[ here’s the rain, then. filling hwylryn’s pond the sky. cold, but yoru has always been cold, too. a corpse reanimate that somehow continued to age and think and feel. and now he just lives forever. ]

Ish.

[ he says the name as though it means nothing. he and ish are strangers, too, for all their talks. he’d always liked the little witch more. ]

To me, this has nothing to do with Ish, except that you said we would be unchanged and then you took that and gave it only to him. [ anyone could have been in ish’s place. ] You are only his and he is only yours. That is your truth. How, then, is that being each other’s in an equal way for anyone other than you two?

[ when yoru had no say, no knowledge. hwylryn had felt that it was fine to make the choice without him, yoru’s existence a non-factor. he might as well have been ash then. ]

If there was no difference, if the term wasn’t important, then why take it away?

[ why gift it like the most precious treasure? ]

Give it back to me then. [ but yoru knows: ] You can’t.

[ the rain comes harder and yoru is quickly soaked through, washed upon the shore like driftwood. he doesn’t want to see hwylryn’s tears, but he’s forced to feel them all the same. ]

And you seem to think that I mind Ish, that I begrudge your relationship. I don’t. I want you to be happy, I want you to live. I never minded when you had Primrose, did I? I don’t think… your heart is shallow at all.

It’s so deep, deeper than anything. You will always want more than both. You will always want as much as you can fit. I’ve always understood that.

[ and you don’t stop to remember that the things you squeeze into yourself are being crushed by the sheer amount others you have in you. ]