It is more difficult than he would have expect to watch her walk away.
You would think—one would think—that after decades, centuries, of living alone in the afterlife that he would have gotten used to the dull ache of her absence. He would have been able to make himself content with the silence. With the memories that he carried with him and with the brief moments that he was able to share with his, and their, children. (Although it was a stabbing pain to realize that they were here.)
But he had not grown satisfied with these moments.
He had not learned how to become content with his death, with the endless eternity stretched before him where she survived and he watched from behind the veil when he could. Instead he grow impatient and wanting and felt his greedy heart snapping behind the usually gentle prison of his ribs.
And seeing her?
Holding her?
It had made the ache so much worse.
Because he could never ask her to stay and he could not go.
That is, until he could.
It was but a moment’s time between when he saw the fading silhouette of her and when he felt that sudden shift in the atmosphere. It crackled like lightning and he lifted his plain head to stare at it, his soulful eyes furrowing with concentration and then hope as it exploded within him.
He was running before he even knew what was happening.
Legs that had nearly atrophied with time broke apart from their restraints. Eagle wings snapped open at his sides and he practically flew through the rift, tumbling out and into the bright light of day. He blinked against it, shaking his head, but unable to stop his momentum. Instead, he soared, feeling a thrill as the icy winter air bit at his lungs and his body protested against the sudden, violent use of it.
But he had never felt better.
He flew for hours. Rejoicing in the ability to do so, even as he felt himself growing more and more confused with the inability to recognize so much of a land that he once loved. When he finally did land, it was in one of the few places that he knew—that he could put a name to: the meadow.
His coat was darkened to nearly black and his breath came in shuddered gasps.
But he was alive.
He was alive.
PLUME
but my heart, it don’t beat, it don’t beat the way it used to