river songs that speak stories of dawn

“Hey, Auron?” Sora asked softly, staring at his reflection in the river. “What’s it like being dead?”

Auron watched the pyreflies dance around the boy, iridescent fires reflecting off Sora’s frame gently in the dead of night. He reached forward, hand settling on top of the boy’s head. Sora leaned into the touch, Auron staring quietly as the hair phased through his fingers, leaving behind soft cries and bright wisps.

He still had some time before he had to leave.

“Is there really a need to know?” he responded, removing his hand and turning back to the river. The stream sang down the earth, gently caressing Sora’s bare ankles as it continued onward. The pyreflies stuck close to him, Auron reaching out to grasp one. It mingled with his skin, the cries rising to sound a delicate desire of times past. Auron raised his head, watching as the stars continued to surround them, never-ending in all their dying glory. “Until your story ends, you’ll have to wait.”

Sora leaned against his side heavily. “Did you ever marry when you were alive?”

Auron let Sora entwine their fingers together, the teen listening for a heart that would never beat again. “No. I was asked once and…” he wondered if the pyreflies would respond to his sorrows.

The small fires continued to float around them, encasing them in the same false dream.

Sora shifted, raising his legs out of the water. He kneeled next to him, staring up at him with poorly hidden hopes. “Then…?”

Auron looked away. It was a foolish desire.

Sora held close, life thrumming beneath his palms. He reminded Auron so much of the love he had lost—would surely lose again. It was a foolish desire to ask of life in death’s caress. Foolish to long for a dream that would cease to sing him whispers of farewell and regret.

And yet, his life had always been full of foolish dreams and outlandish stories, hadn’t it?

“If you say what you really want,” Auron pressed his face to Sora’s, the boy’s breathing a soothing lullaby in his ear, “Then it might be possible.”

“Wait for me, Auron,” Sora said, reaching up to grip the faded fabric of his haori, “Even if it takes a lifetime, please, could you wait for me?”

His body ached as the pyreflies continued on their journey, unaware of the dreams they’d cast off come morning. He felt the way Sora trembled before him, a heart painfully beating as it sought reassurance in a sacred vow.

Ten years had been a long time to wander.

“I’m your guardian, aren’t I?” he responded, kissing the crown of Sora’s head. He cupped Sora’s cheek, feeling the beginnings of tears collect along what physical form he had left.

Ten years had been a long time to drift.

But until the day came where Sora was wrapped in the same dream as him, till the two could sit along the riverside and fade into the dawn together, he would linger till Sora’s story reached its final page.

Ten years had been a long time, but the eternity that would wash them away afterward in the winds of a tearful promise whispered in the night would last even longer.