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Less literal: Went for a more poetic vibe this time. The ambiguity of certain details is intentional.
Because between all the words and thoughts and feelings, they simply can be.
XXI - Because
Because Kain reminds her of stars and suns and skies and stratospheric tears of flickering sorrow and gleaming mirth (and that it's okay to look another way besides now) (and that this will not trap or blind or kill but rather set everything free).
Night sprinkles them, the dining balcony, the hydrangeas, the urban buildings and towers here and there, with drops of life and starlight. Douses her slip dress and fingernails and his tuxedo and unbound hair with winds that are so cold yet so warm.
There is fire within Lightning's lips. The kind that the winds are unfit to mold, kindling vivid with almost all the things her eyes sing, radiating with extra glints of ivory and clarity.
He wants to say that the astral constellations refract upon her irises and lips beautifully. He hopes greatly that droplets of the heavens will carve within her features so that the flames of her mouth and the threnody of her gaze may brim brighter (of ecstasy) and louder (of melancholy).
The extra clarity helps them both so much, he feels.
But because her eyes do not deny his own, he does not say.
Instead, Kain just somewhat smiles. Lightning doesn't quite. Kain guesses it's because she does not feel ready or deserving or right for reasons hidden behind the steel of her stare (and he wishes to help change this because he feels it breaks them both).
Something in her eyes takes flight not long after his smile. It's something of warmth and coldness, burning with flame and beating with rhythms of understanding.
Perhaps this is how she prefers to smile. And he's glad because it means she's giving the stars more time to find their way and make their mark.
Because Lightning colors faith so thoughtfully yellow for him with hard words and soft words when it seems everything will soon dim to nothing (as she takes him out to walk along sunlit, forested paths of greenery and memory and beaming flowers of ardency).
"Forgiveness doesn't work these days."
Shrewd glances of his are thrown at the brightest of plants before he kneels by a pond. In a winding caress, fingertips trace the grooves of a lily that cuts through the day with gradient white-pink petals.
"Because people always get it wrong."
She lowers herself beside Kain, her reply made with delicate yet firm grace, enough to not provoke nor coddle.
The electricity of untold broken promises and waning willingness and whatever other concepts Lightning guesses are within him (and yet knows so well) is rife voltage that seems to strangle the words he wants to spit back.
Lightning wants to lay out all the truths raw and plain, wants to tell him so much that she knows how hard it is to forgive (herself) (himself) (family) (old faces, new faces) (the whole fucking world).
That letting go to savor those forever-seeming sunsets that die too fast for her heart to take or to be glad that she can live even an extra five seconds of her life in untamed peace, always seems so impossible. That it's not always really about seeing the other person in a better light when you can't, but moving forward before your life goes too far to waste.
If closure could come easy, she'd order it in droves.
Supple petals of the lily are graced by her hands, and when she meets his own with them, their eyes do the same.
"It starts with forgiving yourself," she says.
"Why us?" Either one of them asked during one sunset of many.
There are many actions and choices and thoughts that they know they can't take back once they put them up for each other to see. Feeling like this in of itself is a risk sometimes too dangerous to take, so the questions and declarations fall nonstop from both their mouths despite the kisses and caresses and looks they give each other.
"This won't work," she says (fire prowling from lips of softened steel).
"We can't be," he says (voltaic electricity snagging on his remaining words).
And yet, another kiss.
"This happened to me before. It was a mistake." Her eyes incriminate his (or at least try to, but remaining tears of star and sun keep them a well of sorrow in his view).
You put your heart up for sale and once someone buys it (or steals it), you never get it back. It's all in the client's hands.
(But maybe these hands can be trusted).
"Connections like these can't be sustained in this world." He tries to look elsewhere (but her gaze keeps his on hers and now he wishes he could forgive himself faster for many things).
Natural disorder and hate come from everywhere; there's no escape from it (why else are divorce rates high?). These are the supreme laws of entropic humanity.
(But maybe there's a chance to disobey them forever).
In a soft embrace, they sway together in tandem to the melody of a sea breeze. Out of defenses and objections, natural-feeling words make their way to their mouths.
"Because we can be," they finally answer (in the middle of a connection of lips that begs for more) (her answer and his answer only seconds apart) (as her eyes sing and his heart clenches with reprieve).