are you still the same soul

Jude

I'll breathe you in like smoke in the backyard light
We used to laugh til we choked, into the wasted nights

The cruel thing about time is she stops for nothing. Grieving in Koa's arms had given him enough strength to return home, but it had ended in a night curled in the corner of his couch holding his cat and crying the tears he hadn't been able to before. Then what is left but to rise the next morning? He puts his clothes on with fingers so numb the buttons refuse to enter the shirt holes multiple times. He cries when he tries to knot his laces because he inanely hears his dad's voice going 'remember the bunny ears Judy!' He walks past his dad's favorite vendor and wonders if anyone else in the world even knows his dad is dead.

This used to be his home. These used to be his people in so much more than just the kingly sense. It's horrifying to know that someone who had once been so entrenched in the community is gone, and they have no idea. It's terrifying to know Jude could follow in those footsteps and expect the same.

He'd never minded or thought much of his own ghostlike existence, fading in and out of the background in the way his mothers had taught him. Suddenly the ephemeral certainty of his own contentment with invisibility makes him physically sick. Jude goes to the ocean because it's the only way to quell the roiling nausea in his stomach.

That's when he sees Sohalia.

There's plenty that could be said about how he reacts given he didn't know she was found. What he feels, what he thinks. It doesn't matter, nothing matters except how he reacts - which is to stumble toward her and collapse to his knees in a graceless mess that sends sand flying, hands already reaching for her as relief turns his expression rapturous while immediate tears fight to crinkle that very visage. "Soh," he chokes, the nickname he'd told himself he'd stop using leaping out thoughtlessly, praying she doesn't turn away no matter how he doesn't deserve her welcome.

It was the best time of my life, but now I sleep alone
So please don't wake me up, 'cause my thrill is gone