I will not ask you where you came from
I will not ask, and neither should you
If Michael is meant to be playing some game he is surely losing, sweating there on the beach before the phoenix and her phoenix, feeling too heavy and too light, a metronome rocking between panic and exhaustion at a pace that makes him ill. It used to be so much easier just to be alive. Everything used to be so much easier.
Michael is a comet adrift in space, arms outstretched and fingers reaching to catch whatever he can, to hold whatever he must to maintain his admittedly strained sense of self. He grabs her words as he passes by and they pull him from the existential deep.
The waves roar in his ears. Gulls are crying above him. A phoenix circles. Another phoenix stands, expectant.
“Neighbors, huh? Interesting.” and he returns her gaze with one of his own, tepid but not unkind. “Maybe I’ll visit. At some point. If… it happens, I guess.”
Michael purses his lips, tucks the corners back just a little. His brows furrow. All of this is obfuscated. He is thankful for it. His is an expression of veiled frustration.
Anyway,
He is spinning, an entire galaxy crushed and compacted until it doesn’t look at all like it did when he first began. Michael follows her gaze outward to the cresting waves, the lapping ocean. If he has ever felt like he’s at home in Novus it’s got to be here, and it’s got to be now, and for whatever reason it’s got to be next to Israfel, a sylph set on fire.
What is your favorite color, Michael? Do you remember how to love anything, anymore? Do you remember what it means to have any sort of opinion that matters? To care at all about anything that isn’t the stars or the ocean? If he’s going to answer truthfully, “that one,” is what he says while tilting his head down, toward the sand below their feet.
“Whatever you’d call that, I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite color. It reminds me of home. That, or red.”
Michael lifts his head again, shakes the hair out of his eyes for once. They are blue and sharp. “You’re welcome to prying questions, as long as I am, too.”
@Israfel
Michael is a comet adrift in space, arms outstretched and fingers reaching to catch whatever he can, to hold whatever he must to maintain his admittedly strained sense of self. He grabs her words as he passes by and they pull him from the existential deep.
The waves roar in his ears. Gulls are crying above him. A phoenix circles. Another phoenix stands, expectant.
“Neighbors, huh? Interesting.” and he returns her gaze with one of his own, tepid but not unkind. “Maybe I’ll visit. At some point. If… it happens, I guess.”
Michael purses his lips, tucks the corners back just a little. His brows furrow. All of this is obfuscated. He is thankful for it. His is an expression of veiled frustration.
Anyway,
He is spinning, an entire galaxy crushed and compacted until it doesn’t look at all like it did when he first began. Michael follows her gaze outward to the cresting waves, the lapping ocean. If he has ever felt like he’s at home in Novus it’s got to be here, and it’s got to be now, and for whatever reason it’s got to be next to Israfel, a sylph set on fire.
What is your favorite color, Michael? Do you remember how to love anything, anymore? Do you remember what it means to have any sort of opinion that matters? To care at all about anything that isn’t the stars or the ocean? If he’s going to answer truthfully, “that one,” is what he says while tilting his head down, toward the sand below their feet.
“Whatever you’d call that, I’m pretty sure it’s my favorite color. It reminds me of home. That, or red.”
Michael lifts his head again, shakes the hair out of his eyes for once. They are blue and sharp. “You’re welcome to prying questions, as long as I am, too.”
@Israfel
