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The man sitting across him asked gently, carefully, with the tone of an adult cradling a child.
“Did it hurt?"
He gestured at his neck and Athanasia reflectively touched her own, not finding even a trace of a scar. There had to be one somehow, the way the man's eyes landed there with intensity suggested so.
"Probably."
Under the wide expense of rainy sky, Athanasia had looked down at her crumpled clothes and wondered where things went wrong. Besides that, she remembered drowning while everyone else breathing underwater. The rest was a blur.
The man's eyes softened. If Athanasia concentrated hard enough, she could see dark wings encompassing the room and two horns sprouting out of his head. With shadows stretching out under his feet, the man looked like an evil entity depicted in fairytales. It would make sense if he was one.
Lily always said that evil snatched the bad kids away.
Athanasia leaned back and looked up at the white ceiling. If her head made even the slightest movement, she would see infinite stars panning behind her. They pulsed like heartbeats, enough to make her want to reach out for one.
"In my next life," her voice broke. The Most Ancient Dream stared, not giving encouragement but not rushing her off either. It probably didn't mean a thing to him and it was because of this that Athanasia gained the bravery to continue. "Rather than having a father who doesn't love me, in my next life, I don't want to have parents at all."
The Most Ancient Dream tilted his head. He had to be a man approaching his thirty but the little motion gave her an impression of a troubled child. Then the man smiled, wide and serene, and didn't look out of place among the stars, and all of sudden, Athanasia no longer felt like dealing with a child as lost as she was.
"Will you visit me again, my lovely Princess?"
"I will," Athanasia promised.
It wouldn't be bad, she thought, to meet again amidst the dancing cluster of stars.
The next time they met, she was as much as Athanasia as the man before her was a human.
"You're smaller," she said, stretching her hands across the top of the seats.
The Most Ancient Dream chuckled with a strange atmosphere of melancholy that seemingly swept him off his feet. He crossed his legs and leaned forward, eyes twinkling as if he was part of the constellation crossing the window outside.
"It's good to see you too."
The compartment shook a little. Behind the Most Ancient Dream, an aurora passed by, and for a moment, her vision exploded in a myriad of dark purple and pink. It created a powerful contrast against the Most Ancient Dream's unchanging expression. She looked away from it in favor of studying the wall.
Quite a long time must have passed and this man remained as abstract as ever.
She sighed. "Have you ever felt like you've wasted every good thing given to you?"
The Most Ancient Dream moved minutely in a tiny gesture that might be mistaken as a flinch. She elected to ignore it.
"Really," she continued. "It's true what they said. you don't know how precious some things are until it slips out of your hand."
Athanasia is a pleasant dream, she thought, compared to this poor orphan.
"Do you regret it?"
"I wonder." A bitter smile adorned her face before she could stop it. After a moment of hesitation decorated by a lone star shining from a faraway galaxy, she confessed. "Just a little, I want to know what it feels like to have my birth cherished."
Athanasia was born in tragedy, but she was born as a mistake. To be unwanted and thrown away, there was no lonelier feeling.
"My lonely Princess," the Most Ancient Dream stood up and bowed in a perfect imitation of a noble manner, his white coat quavering. The old nickname tickled her like a persistent itch. He smiled courteously and she smiled back with watery eyes. "Thank you for visiting me."
He didn't ask to be visited again and she didn't promise. She wondered if it would be too much to confess that she wished for someone to cherish him too, someone who found him between lonesome nebulae.
He looked like the sort of person that would run away from even the tiniest display of affection.
She stood up as well and extended her hand. Now that he had shrunk several inches and she had lived past Athanasia's age, they were closer in height. "Will you dance with me until I find my destination?"
The Most Ancient Dream looked surprised. It made him look human, if only momentarily. Then he stepped forward, taking her hand in one graceful motion. "I am honored, my lovely Princess."
She leaned her head against his chest and closed her eyes, letting him take the lead.
"Thank you," she whispered. "My sweet little dream."
"It's been quite a journey, isn't it?" The Most Ancient Dream, leaning sideways against the train pole, asked with twinkling eyes.
Athanasia covered her mouth to stifle her laugh. The Most Ancient Dream didn't have the same restrain, his laugh reverberated inside the sketchy compartment. It didn't quite sound like joy, but it must be what contentment would sound like if it had a voice.
When their laughs quietened down, a comfortable silence filled in, accompanied by vibrant wandering stars.
They stared at each other for a minute and Athanasia took her time studying the mystery in front of him. Having shrunk further, the Most Ancient Dream was now closer in resemblance to a child than a thirty-year-old man. The end of his white coat hung down limply to the floor along with the bottom of his pant, and his too-big black suit slipped past his shoulder, revealing sickly-pale skin.
Distantly, Athanasia wondered if he was dying backward.
She shifted her eyes to look at the intersecting glimmers outside the window.
Maybe those stars, too, would meet their ends one after another.
For now though, they just mindlessly slipped away, as if they were performing boundless fireworks. When Athanasia first caught the sight of them, she had wanted to reach out for one. She still felt the same now, even with two lifetimes behind her, but at the same time, she completely felt at ease.
The peace was shattered by the rough shaking of the train, the force of it was great enough to almost send her tumbling. Holding onto the train seat, Athanasia looked back at the Most Ancient Dream, only to see that he was as startled as she felt.
Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. His hands were still clinging to the train pole and he sounded almost breathless but his next words were spoken without a hint of fear. "We have a rude passenger."
As soon as he said that, the door slid open, revealing long black hair fluttering in open space and an impertinent smirk. Behind him, the stars gathered together, illuminating owlishly like a chandelier.
"I've come to pick you up," he said, stepping forward with an ease of a man who was meant to be here.
At this point, Athanasia joined the Most Ancient Dream in his laughter.
"Lucas," she managed to say between blistered laughs.
"Did you miss me?" he teased, his hands stretched out wide.
If this was a fairytale, Lucas wouldn't be a prince. Instead, he would be the bad wizard that had come to collect her soul.
Athanasia jumped into his arms and he caught her in a tight embrace, holding onto her like a lifeline. She hugged him just as desperately, smelling ashes and fire and home.
"Where do you want to go?" He asked, leaning in close enough that their noses almost touched.
"Wherever you want to."
Take my soul, she thought. Take my life too. If it means I can be with you.
Athanasia turned to look at the Most Ancient Dream. He nodded shakily with eyes too bright to belong to a human.
Can we meet again? Athanasia wanted to know but his fractured smile prevented her from asking. Instead, she said. "I hope they find you."
The Most Ancient Dream looked comically betrayed. Athanasia waved at him in one final goodbye as Lucas lifted her up and carried her off to another journey.
Later, when they settled in another train, sitting side by side and her head leaning against his shoulder, Lucas asked. "Who were you talking about?"
"I don't know."
But she had thought about this.
Why else would a single person board a train without a destination drifting alone in the corner of the universe, if not to run away?
"I just want him to be found."
Lucas hummed, apparently losing interest already. He held her hand, gripping it loose enough to not hurt but also tight enough that the warmth of his touch transmitted over to her skin.
"Sing me a lullaby," he pleaded.
"Big baby," she teased before complying with the request.
She sang his favorite and he succumbed to sleep almost immediately, his head falling to lean against hers. Outside the window, the stars glimmered like falling snow on a winter day.
"Sweet dream, Lucas."
I'd give anything to hear
you say it one more time
That the universe was made
just to be seen by my eyes