Amor Fati: A Pinocchio Retelling

The music playing from the tavern became softer and softer as they scaled the stairs. With large strides, Pinocchio tried to catch up to Adone, whose intense steps struck every plank. Only at certain moments did the wooden boy notice the bright smile beaming from Adone’s lips, hailing Pinocchio’s lips to do the same. But then, in the smallest corners of his countenance, sparks of darkness coruscated beneath his smile, dwelling in the abyss of his eyes. Pinocchio knew that there was something on his mind, something so heavy that only his heart can carry, which it barely did. His spirit seemed to be crumbling from its own weight, but every tear and crack supported one another to keep it whole in all its brokenness. While he appreciated his bright enthusiasm deeply, that same appreciation was fragrant with a profound melancholy for his condition. Broken eyes can still see grace glowing in the shards, Pinocchio hoped as he made his way to their room.

Adone excitedly jingled the keys in his hand, fiddling until he found the right one to unlock the door. His smile widened when he saw the grandeur of the room, immediately turning his body towards one of the two beds and flying towards it like a wind-swept leaf. Pinocchio took the time to enjoy the spaciousness of the room and its luxurious amenities. He was happy that he climbed all those stairs, seeing it as worth it as he stared at the fireplace, the beds, the desk, the table and eventually the chandelier hanging above it all. With his sharpest senses, he noticed fays sleeping on the candles, occasionally getting roused from their slumber and roaming around the ceiling. As Pinocchio got lost in the lights, Adone raised his head from the soft blanket and flipped over, sitting up to get struck with another beam of joy. Seeing the safety radiating from the wooden boy awakened a similar feeling within him, but not without its consequences. 

As soon as the velvet warmth touched his core, everything else around it vaporized, exposing himself to the caged beasts he tried to starve in the dark. But they knew no hunger nor sleep, gnawing at whatever beam of light could enter the abyssal sanctum. They did anything they could to sink their fangs into him, shredding all that could break and threatening the break the unbreakable. In the heat of the hunt, Adone longed for that very same unbreakable core they desecrated to shatter into a kaleidoscope of pieces. Only then did he think that he could finally breathe, only when he completely lost himself to truly find himself. But it was in Pinocchio’s turquoise gaze and resplendent smile where he saw his light reflected back to him, shining his own light within himself to illuminate what he always forgot to treasure. 

His eyes followed the doll across the room, studying himself while Pinocchio studied the little details of the place. In the noontide of his enlightening revelation, a deeper darkness awakened, remembering the sweet acid of Cecilia’s love. The excessive intensity that fulfilled him wholly and emptied him completely synchronized with the rhythm of his soul, sputtering blood from an endless wound. In its endlessness, her own indomitable fire sewed it shut by engulfing it completely, setting his blood ablaze. He no longer had to drown in the abyssal blood of his soul and instead could burn with it as one. When all he tasted was death and iron, she was the one to allow him to taste the glory of the sun he became through her. In knowing the pain she excavated from him, his heart was still pulled into her orbit, threatening to consume him like a black hole. Adone’s heart was nothing more than a hound that could only search for what it recognized, growing endlessly hunger for what will only make it grow stronger. 

A wave of fire suddenly flowed out of the hearth, dissolving the storm for a moment to align his attention to Pinocchio toying with the keywinder next to the hearth. The doll narrowly escaped the flaming tongues. 

“Are you alright? Did you get burned?” 

Instantly, Adone jumped out of the bed and rushed to his side, seeing if no part of him got burned. When he saw that everything was fine and that he was just a little startled, he let out a sharp exhale. 

“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” he said with a warm chuckle, “I just didn’t know that it was going to be so strong at first.”

Without much thought, Adone wrapped his arms around Pinocchio and pulled him close as if he was trying to put a broken piece back into himself. For a moment, he did feel more complete, but his mind was surging with endless points of tension. The only way to tame the roaring ocean in his ghost was to see her again, and the bare fact that she was so near made the fangs sink deeper, grazing his soul to nearly make it spit fire. He let out a very slow breath as he tightened his embrace before letting go. 

“I forgot something very important in my caravan that I can’t leave without. You don’t need to stay up since I got another key to this room, so you can sleep whenever you like.” 

