astreans
There was always something changed about each of Ryou's lives. Some defining change that told him that he'd moved from living one life to the next: a star he didn't recognise, born in the short time that lapsed between one life and the other. A scar from a wound he'd never had. A different constellation of freckles dusting his friend's face. And in this one, Luc. Luc did not exist in any life before this one.
There was something hollow about Luc's expression when he stumbled into Ryou's apartment that night. "I don't know what to do," he kept saying. "I don't know what to do."
When Dan was angry, she didn't lash out like Luc or curse your descendants like Emrys. Instead, Dan went silent; eerily so. She kept her emotions carefully weighed down and bottled up inside her.
What a dangerous way to live, Olwen thought. Even the slightest carelessness could cause devastating ruin when the bottle finally broke.
Luc had noticed that when Ryou didn't know anyone was watching him, there would always be a distant expression on his face. Like Ryou was somewhere far away, or he longed to be somewhere else. When Luc said his name, Ryou would turn to him and the distant expression would disappear, any trace of longing locked away where no one would see.
Olwen wasn't her first name. It wasn't her middle name, either. She just liked the name better than either of her given names. And besides, the way she saw it, people should be called what they wanted to be called.
"You should sleep," Ryou said, stepping out onto the deck where Emrys sat staring up at the night sky.
Emrys said, "That star isn't in its proper place. I can't sleep until it is."
Ryou followed her gaze upwards to the sky, the stars too bright for his tired eyes. He didn't know what star she was talking about and he didn't know what she could possibly do about it, but he did know what it was like to be unable to sleep. Sitting down next to her, they stared up at the stars together.
Ryou found her washed up in the cove like a shell, sleeping in the cold sand. Something had pulled him, like an ocean current, down the path from his house to the sea. It made him climb down to the cove, scraping his hands and legs on the rocks not yet softened by the sea. He had no idea how she'd gotten there, or why she insisted on following him home.
Emrys had a habit of eating entire jars of olives at once. She would sit at the counter in Ryou's kitchen with a jar of olives in her hand, spinning on the stool and glowing like a star.
"We don't have these where I'm from," she would say when asked how she hadn't gotten sick of them yet. No one knew where Emrys was from, exactly. Whenever asked, she would just gaze at them eerily until they were forced to look away.
If the play went the way it was going, this would all end in tragedy.
But, thought Dan, as she pulled herself up off the floor, it didn't have to. They didn't have to mindlessly accept the roles they'd been given. They could change the way this story ended.
"I need you," said Luc, while sitting on the ledge with a tub of greek yogurt in one hand, legs swinging back and forth, "like I need this yogurt."
Ryou furrowed his brow. "The hell's that supposed to mean?"
"Protein," Luc said, flourishing his spoon in a way that suggested that this explained everything. It did not. Luc let out a long sigh at Ryou's blank expression and said, "I can't live without you."
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