THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL OMG I LOVE IT 😭😭 (ik Ive Been Unactive But I Saw This And I Just NEEDED To

THIS IS SO BEAUTIFUL OMG I LOVE IT 😭😭 (ik ive been unactive but i saw this and i just NEEDED to reblog it oml)

the song of achilles, retold and restitched by achilles himself part ii "if a tragedy can be seen before met, let it be known i let this one have me" for @investmentofmyheart "i write for you. for you alone. that's enough."

Our forest hides a hundred secrets.

The world seems to me magnified from our small hideaway—the dusks sink rosier, the storms come rougher, the figs swell to sweet rot, honey slips from the comb with a choking sweetness. The bees buzz, the flowers lift their faces, the waters reflect the hundred flashes of the sun, and our life with Chiron is a simple one.

An honest one.

Years past, I thought the world stopped and started with the halls of my father's home, with this and this and this.

The slender shaft of a spear.

The carved running track.

The ceaseless thrash of the sea.

The prophecy, the promise I am to be a hero.

I am to be better than any of them.

Achilles, Achilles, the Prince of the Greeks.

Yet from Chiron's lessons spill centuries of art and culture, a history hidden behind the veil.

He teaches us the names of the heroes, their fallible feats, the hungry ends; he seems to think the tragedy can be seen before met. He shows us the vast vulnerable expanse of the earth. He asks so little of us, only to tend to goats that take ill, to sit on the rocks and help with morning meals, to learn the names of forest plants and poison flowers.

It is rough work, helpful work.

As princes, Patroclus and I were raised in houses that would have killed rather than seen us at the labors of a servant.

Here, all we do means something.

Speech eludes what it means to matter.

Something close to eagerness overtakes me, and every flash of the forest seems to snatch my attention, to demand an audience:

A riot of flowers on the river. A prophecy at the gates of memory, pleading to be let in.

The gleam and glint of a spider's web.

The rain-wet press of earth.

Patroclus in the light of a fire, the freckles along his bare shoulders, the rose flush in his cheeks.

Patroclus. My rose-mouthed boy, my torment.

Youth has sharpened and slipped from him all at once, and he stands on the jutting ledge of a cliff one night, all careful hands and sloping shoulders and slender silhouette, and something so close to awe swells in my throat.

He is only himself.

Human and honest. Lit in the silver shine off the sea. Vulnerable.

He is only himself and I love him all the more for that alone.

I would like to be a vice for him.

I would like to be his art, the muse of his fantasies. I would like to map him out against a bed, slip hips pinned under a hand, head thrown back against the sheets.

I hear the low hum of his voice all over again. Where he goes, I go.

There is a slender humiliation to a one-sided romance, yet worse still is a hope that finds itself requited.

He smiles at me, all pink flush and shy dark eyes, and I feel something in me shatter. If a tragedy can be seen before met, let it be known I let this one have me.

Spring slips among the forest in all her light; another year passes. The air grows sweet with the scent of lilac and myrrh; we learn to take the sap from the cracked bark, to set snares in anticipation of life to come, to carve the rough spear shafts from wood.

Stars shyly emerge from the skies, and we learn their stories, link the constellations in their air with our fingertips. Chiron speaks, and most we know.

Andromeda.

Hercules.

Orion.

Cygnus.

On these evenings Patroclus stirs to sleep, his face pressed against my shoulder. The slightest huff of an exhale distracts me, and I can't even move, afraid the simplest of movements will wake him.

We learn of Ariadne, Princess of Crete, the coronet constellation her husband spun into the sky, tossed high like some spinning wheel.

He loved her enough to make of her a history, to call her after the most enduring light.

"You know who Dionysus is," says Chiron, faintly fond. "You know Ariadne was human."

The selfsame story, all over again.

"A poet might say a god loves a mortal, but only because it makes a clever tale."

Patroclus stirs first and doesn't speak, raising himself on his forearms. Firelight flickers on the curve of his brow.

