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[P] don't let those butterflies out - Printable Version

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don't let those butterflies out - Elliana - 11-08-2020

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul


S
he knows she is dreaming when the world starts tremble. But she leaps up anyhow. “The dead aren't gone,” are the first words that hang from her lips. 

She is no stranger to the oddness of nightmares, to the fear that builds, even now, in the pit of that delicate belly. These nightmares curl around her in the dark and she can hear the buzzing of the voices growing. She knows where she wants to go, needed to go, but she remembers too a promise she made to a friend.

This time she would find him. 
Find him and show him. 

Restless and so very, very wide awake, she tries not to begin sorting through her wandering thoughts. It is reflex to slip from her cottage beside the sea. Her mother lifts her head for just a moment before falling back asleep, unaware of her daughter tip toeing about the house. “I won’t go far, I promise.” She feels the need to say in a hushed voice. 

The night is cool on her face and she greets it eagerly, tipping her head up to the stars and closing those bright blue eyes. She heads into the city, a place she is not to go without permission, but the place she goes all the same because he will be there. She knows where to find him, she saw him through a window one day, she knew the wings, but before that she knew his eyes, at least she likes to think she saw his eyes first, Elli likes thinking about his eyes after all. 

She finds that window—his window—and tosses stones at it, she thinks not of Juliet and Romeo and how the roles have been so perfectly reversed. She watches as the stone fly upwards, skipping across air instead of water, it clangs against the window, the sound so perfectly tuned. Another is tossed, and another, and—she finds no more stones to throw at the window, so she waits. The buzzing it is coming back—buzz, hum, buzz, hum, bu—

“Aeneas,” she says to him when he comes to the window and opens it, the noises of night forgotten for the moment. She feels a flurry of butterflies in her belly, a little explosion of nerves although such things never rise to the surface of her expression. Instead she just stands there quietly, calmly composed, studying him with a face that is always a touch too serious. “Get down here,” she says to him. “I have a perfectly splendid evening planned for us.”



@Aeneas elliana speaks

elliana

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RE: don't let those butterflies out - Aeneas - 11-09-2020


   
    
   

The white stallion. The black beach. The sea, hush, hush, hushing against the sand—

The gulls are silent, and his breath is silent, and the sand underfoot makes no telltale sh-shush-sh-shush beneath their hooves.

“At the dawning of the world—“ the white stallion whispers, “There were only two divinities. The Sea, and the Land.” 

Tap.

Taptap. 

TAP!
 

Aeneas jolts awake. But once conscious, it takes him a moment to orientate himself. The tapping continues, and then stops. He blinks the sleep from his eyes; there is a moment he feels fear, the uncertainty of what was that sound? but then he rises and tiptoes past his sleeping sister to glance out the window. 

(He had read a story, recently, a boy who was visited by a monster each and every night. The monster was an ancient tree that transformed into a primordial creature each day when the sun set. But rather than be frightening, the monster offered sage advice and life counsel—perhaps this would be like that!) 

When he sees Elliana peering up from below, he knows for a fact that whatever adventure she has planned will be even better than a monster come walking. The smile that emerges is almost too broad; but it is thoughtless, and lacking any degree of self consciousness. “Elliana,” he greets her quietly. “What are you doing here?” Before he has the opportunity to ask more questions, however, she tells him—vaguely, but she tells him nonetheless. 

He cracks open the window as quietly as possible; he shares a glance over his shoulder and hesitates. Should he wake Hilde, and invite her? Aeneas knows he ought to—he knows they could all three share the adventure, and he could introduce them—

But… there is something about this friendship, he thinks, he wants to belong to him and him alone. The selfishness of it strikes him bitterly; but that bitterness is gone, as he thinks of how he and his twin have always shared everything, and that this, this can be his

Aeneas carefully, carefully, opens the window. He climbs onto the ledge—and then with deft, almost playful mischief, he steps from the edge.

