How much hurt can one heart hold, before it becomes hate?
How much pain can one soul endure, before it manifests as malice?
Is it equal to the amount of love one can feel?
No. Never. There must be gods laughing, or archangels, or the fates as they stare down at two unequal hearts, two hearts that have diverged so woefully apart. It is not that Lyr knows her, or she him; it is that their souls shine with the same sensitive light, with the same delicate need for affection, sentiment, memory, goodness. Lyr has that somewhere, within him, a tenderly nursed, compassionate nature… or he had, once, and now?
Now there is a woman who resembles, too closely, his sister. And already in his mind he twists her to become what he needs of her. Already in his mind she is soft, and perfect, and consolatory. Already she is the type of light he needs in a life where he cultivates darkness.
The difference between them, however, is what they have done with their grief. Lyr does not yet know it, and perhaps never will, but they are divided as utterly as he and his sister had been, if not more. A medic, versus a soldier. Distractedly, he wonders what he would have done, had someone approached him as he had approached her and—
It’s terrible.
It is. He is drawn back into their conversation, into his story, into the feeling of burning tears.
Lyr, when she was dying, had found it so terrible he could not even face her. As she sickened, and became less and less able-bodied, he could no longer meet her gaze. When she died, he had not been present. He had not gone in to say goodbye.
I hate watching the sunset alone.
She draws him out of his recollections and so he looks, now, at the sunset she mentions. Lyr admires it with the kind of limited admiration men sometimes have for beauty they cannot touch. But he smiles nonetheless, because this girl who resembles his sister speaks to him, takes pity upon him, and makes him feel not so terribly alone.
“It is a… pleasure… Elena. Thank you. I'm Lyr.” He glances at her shyly and turns closer, further entranced by the details that, by the moment, make her appear more and more like the sister he had lost.
He says, eventually—who knows, how long, he stares at that sun? Long enough for the sky to grow dark, and darker still— “You must be new in Terrastella. I haven’t seen you before.” He does not say, I thought you were a ghost.
But there are many types of ghosts, and even more types of haunting.
"Speech" || @
when i leave i'm taking all the atlases
everyone who touches me walks away unharmed and singing.