"So little comes of a god's love." Chiron's voice has stolen an edge, a caution, and of course, he is right. "Hercules went mad. A monster was made of Medusa. And kind Ariadne was murdered in her husband's war."

Patroclus flushes angry red along his ears.

"Is it better not to love a god, then?"

"I think nothing kind will come of it." Chiron stares at him with a close contemplation. "I think the gods are overfond of making games of mortality."

"Ariadne willingly went. That wasn't a game. She went with him, for him, because she loved him."

"A hundred humans have tried to catch the heart of a god; most live to regret themselves. The cataclysm comes when the god tries to catch that of a human."

Patroclus, for a half second, seems incendiary, all haughty sharp lines. My hand finds the arch of his shoulder, and he looks to me, almost in plea.

Believe me.

Even years later, I still think to be believed is all humanity has ever wanted. I still think to be witnessed is to be loved.

I believe you.

He half smiles at me in the dark, and I swear to myself loving him is the only thing I ever want to be known for. I'll be Dionysus spinning the coronet into the sky, I'll be Orpheus fighting for his wife.

If I'm ever lucky enough, he'll be the name beside mine, a ribboning link in the dark, a story for another hero to tell around the fire.

The years slip past, sly and countless, and the forest flowers anew with every spring, and as it endures, so do we.

A poet might say youth is heedless, foolish, reckless: some days Patroclus and I are sick with it, enamored by it. Ropes are made of water reeds, stepping ledges kicked into rock, the forest mapped out across memory.

My sleep is caught with the full swell of figs, the splay of strong hands, firelight flickering against a rosy mouth.

The lilac meadow, the honeycombs, the pale blue of the sky.

The lightless cave, the bonfire we lit, the faint spark of the wood.

Patroclus stands on the edge of the sea, all windblown hair and flushing skin, sharp cheekbones and strong hands, and I am struck with it, the fact he is mine to have in these moments.

His hand lifts in a half wave—come here.

Even that sparks something within me, at being wanted by him.

Everyone seems to think love is a fallible something, a helpless happening: they're wrong. I love him in spite of and for everything he's ever done.

Maybe we are, in part, to condemn for what happens then. My sixteenth year starts at last: if we could ever pretend childhood is infallible, the end is impossible to ignore now.

Something like grief gleams in Chiron's stare when I hold my father's gifts, the slim lyre strings and heavy tunics, the vibrant cape of a king's son, a loose crown of laurel leaves.

But blink, and it is gone, and Patroclus has moved to knot the cape around my throat, clumsy and adoring, and he presses his mouth to the skin of my neck when he nicks it with his nail, and the war seems so very far away.

We spend the day, after all, in the forest.

We sprint, clothes catching on brambles and branches, over the selfsame paths he fell across so many years ago, now overlush with cloying fruit and leaves and bees.

The stepping stones over the earth, the river he skims his fingers in, the fields sticky with figs, the clinging petals of the lilac flowers; something sharp aches in my chest when I think of leaving the forest for the final time.

And Patroclus.

He runs his hands though the sea, across my lower lip to erase the sticky pulp of the figs for salt, young and alive and amused and sharply concentrated.

I would give anything to stay with him in this moment.

I would give anything to stay with him.

I want to love him through an aeon, and then another.

After, Patroclus sprawls out on our bed at night, messy and magnetic, his chest moving swift. I collapse on the space left, struck with happiness, sick with it.

The pink light of the sky is darkening, the stage curtain coming closed.

As if too exhausted to speak, his mouth curves and he reaches out with one hand.

I still.

"Are you happy?" Patroclus says at last, one thumb moving along my mouth.

I make some lazy sound, and he flicks the edge of my lip with his fingernail, amused.

"I am sorry it is ending," I admit.

He hesitates, seeming, for the first time in the forest, shy. "How is your mother?"

He always asks, and for that something in me aches. "She is well. She... she says she cannot see us here."

His finger halts, faint against my lower lip.

