Hotaru
I miss the days when stars were saintly
They sang to me in ways innately
They sang to me in ways innately
Through the open door the spectral entity haunts, but while Hotaru and Noah grasp each other like they’re the only ones left on a sinking ship, Andraste - young, untested, unfamiliar - rises. A specter in her own right. She glides to the door and shoulders it closed, prowling restlessly as her emotions tangle with and inevitably drown beneath June overwhelming weight of Hotaru’s.
Noah does not close himself off from her the way Sunjata often did. Controlled, but present. A hand on her back to hold her away from the edge, feet to the earth. Like a faint voice in a different room you hear as you drift off, familiar noise that reminds you of life beyond your closed door. Ready and waiting for you to open it.
His understanding is like a bass note in the thrum of his soul-song. Sunjata is not dead, but Hotaru’s heart is as shattered as if it were so. This sort of absence is one that can be far more final than death. Death can be crossed, and sometimes even miraculously reversed. But nothing can overcome the decision someone else makes and holds tight to.
She almost wishes he would have simply told her yes or no. Already, the uncertainty and absence of direction eats at her soul. He has gone and left her with loyalty that cannot follow him - nor leave her.
Noah’s calloused hands are the only warmth she can feel as they cradle her face, smoothing away tears from her tacky cheeks. He sees her, sees the broken heart that mirror the one still sitting in his chest. It’s a closeness that would be romantic in any other time, but instead is testament to the bond forged by clasped hands and snowburned cheeks what feels like a lifetime ago.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she bleats like a lost babe. Turned around and directionless but for the guiding light of the man holding her still and steady. “But I can’t fix it anyway. Because he’s…he’s not wrong either.” Even when her heart objects from its bitter and broken vessel, fierce in its adamant vow that she would have waited for him until immortality was stripped from her.
Exhausted in ways too numerous to name, she closes her eyes and rests her forehead against his. The pain hasn’t lessened but for now it has gone quiet. Retreating into her bones in reluctant acknowledgment of how hollow she is after pouring herself empty for days on end. He told me to stay. To figure it out for myself. I can’t stay here - I can’t, I can’t - it repeats in layers over itself, like a chanting crowd as her thoughts spin and tangle. But Halo is not home anymore. And the heart she had called home had been dead in her hands, as dead as her own feels in her chest. So where? To her children, so she can finally keep them in arms reach? Would it even matter if she would be a husk before them, smiling vacantly, miles away? Wherever she turns there is no light to follow. No path cut through the foliage.
Just Noah. Noah, and this dead feeling in her breast that turns sunlight to shadow.
Noah does not close himself off from her the way Sunjata often did. Controlled, but present. A hand on her back to hold her away from the edge, feet to the earth. Like a faint voice in a different room you hear as you drift off, familiar noise that reminds you of life beyond your closed door. Ready and waiting for you to open it.
His understanding is like a bass note in the thrum of his soul-song. Sunjata is not dead, but Hotaru’s heart is as shattered as if it were so. This sort of absence is one that can be far more final than death. Death can be crossed, and sometimes even miraculously reversed. But nothing can overcome the decision someone else makes and holds tight to.
She almost wishes he would have simply told her yes or no. Already, the uncertainty and absence of direction eats at her soul. He has gone and left her with loyalty that cannot follow him - nor leave her.
Noah’s calloused hands are the only warmth she can feel as they cradle her face, smoothing away tears from her tacky cheeks. He sees her, sees the broken heart that mirror the one still sitting in his chest. It’s a closeness that would be romantic in any other time, but instead is testament to the bond forged by clasped hands and snowburned cheeks what feels like a lifetime ago.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she bleats like a lost babe. Turned around and directionless but for the guiding light of the man holding her still and steady. “But I can’t fix it anyway. Because he’s…he’s not wrong either.” Even when her heart objects from its bitter and broken vessel, fierce in its adamant vow that she would have waited for him until immortality was stripped from her.
Exhausted in ways too numerous to name, she closes her eyes and rests her forehead against his. The pain hasn’t lessened but for now it has gone quiet. Retreating into her bones in reluctant acknowledgment of how hollow she is after pouring herself empty for days on end. He told me to stay. To figure it out for myself. I can’t stay here - I can’t, I can’t - it repeats in layers over itself, like a chanting crowd as her thoughts spin and tangle. But Halo is not home anymore. And the heart she had called home had been dead in her hands, as dead as her own feels in her chest. So where? To her children, so she can finally keep them in arms reach? Would it even matter if she would be a husk before them, smiling vacantly, miles away? Wherever she turns there is no light to follow. No path cut through the foliage.
Just Noah. Noah, and this dead feeling in her breast that turns sunlight to shadow.
But my ghost was lost to the grownup gallows
So I find my spirit in the bottle
So I find my spirit in the bottle
