Atem x Reader ☆ In the Twilight

Chapter 2

The days drift by as softly as the breeze and roll ever on as the tides. You experience the flow of passing time as if a single endless day; colors bleeding into one another and the lines of dawn and dusk fading and melting away.

The night of pursuing childhood fantasies and forest roaming falls away into memory during the day. In those hours of sunlight, you squirm against all mention of woodland adventures and midnight dancing. All thoughts are anxious ones.

For the lie you told that night.

You were not as clever as you first thought; possessed no true talent for disappearing beneath noses without practice. Or finding your way back without detection.

Your parents knew.

Of course they knew.

They embraced you, and fretted and worried after you. And when questioned you had simply dragged your toes in the dirt, and let the lie tumble from your lips, unable to meet their eyes.

And they had quietly accepted it.

Because they trust in you—

Because they believe in you—

Always to do the right thing.

And your shame was all the worse for it.

During the day you can hardly face them, your stomach churns to knots.

So the night becomes your safe haven.

All anxiety melts away to the dimming glow of the sun.

And the fog of endless days spent meshed together in guilt seems to lift.

If only until dawn.

In those private hours of the night, memories play with abandon across shut eyes, flittering and flickering and exciting.

Always in purple.

Purple for the ever-changing flashes of firelight the elves danced around.

Purple for the chasing edges of a twilight sky.

And purple for the simmering gaze of a young elven boy.

Your cheeks flush, recalling how they swam with mischief and secret things, even as shame burns hot within. The parts of you that still ache despise the boy as much as the memory.

Yet unable to let him or it go.

So you drown in it—indulging in the simple pleasures of remembering and praying the ocean rushing past your ears will quiet ugly thoughts.