At the Edge of All Possibilities PV Valentin Schnell

Throughout his abyssal odyssey, countless were the days Alexander tried in vain to ascend a spiralling staircase that sank deeper with each step he trod upon it, despite the obvious fact he was not dressed in the regal purple robes of a Byzantine pretender to the throne who had dreams in which darkness continued to elude him even though his both eyes were abacinated. Even his shadow, that amorphous dance of light that occasionally found its cooling respite on the cobblestones on certain nights, always belonged to that meandering path curving like a thin wisp of smoke straggling up through its owner’s shoulder. Having realised that its blinding brightness had been subtly tinged with an orangish hue because of the faint crimsonness of the blood drops flowing from the wound that the nightfall inflicted on its chest with a deft sword stroke, the sun abdicated its throne in favour of the moon's glare, relinquishing the responsibility to oversee the unpretentious dance performance of Alex's shadow to that porous satellite.

Like all boarding school children, Alex's facial expressions had acquired their own meanings over time. Whenever he scowled, for instance, his countenance, lacking in laddishness even when devoid of emotion, would surprisingly adopt a quite boyish look, complete opposite to his intentions. When his lips decided to imitate the curving path that was the homeland of his shadow, on the other hand, his mouth, widening like a fragile hand fan, made him look more mature than he actually was. These were the things the Durmstrang champion would learn in time – if he willing to learn. Like a tired father – his crumpled overcoat covering all the contours of his body – returning home after work in the evening, everything about Alex wanted to make a nest for themselves in the very centre of Valentin's heart. Besides, the white-haired boy’s homework was easy: to run his long, slender fingers over Alex’s eyebrows and lips. That would be enough, then Alex would cease to be an enigma and the serene joy of a solved riddle would fill Valentin’s heart.

Once, on a summer evening when humidity prevailed every single minute of the day, Alex had seen his own reflection in a puddle teeming with dead winged ants, a moment, for some reason, holding more magic than learning the Levitation Charm. The fair-haired boy, however, could not remember having experienced a more magical moment in his lifetime than the present one. He was a pebble that had been rolling for centuries from the top of a mountain whose summit pierced the clouds and heavens and finally came to rest at the Seeker’s feet. Witnessing this lakeside tableau aglow with the brightness of Val’s face marked the milestone that separated the initial phase of Alexander’s life from the subsequent one. Realising that the seedlings of doubt in his heart were withering away at an unprecedented rate, the boy felt the seeds of love stirring in the same soil, ready to sprout.

You are beautiful. But your beauty is not like a carnation placed hastily in a glass. It is like a stone that's heated to its core under the burning sun on a summer night. It is a song waiting to be sung. And now, tears are flowing from your eyes, your untouched, unimpaired, undebased eyes. As you weep, the penknife I’ve preserved in the chest of my heart sparks with an alluring flicker against betrayal, treachery, and the lovelessness that has caused so much pain all around the world. With every warmth of your teardrops on my neck, I am cleaned of my shame, the shame of not finding enough time to say those precious things. Can a person spend their entire life waiting for a moment, not even realising they are waiting for it? Apparently, they can. At least, I did. Now, Val, take me in your palm like a golden snitch and never let me go. Let leaves abandon their trees to journey with the cold autumn breezes, let dewdrops leave the green leaves they rest upon to reunite with the earth, let the unfortunate mothers dump their beautiful babies wrapped in newspapers on doorsteps – but never let me go.

As each iota of his heart brimmed with the warmth of these emotions, Alex gently wiped away the tears in Val's eyes with his thumb - not because they did not look beautiful there. He traced his fingers through the Champion’s hair sparkling like a blaze. Alex’s heart, which had felt like it might leap out with every one of Val’s glances, was now cloaked in a strange tranquillity. Then he leaned in tenderly to plant a kiss on Val's temple. A small and gentle, delicate and warm kiss. "You didn't delay for even a second," he whispered softly, "and you didn't arrive a moment too soon." He squeezed the Seeker between his arms into his heart, wanting to make Val feel safe like a protected and unmolested jewel, to envelop him with all the tenderness he deserved. If a spell were cast upon them to turn the pair into stone it would only be a pleasure, a privilege for Alexander.

@Aida Mòrsgor-Ama Ellwood

Blanket godmod perms over Alex given to Valentin's writer.

Bawling wisteria eyes buried deep within the architecture of Alexander’s neck, Valentin emptied out his heart to the darkest of his depths as every long-suppressed emotion flew freely out of him. The shifting tones and timbres of his sobs soaked the Hufflepuff boy with the greatest crying Valentin had ever shed. Then, at the end of all his keening, Valentin froze at the lowest nadir of his exhalation.

