sublimate antagonistic emotions into art!

How unbearably easy it is to fall in love with the snow, waltzing, slowly, lightly, so unerringly graciously. There, bewitched by the cautious pas the snowflakes danced, covering the traitorous steps that threatened to uncover the secret path, stood Guqqie, hidden by the emerald tree crown. The Fox could not escape the eerie voices emerging from, it seemed, the cosmic abyss, whispering an end of this realm. "It will fall." — yes, it will, like any other prior, for she failed, as was foretold, once again.

There will soon be no more realms for The Walkers to defend. Nevertheless, none of them were ever sufficient enough to last. Never good enough to finish. Always precisely bad to end.

Having pledged her life on something so grandeur — the Prince's — she found no point at staring at the sky, pondering upon the risk of it falling. Can one speak of equality of all living things if hierarchy like that exists? Or, perhaps, there is no philosophy in the lives of ethereal beings? For they, the otherworldly, bind the shards of glass to weave a new world, embedded with broken, distorted Time to count the days down with. Grotesquely, "only time will tell" doesn't work here, for The Time couldn't care less — Time is unbothered, interwoven into universe, lacking a purpose. And they — they don't care about the days. They will end anyway. Speaking frankly, it seemed merely sad.

"Aurora is supposed to be a rarity," she thought, feeling the burden of meaning behind these words.

For some dream of it. To appreciate its magnificence if only once a lifetime and return to their routine, satisfied, accomplished, until it condescendes to them again, if ever. It adornes, embellishes, thus amazes.

Yet, how many countless times she has witnessed it? Over and over, the quantity so meaningless, the word "countless" itself seemed more akin to "uncountable". Similar in its uniqueness, coalescing into some whole, formless, shapeless something, disobedient to ordinals. The Fox couldn't help judging her own reasoning, as new ideas felt rudimentary, albeit justified. However, there was no place to blame rapidly deteriorating sense of beauty, as these monotonous events, in their appallingly remarkable similarity, had held her mind captive until the moment of catharsis — the one when she showed what it's like for her to fall in love (with the snow, of course, not some special person, of course not). Yet, mesmerized by the very idea of probability, Guqqie traveled through the forests, across the river, up the snowy mountain to the treehouse, the very special place.

The wish to make the hideout this exact type of building was as irresistible as was the one to build a farm just beside the castle. And the ledge it was built on seemed merely perfect, just above the valley — glorious hills, studded with wildflowers. It would be a lie if she said she wasn't proud of this one, especially the way the wide terrace was always the place to move the story forward. Would anyone believe that it was a pure coincidence that it could have been a perfect observatory for celestial studies? How fabulous it was to spectate starfalls, auroras, to simply watch the stars from the place you first express your love at? Acknowledging it, giving it a voice, a tone, a rhythm.

That being said, does it not impress her still? Sunsets don't, nor they ever could. Sunset had only implied the decline of the daylight — "Good job," it mocked, "you managed their surviving, now how about the nighttime?" — oh, how exhausted she was by nightly occurrence of someone's deathwish. However, she couldn't help loving the sight rather than the event itself. She could have sworn she loved sunsets in some other universe.

It was sunrise that usually symbolised a true victory.

Good job.

"You've got them through the night. You did your best."

Then which one of us is prone to machiavellism, so shamelessly alive, and if it already was not enough, so outrageously loving?

The Sword or The Crown?

The Fox or The Prince?

The Sunset or The Sunrise?

The Spectator, perhaps, The Agent, or The Narrator?

*

Aimsey vividly remembers the second she looked away from the sky that one time. And her glacier-colored eyes, luminous with something yet unknown to them — something, that felt like a spark of recognition she tried to stifle away — locking onto theirs. As if she was falling — for or down — once again, thus without terror nor shock, aglow with the Northern Lights, "you were sparkling — the eyes, illuminating everlasting adoration; I think I had never thought before the way you must have seen me."

"Don't worry, I'll just forget," he whispers.

Oh.

"Be sure, I'll remember this time," he once lied unknowingly.

"When you watch me fall in love with you all over again. When you build a village, find people to create an elaborate plan with to keep me safe, you let me to get to know you better with each time we restart, you want me to want you more than I did our last try, but I just... forget." his cries echoed in her memory.

"She kissed me, you know," he had once spoken to his only friend, covering his eyes with his hand and genuinely smiling, "the one I told you about."

The tear of sorrow trailed down the silver-lit skin in a silent manifestation.

Is it really possible to forget the moment someone found you simply more wondrous than the sight, presumably, so rare? Was it ever about the Aurora? Was it ever about the vastness of sky in exchange for his life?

Did they both experience this paradoxical feeling of simultaneous wish of both selfishness and selflessness? A warming, surprisingly comforting, however complex feeling, so akin to homesickness, yet undeniably stronger. Rebellious and calming, nearly defiant, and still so tender it seemed fragile.

"What does homesickness feel like anyways?" he wondered, "Can one feel miss the place having never been there?"

But home, home, seems like a place to dream of. Longing — a feeling so distant yet so familiar, like the dream about the field of tulips. Sunset-orange, grading to twilight-blue sky, with tweaks of pastel yellow clouds — a sight to remember, what a loss that such place has never existed. Aimsey could have sworn they would have had a beautiful story there.

"There is one last thing I want you to remember, Little Fox: having loved you once I may have forgotten the sacred words we whispered but there is no possible universe I won't repeat them again."

 *

You know, Little Prince, you were deaf once. I had stopped us once again, then everything got anew, and you came into this realm not able to hear a single sound. It was utterly devastating for me, I hadn't had a single idea how to solve it. And when whatever went wrong started to fade and your hearing began coming back, you rushed to my pine-tree, stumbling over roots and burying yourself in a snow, falling over and over. You were such a delightful sight.

"Aimsey?" I then uttered, as if slightly surprised at your dramatic appearance.

I swear, I'd let every realm decay before my very eyes just in exchange for how you looked at me that moment.

As if I were the most magnificent being in the multiverse, as if your everlost feeling of home was found in that very moment, settled hiding within my features, within the notes of my voice's timbre, as if you just have felt the most majestic song in a single word. And I only did say your own name. You fall on your knees, melting to this moment, not daring to get your eyes off mine, speechless, and I rush forward, catching you in a warm embrace, stumbling with my questions, trying to understand what you are getting through. But you only look at me as if you're enchanted.

"Repeat," I have not heard your voice in this world, not as if I don't remember every octave of it, but it's hoarse and stifled, "Can you repeat my name, please?"

You hear me. And you've fallen like the first thing you've heard the most magical song. But I have only said your name.

*

Distorted distant voice of the unreliable narrator cries, mute to all existent things in a brand-new realm.

Please, just let me die. Please, Guqqie! I want to remember who I was.

You will thank me later.

Remember this, my darling, we fall down the well, in love, into the dazzling darkness, but i know how to stop now.

"Name your courage now, Little Fox."

"You, Aimsey. You alone are all the courage I have ever had."

Once it ended, soft voice of one he could have known before might have recalled the philosophy of the paradox.

"That's exactly what's been missing here! I never thought of that before."

"Yeah, I guess it's just came to me."

Your name, free of ethereal titles, like the sweetest song to me, and our life, reborn in amnesia, under a new sky.