There was a time that Lie’s decade of mistakes would play on repeat in his mind. Beneath a warm Hyalinian sun, above a speckled green ground, he’d share his first secret smile with Kensa. Plums spill out around her white and chestnut body. She looks perfect, different from the woman that spit in his face the last time he saw her.
In a shadow, beneath an overhang assaulted by rain, Starsin’s smiling face turns a corner. It’s a rare moment, one illuminated by a flash of wet sun. Her face lacks the creases of typical Starsin malcontent, and she looks so shamelessly excited to see him. His chest didn’t contract then, he remembers. It opened. It blossomed.
The pair, one red like blood and one gray like thunderclouds, would bleed into each other. Become so intoxicating and larger than life that for years Litotes lived there, in his mind, with them. They want him now, lusty and arduous. But those sweet memories batted away by luxurious lashes aren’t as ripe as they once were. Now, they taste saccharine. They sour every layer of Lie’s intestines.
So, when Lilt’s mouth finds his jaw, Lie doesn’t tense like he once would. He doesn’t dream of tearing away and cursing her until she couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. This touch he used to balk at becomes a balm, soothing and certain, untwisting the stomach Lie so readily ties up. He sighs. Resolute. Tired.
“I missed you, too,” Lie whispers, and it isn’t fearful. Yes, actually, it’s incredibly clear. Annunciated pointedly, uttered with reverence. He falls into her soft neck, tucking half of his nose beneath the fall of her mane. Kisses pressed gentler than a butterfly’s landing leave his lips and he thinks he’s losing himself for a moment: eyes closed, breath held (she smells like their home, the warm, cushioned nest she hopes he’ll return to every night).
Lie remembers, though. Falling headlong and dying. He remembers and he pulls back, though not unkindly.
“How is your family?” he asks as a deflection, not stepping away but lifting his head enough to peer into Lilt’s eyes.
as it softly glides across your back
and i hope you leave right before the sun comes up
so i can watch it alone
