born from stardust [Caine's Death]

[Tom]

A frozen tundra is no place for a cowboy.

Like a catastrophic collision of a purple comet to the earth, everything falls like his body onto the shoulder of his forest boy. Eyes bleed in the image of him with perfect eyes and delicious lips, but he can't move. Everything's slow from the moment his last words fell from his lips to now, he's stuck in a pit of swirling galaxies as collisions collide together. Moons that dance together with the fate of blackness that threatens to take over in a moment. All he can do is stare at the boy who made his chest rise and fall with the want to live longer just to see his face. He's gorgeous. He's perfection. He's worth dying for. He's the other half of his moon that gave him something more than the stampedes in his ears and the hard labor that life had given to him.

There's no whispers of words in his ears. Maybe it was the fact his heart was barely keeping up with him. Everything is so slow, but he can remember everything about Raven in this moment. The night on the roof playing children's games. The ski race where the wind brushed his cheeks with a pink blush. The night before this fight where everything felt warm for the first time in forever with whispers of everything being different. Everything's been a blessing and a curse in the games. Raven was the blessing that made the stars in his skin explode with an energy of life that he never felt. Death was the curse that he had to live with in the end.

As he stares up at his forest boy, who's hand finds his cheek, everything blurs into a mess of stars that make sense in his heart. Fingers gently touching his skin as the world collapses in on just them for a moment. The hat that he had just put on his forest boy's head looks perfect there like it belonged to him the entire time. A wave of relief washes over him as the stampede in his ears of hooves int he dust clear to an oasis of forest where Raven's at. Everything is perfect in this moment, even if crimson is falling from his body. Even when his vision is blurring together only to the sight of his forest boy's face. Aeson, Isaac, Violet, Euley, Cade, and Maisie were not there in this moment of resolution.

Aeson had been right about one thing. A tundra was no place for a cowboy to exist. All he was meant to be was in Raven's arms with that smile on Caine's own face where peace is. Even if it hadn't been real to Raven, it was real to him. Realer than anything else had been. Around Raven, things made sense. Things would fly above with a swirl of celestial things that made his skin crawl with comfort and care. As his hand leave his face, he can see Cade pulling his forest boy away to safety. Pulling his forest boy out of the chaos and eyes of Aeson Kight. Tears don't fall from his eyes. All he can see is his forest boy as the world turns cold once more, eyes closing to keep the image in his mind forever.

Death comes right away to him in a swirl of a handsome boy and stars.

Just another boy who didn't know how to rope the moon.

There's a chill that runs along his skin that doesn't belong to him anymore. He can feel it in his chest as it grows like a fire to the rest of him. Burning through skin and bone to his heart where it bursts into a cluster of stars that he can't see anymore. Beautiful forest boy lays nowhere anymore, but in his mind where dreams of purples and whites flicker into existence. Forest boy's lilacs mixing with a grey from smoke and flower crowns that glitter a gold in his mind, but this time he's there in the land of trees with a smile on his face and a bag of goodies to indulge in. A dream world where nothing bad could happen flickering in front of him with a chill in his heart that freezes over.

There's always a place for Raven's heart in his chest that beats a purple cluster of stars that escapes from blood. How he wished they had been alive in different places in a different time. Dreams do not exist in their world, unless the cold comes to life and takes them. Caine would have done anything for that boy, even if it had never been true. Life was about risks and never about consequences for him. And maybe that's why he was dead now. Too many risks that created an imbalance in the universe of stars and people. All he could feel was the vision fading away to something else. Something a little sadder, but still happy.

Cade's standing in front of them with a false crown upon his head. Another universe that could have been true, but doesn't exist. The crown holds a weight of so many upon it, but Caine's already got his arms around the thin boy from three who he thinks of as a younger brother. A younger brother who now had a family in a world where family was hard to have. They might not have been blood, but that never stopped love before. Picking and choosing who to call family in their world because family can hurt and lose that title, while others gain that love. Caine can see his brother giving Cade a hand to the the head, messing up Cade's soft hair. A laugh falls from his lips in time for the scene to change to something else.

Jed's asleep in his room, on his bed, with an exhaustion that rises through the skin, but there's another happiness that hides there with him. A boy of his own with an arm wrapped lazily around his brother's form. A resounding silence of peace that plasters to his brother's face that sends a chill through Caine's spirit. A smile pulls at Caine's lips as Jed's eyes rise and body breaths in a breath of life. Words falling sleepily for the form as Caine watches him. A hand reaching out to shoo Caine away from the scene of it all.

"You sure know when to interrupt a man's dream."

Dreams. Realities. Fates. Stars. A chuckle falls from Caine's lips as his eyes roll upward in a joking manner. Everything came down to him ruining the norms that everyone created. Always a man going against the tide rather than with it. Words already falling from his lips in a gentle voice that reaches his exhaustion of dying.

"Ya know I tend to do that, bud."

A gentle hand reaches up touching his spirit in a soft manner, before falling through his form once again. A sleepy Jedidiah, who had always been a disappearing act in the middle of the night, leaving him with everything to do in the morning and unanswered questions that he never asked him, stares at him long and hard before asking the question that's been in everyone's head for a long time.

