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Being in love with Ouni is the same as loving a storm. Chasing a beautiful, wild thing across the sands , through the blue skies, all to be given a chance to share in a single moment. This very fact was why Nibi could never say a thing. Every declaration of love sealed up tight at the tip of his tongue manifesting in jokes and playful shoves instead. It was enough to love him from afar, after all Ouni was freedom manifested and no one could lay claim to such a thing.
- But it did not help that he saw his eyes in the stars shooting above the mud whale, or his strength in the stalks of the growing bamboo. It was always about Ouni, it has been since that fateful day he had asked him to be his friend and that quiet boy had decided he had nothing better to do and followed along. ( Though it did not take long at all for them to fall into his rhythm. ) A steady beat of drums, broken by the staccato melody of trouble-making and dreams only Ouni could imagine.
Yes, Nibi had been in love since the very start.
The problem with wanting something far our of reach is that his eyes were always trained towards the sky, leaping from one stepping stone to another, but he never noticed what he already had. Reality is dull in comparison to the dreams he has, but he thinks, maybe if he had taken a second to look around him he would have realized that what he had was already beautiful.
Nibi smells like home, like lilac blossoms, and fresh rain. His life before Nibi was a haze of nothingness, a countdown until his early death. A smudge of grey which bursts forth an array of color, premeditated by a boy with too much attitude, hurling rocks when he barely knows how to walk.
It's why it's wrong, wrong, wrong when his spirited friend lays on the floor, red pooling beneath him, silenced at last. Emotions were foreign, but from his despair he understood. It had taken Nibi's passing to realized he had been in love. They didn't have much, living on the fringes of society, but Nibi had gave and gave until all that he had left was his life, and he handed that over too with a smile on his face.
- And what had Ouni done? He had taken it all without thinking, slipping between his found family's fingers until they were afraid he would leave them. He wants nothing more than to have his life entwined with Nibi's again, to run beneath the sun, to speak of dreams beneath moonlit nights, and to love him right. He was a fool for not seeing it sooner, blinded by ambition, he had forgotten who was the first to offer his hand and promise the world. ( Oh, and Ouni had believed it too. How could he not, when those eyes were so dazzling, with promises unspoken, a blazing light to guide the way? )
Yes, Ouni had been in love since the very start.