They’re standing face-to-face, wading in the stars.
Each alone in their own right, each aching in ways where there aren’t enough words existing to describe exactly how much. And it’s almost cruel that they can’t see inside each other, peel back the flesh and sift beyond the bone, see all the way back to that empty little patch of land inside both their bleeding hearts — the one that makes them feel so lonely. Because maybe if they could, maybe if they did, then each would realize that the other is made of the same things they are — that each has been carefully crafted with all of the same pieces.
Maybe then they would see that they’re not alone together.
Maybe there is still time for that.
Leander tells her that she’s right, that he can see the beauty here among the river stars, too. He smiles for her, and she sees that he is considering it, but she can also almost heart the atoms around them as they shatter like glass under the weight of his own feigned delectation. She didn’t see it at first, but when his eyes fall into the river she can see the wound on him, glittering and fresh; it’s small, almost imperceptible except for the way that he bleeds out his truths in the quiet moments that follow.
She learns that his parents are gone, too, and Eilidh doesn’t know how but she feels a gentle twinge in her heart that has somehow found the room to feel his pain alongside her own.
“They were my home.”
Of course they were. Moselle had been her home, too. It had never been the meadow. It had never been the way they would wade through the long grass as though it were an ocean, or the warm summer sun on their backs. It had never been the cradling embrace of the ancient oak tree’s heavy, draping boughs. It was her. It was the heat off her skin when they lay against each other breathing in unison with their heartbeats syncing. It was the way they shared the same eyes, and the same lyrical laugh when they’d been alive in a time when laughter felt possible. It was the way Eilidh had curled against the gentle arc of her shoulder and seen forever in the soft smile lit inside her mother’s dark eyes.
He tells her he’s sorry, and she shakes her head: No.
“Don’t be sorry. I know exactly what that feels like.”
She is compelled to move forward, to reach out her nose to his as though they are opposite poles connected by gravity. She almost does, and her head moves forward just slightly before she stops herself. They are just strangers, aren’t they? Perhaps she’s only projecting. In compromise she reaches inside herself to give him something else, a piece of her, in some small but significant way.
“I lost my mother, too. Years ago, and I can’t decide if it feels like only yesterday or like I’ve been without her for forever.”
⤜ nobody's watching, drowning in words so sweet ⤛
@[Lydia]