Chapter 41 - Tithonus : Part 2

"Long ago, there was a goddess named Eos who fell in love with a mortal prince." Kiaran began, fingers racing upon the book he held as he sat beside Axel's bed.

"The goddess of the gentle dawn was the mother of the four winds. While all creation slept, she rose from her pink pillows to announce the coming of a new day. She dipped her rosy fingers into a cup filled with dew and sprinkled the drops over flowers and trees. All nature awoke, rejoicing to see her."

Kiaran took a glance at the boy's two different eyes, who were staring at the ceiling without looking at him at all. The demon diverted his gaze to the book again and continued.

"One morning, as Eos looked down on earth, her eyes fell on a young prince waking from his slumber. He was so handsome she could not take her eyes off him, and she wanted him for her husband."

Kiaran opened the next page slowly. Despite how he already memorized the whole story in his brain, he still read it anyway.

"Tithonus was a proud young man, a prince of Troy, handsome and brave, and the moment Eos saw him, she fell deeply in love. That was her way, but this time she decided she must carry him away with her, and so she brought him to her palace, away from his homeland."

"She kidnapped him, basically. But it was love, wasn't it, Axel?" Kiaran voiced his thoughts in between the storytelling he did.

Though the boy just kept staring at the ceiling, unfazed by any of Kiaran's doings nor questions.

Realizing that the demon was not going to get any answers from the boy, he continued rereading Axel's favourite story.

"Tithonus and Eos lived together happily, and they had two sons, Memnon and Emathion, who also became famous among men and gods. All seemed well, but as time passed, Eos remembered something she had forgotten: Mortals do not live forever."

Kiaran tried to see if the boy had moved or done anything. But when he met with one blue eye and one red eye still staring through the roof, he sighed and read the story again.

"Eos began to mourn the future. How would she survive without her love? She could not imagine such a life, and so she asked the greatest god of all, Zeus, to grant Tithonus immortality."

The ticking clock was counting down the story, waiting for it to finish as the time became a background for Kiaran and Axel. The wind desperately tried to get in through the window while the moon hid behind the clouds.

And Kiaran continued.

"'Please,' Eos pleaded, 'let my beloved Tithonus live forever.' Her eyes filled with tears, her skin flushed, and even Zeus was moved, and so he granted her request."

Kiaran flipped the page again, reading the same paragraph and story for the boy in front of him.

"But Zeus was a jealous God, prone to acts of deception in order to seduce beautiful gods and mortals, and he was not pleased with Eos's infatuation with a rival."

The sound of a page turned was so loud to prove how silent Axel was for the whole reading Kiaran did. Even though his eyes were wide open, but the boy lied there like he was sleeping.

"And so he did grant Eos's wish. He made Tithonus immortal, but he did not grant him eternal youth." Kiaran breathed, melodic voice adorning the air like some kind of sick harmony.

"And when the time passed, Tithonus, like all mortals, began to age. First, Eos noticed the wrinkles upon his brow, and as the years passed, his muscles began to grow weak, his arms and legs grew slender, his hair grew grey and thin. Even the light of his beloved Eos no longer gave him the strength it once had."

The pages grew thin as Kiaran flipped them again. The story was ending soon.

"When Eos understood Tithonus's fate, the sight of him filled her with such sadness that she could not bear to look at him. So she left him alone and travelled, falling in love with others."

Axel and Kiaran knew the ending. Both of them knew the end. But the demon kept telling the story anyway.

"Tithonus shrank to a tiny, wizened old man, yet he could not die, for he had been given eternal life. He became so small and weak that Eos had to put him into a little basket and hide him in the corner of her palace. There, in his dark corner, he went on withering and shrivelling till at last, he turned into a grasshopper, chirping for all eternity."

The demon closed the book with his delicate fingers, putting it away to a desk near him. There was a beat of silence accompanying them alongside the ticking clock.

Kiaran's mouth moved to talk more, trying to tell the boy something.

Somehow, Axel could not hear anything. His eyes were empty as he drowned in his own thoughts. The boy felt like his body was flying. He felt like all of these were a dream.