With premeditated steps, Adone made his way to the door and wished him a good night before closing it, leaving his bag on the bed he claimed. The room became much emptier in the absence of his presence, creating a void in Pinocchio he tried to fill by examining the fire sputtering from the hearth. He dragged a small chair from the side and placed it across the fireplace, sitting on it to blankly stare at the fire. But there was no such thing as absence in his mind, only in his clockwork heart. His mind was filled to the brim with hopeful anxiety about the future, together with a deep sense of concern for Adone in the present and a raging sea of memories from the past. But the fire washed it all away, cleansing his heart with its silent warmth and warm silence. 

In the same way he heard Adone’s footsteps thump in the background, so too did his clockwork heart click, clicking with a frantic rhythm. His heart turned into a hundred footsteps walking over his stormy mind, unable to understand why he felt so anxious with his sudden leaving. But deep in his body, he knew that something was amiss in him, that he was trying to hide shadows that he couldn’t contain. Yet the leadlike weight of his worries turned into feathers in the wake of his trust in him, a trust that pierced through a surface not even Adone himself understood. He used his entire body to let out a sigh bigger than himself, rattling the wheels in his system as he walked towards the bag to find his old red uniform. Holding it in his hands again, he wished that it would crumble in his palms. Instead, its texture tickled his fingertips and caressed the surface of his soul with memories that threatened to peel it open, exposing it to the fires raging through his mind. With resplendent joy, he let the fire of the hearth consume it instead of letting his own fire consume him and observed how the red turned into black. 

Every step he took felt heavier and heavier, fearing that he would fall through the stairs from the weight he carried. It became so cumbersome to a point where he even feared falling through the earth, thinking that even that which gave him ground will fall away and leave him in the vacuum of his heart. Cold, alone, isolated and imprisoned by a selfhood he saw as a cage. In a cage far worse than the prison he was in for a week, wrapped in red, for there was only an abyss of meaning to be found within. On plenty of nights, he found himself choking on the marrow of his own heart, repulsed by the bitter taste of its lusts. But with each night came a new day, a new string incorporated into the tapestry of his degeneracy. A new insight that made him want to peel his eyes out. It came to a point where all the eyes within became so numerous that the only hope of healing was to cast each and every one into the fires of forgetfulness, even if it burned him to ash. Especially if it burned him to ash. Because to choke on his own ashes would be far more noble in his tear-stained eyes than to choke on what they once were. 

A part of him became invigorated by the music of the tavern and the warmth of the lights. The murmur of voices reminded him of the waves of the sea, rekindling an ancient memory he couldn’t bear to arouse into fire. There was already a conflagration engulfing his ghost, the sun of his desire continuously breathing fire through his veins. When he looked around, he saw her eyes carved into every surface of the tavern, but the moment he truly laid eyes on her, everything else around her became nothing more than curling tongues of fire. The vitality of the crowd, the individual lives leading them to this particular place, this particular time, engaging in particular conversations due to their particular histories- all of it crumbled around her. His world devoured once again by her, he decided to step closer, directly into the jaws of death again with the dark hope of tasting life on his soul’s palate. 

When Ceclia noticed him approaching, she gave him a smile that tore his heart out of his ribcage, opening the rusty gates to drown him in a sea of memories in one instant. Her nostalgia-stained eyes resting atop her crescent moon of a smile twinkled like ancient stars, tenderly cradling a history so sacred that even time couldn’t dare to let it go. A sweet pain stung both of them as they sat opposite each other in the booth, both heavy with historic life and light with death’s kiss. With all the confidence she usually carried, she immediately crumbled under the weight of his gaze, studying every corner of her without a shred of restraint as his eyes were devouring her image. Every corner of her body bled with a memory so bitter that it nearly made his heart’s tongue shrivel and decay, but she was his only appetite. Deep down, however, he knew that his tastes had expanded and his heart matured, in spite of the blood that stained it. 

There was a silence between them that spilled from within them, each trying to digest the fire sputtering out of their hearts. He noticed how she massaged the knuckles of her fingers, seeing the ghost of his own hand that once caressed those same knuckles and exploring the soft skin of her hand. It became a ritual of love for him, knowing that that soothed her whenever she was shaken by the horror of her own heart. Instead of soothing them both, it made his only hand sting as if punctured by knives. No matter how white his knuckles were beneath his gloves and how tightly he balled his fist, the past refused to escape his veins. All the power she once exuded from which he grew drunk succumbed to an autumn, yet he was still able to savor the shadow of her fire. And he, as a king of silence fused to his ashen throne, became torn by the space between the beauty of what was and the tragedy of what is. But no matter the status of their positions, both were slaves to time and its torment. 