"I wished to tell you, because... because—" Clumsily, strangely, I try to explain. "I thought you would like to know."

Patroclus seems incendiary: his hand shakes slightly. "Are you pleased with her answer?" “Yes."

Are you?

Hope is the one endurable truth of all humanity, but he's the truth of mine. In fate's ceaseless revolt, in spite of my every attempt to fight it, he is what is loved by me.

If I have to suffer a cruelty, a heartache, at least let it be at his hands.

His hand slides under my jaw, along the arch of my throat. His eyes are obliteration bright. He's all flustered and helpless and seems so much younger than sixteen.

And after so many years, I finally kiss him, all over again.

I kiss him.

Patroclus.

My rose-mouthed boy, my torment, mine.

I kiss him.

The sweetness of the figs, the soft sound he makes, this and this and this.

And Patroclus—

Lit in flickering firelight, sprawled out, one hand across my jaw, his mouth parts, moves along my throat. His hands, familiar and clumsy, tug me up over him, and then closer again, hungrily, helplessly.

The cave spins, hazy and heavy in the dusk light.

He smiles slightly against my skin when I fumble with the sheets, and I'm in awe of him, enamored by him.

I map him out across the bed, lower my mouth to the blue veins in his wrists, run my fingers over the sharp bones of his hips. He arches up, and I skim the ridges of his spine, splay my hand in the middle of his shoulder blades, kiss him again and again and again.

This and this and this.

The slender arch of his hips into mine. The shaking of his hands when they slip across my stomach. The sharp flowering of an end, the sticky kiss he leaves against my shoulder.

Stars spin above me as he moves, and I'm helpless staring against the ceiling, awed at a fantasy made achingly real, madly in love with the rose-mouthed boy, Patroclus.

I think I could want him forever. It's spare, stolen seconds like these when I almost say it.

I love you, I love you. I've loved you for as long as I can remember.

Would he hate me, would he forsake me, it's a tide I've been hauled through again and again.

And sometimes I think I've finally found the courage, and then he snaps the silence and says something with the faintest smile, or leans over to free a trapped leaf from my hair and I. . .

I can love him in secret. I can love him, and harbor the foolish hope he might return my helpless heart, instead of having it cleaved open in halves.

I can have him here and it can be enough.

After, we sprawl across each other, hands pinned under hands, sheets half knotted around hips, spent and half asleep.

"Are you sorry?" I say at last.

Please don't hate me.

He stares at me with a soft contemplation, as though this is the simplest question in all the world. "No. I am not sorry."

Something, a sharp pain swollen under my heart, leaves. "I am not either," I say hastily, and sleepy silence falls again.

His eyes are dark in the low light. The freckles along his shoulders stand out like stars. He seems more constellation than boy.

If he asked, I would forget fate and prophecy. I would follow him anywhere. I would let him make a fool of me, a lovesick fool.

He is my worst idea.

The Fates have an old story they like to tell:

A hero's heart is unmade by the human hand.

~ to be continued

tagging: @iambecomeyourvillain @twelve-kinds-of-trouble @saltyfortunes @wafflesandschemingfaces @juxtaglomerularapparatus (hana please Go Change the url) @the-sky-is-full-of-stars @thehalfbloodfreak @ds-umbrella-manufacturing-co @ahecktonoffandomsinoneblog @duartesgem @sankta-chaosqueen @jostensminyards @thebonecarver @alonlyfangirl @lostnevarrite @theglassphantom @dreamingofmoonshadows @im-someone-i-guess @reinamxri @aleenaaalii @kazoo-the-demjin @drunk-on-inejs-laughter @moobrvoobl-moobmoob-oobmpoobroom @stay-because-now-you-have-a-home @clockworknights @fandomstalker27 @wherearetheplants @mirrors-of-rosy-glass @valeriianz @oitreewrites and anyway here comes the part where we curse my ridiculously selective memory and i beg the rest of you to Help me remember my mutuals