I CLOSE MY EYES AND I FIND YOU
She welcomes him, and he could almost smile - almost. The chill of his memories still have their icy fingers clutched about his heart, squeezing in a way that makes his chest feel tight and his breaths painful to draw in. Even the warmth of the desert isn’t enough to keep them at bay; the frost is inside of him, turning him to stone from within. Morbid thoughts cling to his mind, unshakeable memories that whisper of tragedy and death, of a curse that will follow him to his grave.
No longer can he feel the heat of the desert dancing along his wingtips; the air around him grows colder as his magic flares. It’s a struggle to push it away, a struggle to swallow past the growing lump in his throat. He has to force himself to look back at her, tilting his ears forward to pretend he’s listening.
But it’s like trying to stop a river. He can hear her voice, but it sounds as if he’s underwater. “I am Aion,” he manages, though his tongue feels thick, as if it’s forgotten his own name. “I’m from Delumine.”
Delumine, where the sun was always warm and the flowers were always lovely. It’s a place he isn’t sure he belongs; but Eros is there, and he belongs wherever Eros is. There were worse places to live.
She’s still talking, and Aion forces himself to listen, to steal a glance as she looks out across the water and sighs. We’re so different, you and I, he wants to tell her. She was so young and optimist, like a new spring flower growing in the desert. “You’re not a hard person,” he tells her instead. I am. “So maybe it was the hard land that came first, and changed the people.”
He isn’t sure he believes in her god, but he doesn’t tell her so. There’s hope in her, as plain as day; a youthfulness that shines brighter perhaps than even his wings. Aion leans in close as her voice drops, praying to whatever god there might be that she doesn’t see the frost in his eyes, that she might not feel the coolness of the air hovering about his skin.
“Solterra seems like an ancient place,” he says slowly. “how old do they say it is?” There’s still a lot for him to learn about this new world, with its history and its legends.
But there’s a mystery in not knowing, an excitement in untangling a mystery. So he lowers his voice the same as she, and even when he can’t smile with his lips he lets his eyes dance and encourage her to say more.
“Maybe the canyons were filled with flying fish once, or water that filled it to the brim.” He gestures with one wing out to the water before them, that sparkles like gold in the light. “Maybe this is all that remains of it.”
@elif
walk. "talk."
