It begins with warmth.
A morning in Tir na nÓg, in the house they always joked they'd build but never truly named. Tak stands barefoot on sun-warmed stone, a cup of tea in one hand and Henry’s shirt in the other. The light is golden and impossible, filtering through high, open windows with slow reverence. Everything smells like thyme and bread and freshly turned soil.
The house is alive with noise—laughter, footsteps, music bleeding from one room to another like light through stained glass. Tak’s siblings are everywhere. Fourteen of them, scattered across time and tale, all bickering and radiant. One of them is braiding Henry’s hair while another offers him a slice of mango dusted with something sweet and ancient. The room shifts and grows with each moment, space unfolding around them, a dream made architecture.
Tak watches from the doorway, barefoot and blooming, unsure if his chest can contain what it holds. Love spills from everything. From the walls, from the scent of lemon verbena, from the way Henry throws his head back in laughter without needing to know why everyone loves him—just trusting that they do.
He walks forward. A simple thing. Just walks toward Henry. His hand reaches out, and Henry turns, smiling—
—but the air stills.
The warmth bleeds out like breath from a dying fire. Laughter fades. The scent of bread burns. One of his siblings opens their mouth, and ash pours out. It begins to fall, soft and steady, snowing inside.
Tak runs. He calls Henry’s name. Henry turns to him, confused. Then frightened.
Tak grabs his hand—
And it crumbles to dust.
So does the arm. The chest. The eyes.
Tak screams.
And wakes, soaked in sweat, the sheet tangled around his legs like a serpent of regret.
The journal doesn’t end with a flourish or a final line of poetry. It just stops. Mid-thought, mid-feeling, mid-life.
Not a full stop—just silence. A page left blank that should’ve carried joy or sorrow or something burning. And maybe that’s what hurts most of all: that I couldn’t bring myself to write goodbye.
I stopped writing because I couldn’t trust my own hand not to betray me. Not to spill ink that would say too much. Not to beg.
Henry noticed, of course. The next morning, he brought me tea and kissed my shoulder and said, “What, no morning sermon today?” with that boyish smirk that always made me want to wreck kingdoms just to keep him smiling.
I mumbled something. Shrugged. My mouth couldn’t hold the words. If I opened it, I might say everything. And if I did… if I broke the only rule that has ever mattered, it wouldn’t be me who suffered. It would be him.
He didn’t press. That made it worse. The stillness in him, the waiting. He trusted me not to hurt him.
But love, real love, has edges. And sometimes protection is the cruelest form it takes.
I began to vanish from him, not in body, but in presence. I stayed beside him, but my soul curled inward. I left the room before he woke. I said less, touched less. I watched him from rooftops and alleyways and dreamed of the sound of his laughter. He kept trying—small jokes, half-offered smiles, hands reaching out to brush my back—but I had already stepped back into the mist. Back into the space between.
I told myself I was doing it for him. That the best thing I could do was disappear. Not leave a note. Not make him choose. Not let him know how close I had come to breaking everything. I told myself I could bear the weight of being forgotten.
But even gods lie to themselves.
He’ll wake soon and find my place empty. He’ll think I’ve gone to get water. Then maybe supplies. Then maybe space.
And then, he’ll know.
But he’ll be safe. He’ll be alive. And that will have to be enough.
I don’t know if I’ll ever write again.
But if I do… it will be with hands that remember him.
I haven’t drawn since I left him. My hands won’t stop shaking long enough. What would I sketch? A bed with no creases? A horse with no saddle? His smile fades the moment I try to fix it in charcoal. I’m terrified the page will betray me—show me his face wrong, or worse, make me forget it entirely.
And words that ache for the shape of his name.
