12-20-2015, 04:08 AM
" I'd Rather Die Young , "
He was ashamed once. Ashamed of his failure as a king, ashamed that his lover had abandoned him as such, ashamed that he was alone and growing older by the day while still retaining a youthful appearance. The haggard once-king is anything but youthful. He feels his years as though they are shackles across his ankles, binding him to this forsaken place for an eternity or perhaps longer. He is no longer ashamed of his past--he has no reason to be ashamed anymore--but he feels it like a knife in his gut. He is not proud of his history but he bears his name and his title with no shame.
Everyday he loses a little more hope that he will ever see his beloved again. Does she even care anymore, or does she just think of him as gone, as he does of her? He, for one, will never forget the only love that will ever matter to him; her eyes, all fire and brimstone, still swim before him in his dreams. He misses the way she would press herself up against him and the way she felt when they joined to make their princess and he longs for her lips pressed to his neck, whispering words of love and devotion into his ear for only him to hear. Those days seem so long ago. She might not even remember them with the same fondness that he does.
She probably despises him.
He cannot blame her, of course. They were always running away from one another, only to crash back together like the joining of the tide with the beach. Whether it were moonhigh or the point of noon, they always found themselves crashing into one another, inexplicably drawn back together after seemingly forever apart. That was the sort of love they found and it is the sort of love they kept, and he cannot help but wonder if this is one of those times apart. Sure, they have never been apart so long as this before, but every great romance must have lulls. It is only natural.
Isn't it?
He finds her almost unexpectedly, and her steel gray coat has lightened so much over the years that at first, he almost does not recognize the fiery woman he had called his Queen for so short a time. His Queen, no one else's--that had been after she had given up her throne and given herself to him. They had given themselves to each other; nothing else had mattered. Bugger the Valley if they had one another. It had been enough for him, anyway. "Kindling," he rasps, voice rough from disuse (but isn't it always rough, hasn't it always sounded fire-branded, like their love?). "Where have you been, all of these years?" Who have you been with, if not me?
oxytocin
srry i couldn't control myself