4d
. (Mythology Re-Imagined As Fairy-Tale & Deconstructed) .
No one recalls when he arrived.
He was already there, in the corners of high rooms.
Carried in on wind or instinct.
Too composed to belong, too still to be ignored.
He wasn't from the sea, though he stared at it often.
Stared like a man who missed something he never touched.
He lived above things—above feeling, above endings.
He wore distance like other men wear charm.
And she—well.
She wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
---
They said she’d been sealed beneath water before time had a name.
Not drowned. Not sleeping.
Just paused.
A beauty left half-sketched.
A song trapped on the bridge, never reaching the chorus.
She existed in the almost.
The kind of presence that ruins men who believe in silence.
No one put her there.
But something had.
Something old and silver-lipped, a clockmaker with no face.
---
When he found out, he didn’t shout.
Didn’t storm.
Storms are for men who want to be heard.
He simply started unmaking himself.
Small things, at first:
Giving away secrets he never told.
Letting starlight fall from his shoulders like ash.
Standing in rooms long enough for people to forget he was tall.
Eventually, he gave away the last thing he had—
the part of him that never wanted anything.
And that was enough.
---
She came back like foam curling over marble.
Not as a lover. Not as a reward.
As weather.
She passed him by.
Looked at the space he’d vacated inside himself
and nodded, as if to say: “Yes. That will do.”
---
After that, things changed.
She walked through the city like someone who could end it.
Touched doorframes and left them trembling.
Spoke only when the sentence would shatter something.
He, on the other hand,
was seen less and less.
Not gone—just thinned out, like smoke after a gunshot.
---
Some say he became the silence in her laugh.
Others claim he left, unfinished, like a poem crumpled in a lover’s pocket.
No one’s sure.
But if you ask the sea just right—
after midnight, after mirrors—
you’ll hear it whisper:
“He let go of the sky, so she could walk through it.”
{fin}
No one recalls when he arrived.
He was already there, in the corners of high rooms.
Carried in on wind or instinct.
Too composed to belong, too still to be ignored.
He wasn't from the sea, though he stared at it often.
Stared like a man who missed something he never touched.
He lived above things—above feeling, above endings.
He wore distance like other men wear charm.
And she—well.
She wasn’t where she was supposed to be.
---
They said she’d been sealed beneath water before time had a name.
Not drowned. Not sleeping.
Just paused.
A beauty left half-sketched.
A song trapped on the bridge, never reaching the chorus.
She existed in the almost.
The kind of presence that ruins men who believe in silence.
No one put her there.
But something had.
Something old and silver-lipped, a clockmaker with no face.
---
When he found out, he didn’t shout.
Didn’t storm.
Storms are for men who want to be heard.
He simply started unmaking himself.
Small things, at first:
Giving away secrets he never told.
Letting starlight fall from his shoulders like ash.
Standing in rooms long enough for people to forget he was tall.
Eventually, he gave away the last thing he had—
the part of him that never wanted anything.
And that was enough.
---
She came back like foam curling over marble.
Not as a lover. Not as a reward.
As weather.
She passed him by.
Looked at the space he’d vacated inside himself
and nodded, as if to say: “Yes. That will do.”
---
After that, things changed.
She walked through the city like someone who could end it.
Touched doorframes and left them trembling.
Spoke only when the sentence would shatter something.
He, on the other hand,
was seen less and less.
Not gone—just thinned out, like smoke after a gunshot.
---
Some say he became the silence in her laugh.
Others claim he left, unfinished, like a poem crumpled in a lover’s pocket.
No one’s sure.
But if you ask the sea just right—
after midnight, after mirrors—
you’ll hear it whisper:
“He let go of the sky, so she could walk through it.”
{fin}
