i love this world, even in its hard places

And to be Horatio – to love someone in love with death. To watch them walking the cliff side so ready to stumble – what if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord? – my fate cries out. To walk behind them, reaching out despite every attempt to push you away – hold off your hands. To walk beside them in every place, in every time, in graveyards and courtyards and clifftops. To hear your name in their mouth, so loving, so soft, that you would do anything just to hear it again. and yet. you are unable to do the most important thing; you can’t save them. you are so desperately afraid that it will be the last time, one day, and you can do nothing. Here, sweet lord. nothing but stand beside them in a graveyard and know they’re envisioning their own bones in the cool earth. To what base uses may we return, horatio! To catch your breath and say t’were to consider too curiously, to consider it so. please, please see me, standing here…stay. I beseech you. I’d listen to everything you’d say, hide my bleeding heart behind my hands, watch you crumble into a thousand stubborn pieces. he that thou knowest thine – and yet not yours; you must watch them battle sleep and death and a horrific longing for a peace you’d do anything to give them. in my heart’s core. in my heart of hearts. 

In love with someone in love with death. 

And in the final instants – they love you like they’ve never loved anything in their life. more than death, more than life, more than a miserable story they’ve helped create. they wrest the cup from your hands…I love you and you cannot follow me, I love you and if thou didst ever hold me in your heart, I love you and in this harsh world draw your breath in pain, I love you and live. give me the cup! live. even as I will not, for my death is sweeter knowing you will go on. the rest is silence to hear your voice…

Oh good horatio. what a wounded name. 

<3

Just a random anon here to tell you that your book reviews are golden

They were somewhere between 1/5 and 1/50 of the height of a lighthouse, depending on the size of the lighthouse, of course. Lighthouses were not a particularly accurate way to measure people on a general basis, but Kit had been inside of a lighthouse, so it felt more appropriate than describing them in relation to a spaceship.

From time to time, Kit found themself in a pickle. This was not, however, a literal and physicalized pickle. It would’ve been inappropriate to describe Kit in relation to a pickle when they had never been in a real one. The kind of pickle Kit had been in was simply another word for a conundrum. It was extraordinarily difficult to measure people against conundrums. Few had dared try. Those who did created an entirely new conundrum in the process, which wasn’t any easier to measure against a person.

Kit adjusted their glasses as they finished reading a charming novel or perhaps a horrible one. (I wouldn’t know, I don’t review books. Hell, I’m not even a writer.) Kit reviewed books with the help of a trusty orangutan. It was far easier to measure an orangutan in conundrums than a human. This was one of the innumerable ways orangutans were infinitely superior to human beings. Kit understood this. From the window of the lighthouse, they observed everything, especially the better qualities of orangutans.