03-09-2020, 03:21 AM
It’s winter, but it feels considerably warmer here, and she thinks that maybe if he wasn’t standing before her with tears continuously streaming down his face that this place might feel like paradise. She thinks how if things were different she would teasingly remind him that this was nothing like the tundra, this place with its fragrant blossoms and hardened lava fields. She thinks how much Dear would like it, if she were here, and how maybe it was even beautiful enough to spark a different light back into Kensley.
But it’s just the two of them – and it always comes back to that, to being just the two of them, no matter how many others twist and tangle themselves into their lives, and she hangs all her hope and sanity on that, on knowing that eventually it will be just them – and for a long while all she does is stare at him in silence when he speaks.
And the silence stretches, and though she doesn’t speak, the silence is not quiet for her. It is filled with her racing mind, as she grasps and fumbles for a solution, for anything that could ease the insurmountable grief that seemed to have consumed him. She wants to find a logical explanation, but though she could reassure him that she had never been at the mountain, and that this, right now, was not a dream, she has no explanation for the crown of thorns and the gilded tears shimmering on his face.
“Jarris,” she murmurs his name, the way she has a hundred times before, and she closes the space between them. She reaches up to almost touch a barbed point of a thorn, but instead she moves to let her lips trail down his face. “I wasn’t at the mountain, and this, right now, isn’t a dream.” Her jaw tightens with her own tears that throb at the back of her throat, because she hates seeing him like this. She hates seeing him confused, she hates that there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop the tears, and she hates that she can’t fix any of it. “And I’m sure Kennice is fine,” but she doesn’t sound as reassuring as she hoped.
“Strange things happen at the mountain,” she says quietly, still searching for an explanation. “Maybe...maybe that night that you left, you were sleepwalking and just ended up there.” She trails off, knowing as she says it out loud how none of the puzzle pieces fit together. It didn’t make sense that she was real, now, but she hadn’t been real on the mountain. It didn’t make sense that parts of it could be a dream, when he came back physically changed.
“I should have stopped you from leaving,” she whispers, her gaze cast to the ground when she remembers how she had felt him go and but said nothing, because she was always too afraid; afraid that asking him to stay would just make him want to leave.
P L U M E R I A
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.
But it’s just the two of them – and it always comes back to that, to being just the two of them, no matter how many others twist and tangle themselves into their lives, and she hangs all her hope and sanity on that, on knowing that eventually it will be just them – and for a long while all she does is stare at him in silence when he speaks.
And the silence stretches, and though she doesn’t speak, the silence is not quiet for her. It is filled with her racing mind, as she grasps and fumbles for a solution, for anything that could ease the insurmountable grief that seemed to have consumed him. She wants to find a logical explanation, but though she could reassure him that she had never been at the mountain, and that this, right now, was not a dream, she has no explanation for the crown of thorns and the gilded tears shimmering on his face.
“Jarris,” she murmurs his name, the way she has a hundred times before, and she closes the space between them. She reaches up to almost touch a barbed point of a thorn, but instead she moves to let her lips trail down his face. “I wasn’t at the mountain, and this, right now, isn’t a dream.” Her jaw tightens with her own tears that throb at the back of her throat, because she hates seeing him like this. She hates seeing him confused, she hates that there doesn’t seem to be a way to stop the tears, and she hates that she can’t fix any of it. “And I’m sure Kennice is fine,” but she doesn’t sound as reassuring as she hoped.
“Strange things happen at the mountain,” she says quietly, still searching for an explanation. “Maybe...maybe that night that you left, you were sleepwalking and just ended up there.” She trails off, knowing as she says it out loud how none of the puzzle pieces fit together. It didn’t make sense that she was real, now, but she hadn’t been real on the mountain. It didn’t make sense that parts of it could be a dream, when he came back physically changed.
“I should have stopped you from leaving,” she whispers, her gaze cast to the ground when she remembers how she had felt him go and but said nothing, because she was always too afraid; afraid that asking him to stay would just make him want to leave.
when all of the light is gone
a single spark is all I need.