Work Text:
You turn to face the early morning sun. Eyes closed. Shoulders loose. You're smiling —as much as those like us can— your tentacles gently curling and uncurling in an outward show of contentment that seems almost antithetical to our existence.
I feel it too.
Your contentment.
The warmth of the sun on your face.
You make me ...consider... the moment in a way I have not since I was a different person in a different time. The metaphor, I think, is to stop and smell the roses. Maybe I will learn how to slow down once again ...thanks to you.
Hot tea in front of a fire on a cold winter's day. Simple things, missing for so long that their absence has scarred and hardened and would have remained long forgotten if not for you. I can almost remember the taste of cinnamon and cranberries if I stretch my mind far enough. But you. You haven't forgotten. You share it with me in a memory so sharp and clear that it feels like it could have been my own. I can feel the warmth in my hands. In my bones. In your heart.
Hot tea. On a cold winter's day.
Rites and rituals rarely carry over with those like us. Candles and gifts and baubles. Feasts and togetherness and warm fires and itchy sweaters.
Yet. You. Insist.
With your boundless enthusiasm you make wreaths of cedar and garlands of holly. And I do not understand. It seems so pointless. Inefficient. But it brings you joy in the same way as the sparkling sunlight, so I will not object despite my bemusement.
And still, despite everything, because of you —only you— I learn how to smile again, with eyes half-closed and gently curling tentacles. It is unseemly, but I cannot stop.
Those like us are meant to be together, not alone. More than simply two ships passing in the night... A chorus of voices that harmonize in the dark and help guide each other through the fog.
And yet.
It was another thing I had forgotten. So much time spent simply trying to survive that I had forgotten how to live. Until your voice found mine. Until you breathed life back into my lungs and light into my mind.
<Together,> you said as you reached out your hand.
We learned the old songs.
Together.
We painted the world with stars.
Together.
You are the moon which drives the tide. The current which pulls the boats from shore. The sun which rises on even the harshest of winter mornings.
It is ...difficult... for me to express. Sentimentality is crude, bordering on vulgar, and yet you taught me how to smile again. You taught me that forgetting is not growth.
For you? I will unlearn an eternity of the harshest lessons.
For you? I will remember that there is a difference between living and surviving.
For you? I will move the stars themselves all because you believe that I can.
For you? Anything.