“A man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river. A man takes his sadness and throws it away but then he’s still left with his hands.”
The almost-winter air blows in from the hills and it takes its hands on his face for Michael to feel how everything spins, like he is falling and falling and falling but never quite hits the ground.
This is enough. It's easy to be no more than someone that holds the door open and nods as she passes. It's easy to touch her shoulder with his and beg the powers that be to either end his suffering or tell him it will be forever--that here at the end of all things, when Michael's clock is finally ticking and each second seems somehow more precious than the last, this will be the sweet and slow death he deserves.
Moira says don't like she's lying, don't look at me like I'm your salvation, and Michael laughs because he's pretty sure he's in hell. If she is a star burning down to dust in his sky then he wishes on each sparkling piece of her to crash where he wants. He wishes, he wishes, he wishes--
--he wishes many things, and this is the one that has come to be. It is colder than he realized, the sort of cold that sits on the skin but dissolves in the blood (possible because they are more alcohol than horse at this point, but, semantics), the sort of cold that he sees when he closes his eyes, all white light and blank space. The sort of cold at the bottom of the sea where he creaks like old ships and prays to blue serpents.
Michael regards her as they walk, curious how something like this happens. Who is he, in the grand scheme of things? Who is he to walk to the sea with a girl made of fire and pain? He does not stop to ask if he will, if deserving or not deserving makes any difference.
It was never a question, really.
Michael unwraps his scarf, an iridescent blue in the silver wash of the moon, and slings it across Moira's shoulders, tucking each end under the other, smoothing the tassels in place like an artisan. He smiles. His neck is cold where it hung.
"I'm not in the business of lying." he says, like it's as simple as that, and they walk -- to the ocean, and its glittering surface, and all the dark, dark things beneath.
@
Um here is this closer finally WOW I am sorry for the wait
ON TO MORE MIMO
