DISCLAIMER : I own nothing, not even the pieces of poem I quote here. Every single thing here belongs to Himaruya Hidekazu and Algernon Charles Swinburne, except perhaps the OC.
Genre : Romance, Drama
Summary : Indonesia found herself awake in the middle of the night and heard faint sounds outside her hotel room in Colombo, just after an exhausting day of World Meeting. She inspected it, and wasn't surprised when she found him.
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"Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure."
- Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1866
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"...Lars?"
The figure near the balcony turned around. She couldn't see his face, but she could see a small orange glow in the dark. The air smelled like sea, early morning, and tobacco.
"Yes?"
Ciethra rubbed her eyes and sighed. At least she knew the person on the balcony wasn't a thief or some sort. "Go back to sleep," she muttered, half asleep.
"Perhaps a little later," he paused to flick the cigar's ashes on the railing. "Pray tell, where can one find peace in the middle of such enormous world besides now, between midnight and dawn?" But she wasn't listening. She was recalling something in her mind, but she wasn't sure what it was. It was perhaps something one told her when she was younger, but when she tried to remember exactly, the image blurred like shadows on lake destroyed by ripples.
Anyway, this smells so much like home, Ciethra thought drowsily as her mind drifted. Eerily similar to centuries ago, when it was—The woman yawned. She found herself unable to think, her brain draggy from the lack of sleep. Stupid jetlag.
"Here, where the world is quiet," she murmured softly, speaking the sentence that came first on her mind. She saw Lars quickly turned around and said something, but her mind was too hazy to decipher his voice, which echoed like enigma in her mind. Slowly she let the gentle splashes of waves lull her back to slumber.
("Here, where all trouble seems." He gently picked her up and brought her back to bed, which was still slightly warm. Lars watched her figure as he wrapped her with blanket once more. Cigarette in hands forgotten, he put it off without thinking. Her sentence still sounded over and over in his mind. Ciethra was already in deep sleep, chest calmly rising up and down like the sea waves outside their hotel when he spoke gently to no one. He found himself reciting a poem he read for her centuries past, when Ciethra was still small, frail, and by his side had always been by his side but will he lose her again or will he be lost in her waves he'd never know yet she remembers she remembers not only the pain he had caused but also those small, small—
"Dead winds' and spent waves' riot, in doubtful dreams of dreams.")
- End
A/N: Another very short drabble. Rereading A Series of Unfortunate Events might've been a good idea after all. Bless Swinburne and Lemony Snicket.
In this fic, I imagine both nations, having seen just so much, feel like water in weary river—travelled so much, yet never in their own control as time drag them further and further to sea. Even so, in the streams, they found one another, remembering little things that happened when they lived in the same house. In these kind of short moments, they find themselves in the lake instead of speeding current. Short may not be much, but enough for them to feel that the world is quiet.