lestan mayfair found himself fully diminished and his speech undone. he was haunted by dreams of what he had done, the guilt of it, the terror of turning to find reverie — it replayed in harsh lashings over and over, robbing him of dreams or sentiment or capacity, until he only rose to eat, drink, hunt, and sleep.
the deer the creek the mountain the fire lake
the cat;
the languages, twining.
silence filled their home and lestan had felt himself slide headlong into a malaise from which there was no reprieve. he slept. he stared off in long silence.
he had a warm look for blossom, but the shame of other conversations gnawed upon lestan, turning him to a tooth-marked bone.
he had seen reverie flitting in and out; he appreciated her recovery and how she had grown stronger, quiet but determined. the silver of this lining filled him with a brilliant relief, which made it somehow easier for lestan to accept his own decay.
gold now; the silver inside himself; he followed and inhaled to see at last the beauty when she had brought him to it, how like a luminescent sea of sandwater it seemed, and how he scarcely seemed alive in these seconds, detached and dangling on a precarious thread.
lestan wept.