The Last Embers of Eden

Aiden sat outside his shack and scraped together enough money to buy a drink for Dio, whom he had just met, so Dio would not be beaten half to death by his awful father. Aiden earned two shillings a week. Dio used the money to buy less than half a gallon of rum, diluted it with water and poured it back into an empty bottle, then spent what was left on a packet of slow-acting poison that would last two months. He could have repaid the two-shilling debt the following week. Dio repaid it for a hundred years, and thought he had long since paid more than enough. Only as he lay dying did he realize that Aiden had still given more than he ever had: not money or power, but flowers and love. To Aiden, Dio was a brief flash of fire in his life, one that set him alight. The soul that began burning when they first met in 1876 was finally extinguished in 2011, with the arrival of the new world. As the years passed, he remained as beautiful as Eden. In the end, even the last embers will burn out. // A heartbreaking, universally adored character. // Dio is the one true love. After Dio's death, it becomes a story of a widower. Theme: "One day, the sun and moon will both sink beneath the sea. Then I will hold you again."