Stone Circle Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?

He understood it would be a rejection after her first word. Louis kept his ears pricked all the way through nonetheless, just in case. If she didn't want him here all the time, then perhaps a little bit now and then would've been enough. He had, in a youthful flurry, imagined a life where he might have both - the freedom to travel and a lover to return to. A family and freedom alike. 

Louis never grew up feeling like anything was amiss. Confidence had been his natural state for most of his life. It's hard not to wonder now, though, at least a little bit, if there's not something wrong with him for being different.

He looks for love everywhere, and often finds it in his travels. But it melts like morning dew all the same.

In the past he's been happy to chase the next dawn, the next dewdrop of timeless pleasure and simple affections. He'd sort of imagined he'd end up like his parents, there would be an adventure, a trial, maybe some doubt. And then it'd fall into place because that was how it was meant to be.

Dreams don't seem to work that way, out here.

Or maybe more work had gone into his parents' love than he'd realized. Maybe it had never been so certain at all, it only looked that way to youthful eyes.

"I get it. And I wish you both the very best."

He meant it.

There's little else he knows to say. But leaving now would seem rude, so his feet stay planted in the soft grass and he watches her. Tries to memorize her face, the way she is now. He wonders if they'll meet again, or if the road will pull him far away and this will be a final parting. He'll dream of her and she'll think of him from time to time. Their stories will diverge, and there will be poetry in that.

It's a little melodramatic, but he nurses his wounded heart on the tragic fantasy of it nonetheless.