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The subtle waves of the sea crash against Frieren’s feet. The water sticks salt around the pale skin it touches.
The sun makes her white hair glimmer; anywhere the sun rays fall, they shimmer a little blonde, the trickery of the light amuses Himmel.
“Come to think of it,” he says, Frieren doesn’t yet appreciate how soft-spoken he is. She looks him in the eye. She always does. “You’ll never have to worry about your hair going grey.”
Frieren momentarily gazes at the horizon where the sky and the sea blur into a single line of nothing. She grabs the ends of her hair and stares at them. It looks like snow against the paleness of her skin. Flamme had offered to dye it once, Frieren saw no point in it.
“You’re right,” she mumbles, not taking her eyes off of the mostly split ends of her hair. “I’ve never thought about that.”
Himmel laughs. It’s a strange sound that almost startles her; there’s something obscure about it that she cannot quite name. His mouth goes wide and his eyes turn into little lines on his face. It’s awfully familiar, yet Frieren senses something heartbroken underneath. It is filled with warmth and care—endearing, vulnerable. She imagines a newborn fawn.
“You never think of growing old,” he notes. “Why would you, anyway?”
“Most elves don’t die of old age,” she explains in her usual monotone voice. “That’s a human trait.”
Himmel pauses. His short hair sways with the wind, taking on the color of the sky—or perhaps the sea, or a shade just a tad lighter. The mole on his face contrasts with his bright features, especially his eyes that carry—
The Horizon.
Himmel is the horizon. His hair is the blurred blues dissolving into each other. His eyes are the certainty of a single line on an endless ocean that Frieren would consider drowning in. The realization startles her. It’s uncomfortable underneath her skin and she wishes to forget it.
The light in his eyes is a lot dimmer when he asks his next question. Frieren doesn’t have time to wonder how many beats they’ve missed as she aimlessly studied him.
“Do you ever think of death?”
He doesn’t look at her when he speaks. His lips are pressed together. He needs to smile; Frieren needs to see him smile. She spent years by his side—right by him, looking directly at him, with him—and she has never seen him once with the frown he now wears. There hadn’t been a single moment he didn’t smile when alone with Frieren.
She cannot explain the sudden beat of her heart, which feels as though it might knock her over with how forcefully it strikes her ribs. She feels frantic and it’s sudden. Frieren feels betrayed when his lips don’t curl into a smile.
“I…” she swallows, her breaths quickened. It doesn’t make sense.
Still, Himmel doesn’t turn to look at her. She wants to grab him by the jaw and force his gaze onto her. The urge is primal. She needs him to look at her.
Frieren’s next words are a confession.
“I think of yours.”
The admission hangs in the salt-thick air, sharper than the cry of a gull. Himmel’s breath catches, and Frieren imagines it becoming a soft, stolen sound from the depths of the ocean. Finally, he turns to face her.
The light in his eyes is not a bit dimmer, Frieren realizes. They are deep and filled with an emotion she cannot yet name. It seems burdensome, she wants to dig beneath it and learn what it means to be a human. She wishes she understood Himmel, but in those eyes—a perfect reflection of the horizon—she finds herself staring back, unmoving.
“I see,” he says, his voice even softer than before, almost lost to the wind. He looks at her—truly looks—as if memorizing the exact way the trickster sun glints in her hair that will never change with age. “That’s a heavy thing to carry, Frieren.”
The frantic beat of her heart still echoes in the cavity of her chest, but it is calming now, settling into a dull, permanent ache. It’s grief, she realizes. It’s the grief of a life not yet lost.
Himmel is looking at her. He sees her. And he sees the long, long road she will walk way after his footsteps have faded from the earth.
“It is,” she agrees simply. Her hand falls from her hair, back to her side. The split ends resting against just under her shoulders.
He reaches out then, pinching the front pieces of her hair between his fingers. He doesn’t pretend to be checking the color. Frieren watches him religiously.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and the apology is not for dying—that would be absurd—but for the certainty of it, for the shadow it already casts across her endless path.
Frieren finally looks away, focusing back on the blended colors of the horizon. The nothingness feels different, now. It is no longer an abstract distance, but a future expanse of time, vast and empty of this particular light, this particular laugh.
She meets Himmel along the horizon. His eyes are beautiful. Himmel is beautiful.
“Don’t be,” she says, her voice surprisingly steady. “It won’t be too bad to keep you in my memory.”
Another wave rushes in, cooler this time, swirling around their feet before retreating as it pulls the sand from beneath them.
“Thank you, Frieren. It will be an honor to be remembered by you.”
Himmel lets his hand drop. He doesn’t laugh again. He just stands beside her, a hero and a man, a finite point of warmth against the eternity her life must feel like to him. And for this moment, with the sea claiming and reclaiming the shore, they watch the horizon together, holding the weight of his mortality in the quiet space between them.
Frieren figures there are words meant to be spoken—much kinder and much more hidden inside her chest. They must be there, because she already feels the regret of not speaking them.
Even still, she cannot find them. They must be somewhere deep inside of her that she hasn’t learned how to reach, they must be there. There is something and it is valuable. It’s in her palms and it’s all that she has and it’s slipping through her fingers—
“I love you.”
Himmel speaks like an angel would.