(This haphazard trick has been replicated in his mind for weeks, now, after he had seen Leonidas perform it on the cliffside—it is one he has attempted to master toward the point of dangerousness). 

He snaps out his wings so that, rather than fall, he catches the air and glides down to land perfectly beside her. 

“What’s your plan?” Aeneas asks, in a whisper. His eyes are bright with excitement and he leans in confidently close to listen. 

   
   
      Aeneas
      you long to be just honeyed skin and soft curls, but beneath it all, your blood boils fiercely; you were born with heaven and hell already in you, holy fire, hell fire
   
 



RE: don't let those butterflies out - Elliana - 11-09-2020

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul


S
he has no defense against someone like him.

Someone who can so easily bury himself within her skin, someone she can slip so easily towards, not with the sudden abrasiveness of magnets clanging together, but rather the subtle ease of the moon pulling the tides. He is the moon (for how can he be anything else with those wings that can take him so far away?) And she is the ocean, swelling to reach him, to grasp the ends of his lunar glow. She likes to think, maybe, when he got tired of his place in the sky, he might just fall into the sea.

She wonders if he knows just how magnificent he is. He is like a flower in full bloom, like the sunflowers outside of their home, and the correlation brings a smile to her gentle mouth—turning the corners of her lips upward. Elli tucks away the joy and lets it bank like a fire in the pit of her belly.

It warms her as she continues to watch him quietly from her place below his window, studying the angles of his face and the unique tattoos and the way that the heavens seem painted on him. (Maybe he truly is the moon.)

Elliana he calls her. She frowns at this, twisting up to look at him, her blue eyes thoughtful. “Elli, I told you to call me Elli,” Her lashes sweep down and her teeth find her lip as she rolls her shoulders. Elliana always felt too big, like it was never supposed to be her name in the first place. And in truth, it is not entirely her own. It will always belong to her godmother, and she will spend her whole life trying to be big enough to fit into it. But Elli, now Elli fits her just right. She looks over her shoulder as if frightened her mother would appear to drag her home, but those doubtful parts are gone the moment he lands next to her. “I want to show you something,” she says and her face brightens with a smile. “Follow me,” she says and the only thing bright in the dark is those too-blue eyes and the heart upon her brow, a crescent moon on her shoulder.

She weaves in and out of the city, staying silent for fear of waking someone, anyone. It is only when they get to the fields that she exhales. And this is when it starts, surrounded by the shadows of the night. It starts, the humming and whispering of voices.

And the god awful buzzing.
It chatters her teeth and makes her jaw ache.

It feels like some small miracle that she can even hear herself think. “Let me just be in the ground. Let me just be in the ground and go to sleep.” She hears a ghost whisper to her. But then she finds Aeneas in the dark and presses her shoulder into him. The ocean rising to meet its moon. “Want to see a secret?” She asks him with a grin so wild and reckless it is almost unrecognizable when it settles itself across her lips. She leads him to a tree with brambles and shrubs covering the trunk. “Trust me,” she says and leads him through a wall of foliage and through the trunk of the tree to a secret meadow.

A secret meadow illuminated in the night, but hundreds, no thousands, of dancing lights. “They are butterflies, I think, but with light dancing inside them,” she says and settles back against him comfortably. “Aren’ they beautiful?”



@Aeneas elliana speaks

elliana

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RE: don't let those butterflies out - Aeneas - 11-12-2020


   
    
   


Elli. I told you to call me Elli. His smile falters, but only briefly. It occurs to Aeneas, suddenly, that they have both grown. He is taller than her where, before, they had been of one height. It is a strange acknowledgement; that he is looking down as she is looking up beneath her lashes, to reprimand him so gently. The smile returns, apologetic, for Aeneas to amend: “Elli.” The only way to describe his tone, his demeanor, is sweet. 

