Persistence of Vision

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." - Albert Einstein.

For fairies exists only within the confines of their tales, and magic is but fog that you can never catch with your palms, no matter how you try. For everlasting beauty is outside of your grasp, and kisses hurt more than heal… You know she's not real. Chrom knew her to not be real.

Never a fanciful man. Never one for lace trimming or lordly words. Rather, a man very aware of the dirt, the solid ground beneath, and the sweat from a thousand hours of work. He liked to think of himself as a man on the run. Always someplace else…. always, vaster the land, briskier the air, louder the howl. It's not like he wouldn't ever return. He knew there was no away from his own blood.

He knew and he still struggled. Like a bird would in the clumsy palms of a cruel child. He knew there was no denying his responsibility, but as he gazed, on and on, and no, no respite from the ache in the center of his chest, he knew he'd rather be elsewhere.

The first day he saw her he rubbed his eyes until they burned and turned red. He dared not move, or breathe, or speak, or let his heart beat. But traitorous muscle as it was, much needed to live as it was, it would not stand still in the presence of such glorious loveliness. A sea girl wreathed in the white garlands of the night, a transcendent apparition bathed in the moonlit waterfall, an incandescent vision swaying in the midst and mist of a soft October eventide…

It was her who talked with the birds and rolled on the grass. Robin. He dubbed her Robin thus. She never saw him, nor seemed not to care for his shadowed hiding place. He found her, always, in the same place, either singing for her own pleasure or interweaving flowers for herself. She who was not real. She who he desired most. She who he could not touch. Robin… Robin… Robin…

His heart howled her name at night as he stood, stoic, asking things to the stars. Where, and how? What if? What if he took his leave, what if he entered the forest again, and decided he'd just rather not return? Would the kingdom survive? And there went his breath, up, up, curling in the frigidness of the silence. And he wondered. And wondered. And wondered.

Hunting, he'd say. Going hunting. A man is entitled to his time doing manly things. But his escapades would always, always, be excuses to while his ache away in a dark hiding place, which she payed no mind to, and neither did he. No. When he looked at her, it was as though she pulled him from his body, took him out into her reverie of an existence, and sent him soaring above the treetops… and then she let him fall into a dying fall.

She always disappeared too. At the toll of midnight. When the shadows licked her toes like dogs from hell. She'd quiver, shudder, exquisitely, afraid. He knew she was scared of the dark, and so he himself learned to dread the night. He brought her a lamp and left it sitting innocently on the grass. She liked it, he suspected. She stayed longer each time, until one day she was scared no more, and she found him.

And she found him.

But.

For fairies can only live within the confines of their tales…

And she took his hand.

Magic is but fog that you can never catch with your palms, no matter how you try…

And her breath on his face smelled of grapes.

For everlasting beauty is outside of your grasp, and kisses hurt more than heal…

And her tongue and her hands felt real against his skin.

You know you're not real. Chrom knew himself not to be real.

A/N: Getting into my poetic groove. Feels so nice. Damn. Been so long since I last wrote. Exams. What could I do? Anywho, hoped you liked.