“I had a feeling that you would come back down to see me,” Cecilia said with a low, silky voice, hiding her smile behind her closed fist. While her eyes were directed to the musicians, he still felt her gaze bite into him with her words alone. Everything she did was amplified fivefold by the shadow of their love, setting every little action she performed ablaze. He could taste the texture of her lips in her voice, recognizing it like any other limb of his body. While his body showed restraint, his soul screamed for more, deafening him with memories of her touch that reached beyond his skin. As if spilling from the cracks, it sputtered forth, reaching out in a foolish attempt to grasp and take hold of the past sputtering out of her as well, not knowing the illusory nature of it all. Yet it stained him deeper than reality ever could, dying his life in the sweet shadows of death. It even managed to capture the scent of her hair from the color of her eyes alone, embracing every possible part of her that it could in a synesthesia of souls. But his soul’s embracing of hers was simply another foolish attempt to fill the gaps and mend the cracks with things that would only slip through and deepen them. But that was all that it knew. All he ever knew. 

In the absence of his ravenous heart, he saw clearly that he was blind to her true presence, unable to see her without painting her in memories. Her large, brilliant eyes, when turned to his, revealed the abyssal entrance of a cave where time became tortured by its own fluid machinations. He saw his own soul shimmer in that void, drowning in time’s endlessness, remembering that he once called it home and deep down still did. Only now, it was merely a stage to perform his nostalgia forevermore, with its kaleidoscope of colors fulgurating in his soul. No matter the restraint he had, he felt his own body being submerged in the sweet flames of eternal nights, summoning stars from their flesh and breathing light into one another. But only an acidic darkness seeped into him the longer he held her gaze, unable to fathom the paradox of tasting such a dizzying variety of flavors from her presence in him. 

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t come.” 

As he said this, his heart softened, giving rise to a tender smile. For a moment, he channeled the past into him and felt the lightest he ever did after carrying such weight for so long. Transfigured into an animated memory, she was also rekindled by the fire he became and reversed to her old self, enveloped by a warm sense of safety. Even if Adone’s present self was saturated with change, she was able to recognize and only recognize in that second a version of him she treasured in the innermost sanctum of her heart. His sunny smile casted a light into her darkest parts where she stored the most sacred relics, rejuvenated by how he made them sparkle. Their shimmering unveiled the starry night she cradled in her soul, a night perfumed by the fragrance of their desire and decorated by the stars born from every kiss. Yet, in spite of how precious it was to her, every needle-like beam of starlight pierced her soul, perforating it to pieces until it became nothing more than iridescent dust scattered by the wind of change, by the breath of time. 

The paradise-clothed prison dissolved as a waiter asked them what they wished to drink. This startled Adone at first, forgetting that the Red Lobster inn was a highly acclaimed establishment. It was the closest thing peasants got to jewels, he said to himself as he ordered a montefiascone, already tasting the sweet white wine in the words alone. When the waiter left, the bars returned like dormant claws, cruelly cradling the space around them that participated in the vivacity of flame. They both felt that same fire rolling within them, dancing like rippling waves of water within him, enveloping the impenetrable. But the breath of this beast was far too great for his body to understand and continued to scorch his heart, peeling its endless layers while its seismic hum joined death’s lullabye. Visceral flora blossomed from the agonizing purification process, never fully blooming and never satisfied with the light it received and the darkness it drank from the soil of his soul. It only understood the language of lungs and teeth, howling and gnawing the beams of light until they splintered and scattered into embers of a broken promise. This cosmic betrayal sputtered through the way he expressed his existence, bringing him in this place, with this woman and an army of fanged voices. 

“I think I saw you walking with Pinocchio. What are you going to do with him exactly? Shouldn’t he be given to the proper authorities?” 

A wave of relief poured out of him and made him feel lighter than a feather, relieved by the topic she presented to him. 

“Proper authorities? I know he’s a child and I’m most certainly not the best adult to take care of one, but he’s more than just a child and far more than an automaton. They will just lock him up again, and I don’t want that for him. I want us both to be free, to explore, to discover all sorts of things beyond where we were dragged to.” 

