She does not hear him come, or if she does then she mistakes it for something else, loses the sound of him in the dissonance of a dying world unraveling against her shoulders. It is so easy to lose herself in the pain and fear that mirrors her own so closely, to let their ache be her identity so she can pretend this is not her pain and her fear, that it wounds her only because it wounds them. But then he speaks and that is not a thing she can ignore, not a thing easily mistaken. He has what the plants around her lack, what the trees and the flowers cannot use. A voice.
He is more than the emotions that strike her like electric impulses, and so, startled, she lifts that delicate face and finds only a pair of twin moons watching her. They grow infinitesimally larger, and it takes her a moment to realize that these are eyes, more yellow than any flower, and they belong to a face that makes midnight feel bright. She wilts in the dark of him, wondering at the way this feels like facing the yawning emptiness of space, at why her chest tightens as though there is still a heart inside it to protect.
There is not, of course. No heartbeat to pound in her ears, no thrum of blood racing through the spiderwebs of veins that should be tucked beneath her skin if she had any. The only thing left to signal her sudden worry is the widening of those pale, petal pink eyes as she blinks at him in silent wonder.
And then, noticing at last the edges of him so faintly when he tips his head, she says, “Because dying is terrible.” She whispers, searching for more edges of him but they are invisible in this dark. “It is long and drawn out and lonely. You know it’s coming and there is nothing to do but face it, nothing to do but wonder if the life you leave behind was worthwhile.” She falls quiet again, silenced by an ache in her chest that is more than muscle memory. Is she afraid? Yes. But of what?
Her face is a picture of perfect stillness, her brow frozen without muscle to run beneath it. Only her eyes change, change shape and shade, look at him and then away again. “I cannot imagine anything more lonely than knowing someday soon I will not exist anymore. I will cease to be.” The words come slowly like they need forcing, like they wound her to share, and there is a strange distance in her tourmaline eyes when they settle on his again. “I am afraid of what comes after death, but I hope it is kind.”
linnea
these wildfires grow and grow until a brand new world takes shape
@[jamie]