04-14-2016, 12:47 AM
Do the stars call to everyone? Watching them, I can't help but wonder. They didn't seem to call to Rile. My brother had no more care for the night sky than he did for the chirping of crickets or the rustle of the wind as it stirred leaves to dancing. Life called to him, action and movement and whole world his to experience at will. But then, he was marked by starlight, swirling nebulae claiming him from the ground up as a product of the heavens. Maybe that was enough, and he didn't need them calling to him, reaching out to him, beckoning him to cross impossible distances to roll around in the twinkling, glittering diamond sky.
“I suppose I can't speak for everyone,” I find myself saying, and isn't it funny how the words just tumble out of my mouth without a care for my intentions? This stranger's star-touched skin feels familiar, though, and I'm quite unable to disengage and fade into the shadows again. “But they certainly call to me.” Like a bell ringing just out of hearing range, just a note too high to pin down, tingling down my spine and setting my skin to itching with echoes of what used to be, what could have been in another life. A simpler life, where twins frolicked through their young lives together, born to a mother who wanted them, born whole and equal instead of one so much more than the other. Or a life simpler still, where there was only ever one of us. Where I was his shadow in truth, pieces of himself he'd hidden from the world, the darkness cast by his absorption and reflection of the sun's light.
“Yes, the company is nice.” Enjoy may not be the word I would use, but it's a pleasant change, experiencing this nightly haunting with someone by my side. “I'm called...Nevi.” The nickname is still new, and it feels like a mask that lets me hide my deepest truths behind pretty sounds and artful misdirection. It gentles the desperate, clawing need in my chest, the hollowness where whole used to dwell when the world was darkness and water and a trio of heartbeats, and being held close by brother and mother both. “And you? What are you called?”
“I suppose I can't speak for everyone,” I find myself saying, and isn't it funny how the words just tumble out of my mouth without a care for my intentions? This stranger's star-touched skin feels familiar, though, and I'm quite unable to disengage and fade into the shadows again. “But they certainly call to me.” Like a bell ringing just out of hearing range, just a note too high to pin down, tingling down my spine and setting my skin to itching with echoes of what used to be, what could have been in another life. A simpler life, where twins frolicked through their young lives together, born to a mother who wanted them, born whole and equal instead of one so much more than the other. Or a life simpler still, where there was only ever one of us. Where I was his shadow in truth, pieces of himself he'd hidden from the world, the darkness cast by his absorption and reflection of the sun's light.
“Yes, the company is nice.” Enjoy may not be the word I would use, but it's a pleasant change, experiencing this nightly haunting with someone by my side. “I'm called...Nevi.” The nickname is still new, and it feels like a mask that lets me hide my deepest truths behind pretty sounds and artful misdirection. It gentles the desperate, clawing need in my chest, the hollowness where whole used to dwell when the world was darkness and water and a trio of heartbeats, and being held close by brother and mother both. “And you? What are you called?”