She leaned back with a sardonic smirk on her face, folding her hands around her arms as if hugging herself. Despite the dark superiority of her gestures, Adone noticed the way she held herself so tightly as if she could fall apart at any moment. As if her hands tried to touch something beneath the skin, beyond the flesh, and crandle it like a perfect snowflake.

“So he’s going to be dragged along by you instead, huh? Sounds like fun.” 

There was the dark dagger he was looking for, finding it buried in his howling heart. No matter how careful he was, her words still managed to pierce him in the most painful ways. He once mistook this pain for connection, but it was clear to him that it was a cry for paradise, one he foolishly thought he found in her. The malaise she once breathed into him became a fire he breathed out, a fire that made the darkness scream light. 

“What is that supposed to mean?” 

“You know exactly what I mean. You always did, but you never liked to admit it.” 

“Admit what?” 

Cecilia tasted the fire in his gaze and drank it with her own, giving the silence the space to breathe its suffocating air into him. But he didn’t allow himself to fall to his knees again. If he was going to kiss the soil of his soul, he would do it out of his own volition and not out of external authority, for it would only have the deceptive flavor of the commander’s heart. Her rolling eyes cut straight into his marrow, pushing him into his own abyss. Fire flickered in his gaze during the fall, engulfing his sensorium in the song of rage. Before she even spoke, he could feel its wicked melody sizzling in his blood. 

“To admit that you haven’t changed, Adone,” she said, flourishing her hand as her smile grew. She leaned both elbows on the table with an expression so disgustingly bright that all he saw was an all-consuming abyss. “Nobody changes that easily, especially you.” 

“Especially me?” 

An ocean of words threatened to split his skull open and sputter from his mouth like a raging stream of blood. But he ensconded himself in the darkness she radiated and summoned within him, taming the rage by letting it sink its teeth into him and tear through his insides. In the noontide of abyssal rage, words didn’t come as easily as aggression. Fearing that he might do something he would deeply regret, he didn’t raise his arms in offence, but surrender. 

“How so?” 

Both leaned back, searching each other from the outside in. 

“Well, have you proven the contrary? For as long as I’ve known you, you haven’t once changed in any way. “

“That’s because I have nothing to change.” 

“Of course you have, you selfish-” 

A sharp laugh leapt out of his mouth as his eyes beamed, thrilled to uncover the knife she tried to sink into him before it fully could. To his surprise, the laugh continued to sputter forth as his smile grew, threatening to split his skull wide open. He recognized the crackle of his laugh to be an echo of his visceral hatred for not merely her, but her ability to make him hate himself to the core. 

“Selfish! You’re a master in that field, you know? Don’t talk to me about being selfish when you never even acknowledged how I felt or even tried to understand how I felt. No, you only looked at yourself because that was all that mattered to you.” 

Lightning flashed in her heart, shocked to hear the exact same complaint she had of him to be directed to her. All the ice building up to fortify her heart evaporated in an instant, burning her with an impenetrable steam and arousing a deafening scream that dulled her senses for a moment. His words slid in the corners like shadows, but still managed to grasp the deepest part of her Adone nor Cecilia herself was aware could be grasped. The ice flowed through her veins as the frost bit into her heart. In the iridescence of the crystalline scars, the indomitable urge to rip the beautiful parts of him that decorated her consumed her mind, but was left ignored by her soul’s cruel design. Every beam of light she received from him became jewels in her dark nights, now burning her inner paradise with memories and misery. A few nearly fell from her eyes, but she held herself together, wrapping her hands even tighter around her biceps. 

Her lack of eye contact and the way she sat told him that she was on the verge of unraveling. In the darkest corners of his mind, he enjoyed the beauty of her heart slowly opening in the most painful ways imaginable, seeing it as the purest ritual of vulnerability. Adone was still unaware of the darkness loaded in his intent for light and clarity, perfuming it with an intoxicating grace he could only see as good in the galaxy of horror, the stage on which his soul danced. Naturally, her heart’s unfolding came with intense friction that colored her eyes in shades of fury. Sickeningly sweet nostalgia surged through his brain, paired with his insides boiling with an acidic disgust. 

“I thought that we were trying to look out for each other, to be there for one another…”

There was clearly an ocean’s worth of words that she wanted to free, but the thorns wrapped around her lungs tightened and held her back. Sparkles of light glittered in Adone’s ghost as he heard her say that in such a tone, remembering that she was more than a mirror of malice. Each sparkle of light in her abyssal river was enough for him to love her back, turning the sparkles into more scars, more reminders written in the only language he knew. Hatred evaporated in the wake of her words, calming his roaring heart and giving it the opportunity to be open. 

