It's been eight thousand and seven hundred and fifty-eight hours since they've last whispered "I love you."
Time ticks, sand in an hourglass meant to be turned once a minute/hour/second/day and it's so infuriatingly slow, so pleasantly blurry.
(There's flowers growing before the granite marker. Smooth stone, chiseled and unblemished. Next year it'll have smoother edges. It'll have its first marks in five, a crack in ten, if nature and the locals are generous.)
Beautiful and forlorn thorned roses with sickeningly sweet scents and harshly vibrant crimson colors, nothing like the light and airy and gentle blooms the two of them had prefered. Flowers with easily manipulated stems to wind into girlish crowns of petals and leaves. Blossoms with fleeting images and tokens of affection and simplistic views.
He hates them now. The accompanying gift to condolences and apologies and comforts. He flinches every time he sees a daybloom and cringes at the sight of a sunflower.
Worst of all is the very sight/thought/mention/prick of Shiverthorn, the simplistic and intriguing name he'd given to the odd tundra flowers.
His favorite. He'd have to wryly explain to the confused and concerned others.
The sand falls, each grain taking years to crash down, a stream of sand pouring from the top of the glass in instants.
At eight thousand and seven hundred and sixty hours, he will have to come to terms with an absolute.
In two hours, he will have to accept the sinful speed of life, the comfortably everlasting eternity of death.
It's a short walk to the cemetery, and he's sure that his departed spouse wouldn't mind if he was early or late for the sixtieth hour.
The marker appears exactly as he predicted it would. Exactly the same, only with smoother edges and the roses growing nearby.
He ignores them, opting to place the bouquet he's had to painfully bring himself to grow and cut and tie just for this.
Emotionlessly, he lays the listless bundle atop the stone and pulls out a lighter and pack of incense.
Quietly, he lights them, placing the smoking sticks in the soft earth, allowing the scent to numb his mind and stifle his tears and choke his words before they can even rise up to the air.
There is nothing to say, nothing to think, nothing and yet everything, the completion in hollowness.
He opens his mouth to speak the second the bells at the nearby church strike eleven.
Soundlessly, a heart of ice gently forms where his unwept tears were to fall.
He laughs bitterly at the sight, a bittersweet mockery of what once was and what never could be again.
"Aishitemasu, Shuruku."
A/N: sorry I only write about this ship i just like it a lot
also connor now you can stop complaining i havent posted since janurary.