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Like the tar-like candy, he was despised by most, except for a nation far up in the north. She felt his hands on her cheek, his bitterness soaking through her skin, yellowing her teeth as the festering tannins tried inhabiting her insides. When she gazed into his eyes, they filled up with an excruciating saltiness. Still, she leaned forward and took another bite. His lips soft, almost sweet against hers. Hers had dried up and started breaking whenever she smiled — she didn’t mind; it kept her from showing off the black paste that crawled around every crevice and nook.
So salty, so bitter. Each fluttering kiss on her neck made her skin tingle, her heart pound. She loved it, oh, she craved it. She had tried many sweets in her life — burned caramel; too fiery, dark chocolate; too sweet. Even a cup of black home brewed coffee couldn’t wash away the sticky feeling in her throat. His kisses did, though. Fetid soundwaves, slicing away the sugary greed that resided in her. All over her body, she felt it disappear. She became a toxic wasteland for the wicked love he had to give.
Her desire to binge overtook her. A mere smidge of her consciousness remained as the rest of her plunged into the slimy pool of liquorice he embodied. She saw how her fingers climbed his limbs like poison ivy, how her life got pierced by his thorny soul, and her mouth filled with the acid taste of salmiac and salt. Were they crying? She couldn't tell. Something in between passion and hate split her skin open — had it crackle and bleed, seep out a dark syrup that left her feeling empty. Still, she felt him fill her to the brim of his special taste.
They say water and ice is a good combination. It’s classic — the water freezes into ice, the ice melts into water. But isn’t it true that they constantly destroy each other? For water to exist, it has to ruin the ice — remove its structure, strip it of its identity. A soft, warm, kind version of ice doesn’t have a place in this world. Meanwhile, the same thing goes for water. If the ice gets to thrive, it means taking everything the water has to give, and then absorbing it, changing it into a molecular structure that stays steady. It takes a life to stay alive.
Both of these statements ring true. The relationship between ice and water is either a compromise, or an endless cycle of destroying each other to not lose themselves. The only way they could both exist in a peaceful manner, is in a place where everything is frozen — time itself, frozen. Someplace where water can softly caress the glaciers of ice that lay above, and where the ice gets to rest on the waterbed underneath. Where the north and the south meet, ice and water lies in harmony.
But the water is tainted, and the ice can no longer freeze. The sickly oils from the liquorice polluting the seas, eventually ruining Mother Earth herself with the acid rains that follow. But in the darkness in Juvia’s room, she lets herself trace the naked skin of Gray’s chest. The night is young, and she has her entire future left to destroy.