(Aeneas also realizes this is the first time since his father’s disappearance he has forgotten his grief, however briefly. In those seconds he was drawn from his bed to his window to beyond, he had been free of the pain, the anguish—and then he chooses, decisively, to keep it at bay just a bit longer. Elliana is in front of him, with the promise of adventure, the promise of storybooks and paintings, the promise of—)

Of something other than sadness. 

When he is older, he might think back on this moment. On the way his energy is light as air, and his heart is light as air, and he is light as air. He might remember how she had seen him disheveled and taken aback; his hair falls wildly into his too-wide, too-bright eyes. I want to show you something. Follow me. One day, he might remember this, and he might wonder why we meet the people we do. Why paths intersect. The meaning that one person might have. 
 
Aeneas only nods, afraid if he were to speak, the magic might run. He follows her then, from the citadel to the city streets; and as they navigate them, he catches glimpses of a Terrastella he has never known before. The city is different as it sleeps; the quiet sentinels might watch their shadows flit by, but they do not stop their passage. What Aeneas marvels at most, however, is the quiet—nearly serene—energy that inhabits Terrastella at night. He knows it is a land of dreams, and when they weave beyond the city into the fields, Aeneas begins to hear it. 

At first, he thinks it is the dreaming—the quiet whir, the energy of many sleeping, the monsters and triumphs of their night ventures. But as they continue through the fields, her shoulder against his, he realizes the sound is growing louder outside the city. Want to see a secret? 

“Yes,” Aeneas says, unflinchingly. He is too full of wonder to stop himself; he is too desperate to seize this moment, this moment of joy, to let it slip away, to live it any less earnestly. Perhaps, that is where he will learn his love of secrets; perhaps in this moment all of Vespera’s mysticism and secrecy imbeds plants itself in his soul and begins to grow. 

The young prince follows her to a wall of foliage he believes impenetrable—and then she draws a curtain of ivy away, and they are plunging deeper into the trees than he had ever been before. They enter a meadow beyond, and he cannot keep the awe that begins to color his face. The meadow is lit by dancing, whirring lights—and at first he thinks, again, it must be the energy of dreams— 

Because if dreams had a color, had one energy, this would be it. His eyes go up, up, up to watch the butterflies as they dance in spirals. But there is a girl. There is a girl, warm and small and quiet, and she too is a magic thing. Aeneas glances at her—down, again, down so that she is looking up and he is meeting her eyes and holding them, to say: “They are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

Aeneas cranes his head up, and wants to follow them; his wings stir at his sides, but even as they do he turns to regard her. There is something abashed in his tone when he asks her, “Do you think they are real?” 


   
   
      Aeneas
      you long to be just honeyed skin and soft curls, but beneath it all, your blood boils fiercely; you were born with heaven and hell already in you, holy fire, hell fire
   
 



RE: don't let those butterflies out - Elliana - 11-15-2020

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul


S
he knows what her mother would do if she saw his smile falter on his young face. She would smile wider, more beautiful, to try to lift it back. But Elli is not her mother, so her lips only tilt downwards in his direction. She offers little in the way of comfort, she has never been so attune to the needs of the living. Their physicality, their facial expressions, their words that say one thing but mean another entirely. The dead do not have needs for such deceit and secrets, they tell her what burdens their souls, they have no choice—she is the only one willing to listen. “Elli,” she says in response to him. He looks so much taller here, as she looks up at him. She thinks of the sky again, thinks about how he will fly into it and leave her behind. She has yet to decide what she will do when that day comes. Will she wave goodbye? Chase his shadow for as far as she can? Or throw herself over the cliff side, hoping her prayers turn into wings?

Her father had tried to get her to dance with the other children at the Tulip Festival, tried to get her to join in their games, their groups, but Elli was never made to dance among the masses, not like her mother was (her mother who could dance and make the whole world stop). No, she was meant for this sort of dancing, through cobblestone streets, twirling in and out of shadows. All with the lightness of a boy’s hand in her own. She doesn't care if he doesn't know the steps, she would dance for the both of them.

