[open] we watch galaxies collide

[aios]

jupiter's by my side and we watch galaxies collide

She scrutinizes him openly, but not to uncover flaws or find weakness. Instead, it is a nearly scholarly activity—a way to absorb the essence of him, to try and decipher that which makes a man tick. She is worldly and yet wholly naive, a girl who does not yet know how to traverse this world on her own. For so long, Aios has lived beneath the shadow of her mother’s wing, safe to explore within the reach of her mother’s magic—but here, with him, she is exposed. She is free. Her body sings with the joy of it.

“Tumult,” she echoes back to him, taking her time with the syllables of it—savoring the very essence of it. There is so much beneath his surface, she thinks, and her eyes brighten with the challenge of it. With the joy of finding something not so easily revealed. Her heart beats a little faster and she wants to step closer, wants to study him further, but she holds back—keeps her distance with white-knuckled restraint.

His next statement may not be a compliment, but nothing stops her from taking it as one. She flashes him another grin, and her face lights up, storms flickering wildly beneath the muted clouding of her coat. “Nor shall you,” she says with all of the youthful arrogance she is owed. There are others carved of storms, she knows, but she dismisses the thought. None are her. None are the same.

Not lesser, perhaps, but she doesn’t think on it too much.

Instead she drags her gaze away from him to look at the sky where the rain continues to pour over them both. Her eyes close and she sits in silence for a moment as the thunder grows, growling through the sky with the promise of more. “Is there anything better than this?” she muses, feeling that peace only storms bring spread through her, warring with the violent need to run, to act out, to do something.

“I can’t decide if I want to nap right here or run until my heart bursts.”

my apathy is losing ground