come away, o child
to the waters and the wild
Sure, but you can’t kill any of my flowers, only your own. He wants to say, I don’t kill them on purpose, he wants to say, they aren’t dying but both taste too much like a lie between his teeth, all salt and copper. It is her expression that keeps the greenery from wilting a third time; the soft acceptance, a kind of forgiveness. “Aeneas the Flyer—“ he repeats, whimsically. His eyes are alight with a joy he does not often let himself experience— “I like that.”
He rushes to make the conversation less about himself, and more about her. “And you—you can be Elli the Painter!”
There is a bit of that in her, too, he finds. A bit of joyful, lighthearted delight. Aeneas grows a little brighter from his perch; and that light is radiant in the way the sun is, from behind the clouds. He closes his soft grey eyes and begins to count. “One… two… three…” He already knows she will be gone when he opens them.
But today, Aeneas doesn’t mind.
He’s made a friend.
And he knows he’ll find her again.
with a fairy, hand in hand
for the world is more full of weeping
than you can understand
