons him further from the edge of the forest.
How blinding the light that surrounds her.
He stops, head tilted.
He sees then that she is smiling and he hesitates.
(He is no joy-thief, Hadrien, he does not want to disturb her.
But then, isn’t it too late?)
“Sorry,” he says, not a greeting at all. “You just—”
But he cannot finish his thought, if there had even been one at all.
— hadrien