07-23-2016, 12:37 PM
He tries to forget.
He is not his father, he cannot exist with great, ruined loves in his heart without falling to pieces. He is inherently a fragile man, and he cannot take the burden – his bones, already hollowed and creaking, cannot bear the leaden weight that has been affixed to their names, to the memories that exist of her – of them.
(A true dichotomy of loves, glass and steel, and of course when they collided, something broke – he’s just glad it was him.)
He tries to forget.
He focusing on existing, instead, of surviving on this second-chance life he got. He still doesn’t know what happened, exactly, only that in one moment he was dying with her name on his lips and the next he was waking, alone in the meadow, pieced back together as if nothing had ever transpired there in the falls, as if it had been some fever-strewn memory.
And it works, mostly. He does not delve too deep into anything. He inches along on the legs that were never meant to support his weight, translucent skin stretching thin over muscles, a walking anatomy lesson, a map of every vital piece to him made visible to all the predators in his midst.
But they had shared the same dead womb of their mother, they had shared secrets, they have saved one another’s lives. So all the forgetting in the world can’t erase the fact that she is his blood, that there is a tie forged from birth, and when she enters the meadow he feels it like a hand wrapped around his heart, fingers sunk in the meat of it, forcing a heartbeat.
He feels her.
He gasps aloud, like a fool, and a whirlwind of terror and nerves and hope spins around his bones. He moves, frantic, looking for her, for the ghost-like form of her, and oh, there she is, there with her papery wings and body like his own, twin forms, glass and fragile, but ever so much stronger together.
“Adaline.”
He says her name like a prayer.
contagion
be careful making wishes in the dark