Icarus and her sun
The Burn of Knowing You
“If you are to be the sun,” she had told him once, the phantom weight of feathers and wax already heavy on her shoulders, “then I am to be Icarus — a fool fated to fall and burn before I even reach you. Even on wings of wax, I would fly toward you.”
He had looked at her then, his gaze carrying the quiet intensity of a midday sky, and replied softly, “But you already reached me.”
And for a beautiful, fleeting moment, she believed him. She had reached him, but only the surface. Like the mythological fool before her, she ignored every warning, threw caution into the sea, and let curiosity rule her heart. He was the one who had caught her interest first, drawing her into his orbit, but it was she who chose to take the definitive, dangerous risk. She wanted to understand his depths, not just bask in his light, but know the gravity that held him together.
From a distance, he was everything promised: radiant, golden, and undeniably warm. As she drew nearer, trying to breach the distance, he ended up hurting her not with malice, but with the ruthless intensity of a flame that refuses to be held. The closer she fought to get to his core, the more the fire consumed her. By the time she was close enough to touch, her wings were molten, and her skin was scorched.
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When she fell, scarred and broken, he didn’t even recognize her. The burns had altered her completely, rendering her unrecognizable to the entity that caused them. He never looked her way again, his gaze passing right through her as if she were nothing but a ghost drifting through his sky.
It was only during that agonizing descent, watching the sky recede, that the cruelest truth finally became clear to her. People didn’t stay away from the sun merely because of the unbearable heat. They stayed away because he intended for no one to get close. The blistering barrier wasn’t an accident of nature; it was a deliberate defense mechanism to ensure he would never be truly known.
Yet, even with broken wings, her heart remained a stubborn thing. She still wanted to fly toward him. But before she could gather the strength to try, he vanished, slipping beneath the horizon and leaving her in the cold expanse of the night.
When the morning returned, pulling the sun back into the sky, a quiet realization settled over him. Looking out across the vast, empty blue, he realized that no one else would ever attempt the climb. No one else intended to get close to him the way his Icarus had. The sting of regret finally pierced his golden armor, a sudden longing for the one soul brave enough to risk the fire.
But Icarus had already accepted the pain.
She left quietly, slipping away into the shadows of the earth, even while her heart screamed at her to stay, to keep trying, to burn all over again. Because just like the sun, she knew the absolute truth: she was the only one who had ever truly wanted to get close to him.
She can no longer fly; her wings are nothing but ash and memory. So, she took a step back. Not too far, never far enough to lose sight of him entirely, but just enough to survive. Today, she still looks after him from a safe, quiet distance, watching the sun shine from afar. And as his light washes over the world, she harbors a silent, aching hope that one day he will finally lower his guard and let someone close enough to know his depths, even if it means that someone will never be her.
-era.
