DEIMOS
Unaware of her misplaced agony, he waited several beats, the brooch in his hand. It held more weight than it had initially, along the Fae grounds, a ridiculous joke uttered by a ridiculous being – now gone, vanquished, ghosts of jocular notions bleeding into the crimson veneer. He eyed it for a moment or two before she took it on a choking sob, only a fragment of what he could give her; the actual figure, the friend she’d crave, frozen solid in a cave. His jaw clicked together, enamel biting down upon one another, a breath he held extinguished, lifted and released slowly from his lungs. She would come back later, likely intending to be alone again in her grief, something he could understand, after lifetimes of doing the same. Hiding in shadows, veiled, brooding, casting aside anything and everything for the sake of miring himself into anchors, tethers, and lines, frayed at both ends, waiting for some other inevitable storm. Stuck and grating, detached, and apathetic.
Except for now, because everything was still raw and blinding.
He relinquished the ornament to her, but not her hands, her fingers, clasping them, refusing to let go. Stubborn and willful, tenacious and persevering: just one more thing they’d somehow heal and mend and stitch together, interlocking patterns of anguish and melancholy. “You are welcome,” he proffered in return, eyes holding hers before sliding back to his bag, maneuvering it back onto his shoulder. Leading, striving, towards the door, back out into warped patches of sunlight, as if the world had moved on while they segmented and broke apart inside. It always did: indifferent, reticent, to the way it exposed and bled its inhabitants.
Then a single word, to cast them out of Adam’s domicile, and back down the road. “Home.” Their home; not a space wholly occupied by him. He’d offered. He’d granted. He’d do it over and over again, for her.
Except for now, because everything was still raw and blinding.
He relinquished the ornament to her, but not her hands, her fingers, clasping them, refusing to let go. Stubborn and willful, tenacious and persevering: just one more thing they’d somehow heal and mend and stitch together, interlocking patterns of anguish and melancholy. “You are welcome,” he proffered in return, eyes holding hers before sliding back to his bag, maneuvering it back onto his shoulder. Leading, striving, towards the door, back out into warped patches of sunlight, as if the world had moved on while they segmented and broke apart inside. It always did: indifferent, reticent, to the way it exposed and bled its inhabitants.
Then a single word, to cast them out of Adam’s domicile, and back down the road. “Home.” Their home; not a space wholly occupied by him. He’d offered. He’d granted. He’d do it over and over again, for her.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