Maybe not a dream, more like a nightmare.

A weird kind of nightmare that was wrapped in lies and manipulations.

"You read it again. The story." Axel started to speak hoarsely without looking away from the ceiling.

Kiaran, who was muttering about something a moment ago, snapped his mouth shut.

"You did that a lot, weren't you?" Axel asked wanderingly, eyes locked on the roof as he began to continue.

"Back when I was huma-" The boy cut his own words, taking a huge intake of breath as he tremblingly tried to speak again.

"Back in my world. Every time I went to bed, you read it for me." Axel finally moved his cloudy eyes to Kiaran. "It was you, right?"

"Yes." The demon answered, red eyes looking at the blue and red ones.

"You were afraid to lose your Axel, so you tried to ask someone or maybe something for power to change me." The boy stated, and he knew that he caught the demon off guard.

"But I am human, I am not a demon." Axel grew tired looking at Kiaran, so he looked away to the window, looking right to the sad moon.

"You loved him so much that you tried to make me something I am not." The boy kept talking, slapping facts within the air as his eyes wandered off outside.

"A demon." The words felt bitter, knowing that the process was agonizing, knowing that it was all part of the demon family's manipulative plan.

"Just like Tithonus, wasn't it? The story you love to tell. The story you believe I love." Axel chuckled weakly, clicking off the bitter tongue. "He was no god. He was just a mortal."

"Eos loved him too much that she begged Zeus to make him immortal." Taking one last glance at the moon, the boy looked back at Kiaran's two blood-red eyes. "But Zeus was jealous, wasn't he?"

"He made him immortal yet he was ageing and dying inside."

Kiaran knew where this was going, but the demon chose to stay silent.

"You made me a demon because you were jealous of the human life, when I am actually alive." The manipulated boy added. Few of his black locks fell over his face as he spoke.

"If you called getting manipulated alive, that is." Axel sneered at his own tragedy. At this moment, it was ironically funny to talk about that.

"But Kiaran," The boy darted, smiling weakly at his pseudo-brother. "I'm going to wither away and die. Just like that story."

"Don't be like that person." The weak boy said, almost begging. Axel was just tired of actually taking anything that was happening right now.

Like the demon in front of him right now, the boy was hiding behind his own denial.

"Eos? I'm not her. Adreanna and Cain weren't either." Kiaran defended, almost laughing at how poetic Axel was right now. "We're better than her. We're making you better."

Axel, still staring at Kiaran, just smiled. "No, not her."

"Don't be Zeus." The boy specified, squeezing the eyes shut, then opening them wide in an effort to stay awake. "You're jealous of the human world and you wanted to change it."

Axel tilted his head, making his fluffy black hair bounce to the right a little. "What makes you different than Zeus, Kiaran?"

"I'm saving you from my other self. I'm saving you from a fate that you could fall which is death." Kiaran's voice was raising a little, clearly agitated by Axel's words.

"Or were you just jealous that my Kiaran had me and you didn't?" The 16-year-old cut the 18-year-old again.

Axel smiled bitterly. Numbness was etching all over his body as he carried on. "My other me. He's dead, isn't he?"

Kiaran stiffened. There was a heavy feeling in his stomach while he tried to deny everything again.

Axel's lips tugged upward a little. "I thought so."

The kid was just about to turn his back on the demon but stopped when Kiaran tried to speak again.

"But I'm not Zeus in your story. I'm not making you immortal just to age and suffer." Still trying to defend himself, Kiaran began to retort back.

"But you did."

Axel tiredly looked at his pseudo brother, the leftover pain was still lingering within him, and he did not know if it was physical or mental. "You're doing this to me, Kiaran. You're doing what exactly Zeus did."

Kiaran bit his lips as he still dared to stare at Axel. One side of his mouth was pulled up and back, tilting his head slightly to show no vulnerability.

"Are you Eos or Zeus, then? Tell me." Axel breathed roughly. His red eye glazed with heaviness.

"Tell me a story."