I.
Past Prologue
Boy with a heart of fire, summer heart, night heart, and all the same heartless. He stand alone in the green-black-growing space he learned in the gray of the twilight, in words invisible, words yet heard. He stands alone, speaks to the silence and cherishes the fire he holds now only in his breath, on his taste-buds, still stinging his tongue. No rhythm. No burning.
"O heartless boy, when a star is shot it falls to die, not begin beating."
Where does it come from? He does not know, but like the blackness, he grows. Stare not into the abyss, or the abyss stares into you…he who fights with monsters, take care you do not become a monster…
Beasts we are, lest beasts we become.
He becomes. Bird raven-backed in the starling hour, howl of a wolf and a face so human still, and beautiful.
Tempting.
The most beautiful boy in the world.
The most dangerous man alive.
They called him Howl, heart-eater, and he answered. Now, he has forgotten all but the ashes of any other name. He sleeps just to dream her, one night after the next, because on the nights he does not sleep, he dreams regardless. He dreams through the darkness that cups the burden of his being, the void that holds tight to the pieces that remain of past, and memory, and truth.
Sophie...
He thinks she had her own magic, that she has it even now when her body is a heartless shell, her heart a fleshless beating in his own breast. Yes – she has her own magic. He should have realized in the beginning – when is the beginning?
He sleeps just to dream her, to dream the blinkered life in which that which was before her was all that she allowed herself to see.
"O heartless boy, the last of the starlight is not meant to linger in this world."
To dream is dangerous.
To dream is to open the inner door, let the flood waters rise with no hope of receding…to dream is to walk to the blood road, the wild path, the way her heart illuminates for him into the darkness.
They are not the same – the past belongs only to itself, and memory chooses what it pleases to reveal…and neither of those things are truth. Still…they are all important, all equal parts missing and now returned, pieces of the heart he gave away for power.
Power to create. Power to destroy.
Power to change the world.
"O heartless girl, what have you done to me?"
A/N: As promised, a sequel! Expect this one to be rather slow and irregular in updates - I write it when it calls to me, and Howl is a twitchy little muse xD