Happiness a tricky thing. For Eik it was never easy, like everyone else made it seem. It needed to be handled, or else it would get away from him the way his heart does now. Happiness is dangerous. So he often settled for contentment, its older brother.
But oh, how delightful it is to stand in the doorway of happiness and see what lies past it. He is not content, here in the falling snow tangled up in a black-haired unicorn. She's cracked open something deep and beautiful in him and he does not know if he will ever be content again-- if seems the world will be forever polarized into With or Without this dream creature beside him. The one who names herself Isra.
"My name is Eik, his voice is tight, for he too knows what it is to beg-- though never successfully.
(Ask more of me, Ask everything.)
He almost cries out when she steps away and the cold rushes in to fill the space she once inhabited. His eyes cling to her as though expecting her to fade as all sweet dreams must do. Only now does he notice her scales, each a small galaxy in itself, and he wonders at the way they reflect the moon in iridescent shades of color he has no name for. And as she walks away from him her swaying hips toll like a bell in his soul.
(Of course, of course he realizes this is all just a new kind of madness. But if he can't be without madness then let it at least be wild and beautiful and bigger than himself. Let it bleed him dry. We pray to those we've lost, for we have new ghosts now and they have blue eyes.)
Isra looks at him with a challenge in her eyes and he has the sinking feeling that she will be the ruin of him, but he also has the feeling of rising, rising like the smoke that remains even after the flame has died. "If it would please you," his voice is hoarse with restraint (has he ever wanted anything this much) and as he speaks out loud his mind voice chimes in, out of his control "that is not enough."
He steps after her before she is lost to the herd, and it does not escape his attention how her hoofprints look so very real and so very small among the bison's. Then he reaches out to her vast, sad, heartbreakingly beautiful mind, and then he reaches out to the minds of sleeping giants, and he pulls the dreams of the bison over them like a blanket. One last magic trick. And for a time, he allows himself this razor-edged happiness. It feels a little like death and a little like rebirth, both of which he knows in a way, but not like she does.
ooc: @Isra a naked, long overdue closer! Thank you for such a wonderful thread <3
Time makes fools of us all
