Firefly in a Jar

He comes to them in dreams.

Only in dreams, now.

Warm fingers, breath light with citrus. 

The hairs at the back of their neck stirred, the press of lips just beneath their ear. 

Agony and bliss, blended. Inextricable. 

They are tangled in their sheets, a warm, quiet room where the whispers do not reach them. His hand over their chest and his heartbeat at their spine.

They are seated before a great aquarium, his fingers gentle as he unwinds their hair, stress and worry falling to the floor with their shed. 

They recline on a coarsely woven blanket, and he rolls to prop himself over them, and he is here and he is present, violet eyes brighter than the stars that crown him. 

“You’re blocking my view,” they complain, pressing their fingers to the tree that marks his cheeks. Pushing without pressure, because they will die if they lose sight of him now. 

“I am the view,” he laughs. 

They are alone in a field of ashes, and the scent of citrus is lost beneath the burning. 

They can stand amid the ruin, or they can walk. The flames sputter, weak enough to navigate. 

They walk.

Blackened trunks rise around them. Every step stirs clouds amid the destruction. 

“Are you a forest?” he asks, from somewhere far away. An old debate. What becomes of a forest when the fire has died is kinder than what will become of them. 

“Where are you?” They need his answer, and he cannot give one that satisfies.  

Their steps turn, speeding. Urgency that drives them without direction. Need and want and regret and anger. 

Fingers lace their wrist, threading the spaces between the bangles they had claimed, and he spins them into a dance. 

“You are always running, little star,” he chides. “How am I to catch you?”

Citrus on his breath. His hand is warm where he spreads his palm across the small of their back. 

When he spins them, the ashes scatter. Dust glitters, the scorched trees dissolving into the swirling void of space. They dance in steps half a beat broken, the nebula around them correcting what time has taken. 

“I am caught,” they confess. 

“I am gone,” he reminds them. 

“Not here,” they say. “Never here.” 

He smiles, softer than sunlight and far more wanted. 

“I need to tell you something,” they confess. 

“It's too late,” he tells them. 

“It can't be too late,” they argue with a ghost, with time, with loss. “Let me tell you now.”

“I'm not here, estar'lath.”

“Yes, you are.”

He smiles, and the violet in his eyes is bright. Agony and bliss, when he touches their cheek. They can feel the warmth of his fingers, the way he traces their skin. It doesn't matter that he sees their scars. It never should have mattered. 

“You should have told me sooner,” he murmurs.

“Would it have changed anything?” A desperate question, and an unfair one. They need to be angry, and he is dead and they are not. 

He doesn't answer. 

“Would it have saved you?” They press their question into his mouth, layering their lips and chasing his taste. 

Citrus, laced with ashes. 

“We will never know,” his kiss is chaste, closed lips to the open wound of their wanting, their wishing, their hopelessness. “But you should have told me sooner.” 

“Let me say it now,” they plead. 

“You have to wake up,” he says, and there is a canyon between them. They stand amid blackened trunks, and he stands in a starlit field, and even in dreams they know they cannot cross the chasm. 

“Please,” they beg.

“There is work to do.” They can see the sad turn to his smile even from this distance. “The work comes first. Maybe after. Maybe then it will be time.” 

“There is always work to do,” they spit. “I don't care anymore.”

“Yes, you do. Wake up, little star. You cannot change the choices you made. You cannot change the choices other people make.”

Another old debate. Their heart slams into their ribs, railing and rejecting the truth of it even as defeat drags its beat into their stomach. 

“Don't ask me to go,” they say. 

“I'm not here,” he says. “Wake up, little star. Go do the work. You always choose the work.”

The dream dissolves around them, and the bed they awaken to is too empty to be warm. 

They deserve the chill, they think, pushing themself from the mattress, gooseflesh rising on their skin as the air hits places sheets had shielded. 

And even dead, even in dreams, even as a ghost, Felassan is always right.

They drag themself from the dream as though peeling free of cobwebs.