how do I learn my dreams to mold, to lay them bare in the morning cold?
He had not expected the pain—so fresh and visceral as it sears across his chest. He hadn’t expected to feel this fresh ache in his bones as she looks at him and he is trapped in the memories of them. Growing up and hiding a friendship away in secret. Never understanding why they came from two sides of the same war. Laughing and running around and being free in a way that feels impossible now—forever lost.
He finds himself trapped in the memory of being locked on the other side of portals.
Of seeing death claim her.
Of having the ice claim him.
He remembers his mother bringing him home and doing her best to stitch his body back together. Of the way Linnea had been born anew into this beautiful body of bark and leaves. How she had looked so different from the young girl he had known and yet still so mesmerizing—still herself.
How she had comforted him as the pain came over him in waves.
The memories are painful and comforting in the same breath. It makes the distance between them hurt all the more until he is gritting his teeth, the muscle jumping in his jaw, the skin stretched tight over the grooves of it. He watches as the leaves continue their dance, swirling up around the slender bark of her legs and then falling to the ground, the magic he had gifted them with drained from them completely.
Her words catch him on the edges of the hooks and he glances back up, silvery gaze mercurial. “Maybe I am,” his voice is huskier than the last time she heard it, rusted with disuse. There is still something of the boy that she had known though and it shows in a quick glimpse across his face, a shadow of humor.
“A ghost that’s still allergic, I’m afraid.”
A flash of white teeth and then nothing as the curtain flutters closed over his expression once more.
nikolaus
if they’re still out there then the chasm grows
( for all you know, for all you’ve known )