Want to see a secret? She will ask him. 
This is the first time.
It will not be the last time.

“I think magic was born here,” she says, expecting him to laugh at her, but knowing he wont (or maybe it is just dreaming, just wishing, just believing.) He is looking up, up and away and fear clutches her heart for just a moment. Would he fly? Would he leave her? Was this it? But then with just a glance he returns to her and she catches him with blue eyes, drawing him back to her. Gotcha, she wants to whisper like a child catching butterflies in a secret garden.

His wings flutter next to her and she leans her small body against him, her own way of asking him to still, to remain beside her. Elli perhaps of all people has never thought a question to be silly. Because they ask her, the shadows, they ask her so many questions she does not have answers to. (Where is my mom?) (I am scared to close my eyes, what if they don’t open?) (Did my baby ever make it?) (What happened to my locket, did someone find it?)

“Do you want them to be?” She asks him, furrowing her forehead at him with her question. “I painted them once,” she says, turning to look out at them again. “But I wish I could make something this beautiful,” she says longingly. “Don’t you? Wish you could make something this beautiful?” She asks because she cannot make anything, she can only listen, listen, listen.

Even when she doesn't want to.



@Aeneas elliana speaks

elliana

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RE: don't let those butterflies out - Aeneas - 11-20-2020


   
    
   



If Aeneas could read her thoughts, he might reassure her. He might say, I could never do to someone else what has been done to me, even to a lesser degree. He might say, I could never leave like my father left. It is true that wings are made for flying; they are made for soaring high above and away, for crossing vast distances; for kissing the no-man’s-land between stars and earth. But when Aeneas thinks of his wings, he does not think of them in such a capacity. They are not an escape. They are merely a means to an end. Perhaps it is unromantic, and even utilitarian, but he looks at his wings and his heart wells with the same sense of adventure that a boy feels when he sees a sword. 

Not a map, to distant lands.

(Why would he want those, when everything he has ever loved, ever wanted, has always been here? He is not like other boys. The idea of leaving Terrastella breaks his heart). 

As she repeats her nickname, Aeneas is smiling again. It seems a private thing, between the two of them, and he is grateful for it. He wishes he had something to give her, to reciprocate the intimacy; a name only for her. 

I think magic was born here, she tells him. 

Aeneas does not look at the magic thing when she says it; he looks at her. He does not smile now. (Perhaps they are alike in the differences between themselves and their parents; Orestes would have smiled, in that moment). Aeneas, instead, seems almost somber. He nods in agreement, before his eyes catch the movement and are gone again. She leans against him. The magic, at once, is a draw to something beyond—and she remains a tether to what is

“Yes,” Aeneas answers, almost breathlessly. He is awestruck by them. They are luminous and, in their flight, nearly incomprehensible. For a boy who has not yet seen fall—who has seen, comparatively, so few things—he has no point of reference, no point of comparison. He might say they are like fall leaves, falling up instead of down. But he has never seen autumn, and cannot say. 

Aeneas’ eyes remain on the scene as she continues to speak. He is taken aback, however, by her commentary. “But—Elli. You have made something this beautiful. Your paintings are still-shots of moments like this.” His voice is thoughtful, and appreciative. He cannot help but remember her painting him, and if not for his dark complexion, his face would have flushed. 

“I—I do. Wish that, I mean.” 

Aeneas is quiet, then. He is watching them as they go up, up, up and then swirl back down. Sometimes, they settle in the field. Above them, the moon winks and the stars gleam like shattered glass. Aeneas closes his eyes. He feels it—the energy in this place. The way Elli is bright beside him; the butterflies, and their magic; the stars, and their shining. He feels powerful; but what is different than usual is the lightness. All this energy is passing through him and none of it is negative; none of it is dark; none of it is caustic. 

