[private] you're walking alone - oh, how to get through?

[leuce]

i’ll dream each night of some version of you—

He shouts his own surprise and she, too, feels a rush of guilt. She should not have been looking so closely, she thinks, she should have simply admired the delicate architecture and move on. But she has always had this issue, hasn’t she? She has always fixated on the beautiful things, though it has most often been during the daylight hours when those beautiful things were unaware of her staring.

Instead of blurting out a misshapen apology, though, she blurts out something else entirely. The sort of question not worth asking, except that it was the first thing that had come to mind when it had appeared as if he’d been emerging from some sort of slumber.

She finds that his answer only begs more questions, though she promptly swallows them. She has overstepped already, she’s certain of it. Instead, she allows herself to consider what it might be like to sleep without knowing if it’s really sleep. She is still considering his answer when he offers up an apology and her expression (which had been slightly puzzled) dissolves around a soft smile.

“I’m sorry for staring,” she counters, “that was awfully rude of me. I just… You were so beautiful.” She says this without a shred of self-consciousness, so matter-of-fact that she may as well have been describing the weather. (But she is a thing that values beauty and she has never had any qualms about pointing it out.) 

She studies his profile as he turns his face toward the horizon and then she, too, shifts her gaze to the brilliant colors of dusk. And, perhaps as an apology, she draws out the color. She stays it there on the horizon, acutely aware of how quickly it fades. But tonight, it lingers, bathing the world in its soft glow. 

—that i might not have but i did not lose

@Nemeon