12-03-2015, 12:26 PM
tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us She stills bears their weight heavy on his shoulders. She had never wanted it, never asked for it. She wanted to go back, yes, but not at the cost – the six had been what was left, the others frozen, shattered, torn apart by monsters. He told her he kept them all alive. She wonders. Even if they survived, what ghosts haunt them still? (Figuratively, and literally.) She asked him to undo it, once. To wind the clock back, undo the quest, undo all of it. He refused, lips in her hair, said, I would destroy so much more for you. He almost loves her. She almost hates him. They are inevitable, indefinable, and she has never had much of a choice – even as children, when he touched her and told her the things he imagined, the terrible things he wanted, she had loved him. It is too much, to be the thing he wants – he tries to make her a goddess, to match him, but she refuses. She has no wont for magic, and besides, he couldn’t give it to her. (He tried, once. She felt it, something prickling at her skin. But it didn’t take.) All this, and nothing changes, she is left alone at the beach in her strange capsule, surrounded by ghosts. Smiling, glad – too glad – to see him. (He is different from the rest of them. In ways she doesn’t articulate for fear of what she might say.) But the smile fades from her face as she sees the sorrow and grief that shape his own. She wonders what has happened. Even through it, he shares word of Graveling before she even has to ask. “I’m glad,” she says softly, an ache in her voice, but it is not a lie – she is glad the girl has a chance, that she is not (yet) condemned to these misty beaches. “Ramiel,” she says softly, touches him lightly – she relishes the solidity, a rare thing in this world, “what happened?” |