As elegantly as the bow of a crane, the golden-haired boy leaned down and placed a kiss upon Valya’s temple, restarting the seeker’s breathing, and then what did the seeker find at the very bottom but a fresh wellspring of laughter. Giddy joy flowed out through pure peals of multi-coloured mirth, ringing up towards the moon like the most radiant of birdsong. In Alexander’s arms, Valentin shook from the sheer ecstasy of letting go of everything, everything, to find everything anew once more. Here broke a new juncture in Valentin’s life from which everything would tumble differently, like the gifts of a stormcloud crossing just far enough that its waters began to flow at new angles across the opposite slope of a mountain ridge.

"You didn't delay for even a second," whispered Alexander, "and you didn't arrive a moment too soon."

“Every wind there is and will ever be, speed me to your side whenever, wherever you need. On every blackened night, any morning whimsy, and each midday yearning, pray tell what your heart most desires to me.” Squeezed tight between Alexander’s arms, Valentin melded into equilibrium at last, balanced against the other boy’s heart, and so closed he his eyes in exquisite peace. “Take now for your own this one wishing star, and never me let go. I have flown far across the cold void of space and came to know such great worlds along my path, but none have matched my devotion enough to capture me at last. As the sun of living illuminates but corrodes me ion by ion, use my energy as your own power, through which we may find unity and thereafter enrich that which is worthy.”

If Alexander was a stone that rolled down from a moonlit summit above the clouds, then it was in the same soil he collided with a frozen hunk of comet that had fallen there, too, cascading down through the eons of Valentin’s sublimating bloodline. Pulling back in order to take in every last minutia of Alexander’s expressions, Valentin committed everything to memory: the texture of his darling snidget hair, the hues of his hazy viridescent eyes shifting in each new angle of light, and the emotions conveyed through the ever-changing portrait of his face.

“For once in my life, I feel absolutely free. Here, at the edge of all possibilities, I know I am oblivious to the infinitude of choices we could make, but wherever this moment leads, I surrender myself to the simple wish that we stay fundamentally together. I don’t know the cost, just as I don’t know the future, but the magic of wishing needs such faith to continually water the seeds of any would-be orchard. If I simply do not have enough to offer what you need, then at least take up my lifestream as a contribution to the fulfillment of your dreams. Should I simply make the stars shine brighter for you during your time on Earth, then I will consider my own wish fulfilled.”

Valentin’s eyes gazed into Alexander’s with serene sincerity, and up raised the tips of the seeker’s fingers to trace the angles of the boy’s eyebrows. Watching him to the tune of the night creatures burbling and cricketing all around the lakeshore, Valya felt like there were no fixed barriers between any of them on this perfect evening. Time would make every thing into everything soon enough. Accepting that even he, the “White Immortal,” was surely oblivious of the true depths of eternity, Valentin asked himself what he would want if this were to be the last moment in existence for the both of them. What was a seeker if not one who reached out for a dream while there was still enough electricity in their heart to power them onwards?

The fingertips of Valya’s right hand slipped off the corner of Alexander’s eyebrow and fell across his cheekbone like a waterfall before curling under his chin as if to support him. Then, running his thumb across the texture of the boy’s lower lip, Valentin smiled gently.

“If all this is what you want, Alexander, then tell me your heart’s desire and seal your wish with a kiss.”

Amidst a joyful feeling skirting with boundless harmony, Alexander wore a grateful expression. The fair-haired boy directed every ounce of his attention towards the disarmingly alluring notes of the melody that Val’s amethystine eyes, probably hewn out the side of a mythical mountain, had roused within him. Holding his grounds against the headmasterly gormlessness of this execrable world rife with an inordinate number of Frankensteinian eyes jaundiced by rotten hierarchies and maleficent stratagems in unison, Alexander, with a broad and bland smile on his face, decided to make every single particle of his being capable of love huddle around the soothing presence of the Seeker. Like an irremovable elephantine overcoat, this decision clung to his shoulders with all its might, and all the bridges that could have led him back were burned to the ashes in a ragingly iridescent inferno ignited by his heart splattered with effulgent sparks. Despite the caustically mournful lines written by usually doleful and always becloaked troubadours bereft of love, and without being affected by the morose preaches of spinster-faced pachydermatous grown-ups raining fire and brimstone, the boy’s credence in love was still staunch. Throughout the several yesteryears that could instil despair in a young heart, even the saturninely silent and derelict streets of Manchester impeccably epitomising a Dickensian drear, hand in hand with all the wizened and self-loathing Victorian bricks and mortars, could not manage to quench that glaring light of hope from Alexander’s shrubland-green eyes.

