I should have loved a thunderbird instead
at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean doesn’t notice the behemoth by his side until it begins speaking, but he doesn’t startle or spook. His purple eyes remain trained on the stars that he spins out of his imagination before him, watching as they crash into the water below and circle the sky above. His lips almost curve at the beauty of it, but there is something else that catches his breath, that holds him back, and when he finally does turn to look toward Larva, the bruises remain. He is surprised by how large the other stallion is, how the weight of age seems to settle into his bones and yet he looks as ready to take on the fight of life as any young one.
“I cannot imagine hating magic,” Aegean breathes, wondering at how anyone could hold the gift in front of him as as anything but pure and glorious. “But that doesn’t mean that you were stupid,” the word is clunky and he struggles to say it—always having preferred the prettier, more poetic words. The ones that blossom on his tongue and sweeten it like honey. “I think magic can be difficult to understand and, when wielded by the wrong user, it can have too keen of an edge.” Sorrow, briefly, as he looks back.
He can only hope the stallion had not been on the wrong side of it.
“I still don’t understand it, but I hope I am not the wrong user for these dreams.”
For that’s all they are—just waking dreams. Just taking a paintbrush to the skies.
When he looks back, he nods at the name and the smile flickers back, dreamy and unsettled on his impossibly white lips at the idea of grandchildren. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Larva. My name is Aegean.” There are other words but he struggles to articulate them—struggles to give structure to the thing within him that defies boundaries. How could he possibly articulate the smoke that threatens to choke him? The longing for something that which was never his? It would be like trying to be jealous of the stars—trying to possess the oceans in a breath. “I think we could all use someone to listen.”
He looks back, studying his face.
“Do you?”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
(I think I made you up inside my head.)