I flipped through until I found the last two entries.
“My time here has been long and lonely. I grow more apathetic each season. When did it become winter again? I could have sworn last winter was just a couple weeks back.
I’ve been alive a long time. I can hardly remember home and those I left behind. My emotions become more muted, my desire to do anything withering. I’m fading, it happens to the best of us.
Every night I drag myself to sit on the hang-off, keeping up with a schedule to break up the monotony of time. I look down into the valley and across the rolling blue mountains.
I’m losing a moth each night. It breaks free from my wings, leaving a tattered spot in its place. Little bastards.
I’ve been feeling the urge to let it happen fully. To let each part of me become a thick eclipse of moths, my body gone as they flutter over the mountains. There is beauty in how my kind dies. I could stop the slow breakdown but I don’t. I’m almost ready.”
I sat there shocked. My eyes darted to the moth I’d seen pinned behind glass on the wall. It was one of the many things hung on the wall, making it look like a strange trophy room of sorts.
That little moth was a part of Pollux, wasn’t it? Its dark wings with blood-red dots were unmistakable. That’s why his wings were tattered. He’d said the answer was in this journal. I just hadn’t expected this. That it was him fading—which seemed a pretty word for dying.
I flipped to the next page, the final entry.
“End of summer now. I hate summer, so good riddance.
Last night I was sitting atop the mountain, imagining letting go… leaving the world in a flutter of moths. I’d been considering it too long.
I’ve lived a long life and have had my fair share of adventure. I was tired…. Bored to death quite literally.
So last night I was up there thinking about it. I took a deep breath, ready to end it on the exhale. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should wait another year. See the seasons change once more.
Moths were already breaking free from my wings as I sat there thinking. There was more than a usual night—two then three.
My wings’ edges are a display of what had been happening slowly. Of what I was ready to finish last night.
But then… I sensed it.Her. My antennae whorled around tasting and smelling the decadent flavor watered down by my distance. I took a deep breath and wondered who was that?Whatwas that?
I leapt off the cliff in a rush, my fading a distant thought in my head. Wind whipped my face, brushing fur backwards. My stomach lifted as I fell, a thrilling feeling. As the trees approached I opened my wings, collecting air. I hadn’t flown like that in ages.
I raced closer and closer to the thing glowing in my mind's eyes. The light was so bright I couldn’t stop from going towards it. A beacon in the night.
Then… I saw her, her golden aura glowing bright in the night. All the apathy and loneliness washed away in an instant. I don't know why I felt that way but I did and that was enough and more.
The moment I saw her was life-altering. Her scent humming in the breeze, drifting towards me, pulling me in.
Her aura glowed like a flame. Powerful, good energy. She smelled like the sweetest nectar. My cock had twitched in my pants as she laughed with the other man with her. He smiled warmly at her and I wanted that. I wanted to be close. To touch her arm as he did. To taste a sip of the love they had for each other.
He made her laugh and the sound settled into my limbs, pleasant and warm. A far-off memory of my own world and people came to me. Of how we were always close, always touching. It had been a long time since then but I craved that. More than that, actually. I felt like fucking my own fist like a creeper. My sex drive had been shot up with adrenaline.
I wished I was mirroring the man with her now. Making her laugh, leaning in, and smelling her hair when she wasn’t looking.
Well okay, that part was odd.
I watched their group trailing through the campground and I followed her closely, taking in her tan, plump legs. Her ass in her tight shorts. Her long hair swinging behind her as she walked.
She stopped walking suddenly and I felt a vicious tug in the center of my chest, like a cord looped around my heart and straining to drag me in.
I clutched my chest. She gasped and winced. I pulled back in shock, moving backwards in the forest with wide eyes. My boots stepped on a small twig and snapped. The man with her jerked his head toward me, his eyes flashing with a predatory viciousness.
The woman shook her head and squeezed her beautiful eyes shut in pain.
Had she felt me? I think she had. I’d felt her too. I rubbed my chest and stayed still while her partner eyed the trees without making me out.
Fuck, it had all been for this. Time, space, dimensions even. It had all been to get to her.”
