#i just needed to word vomit and i cannot express how much this ch release moved me

[llondonfog]

silver smiles up at him in the perfect, innocent way that children do— his eyes scrunched slightly against the faint valley sun, cheeks dimpled and flushed from romping around with the zigvolt's boy. there are leaves dappled through his downy hair, fallen blessings themselves from the ancient forest who has seen fit to indulge the little forgotten prince with all manner of flora and fauna for his finery and court. lilia knows an apology from the woods when he sees one; perhaps they both seek his forgiveness for what he does not know that they've stolen away.

there is no one alive now who will remember the boy. there will be no songs sung in his name, no parades to honor his birth, no glorious banners flown in his presence. he has tumbled down from the highest peaks of society to land, scuffed and scorned, into the dirt at lilia's feet. and still, he smiles stupidly up at the fae, seeing not the cold fury of a general nor the aching grief of one who has lost nearly everything of precious value, but the familiar and welcome face of a father.

lilia almost wants to shake the child for his simple happiness, a thought he finds himself sometimes seized violently by— he wants to despair at the boy's blessed ignorance for what he does not know, for all that had been lost to his kind and accursed lineage. for all that is yet to come along the path of this child's stolen life.

but silver reaches up, places his dirt-stained fingers into the palm of lilia's hand (when had he opened it? when had he begun to anticipate the child reaching for him?), and lilia cannot tell who he despairs for more: the boy, for the curse black and heavy within his veins; the budding prince, for the loneliness within himself that he will never understand; or himself, for falling under the sweetest of spells as old and eternal as time.

silver's fingers squeeze around his own as he leads lilia down the path towards the once-abandoned cottage, and they leave behind them one more casualty of war, the ghost of a general lingering in the muted shadows of the forest.