"Even if the stars melted into the night, constellations faded as all masterpieces do, and the sky shattered into millions of black stars, I would hold your hand through all of the broken glass."
"But you didn't."
Rain droplets and slowed steps in roadside puddles kissed lullabies to her lips and the steady drip of twilight pitter-pattered onto her fluttered eyelids. His fingertips ran along her hands, scribing poems into her soft palm.
Her voice choked as she grabbed his hand, forcing him to stop, "But you don't. It's okay, though." Rain tangled into her hair and stuck to her cheeks. The sky was falling. "It's just that... you speak so beautifully, yet your actions are so full of anger."
The sound of the rain rung like a knell in his ears; he could hear the gates of heaven crack open. The sky was falling. Nothing but whisps of cold air left his mouth and he shook.
"You saw the fires setting alight to all that was around you and so your embers made themselves at home in your eyes, burning your sight." The wind whistled old sailor tunes in her ears but the rain made everything feel right. She could never speak like this at sunrise or during lunchtime picnics, during violin recitals or sat in an old library. She could only ever say this now because the night was hers.
"I did... I tried. I tried so hard." His free hand slipped into his hair, clenching it as he looked up at the falling sky. With all the pain shooting across his head like shooting stars and the rain washing away his tears, he could almost believe that he was anywhere else. He played pretend as the girl stood in her own reality.
"No. You tried to put the fires out. All you saw were the flames and not all the people gathered around them for warmth." The girl slipped her hands away from his. She had had enough of his poetry and pretty words. "You sing so beautifully but it's the wrong song."
Fireflies played hide and seek in the tall grass, watching the two simply stand in the downpour. An audience of tiny fires had gathered around, setting the raining world on fire.
He shook his head and tried to take step towards her, "Love, I don't understand what you're saying-"
"What I am saying is," She smoothly took a step away from him, "you write so beautifully, I love your poetry and the way you can hear it when you breathe. I can hear ancient hymns in your heartbeat and old laments in the way you blink. I love how your love has become so interlaced into you."
"Then-"
"But those poems weren't written for me."
He shouted desperately, hands just out of reach of hers, "I didn't know it then, but they were always for you. Everything I did was for you, love."
The forest fire of fireflies waved as they came tumbling off of their seats of roses, weeds and poppies. A wave of orange lights falling out of a sea of vibrant reds and dull greens surrounded the pair.
"They were poems for your father, of your hatred of him. Poems for dead friends, of your grief for them. Poems for your childhood love, of your guilt for them. You know you wrote them for different people and I had no right to hear them because they were never for me or you but you're so desperate for an audience that you read them to me regardless." She shook her head and pointed at him, "You need to learn how to write for you, of the hatred of your father, of your grief, of your guilt. Learn to write for you and then the poems will also be for me."
His voice cracked as he whispered, "I don't understand. What did I do wrong?" For the first time, he looked her in the eyes. As her hand fell back to her side, he looked at her like she was the sun. He only looked at her when she was leaving and this may be his final sunset.
The rain drowned all of her tears and sorrow. "You live for others. Everything you do, you do for and due to another. You read because you think that if you're smart your father will love you. You play the piano because you think that you may honour fallen friends in their favourite pieces. You fight because you think it will make her forgive you." She could feel the old rage running through her veins. The heat of her body despite the nighttime winds and the cold water drenching her bare skin and silk clothes. She felt like the world would end right here. The sky was falling. "God, how do you not see? I want you to live for yourself. Love yourself... please just-"
The boy had nothing to say as he watched the girl he loved so dearly fall apart in the nighttime rain before his very eyes and all he could do was watch. "Love, I-"
"No!" She snapped as she clenched her teeth through the tears. She would do this. The night was hers. "I'm not finished. I just want you to play the piano with songs you have loved for years. I want you to practice magic because of old fairytales you heard as a child. I want you to write because this world is all too wonderous and all too tragic for our fragile souls."
The owner of the night and a poet stood in a field ablaze with fireflies and roses whilst everything drowned in the rain and the sky was falling.
Tears still cascading down his reddened cheeks, he smiled. The kind of smile that hid embers on his tongue and lit fires in his throat. Everything was burning inside of him. "Would you teach me?"
"Pardon?"
"Teach me how to live for myself, love, so that someday I can live for you too."
-An extract from Gods Land chapter 186