Airen and Coen's conversation ended up nowhere. Airen rejected his presence as she pressed her frail fingers at his forehead.
Coen vanished into a dusty glitter, fertilizing the flower buds with glow and beauty.
The world became a pristine glass.
An air rippling gently and silently from inside, slowly forming into a vortex and finally shattering it into crystal fragments.
"You should stop hiding now, my dear," Airen said with such a taunting, yet lovely voice. "I know you are over there, my lovely second son."
It felt like a river had rushed against his frozen nerves. Toren slowly stood up and got out from where he was hiding.
Nothing had actually changed, but somehow, he felt like Airen had grown younger and prettier.
Was it because of the moon magic? Was that the effect of sipping the celestial fluid daily? Or was it because of the several bargains she had dealt with? Seeping recesses and sucking tragedies?
Toren did not know how he could think of such unimaginable things, but it felt rational to do so, looking at her cherubic face.
Her glows were even more than holy and angelic.
She was like a descended goddess and he felt so much honor and intimidation to be in front of her.
"You are my mother, right?" He tried confirming.
Airen chuckled, her lips plumping redder and her face getting brighter. "Of course I am," She said. "Who do you think I am if not your mother?"
"You seemed quite different."
"Did the difference become better?"
"Yes."
"I had hoped so."
Toren then began pulling out his courage to ask what she was talking about with Coen earlier.
She would just brush it off and ignore it like the question did not even exist.
It lingered like an eerie labyrinth through the gusts of wind, the ones that take things off from one place to nowhere. The mother and son spent their time frolicking around that familiar paradise until he had completely forgotten why he was there in the first place.
He became more untrusting of himself about the questions he was supposed to ask.
She would touch him everywhere – at places he thought no one would reach and he would lose his mind. The sensation he felt with her was an absolute insanity.
He would open his mouth to say something, but then, she would stop it and it would be forgotten. He would retaliate, then she would softly bind him onto an inescapable spell.
He was a damn lunatic for her. Completely incarcerating him inside her metaphysical strings, he could not recall who he was before entering her lair.
When their little eternity needed to end then, Airen pressed her cold, feline palms above his eyes and transported him back to where he originally belonged.
It was the place where he was supposed to be in and not around her arms.
He returned to the dimension of reality, but he was not a ghost anymore.
The interaction with his brother, the deep blue flower, and how he had become a specter on earth felt like a far, far away dream from a land that does not exist.
He only had vague memories of it, but he longed for it now.
Just as much as he had longed for his flesh to intertwine with Airen's. Toren was just a mere lump of perception now.
Nothing more, nothing lesss.
A consciousness without a soul. He felt light, yet empty.
With such a strange, cold sensation, he had yearned for his brother's presence and assistance.
Hoping, for anyone's sake, that things would get better if he was with Coen.