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Parrot drifted through the basement of his house, searching for any trinkets he didn't require any longer. He found little that wasn't dust he was required to scrape off, feeling disdain in his system when he left shelves untouched.
His talons scanned the fogged basement and boxes of accessories he'd laced away long ago, his lungs coughing with disease he's ingested by now.
The flashlight dimmed the arena, and the battery was running lower and lower as the seconds ticked by. He skimmed the basement for trash, yet his eyes landed on a page of withered parchment paper with writings on the page. Something he couldn't remember putting up on the walls of his lower house.
It was hung up by a bit of tape that clung to the grey wall as a last hope, contrasting against it with rivalry. Despite this, it seemed as if a minuscule gust of wind could knock it to the floor without a second thought.
His claws plucked it off, now in his possession. It was fragile and thin enough to see his palm through if he placed it behind the yellow parchment. The edges were torn, but only fragments of the ends and sides, nothing that clashed with the cursive.
Focusing on the details of the painstaking writing, he noticed it felt... Familiar. The handwriting. It looked like a distant memory, or remnants of a fogged time—a hazed star in the proximity of average glowing skies.
Wifies.
His heart hammered with the strength of a jackrabbit that even haunted himself, even if it was his own flesh of over two decades.
For a bit, Parrot's uncomfortable demeanor mellowed to glee from the idea that he got to hear from Wifies again, like how they used to write letters to each other when they were smaller because it was the only way they knew how to stay in contact outside of school hours.
Until he broke out of his euphoric fantasies, Wifies wasn't coming back. Not now, not ever. This was simply another reminder that he wasn't waiting for him to call on the telephone. That they wouldn't ever get to make flower crowns for each other under the shade, or solve impossible mysteries and escape rooms, or let Wifies preen his wings because he was the only person he could trust, or try new hobbies to pull the other from a bad mood.
He slumped against the wall, hands tremoring with tight velocity, but not enough to split the paper on a fraction of a second. Not for an instant did he take his eyes off the opus, as if it would scatter to a million pieces in the snap of one's fingers. His legs lay crossed, and his posture slanted to gawk at the minuscule details of the writing. Every drop of ink that landed on the paper, every crease in the sacred treasure, every shade of gilded brown that dampened on the outer parts.
He couldn't constrain himself from reading it, even if the memories of what Wifies put him through still stung like a blade to his tender heart. The heart he'd offer to Wifies in the gram of a second if he required it.
"My dearest, Parrot,
I would go to great lengths for your forgiveness of my cruel mind & my very fingertips for putting you through such a helpless fate.
I know our relationship status has exceeded any attempt of salvaging by now. I come to the understanding that no matter how many times you could accept an apology from me, we will never be the same two people. Let alone duo.
I think about our past every time I look at you. I see the entrancement and nostalgia of our youthful days. I see us two from only a few months ago, and the two of us from years ago.
I relish for the way your eyes creased when we laughed together, through every circumstance we withstood tandem to another.
You do not grasp how tight my chest feels when I daydream about our missions together in the rush of time that waits for no one.
I come to the acceptance that you despise me now. At least a majority of your soul does.
If I had the viewpoint of you, I would hate Wifies the same way you do. Maybe not to an exact replication, but I know you hold a hatred that mixes in with remorse and outrage deep within you for me. Despite your consistency with avoiding me, I know wrath for me dwells inside of you.
I realize that the old Wifies never got to say a goodbye to you, and now you have to be here with me for the rest of our days. The days you could've spent exploring with me again, discovering abandoned civilizations and solving complex and mysterious labyrinths with our brains and no more.
It's a true shame I've forced us to throw away our shared dreams. I could imagine every scenario of us out in the immaculate world awaiting us. How much we're missing out on and will for the rest of our days.
But if it keeps you safe, I would sacrifice every fragmentum of my form and my sanity to ensure you remain enclosed. Although you reasonably find my actions and intentions insane, I can't let you go. I can't spend a second without you in my life. The concept of you leaving me, sends a chill down my spine. It makes my skin crawl. You're the only person keeping me grounded.
I sound selfish, but please...
