06-07-2019, 08:10 PM
and at once i knew
i was not magnificent
How could he have known that eventually he’d go mad?
He had never fancied himself especially smart.
He had never fancied himself much of anything, in fact.
For a once-king, he thought himself perfectly ordinary.
So, he could not have known that someday the stitching in his over-tired mind would begin to unravel, that someday he would entertain conversation with ghosts.
But maybe he was dreaming. Perhaps he had been felled by exhaustion in a desert somewhere, tongue parched, throat aching, and lapsed into this fever dream. Because Plumeria had touched him and her breath had been warm and he’d touched her, too. He did not know much about the physics of ghosts or dreams, but he was almost certain that neither of those things should have been possible.
And now he’s standing on the edge of the meadow – always on the outskirts of things, always just out of reach because some things never change – and he’s spotted another ghost.
He calls out to her before he can stop himself, “Charity!” Because he is dreaming. Or maybe something killed him, finally, and this feels like home but doesn’t look like home because it’s someplace beyond.
“Charity!” he calls again and moves slow, leisurely, across the meadow because he has all the time in the world. Because when you’re dead or dreaming, time does not adhere to the same linear formula.
She has wings now, but she is still made of glass. He exhales a sigh that’s meant to sound like a smile. “It’s been a long time,” he says. “Too long.”
son of caden & fray
once-king of the hidden tundra