With his eyes closed, Aeneas begins to paint a picture. It begins in front of them, a butterfly the color of starlight. But then it grows, and grows, and grows, and those wings warp and that body warps and the thing is light becomes a lion. It is Ariel as he remembers him, but blanched, turned the color of silver-gold that exists only when Aeneas is in his most peaceful state. The lion, made of cosmic energy, walks into the center of the field and in a series of bounds follows the butterflies into the sky. Once there, he dissipates into fragments of light and then is gone. 

Beneath Aeneas’ feet, the grass has wilted. 

He opens his eyes, having not seen any of it, but having known it was beautiful. He looks beneath his feet, however, and then to the butterflies again. “I wonder—do you think anything beautiful can happen without something ugly existing, too?” 

Aeneas is shy in the way he looks at her now; he know she is as old as he, and there is no way for her to know more profoundly the answer. Somehow—and perhaps this is how it will always be, between them—he feels she is the wiser of the two, the more aware. 

He lets that silence grow long and comfortable, too. The butterflies are settling; their undulations of flight have become dances. “Do you have magic, Elli?” Aeneas cannot help but ask. She has never spoken of it, that he knows of. But there is something in her demeanor—and the cosmic energy, the tie to her and the universe—that he feels is different


   
   
      Aeneas
      you long to be just honeyed skin and soft curls, but beneath it all, your blood boils fiercely; you were born with heaven and hell already in you, holy fire, hell fire
   
 



RE: don't let those butterflies out - Elliana - 11-20-2020

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul


S
he did a painting once, in the middle of the night when she knew no one would be up and watching her. No mother, no Nic even. She was not sure why she felt like this, it is only when the paint touched the canvas that she realized it was because none of her art had ever before been a secret. She drew herself on Terrastella cliffs. No, not on the cliffs, she was above them. Elli had grown wings and the first thing she did was leave Dusk all behind.

Elli will realize one day that it is not the wings she so desires, but the ease of escape they would provide her.

Maybe Aeneas was never her very own Peter Pan.
Maybe he was her Wendy.

His wings were just their pixie dust.

She will never be a girl who needs his smiles. She will come to love his smiles, to admire them, to know them just as well as she does her mother’s or Nic’s, but she will never need them. Instead, she will need the steady glow of his markings, that are far more comforting than any night light. She will the steel of his gaze catching the blue of her own in moments they are both sharing the same thought. She will need him to keep finding her, even if she hides far, far away.

She doesn’t mean to, but she sighs.
It leaves her before she can stop it.
It leaves her before she’s even fully registered what he’s said.

“There is magic in the movement,” she says, the one weakness of her art, what it could never be. It could never live and breathe, no matter if she painted the hearts and the lungs of moments. She does not mean to discount his words, but she does not take them back either.

He wishes too. She decides, in that instant, that he could do absolutely anything and she would forgive him for it. This is a gift she has not yet bestowed on anyone. He has his eyes closed, he is thinking, and she watches him. Her attention is only stolen when the world before them stirs with magic. She feels that familiar chill of someone, something was going to cross over. “Aeneas,” she says to him as the lion is brought to life through magic and light. It is beautiful, and she knows that because of that, it will be fleeting.

She breathes as the chill exits her body and the lion disappears into the sky. “I don’t know, Aeneas,” she says, attempting to pull his gaze to her own. His eyes remind her of the storm clouds she saw right before the blizzard. She looks out at the shadows with his question, as if worried they might hear. She has never before confessed this in the night. “I do,” she says, and it is the first time she acknowledges that what she can do is truly magic. “I can hear the shadows talk,” she says, and they whisper behind her. “Did you know that they can breathe?” The question is asked in much the same way she would ask if he knew that if you mixed blue and yellow paint together, you get green.

