[P] the world we close our eyes to see

[Samaira]

i guess i could swim for days in the salty sea

Samaira could live forever next to him. In this moment, with her skin touching his—soft earth against fading twilight. She could live forever in the rhythm of his heartbeat, which she can feel beneath the delicate skin of his cheek. Hers beats brightly, aloft, flying.

Oh, the pegasus woman would happily forget the world if this moment would only go on endlessly: the moment she finally felt whole once more. He carries the smells of strange places on his skin, but he is still Asterion, who prefers to sleep under the stars and who commands the rivers and the seas.

Perhaps it is Samaira, of anyone, who should have known that what goes up does always come down.

It’s his expression that tells her something is amiss, not that he pulls away to look in her eyes. He is too serious, too solemn, for the admission she has been holding in her heart since he went away. “Samaira, I had no idea,” he says and she thinks no, how could you have.

I have been so good at hiding my heart, she thinks. Until now. Still, the pegasus is waiting. Waiting for the reason the smile has been wiped from his face so suddenly, so completely. And then—

“I am in love with someone…”

She breaks. Like a mirror, in a million star-shine fragments that go tinkling to the ground. It is a beautiful sound, like fairy song, like stars twinkling. It is a terrible sound, the sound of her heart breaking. Again. Again, again, again.

“She is lucky to have your heart,” this, Samaira has practiced plenty in the last year. How to hide the hurt. How to push down the sadness in her moon-bright eyes. There are no stars in her eyes. This she has practiced plenty.

The woman smiles. She wants to be selfish. She wants to say “and if she won’t have you?” Samaira wants to tell him how much she has longed, how her heart had never forgotten him, regardless of how her head had tried to make it.

She wants to cry.

She says, “I hope that you get everything that you desire. You deserve so much.” It’s a burning iron upon her tongue, a million arrows pierced through her wings. A part of her had always hoped—a foolish part—that she would one day get the things that she desired, too.

She sees now that is a lie. She never will.

but in the end, the waves will discolour me

⚕ | @Asterion i'm not crying