(no subject)
He opens his eyes, not in his bed, but in his garden, flowers bobbing gently over his head, and that--and the fact that he opens both eyes--is how he knows it's over.
It's like waking up out of a dream and back into one, the strangest feeling of mixed reality and unreality that he's ever felt. Not even coming back from Neil's cycle had been like this. He scrubs his hands over his face, smearing dirt on his cheeks and brow, heedless. No rough scar tissue. His leg is aching but real and solid. he feels relief, a flood of it so great and so intense that he gasps, almost moans, almost a sexual kind of pleasure--
And then guilt follows on its heels.
He doesn't have anything to be proud of. Not a thing. Suddenly just being in this place, breathing this air, doesn't feel as good. He glances back toward the house with something alarmingly like fear. And then weariness, deep as he's ever felt.
As far as he's come... still this. Still. He doesn't feel liberated. He just feels old. He turns his face up to the gently swaying boughs of the tree, and he allows himself, just for a moment, to be glad that Eostre is not here, that she never saw this.
It's like waking up out of a dream and back into one, the strangest feeling of mixed reality and unreality that he's ever felt. Not even coming back from Neil's cycle had been like this. He scrubs his hands over his face, smearing dirt on his cheeks and brow, heedless. No rough scar tissue. His leg is aching but real and solid. he feels relief, a flood of it so great and so intense that he gasps, almost moans, almost a sexual kind of pleasure--
And then guilt follows on its heels.
He doesn't have anything to be proud of. Not a thing. Suddenly just being in this place, breathing this air, doesn't feel as good. He glances back toward the house with something alarmingly like fear. And then weariness, deep as he's ever felt.
As far as he's come... still this. Still. He doesn't feel liberated. He just feels old. He turns his face up to the gently swaying boughs of the tree, and he allows himself, just for a moment, to be glad that Eostre is not here, that she never saw this.