You remain,It's like he's waking up. Eyes flashing, smile unable to leave his face, curls highlighted in the darkness. No longer in the shadow of the devil, he thrives in the moonlight, charm leading the way. A quiet confidence tried on for the first time in ages, inspected and repaired to one hundred percent. My heart soars. I wish sometimes that it was only us again, plotting our course on a stolen gas station map with a borrowed pen and the most foolish of dreams, dreams we never finished. Dreams we don't know the endings of yet. Dreams we can maybe finally afford.
My power, my pleasure, my pain, baby
To me you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny.
Won't you tell me is that healthy, baby?
But did you know,
That when it snows,
My eyes become large and the light that you shine can be seen.
But it isn't just us now and we have a whole built-in circus full of characters, full of workers, everyone knowing their role, playing their part and when the Devil lets go he leaves a wake of flames behind.
Only one person can control those and it isn't me.
Our audience is each other, our acts change daily, costumes too. Our profit is high and our word of mouth travels as far as the eyes can see. To a place I have never seen, a place Lochlan describes as magical, full of adventure and surprise and comfort too because comfort is essential when you travel so lightly as we are wont to do. I nod enthusiastically. I'll believe anything he says when he says it like this, only the adventure came to a grinding halt right here, grinding, sliding right to and then slightly over the edge of the world, tipping perilously toward the ocean but not quite. The wind ruffling our hair, threatening to help gravity just enough to end this grand adventure but our hero thought of that already and has fashioned a safety-rope made of my fears and doubts, twisted tightly together in lengths, knotted for strength, destined to save us somewhere along the line, the face of caution and preparation to his headlong rush, the childlike fear of the unknown that kept him from taking me into his arms and dropping off the face of the earth never to be seen again, lost in a mighty whirlwind of show after show after act after show. Going down in history as the courageous lovers who never saw the end coming until it was too late.
Except that isn't how it ends. Our act has changed so much through the years, veering haphazardly down one path, doubling back before heading deliberately down another and still here's one more path and it's different than all the rest but as he always tells me when the doubts rear up like boogeymen to chew off my limbs and then feast on my heart,
We're together. We have food. We have heat. But most importantly we have each other and I'll never need for more than you as long as you'll have me and be beside me.
We need more than food and heat, Locket. I have to have grade ten math to graduate and I need an actual job and if we ever get caught we're screwed-
I'll always provide for you. I'll teach you the math. And you don't need a real job, that's why we're here. I'd rather do magic for the rest of my life than suffer indoors at some stuffy office gig and we're too good to get caught, darling Peanut. And that's the best magic right there. We're independent. We're perfect. We're invincible!
Does this mean I can go get cotton candy for dinner?
No. I stole beets and carrots from the field just down the road. You need vegetables to grow strong.
You just said I was perfect.
Perfectly miniature. I think you'd have a easier time if you grew just a little more besides. Then you could reach those dreams without me holding you up.