It didn’t take long, but when the words sank deeper and deeper into him, they managed to touch a part of him he didn’t know he still had. From the bite marks made by her fanged heart, a sea of affect sputtered out from a part of his own heart. Something in the fragrance of the blood that came from such a deep place stung him even deeper, sending sunkissed memories straight through every nerve in his body and every corner of his soul. Moments of profound harmony and serenity, where the need to reflect and conceptualize was nonexistent as his soul tasted the beauty of raw existence. The same peace he found in Pinocchio he found in Cecilia fivefold in a way not many can replace. It was a peace laced with passion, perfumed with the petrichor of an emerald paradise both found in the union of their hearts. But Pinocchio did what Cecilia couldn’t ever do; illuminate the paradise within himself that was abandoned for so long and see the beauty of it without needing to dissolve himself to run away from it. Under turquoise light, he was finally able to appreciate that sanctum as a paradise instead of a prison, something Cecilia couldn’t fathom. But knowing this, his soul salivated for her visceral grace, for the sunlight he drank from her skin as the only paradise his heart truly understood as home. 

Suddenly, a wicked eclipse darkened his ghost, drowning it in a darkness he thought his soul’s incandescence kept at bay. What its light really did was give it a place to sleep and ensconce itself, nurturing it until its abyssal breath clouded his whole being. The inner light he tried to worship but despised so vehemently screamed in pain as it illuminated memories he tried to forget so desperately. In trying to forget, his heart could only remind him of what made it, showing him images of people screaming, bleeding, begging for their lives and cursing their death and deeds. The blood still felt fresh on his hands, still warm and wet, humming with life. The amount of people he butchered under the command of Mangiafuoco was so long that the amount would make his skull burst open. That same urge came about, one he wanted to perform out of his own tormented volition as he saw them again, screeching blood and silence. The sea of flesh was so vast that it enveloped and drowned his paradise and everything around it, erasing the person he pulled apart in flesh and spirit. Whenever he remembered such things, he wished to pierce his fingers into his skull and crack it open to rip out the memories from the roots. Time’s grace already fulfilled that task innumerable times in innumerable ways, giving him a taste of unimaginable anguish for what could only be described as eternity to his ephemeral flesh. Whatever light that still shone through the desecrated viscera wished to escape through his tears, but his eyes were dry as the gouged eyes of his heart merely continued to cry blood-cradled memories.  

“I know the things you had to go through weren’t pretty; I also went through things I wish I didn’t know could exist either. I, I thought that we had the chance to just make a paradise that we lost in the midst of all we endured, to create a paradise that could endure, endure more than us. I’m… sorry. I’m sorry for being so cruel to you and I’m sorry that I let myself be treated so cruelly by you. But you want to know something really funny? To this day, with all this insight, I still can’t help myself. It’s the only language that speaks to me, one that I cannot only understand, but gives me a voice.” 

A giggle that carried the dying fire of dusk set fire to her balmy laughter, burning her lips into a deep smile, one where he saw his sanctuary once resting with its sunlight filtering through her eyes. He felt as though that same light he saw from the depths of her actually gazed into his own dark depths, seeing the horrors he went through and giving him the reassurance that always succumbed to silence. But when he received that kiss of light again, so intimately and so intensely, the past reawakened within himself and he could only see her in the light she gave him again in spite of the excessive darkness. 

He let her words simmer in the silence as the waiter gave them their drinks, taking a deep sip of the sweet white wine that immediately released the tension tightly coiled around his nerves. Relieved by the clarity he had for a moment, he seized it and translated the darkness-enrobed wisdom that revealed just enough of its light for him to engage with the truth of his heart. 

“There are plenty of other things that can give you a voice. You don’t need to let that define you in order to make you breathe. In fact, you always had a voice, like everyone, but yours and mine merely got snuffed out by our past. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone and you definitely don’t need to find it in the past. It’s discovered in the present and grows riper as it goes towards the future. I’m also trying to find a voice beyond the past, a voice that can hail a fruitful future that sows the seeds for it in the present. Me and Pinocchio are going to head eastward on horseback and see where life takes us tomorrow, and maybe I’ll find my voice along the way. I hope that you’re able to find yours too, that you can do what you wish and regain your paradise.”

