Frej Eaglehart [D7] ~FIN

I used to hold her hand and we would dance underneath a lunar blessing. I was ice, she was fire and whenever I would let her hands slip through my fingertips she would hold them with her free hand and whisper into my ear - ("please don't leave me Eagle,") I would shudder (a childhood name should never linger to the age of sixteen) and there would be a pause between flicking pages and feigning ignorance of the obvious. She called me a dream, the beginning of an astral sleep she never wanted to awaken from and I called her mine and buried my head under her shoulders and pray that I would never wake up; just dream again, and again, and again.

I tried to let her go, but I always stayed for an extra hour under the moonlight.

We were the perfectly happy paradox; she called me her princess and always came to pick me up from my proclaimed kingdom that was no larger than the wooden door slowly weathering and chipping away piece by piece. When my father gave me the hilt of silver steel at fifteen I never learned how to hit targets or carve flesh - I only learned how to whittle wood and turn fantasies dreamed under the stars into a tiny piece of reality. She was given an axe and never hesitated to lay it across bark or fur alike, it was all the same shade of red to her.

"Eagle, you know I love you right?"

A kiss, a hand under a top, a tremble; we were living in a dream and hoped it would be our final destination.

(but I'm a rational person, I knew it could never be, I knew I couldn't say it back)

"I know that Bailey, I won't forget it I swear." But I could never bring myself to repeat learned sentiment to add to the illusion of our fantasy that was to be our final destination.

I was ice and she was fire, it was the perfect paradox with the ingredients to live happily ever after. My dark brown hair and hazel eyes were said to be an reflection of a district that only saw brown trees and green leaves. Medium length, falling down no lower than the middle of my forehead, she would run her hands through it call it dirty and prickly, that it reminded her of a hedgehog she accidentally killed with a hatchet when cutting down trees but laugh and she she didn't mind - I just needed a wash.

I'm a maze of flaws and imperfections, pale skin scarred by acne across the back and numerous nicks and cuts along the palms of my hands and fingertips at the careless slip-up of a blade that's never tasted anyone's blood but my own. I was never even a very intimidating figure, not one who would make someone think twice about deciding to challenge with a bottle in hand in a bar - who would fear someone only standing at 5'10 with nothing to back him up but childish dreams and hearts scribbled in a pink scrapbook? Someone's who so lucky that they're an only child or he would starve with his father's meager income, he's barely managing to keep off the line of malnourished as it is. Who has a baby face kissed not even by the shadow of a stubble.

I used to be clumsy, slipping, stumbling and dropping everything I dared to touch now I hold the gift of precision and through the eye of the needle. Whittling wood, shaping fiction and shadows into reality; it gets my mind off of a better fiction that could have been. I don't think I'm supposed to think about it. I'm supposed to be becoming a man soon, but I cannot even navigate the grey boundary between reality and fiction - still living in a final fantasy and a name of endearment that should've died with the approaching threat of manhood.

One second I'm whittling wood, fixing fiction from fabrications and blind thoughts, and the next I feel her hand against my cheek telling me that I'm cold and that I'm shaking before wrapping her jacket around me to hide me from the every external horror the climate brings but failing to hide me from the horrors of a mind clouded by hallucinations and fabrications. I can see her, cream skin, dark curled hair, dark brown eyes and - and -

I slip, slicing the palm of my hand with carelessness before scrambling for a clean bandage and some gauze.

"I don't think that you're insane, Eagle." A pause, a quick glance at a shadow, discerning the truth between reality and fiction.

"My name isn't Eagle!"

Only Bailey ever called me Eagle.

My father always said I held myself with too high a grandeur, that I was just a whittler's son and anything out of the ordinary that I saw was just another sign of my fading grip on reality and nothing more - I wasn't special and I wasn't some descendant of a god with gold, frankincense and myrrh in my past. I suppose it's fair of him and everything associated with divinity to look at me with such contempt; I'd committed mortal sin the day of my birth by killing my mother when I was born. I think I heard him say it was an unfair trade - a loving, beautiful wife for an insane son who still talks to imaginary friends and enemies on the wall, who's still afraid of the shadows the twist and turn to look at him on his bedroom wall.

