Stag Tales Moon Talk

Goodbyes

                                       for this is the end

I've drowned and dreamt this moment

"Are we safe?" she whispered in the dark. 

"I can't say. Stay down." He told her angrily, as if this was her fault. "We don't want to lose this spot."

Ushering closer to each other, their hairs on end as the wind rustled through the leaves that were so willing to make a sound, they barely spoke in the hours that follow. Somewhere after midnight, after they had been left alone for what seemed like an eternity, she couldn't let another minute pass by without trying to get Zach to talk.

"Do you think of death?" she asked him as they stayed vigilant, her eyes finally used to seeing in the dark.

"I don't."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't really matter if we're all going through the same thing, this thing we call life, does it? It doesn't matter if you can feel my pain, it doesn't matter if you can relate. Hell, it doesn't even matter if you can tell me exactly what I shouldn't have done to make the big mistakes, the ones that changed me forever. 

"At the end of this thing, at the end of it all, it'll all be okay. Do you know why?" he asked her with a quiet voice, as if afraid to disrupt the solemness of the crickets around them. Hunched together, closer than required, she remembered thinking of how dirty the Earth really smelled. 

"Why?"

"Because your story will be finished. Because then, you can have the best moments flash in front of your eyes, for a change, as opposed to the way you're so used to thinking of yourself at your worst. With death, there's peace, there's knowing, there's everything. With death there is you, only you," he looked into her eyes then, a look of something so intensely all-knowing pulsing through. "With death there is acceptance, and I've long accepted that it's a part of my life, as it is yours."

She felt something dirty kick at the back of her mind. Before she could stop herself, she spoke the words "Will you forget me?"

His smile was involuntary, she could tell. He never smiled wantingly. He hated smiling. And of course, just the way Zach liked to work, he said nothing in return after that Earth shattering smile.

All night long she would wonder about why the fuck the man was smiling. She would dream of him as she dozed in and out of sleep, almost as if her skin was pressed against his, his lips on her hair as she wondered the same thing over and over, telling him that she would miss him when she would leave, when death would take her.

"Not even..." something said to her, Zach said to her, his voice urgent, awake. "You... death... never."

She didn't understand. She told him so, groggily. "I don't get it. What?"

Pulling her closer he lay down on the moist soil, his long hair already stuffed with twigs and leaves, his small, dark eyes focused on hers. "You won't die. I won't let it."

"There's nothing about death and allowing it, Zach," she reminded him. "Death... is death. It doesn't wait. It's not waiting. It'll come when it's time."

He remained silent, some cocky response at the tip of his tongue, she was sure. Still, his silence unnerved her. She wished he would say something to kill the silence, for a change. He didn't, so she went to sleep.