c o m e t s

conclusion

Ezra was back into the redundant system and back into another foster home. However, just like the previous ones, this family wouldn't accept Ezra as he was. They had forced him to change his daily attire, he was coerced to make choices that weren't his own and they wouldn't appreciate the effort he was making to restrain his darker entity. How would they? He hadn't had the opportunity to show them his alternative side because he was holding on to the hope that Iris had given him like a lifeline. Ezra told her that he felt like every flaw of his was being inspected under a magnifying glass, that his opinion was as insignificant as himself.

Iris, as always, related to the darker currents that were making the waves crash on the surface of Ezra's appearance. Just as she'd felt that she'd found the co-ordinates of peace and acceptance, her buoy had deflated and sunk beneath the water. She was left floundering once again, sputtering to stay afloat. She told Ezra that the sharks that had finally left her to explore by herself were back, not only to prey but also to swamp her with their alien thinking before they did. 

When at school, Ezra had to resist the temptation to text Iris, because she too was at her own school, sailing her own stormy seas. He couldn't take away her time at the environment she wished to succeed in the most, so he didn't. But close to Iris' turbulent waters, Ezra felt himself sinking deeper into his sea of sorrow. To Ezra, sorrow rapidly became like smoking. It was liberating at first, to accept the consequences of what was happening and store them away, but it was also ravenously addicting. Over time it consumed him and was then rotting him from the inside out.

One night, while Ezra and Iris were lying on the sand on the beach, dark thoughts clouded both their minds despite the bright stars shining in the clear skies. Sometimes silence guides you to a place so far away, you can't stand it.

"So you think feeling accepted is the best feeling that you could have?" Iris asked Ezra as she turned her head to face him.

Without looking at her, he started to say something but paused soon after. Then he said: "To be loved, that's the epitome of feelings."

"So, love is the cure, huh?" Ezra could hear her smile.. "Cliché much?"

He reciprocated her smile, an awkward movement of muscles he'd just grown used to recently. Ezra finally turned to align his eyes with her brown ones. Brown, such a mundane colour, yet exceptional on her. That night, they twinkled. Beautiful.

"People should love like stars exist, it's okay if they don't always show that they do." Ezra looked back at the constellations on display above them and shrugged. "Because you know they do." 

"And have you ever felt that way?"

"Only recently." He caught her glance once again.

The incessant waves breaking on the shore seemed to be further away than usual due to the stillness gradually setting itself around them, a yoke slowly creeping back onto their shoulders.

Iris was the northern star to him, forever present, just like her love. And that should have been enough for him, she could guide him towards a better end. But before her light, came the dark. Always. The heavy darkness which emanated from everything except her, from everything including himself. The darkness which would end up latching itself onto her and drag her down like an anchor to the depths of a misery that matches to that of Persephone in Hades' realm. 

"I don't deserve you." Ezra said out loud. 

"What do you mean?"

 He pulled himself into a sitting position, his mind running at a hundred miles per hour. He wanted her to soak up the love of thousands of stars rather than wait for the flickering light in him to intensify. 

"Nobody should have to put up with me." He said. Iris impetuously sat up, alarmed by what he was saying. She hurriedly faced him and grabbed his hands, but in doing so she saw something which sent her into a deep panic; at the end of his palms there were lines, too dark to be just simple creases in his skin. He bowed his head, as if in deep pain. "I can't burden you."

She deserved the luminescence of many stars that would shine on her while she walked through life. Comets that would soar with her success. Comets that he wished would have done that for him but he knew they couldn't have because, "Because when beggars die there are no comets to be seen."

Iris' gaze burned into his eyes because she knew that he was stuck in a turmoil of his deceiving thoughts. But she also knew that there was no pulling him out of the cold grasp of deception that crushed him; a hand that had also been outstretched towards her. She had ignored it up until now, hoping it would wither away, yet there it was. Now, having seen Ezra's decision, she accepted the osseous hand. "But the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."

Iris lifted Ezra's wrists to her lips and kissed them, tears streaming down her face. Ezra understood. There was no going back. He delicately wiped her tears away and placed his lips on hers. The kiss sealed their fate on the starriest night of all.