She knows he is great, she has known it for some time now and the way she looks at him now, how can he not see it reflected in her eyes? They were as blue as a glacial lake, should they not be as reflective? That knowing look of hers burns. She has a way of watching people with such an intensity that she is able to burn right through them, through the smoothness of their bones, over the curve of their ribs, and right through their heart. “I don’t know if we can create something beautiful without something ugly coming to exist, but I think if anyone should try—maybe it should be you.”



@Aeneas elliana speaks

elliana

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RE: don't let those butterflies out - Aeneas - 11-20-2020


   
    
   


Aeneas already knows the heaviness of life. He knows the heaviness of life in the way that boys abandoned by their fathers have to. He knows the heaviness of life in the way that he listened to his mother cry at night, or has felt her embrace him so tightly his ribs ached. He knows the heaviness of life in the way that he watches the Halcyon practice day after day after day, not as some competition of wills, but as a sharpening for some future conflict that is truly life, or death. 

Because of this heaviness, Aeneas does not feel the urge to leave. He feels the urge to stay. He understands the importance of roots; of being duty-bound, not to the point of being crushed (as his father was)—but to the point of purpose. To the point of being nothing if not Terrastellan, if not Prince, if not Marisol’s son or Hilde’s brother or Elliana’s friend. 

(This, one day, will hurt him as certainly as the heaviness does. Those of us find our purpose tied irrevocably in others find, all to often, that our hearts break). 

There is magic in the movement, she tells him, and when she tells him he sees what he did not before; the way they are more alive, more enchanting, because his eyes cannot understand them. They are pandemonium rather than pattern; just as his eyes focus, they swirl away again and are gone. 

Aeneas—his name, in her mouth, does something to him. It belongs there, in this secret field. The lion is gone but the stars remain; he can feel them even here, small and mortal and insignificant. He can feel them. I don’t know, Aeneas. His gaze lingers on the sky before it returns to her. “What do they say?” he asks, quietly. It is not the answer he expected and, somehow, it is the only answer that makes sense. It explains the severity of her gaze; the softness of her voice. “I didn’t know that.” Aeneas’s voice softens, nearly brightens. “But now I do.” 

He told her the shameful dangers of his own magic; but as she explains the breathing of shadows, Aeneas thinks of the collapsing of stars. When he does not dream of the white stallion, he dreams of that; he dreams of an explosion so great it created life, of stardust and mercury, of elements that incomprehensible, lakes of liquid diamond, planets in orbit. The way that the same things that made him, made her.

Elli stares at him too intensely, then; her gaze does not waiver, and the ice of her eyes pierces the steel of his. He feels as if she knows something he does not, some mysterious and important secret. She catches him by surprise yet again by saying, I don’t know if we can create something beautiful without something ugly coming to exist, but I think if anyone should try—maybe it should be you. 

He does not smile. He does not look away. 

(His father would have smiled. His father would have said something clever and charming and appreciative). But Aeneas almost doesn’t know what to say. He thinks of burning his sister. He thinks of all the days he has gone to the garden outside of the citadel to sit and meditate. He thinks of all the times he has destroyed something without meaning to, and how little time he had spent creating. Somehow, her belief in him is a salve to those wounds and, at long last what he says to break the silence is, “Thank you, Elli.” 

But Aeneas isn’t ready to believe it. Not yet. He has never created anything that lasts. And he has never created anything without ruining, first, something else. 



   
   
      Aeneas
      you long to be just honeyed skin and soft curls, but beneath it all, your blood boils fiercely; you were born with heaven and hell already in you, holy fire, hell fire
   
 



RE: don't let those butterflies out - Elliana - 11-21-2020

kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul


S
he did not yet understand the connection that had forged between them; she did not understand the way her heart had seen him in a way her eyes never could, because she still doesn’t even know who he is and who he will become.

But Elli, in all of her young, unbridled naivety, didn’t care at all.  

Whoever he is, she cannot help but to feel like he is hers; like a million stars must have lined up to make sure that their paths crossed on that cold, day in that empty field. Destiny was strange like that, she would come to find.