"Did you even learn to rope the moon Caine?"

A moment of rising and falling happens as the air in his chest feels heavier and heavier. Everything begins to turn numb as heat rises through him in a flame that flickers to life. Burning upwards and upwards with smoke and fire. A want to cough fills his chest, but he doesn't dare cough it out. Words fumble from his lips with a smile that shines brighter than the moons had.

"Yes. I roped the moon in the end, then the sun rose, taking me with it to a new place where the stars glitter and comets fly. It's beautiful, Jed."

The heat rises until everything blurs into a motion of black. All that remains is his forest boy, Cade, and Jed standing at different steps away. They float in the darkness for awhile, until they shatter in a explosion of color and light that blinds him. Aeson Kight would never believe the beauty of life that he had seen. Aeson Kight would never know what it was like to feel the way he had. The lights flutter around, until they create the night sky with black and white and purples and a giant glittering white that shines onto his skin.

Aeson Kight would never become a man that could rope the moon.

A rope of black appears in his hands as he feels the threads that bind it together form from words and memories of his past that flicker to life. Abel is in this rope with memories of dust and happy days in the sun. Jed and his brothers are in the rope with dreams and wishes and discussions of life that would never disappear from his mind. Ma and Pa reside in the rope through praise and love and times of struggle that kept him alive in a world where death seemed imminent. Cade and Maisie live in the rope with dreams and wishes of something more that where they live with fates taken from them. Raven is there in that rope, staring back at him with eyes of love and wishes of something more.

All that was left was for him to swing it and release it at the moon.

The sound of the stampede disappears to the silence of the night. Stars glittering around him. Comets gliding past his head with a beauty. A star exploding in the distance to a sight of different colors that couldn't be understood. Everyone dreams of reaching the stars and the beyond, but no one actually ever gets there. A mystery that is undiscovered to everyone else, Caine swings the loop into the air as visions hit him now. Words left unsaid reaching his head, but vanishing. People left behind disappearing from his head. The stress of living just escaping him into the blackness of the sky.

The release is perfect as the rope moves around the moon before flickering a golden light. Caine's skin glows the same gold that envelops himself. A flicker of lights as everything becomes easier and lighter like his body is spreading out into something else. Stuck in a motion of release as it becomes easier and easier to forget it all and become something more. Something much better than just a boy from District Ten who would raise cattle for the rest of his life.

The moon was enveloped in a string of stars as a dream of a little kid becomes reality.

Caine's last sight is the string of stars, until everything goes white and black.

And then he doesn't exist anymore in the same form that he had been for a long time.

---

A little boy lays under the stars with his older brother watching the night sky. A mother and father waiting out on the porch with words on their lips of the belief that they were all born from the stars. The little boy reaching his hand up towards the moon that glitters in a white aura of safety. A comfort that many took for granted. Eyes glittering a blue as his brother points to stars naming them silly names from his classmates. They both laugh with a happiness that reaches the air keeping it warm.

A forest lies a little ways away as another boy watches the two laying under the stars with a flower crown in each hand and one atop his head. He goes running to the group with smiles and happiness as his friend tells him to lay down and look to the sky. Fingers points from the moon to a star nearby. Stardust flickering in the sky like a guide to the dreams that they all have to become a star in the night sky. Smiles on their faces with laughs in their chests. The flower crown boy asks with ease as he looks to the moon once again.

"Do you know the constellations?"

A flickering of energy passes between the two as the older brother gets up to help his mother and father inside the small house behind them. A silence passes between the two as flowers sit around them in pinks and whites that make his heart flutter with a small red blush. Words flicker from his lips as his hand already moves to the sky pointing to a panhandle of the big dipper naming it to the other. The flower crown boy doesn't accept it as he shakes his head, but smiles at him easily. Words fall from his lips once again that sends shivers through his skin.

"Let's make our own constellations! Didn't your parents tell you we are made from stardust?"

A nod as young eyes stare up at the sky with ease before the sight rings in his mind with a sound of a stampede. There's a faint smell of forest and dust that rises to his nose before he can spot the stars making a form above. Flickering whites that glitter with the words of family, friends, lovers, and everything else. Fingers pointing each star out carefully to the flower boy that lives in the forest. A red blush creeping to his cheeks as a fire burns in his chest once again.

The stars make out a cowboy and his rope that encircles the moon that was caught.

A smile pulls at his lips before he looks to the flower boy from the forest as words fall from his lips.

"I hope this night never ends."

The flower boy smiles to him, placing the flower crown in his lap as the burning light of happiness burns in the boy's skin. A peace resounds between them for awhile as the moon begins to disappear across the horizon as the sun threatens to rise once again. Flowers begin to bloom around them as the scent of lilacs hits his nose once more. The forest boy reaches out a hand to him that the blue eyed one hadn't seen before. A whisper upon the flower boy's lips is the last thing that he hears.

"We're endless, Caine."

And his heart flutters.

[dars]