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His heart feels heavy as he bides the man good night, words spoken respectively and humbly that shadow his true feelings in inky darkness where light will never shine. He watches the man’s frame disappear as he rounds a curve, leaving the warrior alone again.
Loneliness. It is a despondent word that he is unwillingly bonded with. It is a melancholy tone, sung low and long that clings to his soul and echoes through its caverns. And it is a perpetrating essence that not even the heartfelt mirth of friendship can drive away, for it is not the lack of friendship that causes the loneliness, but rather the sole enactment of merely friendship.
The full moon shimmers light through the naked branches of a peach tree. Shadow and light cast across his young face. He looks upon it, dark spring green eyes full. In memory of how blossoms and fruit had sprung from the tree, and how the amaranth pink petals have drifted softly through the breeze. Yet, as all things come to pass, the tree is now bare. He looks down with a desolate gaze. He, too, is bare.
There had once been the quiet speculation, the misconception that gave birth to hope. But he had silenced those thoughts, that false hope that would lift him up only to then tear him down. It was something had could never be. He had convinced himself the sooner he accepted such the wiser it would be.
Yet… the mind cannot control what the heart feels. It can only create the illusion that it can, that it knows. And to feign that his heart harmonizes with his mind is to live a life of deception, a life that is not truly worth living.
He looks to the heavens, the moon and stars in this unearthly kingdom, but there are no answers written amongst them. There is only silence, the muted presence of thoughts where time has no meaning.
Tears pool and streak his cheeks, soundlessly as the greatest of sorrows are: the ones that cannot be heard, but are felt in a nostalgic way that is subtle yet constantly looming into something greater, something more raw then the moment before it.
Indeed, he is bare… indeed….