For now, it is just him and her, both of them alight in the glow of the stars and the magic.

She stands beside him, carefree and unafraid. The moonlight pours a stage on which they are dancers, or actors, maybe they are poets or musicians. (The possibilities are endless when you’re young.) With a tip of her head she smiles at him when he asks the question.

What do they say?
This is not the first time she has been asked. The other one who asked was someone entirely different from this one. A man of horns and ghosts etched in his face.

“Secrets,” she presses the answer into him as a whisper. She cannot tell him about the regrets, cannot tell him about the sorrows, cannot tell him about the longing. These things they tell her, she cannot tell him.

He holds her gaze and it feels like time slows. It feels like dying, and she knows about dying. It feels like she can hear the static in the air around her face. It feels like she can smell every dewy blade of the sweet-grass they stand in. It feels like her heart is hammering against her chest so hard it threatens to break through her ribs, like her eyes are rolling back into her head and she can see nothing and somehow everything. It feels like dying.

It feels like seeing everything she has ever wanted for all of her existence.

Thank you, Elli.

She sighs. Elli feels her heart burning – she thinks in all her young life, she has never heard melody in syllables before. “Enjoy the magic tonight, Aeneas,” she says, says his name, because she can never say it enough. (She will find, later, that she does not like his name as much when it is not said from her mouth.) “Tomorrow, it will be gone,” she tells him because it disappears with the sun, she has tried to look for them in the light and has always been disappointed. “But if anyone can bring magic back…” back to their secret meadow, where a girl says a boy’s name, and a boy asks a girl what shadows say. “Bring it back, Aeneas.”



@Aeneas elliana speaks

elliana

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RE: don't let those butterflies out - Aeneas - 11-22-2020


   
    
   


Life will do so much to them; life has already done so much to them. His father has already left, and hers is already a half-lie. There is so much waiting to unfold; penance for their parents, or simply the other clawed hands of fate. Children never know, however, how these demons wait from the shadows, beckoning. Come closer, and though they do not hear the call through their optimism and ignorance, they are already moving that direction. Toward tragedy. Disappointment. Betrayal. Pain. Expectations that fall short of what they were meant to be. 

Sometimes, towards love. Sometimes, towards hate. 

Oh, to keep it back—to keep this baying back. The only thing to do is to live, wide-eyed and with wonder, for as long as they can. They are so young in that field; so lit up by the moon, by the stars, by the butterflies in their swarm. This is a memory that will last a lifetime; it might be even one that defines him, young and naive and wanting to understand the largeness of life. 

Secrets, she says to him. And all of this—this entire field—has become a secret, he thinks. The shadows, she says, tell secrets. She is looking at him in that too-heavy, too-intense way of hers and Aeneas is looking back, but for once his expression is difficult to read. (This, too, will come with life; when he learns he wants to be a warrior; when he learns sometimes, sometimes, feelings are a disadvantage). “Elli? Do you think… you could let me know if you ever talk to my dad? Do you think you could promise that?” It is the first time I have mentioned him to her, although I wonder if she’s known, all along. 

Enjoy the magic tonight, Aeneas. He smile—but despite the seriousness of her words he steps closer to her, and leans against her shoulder. Aeneas extends one wing and draws her in, so they are standing side-by-side before the light show. They have begun their dance again. They are more beautiful than anything else he has ever seen. Except, maybe—

His eyes are on her. “Elli? If I can bring it back, it’s only because you’ve showed me what it is.” 

The quiet stretches a moment while they watch. In the silence, the wings create their own sympathy; it sounds a little like water, he thinks, or wind through the trees. “Should we be going home, you think? Or should we—should we watch until dawn?” 


   
   
      Aeneas
      you long to be just honeyed skin and soft curls, but beneath it all, your blood boils fiercely; you were born with heaven and hell already in you, holy fire, hell fire