I am not like any ordinary world
It was typical. The wild-wood boy had spent as much of his life as he could remember remaining untouched. Yet, the one girl who touches him (and who Leonidas decides he enjoys touched by) at the conclusion of one night with him is utterly untouchable.
She is beside him, the boy can see where her faded body, silver and ghostly, should be pressed against his. He remembers (already) how her cheek should feel upon his. But there is no warmth to her touch. There is no soft skin, the likes of which he had never felt before. She pressed her body to his but there is nothing of her. He cannot feel himself and he cannot feel where he ends or she begins. The water runs through them and he does not feel that either.
There is no comfort to be found in their embrace. Aspara has become little more than air. He can see the stars where her eyes were once dark and lovely. The feral boy breathes a rattling, trembling breath. Breathing feels like nothing at all.
Apsara smiles at him, speaks and he wonders how her voice has become so strange. It echoes as if reaching him from another place. He wonders how she can speak at all when their bodies are fading to nothing and the waters are not helping.
When will he be able to feel the rains upon his back? Or the leaves across his sides? Or the way a butterfly lands and presses its small feet upon the curve of his cheek. He longs even for the fireflies that tangle in his hair. Now they only drift through him as if he is not there at all.
They were strangers at the start. He thought her pretty, he might have followed her for that alone. Yet circumstance has seen to bind them tighter yet. When she moves for the bank Leonidas follows, easy as an impulse, an answering beat of a heart. The Denocte girl speaks of healers and the boy is wary, he has seen healers plucking roots and leaves out of the grounds, he has seen their strange magics. Yet he follows her as she directs him too. The water does not sluice from his skin nor does it fall like tears. It was never even upon him to begin with. The water runs on as the children leaves it. Its place knows them no more, as if they had never even been there.
“Will you live with me in the woods?” The boy asks, “If we never get our bodies back?” For Leonidas thinks life might not be so different for him anyway. He never was noticed before. He just needs to get used to never feeling anything upon his body again. Yet he thinks he might miss her touch most of all.
Apsara turns to him and smiles. His is a reflection of her own: braver and brighter than they felt. The wild boy follows the city girl as she leads him away in search of a healer.
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