Work Text:
I mind my step around the golden flowers as you take my hand and pull me through the field, their sunlight fingers caressing our feet as we pass by, and I know that each, too, has felt your gentle hand, when you planted them in the earth with care like that of one holding a most precious thing, and watered them, and made each of them a love-letter.
But you have made it clear to me that I am most resplendent among them, though they have all received their fair share of care. I know not what enshrines me in your eyes, but would you allow me to make my address there? Oh, Max, you are dearer than a well-beloved; it is as though we were born of a piece, blue and gold intertwined, and we were born before then, too, and will be born again after, and will find one another again and interlock our hands in that destined way of ours.
You take my arm overhead and pirouette and your scarf shrouds your body like an embrace and I wish to take its place, and you pull me close and I feel the oceans of the moon beneath your skin which is like that of flawless ceramic, an untarnished statuesque demigod-figure which is now all that I can see and sense, a perfected marble-carved image of the masculine and feminine at once, and I wish to trace the contours of that figure but you twirl once again and blue swallows my vision, and when I see again, we are standing beside a great and once-distant star, vast black expanse below our feet, and I feel a sudden fright, but then know that you are with me, and your hand comforts me, and no harm shall come to me.
Immense rays of light shine down upon us and the heat is gentle and like that of sitting beside a hearth on a harsh winter night; and in that light you are made ever more clear to me, your hair wind-swept and swaying despite the void-stillness, your eyes in which it feels as though I can fall, into the infinite blue depths that glisten and glow in the brightness, and in them I can see the formless yet magnificent shades of your being, as they fly and dance about and hold great wisdom and hypnotizing power.
You speak, and I cannot hear it, your words silent and unknowable to me, and this is a great pain. You frown, and the sight drives searing lances into my heart, as you attempt to speak again and cannot be heard. Then, you cease, and smile, and I am brought up from a black depth as your pale and delicate fingers trace the Sign upon my forehead, and vanquish all pain and worry, and I feel as though there is nothing in this world but you and I, and I draw closer and wreathe my arms about you and can see naught but your visage and it is a great joy and I wish to remain in this moment forevermore as our faces draw near and our foreheads and the Signs upon them make contact and are one,
and I am awoken, and around me is a great and terrible cacophony of fire and war in which dance and cavort inhuman shapes, and I have within my hands wicked black blades of cold and dry blood, and you are not with me, not beside me, for you are no longer, and it is a terrible cruelty that I cannot follow you yet. Oh, Max, I have ended, you see, by accepting thee, for I know, that you have left me.