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It’s a funny way to die, isn’t it, he thought.
If he understood anything about this world, it was that everything is changing, constantly, no matter whether or not you would like it to. People like him didn’t grow, not in the way humans did, but still he had seen fears and hopes come and go. He had watched it, in all its glory, pass him by like a ship in the night, sailing past his harbor and out, then, into the endless sea, into wherever his dreams sank when he awoke.
Something was underneath him. Something was over him. Which way was up he couldn’t have said, only that something was there, hard and definite. It slipped from his grasp and then there was nothing.
He hadn’t supposed it would be much to ask, to be understood. To be held. Perhaps this was an oversight on his part. Perhaps those old ships, creaking and groaning against the weight of the waves that crashed against their sides, licking up the grains of the wood and stretching up towards the deck, towards the sail, perhaps they were destined to land on brighter shores.
It found him there, whatever it was. It must be quite a sight, he thought; he naked and vulnerable and floating endlessly, and it, a thousand times grander than he, coming towards his body with all the force of a hurricane, a million times gentler.
The eye of the storm was not calm. It was blinding, thrashing, burning, lashing its terrible waves against the boards until they shrieked and collapsed, drifting out in as many different directions as there were ships. The white tongues pulled the sails beneath them and only then it became quiet. And the sunlight filtered through the blue water and the salt crusted on the rails, and when it glittered it almost looked like diamonds, like gold.
He learned, in those moments, what it was to live. The dust gathered in his lungs began to swirl in the wind, around and around, pulling his chest in on itself, and when he reached out his arms, expecting to find nothing at all, his fingertips met warmth. Then his lungs unlocked, and he breathed.
And the boards pulled apart and came together again and settled at the bottom of the sea.
And the dust rose up and away and flew to wherever his nightmares fled when he awoke.
And two people met in the dark, in the light, in the caverns, in the room of an inn, in the space between that seems to stretch on forever, and the gap closed all at once. All at once they understood.
It’s a funny way to love, isn’t it, he thought.