The meadow is not beautiful for him.
He’s seen what time has hidden – the gore, the shoreline stained red. He’s heard what time has buried – the sound of flesh torn, the crack of bone, the highest pitch there is to a scream, and the guttural cries of mourning. He prefers the emptiness of space to this, but bitterness will come to him at a cost.
There is just enough cruelty spun into his flesh that he will enjoy plucking the stars from her eyes. He could choose kindness, but it’s the more difficult choice when there is some resemblance of solace that he can find in control, in taking. It fills a piece of him that they left empty when they’d made him. It sits between the magic and the mystery, nestled between ribs, and close to his chest. It flickers in and out just like the backgrounds he creates.
And now, the meadow won’t be beautiful for her.
“You lied,” she says, wordlessly, and he will only smile – her eyes are ancient, and they hold hurricanes in their fractures, but she is only a child. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, but one day she will. One day she’ll know that the world is made of lies much bigger than his own. He will not answer her, but he is silently pleased to have stripped her of the star-shine on her back.
The next set of words will find him then through the gentle quiet of the meadow: “Why do you run?”And there is just enough cruelty spun into his flesh that he harbors no regret leaving her loitering on the edge of an answer. He parts his lips to speak. He takes a breath. He does not intend to answer, but he does intend for her to cling to the hope that he might.
Because they made him this way.
And someone made her a child. Someone gave her the world, and took it back. Someone made her thirst for stars she cannot reach. “I don’t care about the burning; I welcome it,” she says, and he will laugh a laugh that’s strained somehow in his throat while remembering all the times he thought those same words.
“You’ll change your mind when all that’s left is ashes.” He says, but he touches his nose to her cheek, and he shows her the sun anyways.
elektrum
i am and always will be the optimist