Nothing's Conventional About Us

XV ~ Cyan

Cyan is the colour of a soothing dream,
And of an unravelling secret,
And of past and a future.
But above all,
When I sight cyan brewing in the distance,
I remind myself that,
It is the colour of a stormy sea.

Cyan

Their laughter had receded into a mindful silence, something that holds secrets and suspicions and peace and yet some residue of the lingering laughter in the air, all at once. 

Was this the peace he had always pictured, he could not help but wonder. Was this the same dream that he had once labelled as untouchable? Unreachable? 

Oh no. He knew that it was not. 

He, during his one rare childhood visit to the abode of immortals, had once asked a trusted immortal how he was supposed to identify peace if he looked into the face of it. The immortal had peered into his dark crimson eyes for a while and then stared into the distance, into the lavender clouds, and then said that they did not know. No one could ever know. None of them.

Because they had never seen peace's face. Not once in aeons. 

That day, the child in him had wondered if they had seen peace and had failed to identify its face to begin with. 

It was a twisted logic, a snake with two faces, a knot with two nooses and a riddle with two ends. It was also a question with no answer at all.

Now that he stared at her face, flush with repose, he wondered if this was peace. If those midnight eyes staring intently at the dark ebony of his bedroom ceiling was peace. 

But he could tell that it was not. 

Because, he could feel the storm brewing in the distance. Hear its wicked voice hissing in his ears. This was what an eternity of war looked like. 

"Would you still keep holding my hand if I told you a secret?", he finally mustered the courage to ask, mustered the courage to shatter that serenity on her face. 

But his guilt dissipated as soon as her eyes snapped to meet his. There was no serenity in those eyes. Simply the preamble of the hissing fires and storms that he could hear.

"Depends.", she said with a smirk tilting up a corner of her lips. He mirrored the smirk with one of his own. It seemed like the smirk tore out of his heart, tore a muscle out of it. 

It hurt. It hurt so much. But his heart also slowed down. What a wicked medicine. It was like breaking a twitching finger in order to stop its twitching. It hurt so much, but at least it had shoved the problem aside, had it not? 

"We would never have peace. Ever. We would never see the face of peace together. Is that enough for you? For an eternity?", his voice almost shook as the tremors of doubt wracked through him. 

That gold-and-red heart of his knew that she would never give up and walk away, not this easily, not for something that sounded so simple. But that was what frightened him the most. 

The fact that this sounded like nothing. Like something so meager and insignificant when it would chase and haunt him forever. Every moment of forever. 

That was his eternity. That was how it would always be. Restless. Not a glimpse of peace.

"Oh?", she arched up a perfect eyebrow, as if readying to taunt the Fates themselves. 

"Did the Fates themselves whisper that grand secret in your ears, My Lord?", the taunt flowed past her lips like dark satin - so beautiful, so seemingly harmless, unless it was but a ribbon around a throat. So inescapable and quiet and unsuspected and lethal.