10-07-2018, 08:48 PM
The smell of her unravels memories he thought were laid to rest. Truth and love and memory and all of it, all those lifetimes, everything long since buried, reaches up through soil long since settled, pressing upward alongside the fresh life of spring.
He kisses her, again, and is overwhelmed with sensory delight.
When he closes his eyes he sees her the way he did that first time. In the tundra she is a magnolia blooming in the frost. They were young then, so young! The taste of her brings back so many memories now that it is impossible they wouldn't collide and become distorted-
He remembers the way her skin, when she was truly made of porcelain, sounded when the rain fell sadly on her,
and the scent of jasmine that filled what little space was between them as they walked through the Dale at twilight,
and oh, he remembers all the colors of their love spread out beneath all the colors of the sky,
("Skellig," she says, and his heart sighs)
and,
and,
and-- a thousand dreamlike memories, a hundred run-on sentences, a sea of love and bad grammar and--
He remembers frustration, too, and anger and sorrow-- and there were affairs and other petty games (decades passed and he never could grow up) but in hindsight the lows only make the highs soar higher, brighter.
She explores him with her lips and buries herself in his neck and it is all so humbling. He cradles her, he worships her. He wants to stay like this forever, twined around each other.
Finally, he admits, "I don't know where I went."
The truth is that he was lost in time. But it seems like such an overly poetic, downright embarrassing thing to say that he settles for the easier half-truth. He doesn't know how a year passes in what seems like a single day. He doesn't know how time slips away.
"I love you too, Ryatah." Her name is a paper bird in his mouth. It unfolds molten hot and rose gold and his heart beats a little faster. He wonders if they can twine around each other well enough they never have to let go.
"Everything is so different." Not her, not this, but Beqanna. It's like he's stepped out from the history books into a world that is no longer his. Nothing is recognizable except the meadow, and even that looks a little different. "What have you been up to? How have you been?" Another kiss, another inhale, god knows he could never get enough of her.
@Ryatah idek but my heart cannot handle it ;_; sorry for the wait!