What made this child of nature, oscillating like a pendulum between the pampering scrutiny of his grandmother and often disapproving glances of his mother, impervious and immune to the widely held conviction that wisdom lay in the sour point that there was no genuine intimacy between two people in this life truly worth experiencing? Alexander often witnessed that so many people around him, in their maggoty exasperation and with their rasping voices, mordaciously claimed that since the horrible day when the waves of time gone were swallowed by the tides of time to come love has been looking like a pathetic creature of meaningless endurance. Still, like an inexperienced mortician examining his first cadaver, Alexander’s face had a habit of instantiating an undisguised loathe whenever he thought about such assertations. He, even though he had an unmistakably self-effacing character, always found the idea to be the spearhead of the case of love amongst young teens tempting. He looked at Valentin’s eyes and at the very instant he knew that what resided there was a chance to take the first step towards that goal. The Seeker, with his extremely suitable name for that cause, Valentin, would be his saint; and Alexander was completely ready to devote his life to glorifying his holy name.

In an effort to memorise every curve of his face and imprint every single emotional nuance that flickered within his eyes, Alexander, like an idol made of clay, stood still and watched Valentin in awe. The more he watched the boy's face, that beautiful, divine, jewel-like face, the more convinced Alexander became that the Durmstrang boy should be kept away from the waters of the lake. “Should he catch a glimpse of his own reflection in the water, he might become entranced by his own beauty and remain intoxicated forever,” Alexander thought.

The golden-haired boy found himself speechless as if he had swallowed his tongue, as if he had been abandoned by his mother tongue, as if he transcended every constructed phenomenon to the point that only the primordial folds of his brain, predating the evolution of language, remained operational. In Valentin, he beheld a beauty that rendered a nightingale, which had sung as if it wanted to tear its lungs to pieces in the face of every beauty it had witnessed throughout the years, silent and reverent. One by one, every word Alexander knew kicked the chair beneath them as they bore witness to Valentin's majestic presence, turning his mind into a graveyard of dead words that would make vultures drool. No wonder. If Valentin were to conceal himself in a corner and reveal only his heel, it would be enough to ignite a war. As he commenced his song a conflict would arise between the key and the lock, the nadir and the zenith would confront each other in a battle.

But Valentin's final sentence, that sentence of pure words bathed in holiness, foretold that he would not use this destructive power bestowed on him. The Seeker was not to tear the world apart but to bring harmony to Alex's world.

“I love you.”

Alexander ran his fingers through Valentin's hair, white as if it had taken on the role of the moon's representative on earth, and wrapped his hand around the Durmstrang boy's neck. He brought his face closer to the Seeker's, his heart pounding with a throb similar to the muffled rumble in the first moments of an earthquake. When their lips finally met, for an immeasurably short period of time, Alexander thought he would melt from the terrifying heat that covered every part of his body. Yet, somehow, he did not melt.

Somewhere nearby, a swarm of crickets was serenading.

@Aida Mòrsgor-Ama Ellwood

Blanket godmod perms over Alex given to Valentin's writer.

“Whoever could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very swift. Thinking of oneself gives little happiness. If, however, one feels much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of oneself but of one's ideal. This is far, and only the swift shall reach it and are delighted.”

– Nietzsche

If falling for Alexander on first hearing his voice was to lose his mind, then Valentin didn’t want any mind that would tell him to do otherwise. Was not this connection the stuff of which fairy tales could only fantasize? Whatever ramifications this moment would have, even if it meant he would die tomorrow, Valentin would have it no other way.

“…And I love you, Alexander. I love you with all my heart and soul.”

With the boy’s fingertips running through Valya’s hair, white eyelashes fluttered with bedazzlement. Alexander’s arm encircled the seeker’s neck, his face drawing near, and a curtain of golden hair shifted like a glint off the wings of an augurey coming into view. Like a thousand colors flooding into Valentin’s veins through his wide open heart, unrestrainable bliss consumed him from inside out: Alexander’s velvet lips melted into his own. Yet, for as much as the seeker had been waiting for this moment his entire life, suddenly it felt like no time had passed at all and this was but the inevitable outcome of being born. Surrendering every last piece of himself into the passion of their kiss, Valentin knew at last they had arrived home.

“I’m yours. I always was, even if I did not understand before.” The seeker’s hands swept over the planes of Alexander’s back, pulling the boy into him tighter as they crossed. “Now, no matter what temporary distance interludes between us, you will always know that I exist. You’ll never have to be alone at heart again, as you’ll always have me, from the deepest fundament up to the minutiae passing through each second of our days. This is the beginning of a new book of life for us, and how grateful I am to have made it into your arms.”