With all the light spilling from his heart of hearts, all he was able to read in Cecilia’s dying dusk was a darkness no star dared to dwell in. Something tremendous let out a seismic roar in the marrow of her soul, shattering the light he radiated into shards of ice that sank deeper than any light, penetrating the innumerable layers of darkness. His words pierced her so deeply that they even reached the incandescent core enrobed in the cocoon of darkness that burned so bitterly that it turned the ice into steam and scarred the layers of her insides. A fiery tidal wave of rage crashed upon her tenderness and burned it to ashes, leaving nothing but the blazing sun of envy. It grew in strength, arousing the ocean of her soul to boil furiously, howling with a million voices she couldn’t call her own. The starlit promise written in their enmeshed heavens that told her that he wouldn’t abandon her vanished in the rage while feeding it endlessly in an uroboros of anguish. 

“You really don’t get it, do you?” Cecilia said with a scoff, as if she tried to tear something out of her throat. 

Light filtered through the broken layers, bleeding gold that stretched to Adone like a tree whose blossoms yearned his light. But she didn’t get the flavor of love she wished, recognizing it as a threat that promised the kiss of the abyss. A place where he was not there, a place devoid of the light she devoured in a parasitic frenzy. In her garden of rot, only he was allowed to bloom, from which she would partake in every blossom until there was nothing left but the abyss of love. 

“Do you really think that suddenly running away will pardon you from all that you put me through? Do you honestly think that forgiveness comes from turning the other cheek? You can’t be that stupid, can you?” 

Shards of her heart shimmered from the cracks of her countenance, spilling a substance Adone can only register as the blood of pain. It was a kind of pain he was familiar with, for it ran through his veins as well. When presented in such a way, however, that dwelling place he called home became a place worse than any torture chamber he could imagine. Deep down, her heart pierced him deep enough to crack his own wide open, emptying it and dissolving it with acidic shame. It was there, where ashes danced and sparkled like stars, where he witnessed the horizon of her emptiness and her desperate desire to incorporate him into it. 

Upon seeing this, he thought that it was a shame that he had to come so close only to feel so far removed from that he longed to embrace. That love’s language was in the touch of skin and scent of desire, for it was blinded by what it loathed to witness. It even went so far as to peel its eyes out, preferring the mystery of blindness over the misery of vision. To this day, it still cries tears of blood that run through the veins of his soul, surging and shouting names untouched by light, yet bled it profusely. While never given the chance to taste life with the eye of his heart, he found enough satisfaction in the language he learned through life’s harrowing trials, seeing what he wished he was able to see long ago.

“And you hurt me just the same, Cecilia. But the difference is you don’t see that. There’s no such thing as forgiveness anymore, we’re far beyond that now. All there is me, you, and a sea of memories indifferent to both of us. None of it matters anymore, but what does matter is to move on and see that there is more to the future than the past.” 

From the most subtle movements, she noticed that he was about to leave. A dark desire struck her heart, whispering into her temptations she digested as truths. It only grew warmer and warmer as she studied the shape of his jaw harmonizing with the dark honey in his eyes. Even the muscles wrapped around his neck seemed to bleed honey to her as she remembered her engravings upon it. Now, in the light of darkness, she longed to drink and get drunk on the nostalgia bleeding from every scar and every corner of his body. 

“There’s more to life than me and you and all these little things. But it’s in the little things where you can find life at its most ripe. And of course, I’m sorry for all that I did, and I think that the best act of forgiveness for both of us is to go our separate ways.” 

Just as he moved his leg to go away, she quickly put her hand to his side and stopped him, holding his prosthetic arm. Knowing that she herself contributed to the cause of the missing arm sent a ripple of darkness through her bones, setting her heart on fire until it howled in a language she understood with perfect clarity. She caressed the gloved arm with her thumb and looked him in the eyes with a velvet gaze, ripe with melancholy’s fire. 

“We both know what we want, Adone.” 

As if from a dream, he recognized the fire of a hundred nights in her whispery tone, kindling a part of him he thought passed away long ago. But as it turned out, it was merely slumbering in the abyss, opening its star-stained eyes upon hearing the melody of madness. As her hand traveled up his arm, he felt its fangs sink into the marrow of his light. And before he was able to digest time, she was pressed next to him with her lips barely touching his ear. Her whisper of death set his heavens ablaze with the fury of dusk, blowing the iridescent ashes of his virtue into the night.