backdated to June 5th
Jun. 11th, 2019 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pylades_drunkIt's almost an obscenely beautiful day, Grantaire thinks, but then it wasn't a particularly miserable June when they'd put up the barricades, either. A little warm, and the middle of a cholera epidemic, but the weather hadn't been ugly.
This, though, is something else. Lilac scents the air; the weather might be described as perfect. Fruit ripens early on the branches of trees he wasn't even aware had ever borne fruit.
In the past, he'd celebrated the anniversary of their deaths with friends who had been there, drinking and vacillating between a hedonistic revelation of the shortness of life and a somber acknowledgement; in the more recent past, since he'd stopped drinking and some of them had disappeared, it'd been a smaller, sort of private reflection.
Today, he wanders in the park with a friend who knows what he's thinking of. They talk about other things, and they talk about their friends, and they let the specter of mortality wander into their conversation as it wants to, for there's no stopping it.
"Do you ever think about what happens if we disappear?" Eponine asks. Grantaire doesn't keep such close tabs on her that she feels smothered by it, but she's grown to enjoy that he texts to check in from time to time. When she was first here, she thought he might be using her as a stand-in for her brother. Now, it's just good to have someone who knows Paris, who has anything in common, on days like today.
"I try not to," Grantaire rejoins, picking a plum off a low branch. "I've only just started thinking in future tense. At any rate, that just calls up questions of the afterlife, and most of those possibilities are ridiculous or awful. Probably, nothing. We just --- stop. It'd be worse for the people here."
They ponder that for a moment. "Let's not do it, then," she says a little over-brightly, and holds up a hand. "Plum?"
"Certainly," he says, and throws her one.
Smirking, she steps back to catch it, right into the middle of the path.
This, though, is something else. Lilac scents the air; the weather might be described as perfect. Fruit ripens early on the branches of trees he wasn't even aware had ever borne fruit.
In the past, he'd celebrated the anniversary of their deaths with friends who had been there, drinking and vacillating between a hedonistic revelation of the shortness of life and a somber acknowledgement; in the more recent past, since he'd stopped drinking and some of them had disappeared, it'd been a smaller, sort of private reflection.
Today, he wanders in the park with a friend who knows what he's thinking of. They talk about other things, and they talk about their friends, and they let the specter of mortality wander into their conversation as it wants to, for there's no stopping it.
"Do you ever think about what happens if we disappear?" Eponine asks. Grantaire doesn't keep such close tabs on her that she feels smothered by it, but she's grown to enjoy that he texts to check in from time to time. When she was first here, she thought he might be using her as a stand-in for her brother. Now, it's just good to have someone who knows Paris, who has anything in common, on days like today.
"I try not to," Grantaire rejoins, picking a plum off a low branch. "I've only just started thinking in future tense. At any rate, that just calls up questions of the afterlife, and most of those possibilities are ridiculous or awful. Probably, nothing. We just --- stop. It'd be worse for the people here."
They ponder that for a moment. "Let's not do it, then," she says a little over-brightly, and holds up a hand. "Plum?"
"Certainly," he says, and throws her one.
Smirking, she steps back to catch it, right into the middle of the path.
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Date: 2019-06-29 03:49 am (UTC)She bites into it as Grantaire continues, her expression thoughtful. She knows what that means, after all. It's hard to get the dates lined up, but she tends to get a little somber when the anniversary of her arrival here rolls around for the same reason. Being aware of having died is always a strange thing, but all the more so with reminders of when it happened. "Things really have changed, haven't they?" she replies, her voice low and understanding. "It's a lot to carry."