Streaks of brilliant lights sluiced off Sunday’s halo, painting his features with refracted iridescence. The chatter of children, the laughter that rang like chimes in the air, it was all so familiar and yet so foreign. End-of-summer heat lingered in wisps here even in the throes of a painted dusk, curling around the fleeting moments of happiness wound into the fiery petals of an unfolding firework.

Between the towering attractions and concession stands stood a mosaic of people gathered to watch the light show, dotting the pastel cobblestones paving the ground with thrown shadows cast by faces he no longer saw as nameless stories to glean. The air here smelt sweet, undertones of manufactured cheer seeping through lacy warmth.

Sunday had only been on the outskirts of this kind of festival, sewn tight to the velvet that covered the birdcage of Penacony like an afterthought. The illusion of freedom kept the words on the tip of his tongue from running, after all, his image must not be marred. But that was a while ago, an era he would rather forget. And there was no better place to reflect than atop the ferris wheel, its slow revolution barely new yet meaning everything and more to him.

One squeeze of your hand in his had him throwing himself out of his silent reverie; on his face bloomed a soft smile filled with regret, somber nostalgia– which, in the midst of both, cradled in its embrace, fostered an aching ebullience he thought was once long lost. And you’d given him a new beginning, lifted his weary face to the sun so he could rinse sin from the crevices of his bleached skeleton.

In turn the festival seemed to glow, vivid, soft colors paving the way forward. Never back. He swore he’d never look back. Peals of sparks blurred the sky into watercolor, reaching out and receding tenebrosity to the far corners of the galaxy.

And for once he didn’t care that his shirt was askew, slightly creased in a way that might have condemned him once upon a time. He didn’t care that it was dangerous to be so close to the sun; he felt that he could understand Icarus if the moment before his fall felt as vivacious as this.

Admiring the blazing lights, the crowd thickened on the ground; Sunday instinctively pulled you in when your shared car reached the summit of the wheel, your back against his chest. “Far too late” had come far too soon, the landscape outlined by a soft luminescent glow that wrote promises of home away from home in spindly script.

“My love, if you will,” he rejoined, voice a little wistful, low and melodic as he ran a careful hand over your cheek, “for the sake of memories to come… May I?”

There was no better time than this for a sealed confirmation of your shared promise-- you and Sunday, here, in the moment, your entwined silhouettes cast against dreamlike, prismatic sparks dazzling the horizon with its artificial beauty.