fell asleep inside a fantasy, aegean

[aegean]

Aegean

I should have loved a thunderbird instead
at least when spring comes they roar back again

Aegean has little experience with brokenness.

He might have, had he given life that kind of hooks into him. Perhaps he might have felt the sting of his mothers disappearing and his family dissolving and being left without a home or purpose. But he had no true sting in the wound and felt nothing but the casual sweep of loss against his heart.

He felt it as a passing wind.

So he feels sorrow at her grief but there is no true match in his heart and he has no way to rectify that. He can only offer her support and his presence and the pretty illusions that he weaves around them.

His smile is soft and kind and he banishes whatever remnant of pity she might find in the folds of it. He instead focuses on the stars around them and the way they reflect against her evergreen skin.

“How could I ever forget?” he says and his voice is sincere, silver bells and flickering against the back of his tongue as he reaches over to brush lips gently against the curve of her cheek. “You were so beautiful and the night was so magnificent. I thought that my heart might burst clean out of my chest.”

For a second, he is quiet as he tips his head back and breathes in deep and then they are back there on that island. He paints it around them, leaving the magical snow against their hooves and the faint lights in the air and the subtle sound of the sea washing up the shore. He had never known just how his memory would come to serve him, but with this new gift, he is able to recall the details, the beauty of it.

And he paints it for them, for her.

With a smile, he catches her gaze.

“You are just as beautiful as you were that night.”

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
(I think I made you up inside my head.)