I should have loved a thunderbird instead
at least when spring comes they roar back again
Aegean’s heart has always been an easy thing to win. Perhaps it is the impossible nature of his life—that knowing in the back of his head that each moment is a gift. He was never meant to be alive and so he intends to live to the full extent of it, even if that means falling in love often and spending his hours exploring the depths of his mind as much as the expanse of the world around him.
But, even still, he knows there’s something different about the way his heart reacts to Pteron.
It is a strange, wondrous thing and, for all of its discomfort, he has no desire to see it leave. He relishes in the way that his pulse slows into a slow, looping rhythm, the way that the rest of the world quiets as if the snow around them muffled it. His amethyst eyes darken further and his lips hint in the corner at a smile as Pteron closes the distance between them just slightly. They have never touched, he realizes, and the tension of it is a beautiful, aching thing. It is poetic, he thinks, and makes no move to change it now.
“Perhaps I will,” he replies, tipping his antlered head back to stare at the sky that spins above them. His smile is lazy and slow and he steeps in the quiet that stretches around them. “The sky is so beautiful, after all.” He closes his eyes for a moment and inhales slowly, his breath coming out in a slow fog when he finally does release it. Mesmerized, his gift reaches toward the slow curl of smoke in the air and begins to weave around it. It expands and twists and curls, turning whiter and more substantial, snaking upward.
It becomes lace and then breaks into beautiful snowflakes, as large as a fist, that slowly fall down.
As they suspend in the air around them, the light reflecting off the winter illusion, Aegean finally brings his head down again, angling his head and feeling his chest tighten just slightly with the boy’s words.
“Perhaps I am the moon,” he breathes, “and you are the sun.”
His eyes roam over Pteron’s face.
“Perhaps I will spend my whole life chasing the shadows of you.”
A smile, a sigh.
“I can think of worse fates.”
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead
(I think I made you up inside my head.)