"I think we deserve
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."
a soft epilogue, my love.
we are good people
and we've suffered enough."
It was not easy to learn, but Michael has come to understand that everything is suffering - that there is an undercurrent of pain that runs through the veins of the earth. Eleven - and it hurts to think the name, but there it is, somehow - would say he was cynical. She would perhaps think we was selfish; that he is turning the world to a soft and sad thing because he cannot understand anything that is not.
Maybe she's right.
And Michael does want to die. It is a cold rock settled at the bottom of the deep lake of his heart, silt-covered and tucked away. He has forgotten this over centuries of doing the opposite (persisting, in spite of his efforts, in spite of the roiling black clouds of fate) but it sits in him still.
It occurs to him, suddenly and without warning, there on the mountainside in the company of this white horse, that he will. A year has come and gone and he is sure that he is so tired because now, at last, he is aging. The slow decay of being alive.
And suddenly he doesn't want to die at all.
Michael smiles, and nods, and while it is brittle it is genuine. "Toro, I'm Michael. I'm from here."
And up they go, until the trees break into rock piled on rock, until the trail is edged on either side by open air or alpine meadow that slants toward Denocte, laid out before them by a map. Michael stops to catch his breath. Michael turns.
His eyes are pale, angled toward the sun - even squinting, even so desperately tired.
"I must know, do you come here often?" he asks, and he can hear his own thin smile in it. "And also, why?"
@El Toro
