Eliwood x Ninian with a twist. This time, Ninian returns to her world, and they are shut off from each other forever. This poem is full of regret and all. It was hard, I tell you...

Posted this from a Windows Vista! I find it very annoying that you can't save stuff in doc format.

aftertaste

She smiled at me

And the sky shone like the dawn of tomorrow

Her smile—I want to hold it forever—

Cradle the warmth of a star in my palms

Believing that our dawn will never end

-

Oh, she could have been all the riches in the world!

She had eyes like the deepest rubies, filled with starlight

Hair like the most vivid silk,

Making even her dress and ribbon drab

-

But she was everything, more than just the riches

She was the world in itself, and every step she took

Seemed to paint a path of shining frost on grey cobblestones

-

She was my every dream, radiant and shining pure

And yet she was never proud—only sweet

And shy and enduring beyond the universe's treasures

-

Fantasies always have to end, don't they?

-

Alone at the edge of the gate, I watched my dream

As she smiled her brilliant smile one last time

Vanished through a veil of light—starlight

Into a world of endless mountains beyond

A world where snow would forever hold the land

In a beautiful, distant cold embrace

-

I lost her to the ice forever

-

And it was gone, fast as a firework, fleeting as a second

That cannot be grasped

Flying away like a frantic dove into the far clouds,

As that final passage between she and I ceased to exist

-

And by then, who knew if she had ever existed?

It could all have been a dream;

She could have been a mere wishful fantasy

For now I would never know—

All I had left of her was a flickering dream, an aftertaste

Eyes blurred like a frosted window, by tears...

-

Oh, what could have been,

if I hadn't let her go!

-

Regret is bitter, like the herbs of the mountains

Bred in ice and hoar, leaving a lingering sweetness

And a piercing bitterness

Bringing fleeting images of a world far away...

-

Does it even exist?

I blink my eyes open on my bed on a chilly morning

Ice shimmers on my window

And I feel this inexplicable sense that I've lost something

As if a sweet dream has ended, vanished

Leaving only a scattering of frost on the cobblestone pathway

-

The papers are strewn across my table

The curtains are drawn

I can smell the fresh winter morning in my room

Everything is as I know it to be...

-

But there is something missing!

Somewhere, that memory of a girl, a wish come true

Something I have lost—

But was it even real?

-

Ah...even the aftertaste is vanishing!

The frost has melted beneath the sun

The light has faded from my reminiscence.

Somehow, I don't know

If it was memory or dream.

-

Bright ruby eyes, hair of woven silk

Her magical footsteps on which danced the sunlight

Like the thawing ice, they are vanishing

When, if ever, did she once cross my path?

Was she a true person, or just a shadow of my longing?

-

Does she now smile, dancing in her frozen mountain world

Wondering if I am only one of her fantasies?

Or do I delude myself with the belief that she was real?

-

Oh...

What could have been,

If I hadn't let her go...

But I have

I have, and she will slowly fade

Like a picture made in imperfect ink

A vivid dream of ecstasy,

Dwindling into a gentle notion

Fading...

Fading...

-

Now she is just an aftertaste,

Standing on the border of oblivion.

...

It is so hard to express the sort of regret that Eliwood is supposed to feel here. It's really so hard; too strange and inexplicable for words, it seems... I think I screwed it. Oh man.