Bowing his head, Valentin pressed another kiss onto Alexander’s mouth, and he held on for the longest, sweetest moment he’d ever lived. No serenity from the sublimest music, nor revelling in wild freedom, nor the joy of loving life itself could match the peace in the seeker’s heart now as all of these unified with adoration of his beloved within each pounding beat of his heart. Each facet of Alexander – the rhythm of his breathing, the texture of his skin, and the scent of his hair – these all soaked into Valentin like words spoken to a newborn. Only slowly, tenderly would Valya pull back away and savor the precious flavor on his lips.

“My love, I’d do anything for you. At last, this shooting star has been captured. If this has all moved at the speed of light, it is only because nothing has ever felt so right, at least for me. Know that I give all my faith to you because my heart demands it, as it has never asked for anything more earnestly. Forgive me, please, the mistakes I will make, and know that it is only cause for joy that I have so much to learn about you. What’s really important, I already know in my soul, and from here it is only a matter of caring for love's rose as it blossoms more each day. Call upon me – no matter what – so that I will hear the voice of your heart and come running to your side.” Leaning back, Valentin grasped Alexander’s hand and raised it into a kiss across his knuckles.

“Would you come with me? I’d like to take you up closer to the moon, on my broom. With you in my arms, who knows, maybe we'll start finding a method to get us all the way there, together.” If Alexander agreed, Valentin would finally stand and collect his oud in one hand while holding out his other. He’d never walked holding a boy’s hand before. Then, tonight would be the start of many firsts for Valentin, and surely for Alexander as well.

“Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us”

Hesse

Alexander Harland, akin to a wayfarer who, having ventured far from the hearth of his native abode, suddenly halted in the poignant realisation of a precipice of remembrance, grappling hopelessly through the labyrinthine alleys of the realm of memory, before resolutely plodding forth with the burdensome weight of the yesteryears, decided to continue his journey with a fragment of his spirit stranded in the rearview mirror of the time. What was it that the boy's mind was chasing after, thinking that he had forgotten it or under the delusion that he had long ago lost it? Who knows?

'Our homes are much more than mere bricks and mortars,' Alexander thought, 'to us, they used to encompass an entire city. Similarly, our vicinities are not just a couple of neighbourhoods but they constitute a whole universe. Those places formed the entire framework for our silly adventures and exceptionally inept romances have a habit of speaking in a language known only to us. In and around these spaces unseen by foreign eyes fairies reveal their mottled faces.' Human life has always unfolded not solely within the material realm but within a domain that, in our hearts, at times transforms into heaven and at others into hell.

Valentin's voice, which sounded like a violin string revealing a melody that promised nothing but tranquillity, and his captivating countenance, which held Alex's green eyes in rapt attention, were the main triggers for these long-dormant thoughts within the dotard mind of the golden-haired boy. Any action less than tender in response to such grace would be seen as unpardonably ignominious. Because when a person is encountered with a face that reminds him of a home, a face that heralds a nest, he inevitably looks for the place in his heart that he finds closest to this word.

Alex suddenly realised how inadequate words were. How unhelpful those sound games, with all the meaning attached to them, were to say all the really precious things. As the young badger paddled in the sea of his swelling emotions, he waited for the words to throw him a rope to save him, but in vain! Those fancy words, which ran to the door of his mind when they needed to be written on a piece of paper, were now crammed down his throat with embarrassment when he needed to say something to a lover. Only visitors from the mysterious world of facial expressions and gentle touches were ready to come to his rescue. These poor pilgrims, who entered the door ajar of his soul with alms bowls in their hands, had an expression on their faces as if to say, 'We will find you whenever you need us'.

Then Alex looked at Valentin with an expression on his face that he hoped would be sufficient to convey his feelings. With a small, gentle, fragile smile, and like a rose tilted by the wind, he reached out to the nightingale before his eyes and took his hand. This feeling of comfort was enough for him to be embraced by the arms of compassion, an emotion even greater than love and perfect in itself. Alex snuggled closer to the boy whose hand he held, despite the height difference that prevented their shoulders from aligning.

"I wish we could fly far away together," the Harland boy murmured, unable to prevent a slight blush from forming on his cheeks, "where no one can see us." Then he thought for a moment, "Moon might not be a bad choice, my love." My love... Had Alex ever even had the opportunity to imagine that these words might one day slip from his lips? But it was love's custom to come like a raid, unannounced, like a pimple on the back. The waves of the Hogwarts boy's heart had risen, and now, no breakwater could stand against them.

@Aida Mòrsgor-Ama Ellwood