#forgivenunforgotten

         The god’s chest suddenly felt tight, his harp string ribs taut around a sprinting heart and lungs seized with fear.

         His world was exploding with vibrance, swathed in colors that were voraciously chasing the ashen shades away, and he was struck by the sheer beauty of it.

         Were there names for each vivacious hue? Who did he have to ask to find out? What color was the shimmering ocean? What about Erik’s conservatory, which was surrounded by roses bushes with petals now bursting among the duller leaves? And what about Erik himself?

         Loki couldn’t put names to all the different tints he was now seeing. The best he could do was compare and try to make sense of it all while not getting so lost in wonder…

         That proved difficult, though, when Erik’s skin now looked just as warm as Loki had always known it to be. Warm was its color, like sand in the sunshine or down blankets in the winter. And Erik’s mouth, his lips and tongue and teeth, had never been merely black and white even when all he’d been able to see was a scale of gray. His mouth had always been an instrument of tranquility as much as torment; a distraction and a familiar feeling; and now, now it radiated the same warmth as his flesh with the additional pigmented peace and temptation.

         The best and simultaneously worst, and simply most jarring of all, were Erik’s eyes. His pupils were as fathomless as they had always been, but the ribbons surrounding them were complex striations of color that made Loki think of everything at once. He thought of glittering oceans and the dark tempestuous clouds that roused them. He imagined the palette of a sunrise—bursts of light chasing away darkness—and in stark comparison he thought of the streaking claws of color at dusk as the sun made the horizon its grave.

          “Loki?” Erik’s voice reeled the god back to the present. “Do you see it?”