I wanted to kill him, I still do. Break the silent vow that the knife would never taste blood other than my own and shove it in between his ribs, watch him bleed and see if he had any right to call me a mortal sinner. Just to watch the light fade from his eyes and never witness a semblance of hope flicker in those hollow windows ever again. Murderous thoughts; I wanted to do that to a lot of people who wronged me and my hands tremble and my eyes harden - I am ice to this day after all.

But she erased the slate of hatred left by my father's footprint of despair and contempt; simply stitching skin self worth and confidence violated with nothing more than just being Bailey, even through a truth marred by the apparition of twisting shadows and sentient tall tales at fourteen -

("you should leave me, I'm not safe for you, I'm not safe for anyone.")

("I'll never leave you Eagle, don't say that,")

("No one can tame me, not even you - he says I just belong in a cage where all the crazy ones go,")

("You deserve more than to just be alone in your own little birdcage Eagle - you deserve the world,")

A smile, a hug, a first kiss. We began to live in our final fantasy for the first time.

The only good deed I ever committed in order to deserve a loyalty and love needed was to happen to be in the same class as her at five years old and her only transgression to deserve me was to be nice enough to not steer clear of the strange looking kid and have an open heart and open mind to let herself into my bird cage and share it with me.

She was fire, I was ice, but we were a perfect paradox.

I began to whittle wood for my father at fifteen, wrapping myself in furs and sitting my the fireplace, resisting hallucinations coupled with lies and tattletales while she held a hatchet to her heart and did nothing but cut down trees and we would meet underneath a lunar blessing and share our final fantasy. We could embrace, we would kiss, we would dream again, and again, and again.

We would break ourselves into pieces for each other - and yet I could never return the favor whenever she told me she loved me. I think I was too busy chasing colors and hallucinations I mistook for phantoms; writing down our encounters in a pink notebook she gave me for my sixteenth birthday (the final birthday shared in our perfect paradox) and flinching and twisting at the sight of shadows in my bedroom.

(but I could face them when in her bedroom, when she slept at my side.)

But an astral plane were a paradox could by synonymous with perfection was not to be our final destination; it was just irrational, it didn't make sense. I'm supposed to be rational, unfeeling - insane.

I snuck out of my house but she left me alone under our once shared lunar blessing one night, and then the night after so I took the journey to her workplace with a heavy heart but they told she hadn't been in for two days due to illness- she would never miss the chance to sew a hatchet to her palms and hold it against her heart.

So I ran to her house and pounded onto the door but she was there and she was alive. I asked her why she left me but the silence that followed only prompted the curiosity to poke at the beast until the sun rose and the truth was told.

A father in a sticky deal with drug dealers, a threat to his family as well as him, they would find them, they would find her.

"Please tell me you won't leave me," and I knew she wanted me to make a thousands promises to protect her along with our final fantasy but I just didn't, I just couldn't make any promises I knew I wouldn't be able to die in the process of attempting to keep.

"I'd never," And she pulled me into an angelic embrace.

"I love you, Eagle, I love you so much,"

"Thank you," I'd never been able to return fire to the sentiment. "I'll see you under the stars Bailey, tomorrow night and every night after."

They found her with her throat opened by her own hatchet the next day and I screamed. I found her, just as the peacekeepers were loading her cold corpse and red smile onto a cart> stood and watched the red smile, the peacekeepers, the blood flood, a pressure against the back of my forehead until everything just burst and I just screamed, on the verge of shattering into the million pieces I would've gladly given to her.

I did not scream because I failed to back her in her first fight for life I screamed because she expected me to die with her for our final fantasy.

And I still see too many hallucinations to live through the present, too many shadows to even dare of dreaming of starting a new fantasy world with even myself - not even the lingering thread of manhood can provide the present the vitality boost needed to wipe clean the hatred and stitch the wounds of red smiles and an unfair bargain. Her death can be nothing more than a granite stone on my fragile conscience, especially a year later for someone who I never even said the words 'I love you' to.

("I love you, Eagle, I love you so much,")

To follow a final fantasy in hopes of dreaming again, and again, and again - I will never give break pieces of myself for a destination that can never be final ever again.