There was a time when Ashre's heart swelled with every beat, every flicker, and every step taken alongside his brothers. There was a time when his lungs breathed air of yesterday's wonderful memories and tomorrow's promise; there was a time he smiled and yearned for a hug, a kiss, a hand entwined with another.

There was a time when Ashre Relicks walked as a boy unstained. There was a time he didn't know pain, didn't know torment or tragedy or torture or tremor, didn't know how illuminating darkness could be.

He'd forgotten how to love...

And this...

Is the fate of his apathy.

Ashre stood among the sand and the blood. Waves crashed against his aching feet, ankles, shins, and knees- it was all bare bone and bare skin. The torn, lower half of his clothing hung and swayed with the wind, as if whistles on scratches and bruise. Velvet wounds wailed and the dim sun flashed; Ashre blinked away the salt and let the taste linger on his dry tongue. The ocean beckoned him to breathe underwater. And the ocean's call, although serene, was echoing and booming.

He heard it. Loud and clear. Tired as he was, he couldn't close his eyes, because the sea out there was so bright and welcoming. The coves were just sticker decoration, exponentially growing in size as he tiptoed forward, his thighs beginning to scream their gashes as they submerged.

A whisper caught his ears in a caress. It embraced him, and he tightened its quiet hold as his hips dove below the surface, numbness solidifying scars. Immediately, it told him of something beautiful. The words slurred together and mismatched syllables in such an inarticulate way, but its tone captured Ashre's attention. Every limb of his crumbling body felt the urge to keep moving; his veins became currents of the water, as foamed and wet as the mud and rock.

Then, the sound reached a peak. Not high, nor chaotic, but a peak of clarity- the actual words began to dissipate, disappear, until only a melody remained. It was soothing, classical, a rhythm of orchestra and dance.

He didn't realize how ripped his clothes were until the waves struck his chest. He lost his balance and went under; when he arose, throat crackling, hair dripping liquid poison into the slices of his shoulder, teeth chattering, and stomach clenched, he was merely hit again, and the cycle continued; wave, dive, rise, wave. He was only saved by how cold the water was, a blizzard touching exposed skin. Snowfall on the naked and vulnerable, a type of unfeeling reserved for the thousand frozen swords stabbing into fallen fire. Ashre forgot warmth entirely. Forgot heat and forgot the sun.

Ice controlled him, but the whispers spoke of things alight.

There was a day, not so long ago, when Ashre laughed. That day was easy and swift, a fleeting of clockhand and tick, a flutter of sunrise and fall. That day seemed to steal the sound forever, because it was never heard again; the hours of that day concealed Ashre's sweet, succored, savored lips. That day was as remembered as any other; briefly.

That day was a passing fugitive. That day was a stowaway inside his head and heart; it was a monster in the open fields, not hid below the bunk, not locked behind closed doors. That day was one of his lasts. His last laugh. Oh, how that day flared.

He'd forgotten how to laugh...

And this...

Restarted that uproar.

The area beyond the waves was still. By the time he wandered there, he was choking on his own spit of brine, unable to breathe through cracked tongue and brittle gums. Behind him, the waves continued to clamber on the shore; he lost the sight of sand, however, and his body waded as a floating balloon in the water. He'd never again feel the ground.

Another whisper: he was close enough to understand it now, as powerful as crescendo. It was a simmering quake, the aftershock surging before the thunder; and it was lightning within his skin, telling him to move slower, faster, move along its every command.

It disarmed him quickly. He continued to wallow in the open water, the distance between him and the coves closing in. The music played and he listened; it reached a point where it became internal, an underscore rather than a concert. Its softness matched that of the ocean around him.

Then, it truly spoke: "Dear, Ashre, would you dare learn to love again?"

No, no. Copper and wire. The voices spoke in a distinct round, contorting on top of one another in perfect harmony. They were neither male nor female, but a gender composed of euphony. He thought he'd heard young Keon's saccharine tone; he thought he'd heard that of old Keon's rustic tongue; for a second, he even thought he'd heard his parents, equal in tune of the shadows. But those intuitions left as soon as they had arrived.

He only heard music, after. It was if the question was never asked, never imposed upon his apathy. His arms swayed, both above and below the water's surface, and his hips still burned quietly, shoulders feeling flesh peel away. Pain was moreso a thought than a feeling; he felt nothing as his gradual path towards the coves continued.

