It's nice to have a friend.

As I said in my letters (Now that I know better)

Guys this was RUSHED I slept 4 hours bc of how excited I was for TTPD, and the double release???

So much things to say about this album ghkfjdsjhl
__

This chapter's short and I'm sorry about that but TTPD makes me want to write the next parts so bad :')

I went back to the Palace a week later, and it would be a lie to say I wasn't a bit relieved : you hadn't said a thing, but I read in the way you dropped my hand every time I held yours how you were holding back. And that was but the point of us ; what were we if not honest with each other ? If not our souls stripped bare ; just a Knight and a witch whose paths had crossed due to hazardous circumstances.

I hated that I was the one who had turned this week of promised heaven into a cruel counting of days to my departure. And I thought, those nights, of how I could've told you the worst thing you'd ever heard instead.

And I still think of those hundred thrown out speeches I almost said to you. Of how you told me you were fine when you got away from me. Of how I let you down so easily.

(And you just watched it happen.)

It was too late ; I went back to cold towers and hours of ruthless training, advanced magic classes and daily letter writing — to my parents, still, but also to you.

I told you of my exhausting routine, of the friend I had found in 1989, of the way I missed you. Mindlessly asking about your routine and plants we noticed once near the swamp. About cracks and ivy near a window, stains we once left on a wall. All to get to drink more words from your response. All to get to have more of you.

I spent nights laying awake wondering if you thought of me, too, the way I did of you. Shifting under the sheets trying to recall your scent, the graze of your soft hand. Missing your warmth in bed.

So I drowned myself in training and tasks, hoping to pull myself away from the sea of thoughts flooding my mind every second ; but what can a raft do against a raging storm?

I woke before dawn, all to read and practice spells I already knew. My eyes remembering annotations you wrote down in copies of the exact same books, recalling yours damaged by hours you'd spend flipping through pages over and over again.

Thought of the way your skin turned amber in the soft glow of candlelights, dried blood at your fingertips from the thousand paper-thin cuts that didn't stop you from reading half-burnt books from ancient times. Papers slipped in between two pages, scribbled translations and connections to old stories only you knew. Words written in between spells ; new incantations - corrections even, all spread across grimoires you'd made yours, like stars in skies we watched hand in hand.

I practiced spells thinking of how yours basked your face in the softest of hues ; of how it made you grin whenever you cast a new one, your proud grin setting my heart ablaze with one look from your fiery eyes. The way they narrowed as you laughed, calling my name as another of your experiments succeeded.

You frowned whenever it didn't ; you hated being wrong. You'd rewrite everything on new pages with the quill I'd given you, burning the old ones with the simplest of spells ; barely a flip of a hand now.

I worked myself to exhaustion, till your letter reached my febrile hands, till I laid appeased in my bed, storm now soft waves bringing me home. Until I wrote back and the tide pulled me in again.

You wrote back, and I let the lamp burn ; hoping I'd return to you, with your feet on the ground, tell me all that you'd learned : I read you. Read your words throughout pages and small splatters of ink, because what else can you do when half of your soul stands so far from you?

The smell of smoke and trees in my bottom drawer, I checked a few years back ; still true, now part of the empty room I'd called mine.

(It was the one thing you didn't destroy.)

So I reread your words until I knew them all, carved into my mind like the way your eyes gleamed under the moonlight.

Holding my breath the way I'd been doing it since I left.

(That's what you do without a friend.)