who we are and all that we're trying to be
These were the moments he wished he could return to so easily – as if nothing had transpired in that damned Temple, as if friends hadn’t been lost, as if worlds didn’t press down between shoulder blades, make him ache, make him fracture, make him break. His eyes went to her as she grinned, and a laugh nearly buoyed and brimmed over the surface of his convictions, smothered down too, lost and forlorn in the perils of all their stupefying plights.
The boop on his nose caused his eyes to widen, expecting something entirely different.
Silence again as he reared back, maneuvering, shifting, changing in accordance to their rules of the newfounded game – something he’d wanted to show her ages before, but the chances had been whittling, few, infrequent in between all the other burdens. This time he was the massive dog, the undulating form of darkness and sedition, hound unleashed from the gates of hell –
And dove to snag at the otter’s tail with his teeth, minimal grasping at best.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts