Opia - The ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye
Asriel had never seen eyes like theirs before.
They're big and round, maybe slightly slanted, and when they sit among the golden flowers of his father's garden, the light catches on them in the most enchanting of ways, changing their color.
Sometimes their eyes are bright, the same brown as the chocolate they love so much. They will run with him and sing human songs to him and tell Asriel how happy they are to be here, with him. With their mother and their father, forever.
But sometimes their eyes can get dark too, scary and deep and he doesn't want to look at them when that happens but knows he must. They look out at the world, his world, with its earth ceiling and the rocks beneath their feet and whisper that the humans made his people suffer too.
And sometimes, frightening times, their eyes almost seem to be red, like the blood that spills from the cuts they carve into themselves. He holds them as they sob and tells them they are worth it, they truly are.
And as he does, he remembers how they first met, a battered body in a field of gold. They looked so broken, but when he touched them they jumped and moved away. Their eyes were stirred alive, aggressive and scared and prepared to flee, to fight, to die.
They shone with a sadness that Asriel could not phantom yet.
Their eyes were full of regret that one time father got very sick. Brimmed with unshed tears and he hears them utter it still, over and over again. "I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to..." He knows they did mean to, that father had scolded them and they got upset, but he doesn't tell mom.
When they lay next to him at night, huddled beneath the blankets and holding his hands, he can't remember the last time neither of them sneaked into the other bed after mom turned of the lights, always together.
They whisper in his ear, the plan they have made, that will make everybody happy, and in the darkness Asriel can't see their eyes at all, as he wonders what color they might be.
But when they're dying, he sees, touching their face softly, brushing the petals from their lips and confessing he can't live in a world without them.
Their eyes go wide, as if somehow it is hard to believe. Wetness hides behind them, glassy and sad and for a moment he can see the pain hidden there, resonating deep within his soul just as they feel their last breathe against his cheek.
Then their eyes go empty and they're gone.
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