Milliseconds slipped by and he was laughing. He suddenly remembered what was asked of him. Does he dare learn to love again? The chuckles grew in length and that day reappeared; uproar, cackle and guffaw; uproar, igneous and thaw.

My love, it was no learning process for Ashre Relicks. One wounded cannot simply learn to run, to fight. One mute cannot learn to speak; one without sense cannot learn to smell and touch.

Love, to Ashre, meant less than everything coalesced together- time and pain and laughter, hell, death and the cyclic torment of breaths filtered, tortuous tyrants and monarchs and peasantry, families of children combined. It meant less than animal and instinct, than skin and hair and embers of passion, the ashes of pride and joy. Less than being found when lost, filled when hollow, spoken to after a reign of silence; hatred, intrigue, the gallows of heart's other, less distinct, chambers.

Love, to Ashre, didn't exist.

There was a month when Ashre grew up, became the person alive for the decades to follow. That month was a battle, an endless ricochet of different fights with the same goal; it was a month to go and crave something else.

There was a month when Ashre learned to wish for wings and flight, to wish for the ability to live buried, the skill of invisibility, of traveling to dimensions untainted and unseen. That month was all dreamscape and full nightmare; that month taught him desperation, of wishes left ungranted.

There was a month when he forgot to watch the stars and the clouds, like all the other kids.

He'd forgotten how to hope...

And this...

Twisted that wish.

The sirens showed themselves when he stopped laughing. The core of his chest felt kneaded, expired, like thorns dulled and told to sharpen. There were more than a dozen voices and omniscient bodies, but only one siren swam physically in front of him. A stone formed beneath it, an abrupt mountain coming up from the ocean floor.

It watched him with eyes of a lover. The blades of salt and water exited his body; his wounds stopped their ache; he stayed afloat without having to tread. The siren was within constant movement, either swaying its neck from left to right, from the right to the left, or tracing fingers along its thin legs and debonair chest.

Fear was didactic. He understood that his heart was supposed to accelerate. His eyes were instructed to widen, hairs told to stand on end, fingertips maneuvered to quiver. But Ashre experienced none of those sensations; instead, madness sang the mandate of tranquility.

It stared at him and grinned; his clothes slipped away and his scars reformed new, better skin. It then spoke with slithering tongue and washed lisp, a being of delicious sea. "Do you dare learn to wish, Ashre Relicks? Do you dare learn love?"

Its head rolled left and right, then the right and the left. Ashre watched as its hand reached forward, the mountain leveling with the ocean's surface. The earth vanished; it was stale and still, too much like a vast, unmoving land. It was frozen, motionless, a pacific world. And Ashre's eyes began to bleed a deep amethyst, cascading the grey with gemstone, a constellation of galactic sky.

As he watched the siren's hand, his heart did accelerate. His hairs did stand on every end and his fingertips did shake. However, his eyes didn't widen; they slimmed. A sandcastle threatened to fall in each iris, and Ashre waited for the earth to return.

It didn't. And he breathed copper and wire.

There was a second when he asked himself to take their hands. There was a second when he stopped feeling like Ashre Relicks. No, no. That second drowned with the sirens and exhaled, lived, beat; it was only a second when he grabbed and held on tightly.

That second was desire and longing, an infatuation of the beloved. That second was wildrose and a beastly roar; it was nature in its purest and most vulnerable form. It was feeling. It was the first stir after a lifetime of numbness. That second never passed, but remained an endless flicker.

There was a second when he told himself: Embrace them, please. They'll only tighten your hold.

And there was a second when he did just that, and suddenly blackness was the final sensation. Oh, Keon, how it felt. Like nothing he'd ever felt before.

He'd forgotten how to die...

and they...

Easily taught him how it's done.

When Ashre touched the siren's hand, he was no longer it. He was no longer- he felt the rushing of waves and blood and the falling kingdom of sandcastles and copper. And his eyes did widen, then, when the only sight to meet him was the end. The end of sickness and the end of pretend.

There was a moment when he looked back and there was a moment he stared forward. That moment was the beginning, he thought; the beginning of feeling inside his chest. In that moment, he laughed and hoped and wished. And in that moment, he had to die, for everything else to exist.

Because love, to Ashre, in that moment, came to be.

And oh, how it dared to feel.