Keeping you here is the only way I can authenticate that you won't fly away from me.
I acknowledge that you may never read this, and I don't ever hope you read my jotted writing dedicated to you; that's only a form of nimble coping, but no matter the length you want me gone, my dedication to you will always be stronger.
I won't fight back if you choose to never speak to me again, to ignore me completely, to lash out at me with all the energy you have left. But I will stay consistent with my absolute devotion to you.
You've shown me appreciation, Parrot. The first and sole person to truly care about my well-being and the first person to do everything in and out of your path to heist me out of any dire situation in a heartbeat. Your passion is what guides me to this. It would be cruel of me not to return it.
I'm sorry, this is the only way I grasp how to.
The crimed hands I look down to are not the hands I want to have. This... Isn't the being I wanted to become in the end. This isn't the person I imagined myself to be. Frankly, I feel as if I've betrayed myself when I see who I've become. I don't want to be despised, I don't want to have to hurt people to get my ways. If the heavens above had given me the choice to reset my doings whilst ensuring your unscathed, I would take them up on their offer. The price doesn't matter. I've made you sheltered, but at what cost?
I imagine, in a perfect world, you wouldn't be revolted by my conduct, you would accept your fate with me in Paragon. But this world is all I could ask for if you're in it. For as long as I wake with the orange sun granting me generous rays in here with you, I'd never envy anybody else or their intimate belongings or relations.
Perhaps in a year or an eternity, you'd come to terms with this safe haven I've poured my life into so delicately, and we could build an apricitic conjoined house together and drink tea together in the evenings surrounded by nature, or create walls of intricate canvases with blasting colors at every place you look.
I envisage us playing chess or putting together a jigsaw puzzle, playing chess, or baking sweets from the start, whilst recalling the past but looking forth to a morrowlight with me.
Whilst in this forever-haven with you, I've noticed that... My shoe prints won't make an impact on the grounds future generations will set journey on. Since I plan on spending my days in what you call a 'prison' and you don't even meet eye to eye now with I no longer, I've been pondering:
Have I set my trace into the depths of your heart?
Since my memory will die with... you. Will you look fondly on these fragments of the past when you look back at a photo of me or re-read a letter written by my fingertips alone?
Will you remember my voice with bliss bloomed into your dainty heart? Will you think of the way the differing violets and caramels that danced around my iris from so long ago when you optic me again in 50 years? Would you still see them as the same youthful glints they once were?
Will you remember me when I'm gone? When you have nobody to greet mornings to anymore, and it's only you and the faint remnants of my scent engraved into the grassland here to give benevolence?
Would you plant the grandest poppies at the foot of my grave? Would you gift bouquets of leafage and flower crowns at the sanctuary that holds my corpse? Would you manage to permanently engrave your footprints into the tribunes at my grave? Would you await for our reunion on the other side? For the retrouvaille and redamancy when I run into your arms again?
Because I would.
I will wait eternities for your arrival in the afterlife. Hell, heaven, rebirth, or an in-between, I don't caution about the outcome as long as I get to turn and see you by my side.
Or at least know you're safe.
But I can pass happily, anywhere if I know you're shielded. Even if the taste of leaving you gives me a bittersweet flavor on my tongue, I can't wash off.
Don't forget me, Parrot."
He hadn't noticed how tightly he was squeezing the paper, or how a stinging sensation was lodged in his throat by now.
Or the way his every tendon and muscle has immense aches carved into it by now.
His hands latched to the ground hard, using the last of his stamina to pick himself back up to the ground on both of his feet. His bones were no better than smashed into mush, and no words mustered out of his mouth--it only opened and closed. The blood in his system swam to his ears, and his head spun. Everything was a jumble of chaos for a few dazed minutes.
Staring back down at the paper, he picked it up once more and held it like it was made of a thin layer of glass. His talons carving into the feeble material with every movement.
Parrot used the remaining of the usable tape to latch it back onto the exact place the letter once rested. It dangled, before coming to a steady stop where the walls held it just barely. It deserved stillness and peace.
It's what Wifies would've wanted for his remains, too.