06-18-2019, 04:35 PM
and at once i knew
i was not magnificent
There are so many things he has forgotten.
Memories stolen from him by the miles he walked across the desert.
The past spirited away by all the time that has passed.
Much like the tears burn the backs of her eyes, they burn his, too. He brings his forehead to rest against the gentle slope of her shoulder and allows himself this one brief moment to revel in the heat of her. She breathes and the muscles stir beneath her skin and, there at the center of her, her heart beats. Just as fiercely now as it ever did and how foolish of him not to trust that this makes her real.
Again, that rueful smile as he lifts his head and dusts his lips down the length of her beautiful face. How cruel Fate had been to bring them together – both when they were both alive and again now when there is nothing he can do but dredge up the apologies that have festered in his gut for years.
“That was always our problem, wasn’t it?” he asks and he sighs and rests his forehead against hers. How peculiar that she should feel so real, he thinks, solid in a way he would not have expected ghosts to be. He drags in a shuddering breath then. “You never saw how brilliant you were,” he murmurs, “and I never tried hard enough to convince you.”
He swallows thickly and shifts his weight and it strikes him then how weary he is, how thoroughly exhausted he is from chasing all them ghosts. “I love you, Plumeria, and I hope you knew that. Even when I didn’t give you any reason to believe it, I hope you knew.”
And he does love her. How fiercely he loves her! If only in all that running he had learned how to control that bastard heart. But, for all its faults, it has always brought him home to her.
son of caden & fray
once-king of the hidden tundra