Wake up...
Felt like I’d been walking for hours.
“We’ve only been walking a bit, but, could we take a break, Atros? I’m so sorry to be a bother.”
You were never a bother. I didn’t care if we’d walked fifty feet, or five. Every step with you was paradise.
“I’m sorry all we ever get to do is walk through the gardens. I feel like I must be dreadfully boring, the way you travel all the time. Could you...tell me a story?”
I never told you, but those quiet moments in that garden were the best years of my life. Seeing the world held no joy, but the smile on your face when I told you my stories, it was the air in my lungs.
“I wish we could just stay here, or..just go. Go somewhere I’ve never been, which I suppose is the entire world. I wish I could see the sunrise over Winterspring. To see the snow there...oh even Eri’d be smiling, don’t you think?”
She was gone before I could even tell her I loved her, gone before I could hold on and keep the nightmare at bay. That phantom always haunted my dreams whenever I found myself so far gone enough to dream. Always haunting, always waiting. How much longer could I hold it back?
Eventually it would have its due, and take everything I had left. Some part of me didn’t care, and welcomed the release whenever it came.
“Wake up, Atros. Silly man, you fell asleep right under this tree. Not even - I’m- that lazy.” What?
“Wake up, Atros, I want to keep walking.”
Keep walking.