[Aegean] you had your maps drawn

[aegean]

Aegean

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

He watches with awe as the world around them shifts and changes. He watches as the ocean begins to bleed away, as the illusions begin to mold around her and her dreams. He can still feel it in the palm of his hand; he can still feel the way that his gift ebbs and flows in his heart, but the control is different. He no longer directs but instead enjoys as it continues to get its direction from something else entirely.

“You don’t fight the darkness,” is all he says as his eyes continue to travel upward, as he continues to watch the way the earth spins around them, the brilliant lights continuing to spiral. “You simply accept it and give it a space within you. You’ll find that the darkness does not resent the light.”

Aegean smiles down and then lets the conversation continue.

When the desert is complete and the sand is blowing, he breathes in the heat. “I have not,” he says and there is the same awe in his voice when he realizes that she helped shape his illusions into something completely foreign to himself. What a gift to be able to experience something like this with her.

“It is magnificent.”

But she grows tired, curling against him, and he is content to hold her there, to stand watch over the young girl as sleep begins to creep up her and sink into her bones. “Sleep, little one,” he whispers, carefully rearranging her mane and pressing a chaste kiss to her forehead.

“I will be here when you wake up.”

He has no need for sleep soon—he so often sleeps not at all—and with the desert still opening up wide and expansive before him, he is not certain that he would be able to sleep at all anyway.

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