[private] can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: River (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=82) +---- Thread: [private] can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn (/showthread.php?tid=28591) |
can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - despoina - 12-30-2020 DESPOINA She dreams of him, even as she shuns the rest of the world. I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - Torryn - 01-05-2021 choke them on the ashes of the dreams they burned He looks for her everywhere. He looks for her from every shadow that he lingers in, from one corner of this land to the other. He glances across their faces, he searches the outskirts for a single glimpse of iridescent blue, but to no avail. She is just as good at disappearing as he is, and he wonders if this is the universe’s way of punishing him – again. As if being turned into a shadow that feeds off fear and sorrow was not enough. As if he did not already punish himself over and over for all of his wrong-doings, as if he did not already live a life of solitude in an effort to protect anyone he might care about. The universe must be protecting her, then. And he would accept it if he wasn't so selfish. He knows that he is not good for her – not good for anyone, but least of all her. Terror and misfortune seemed to follow him wherever he went, and the last thing he would ever want is to bring harm to her, but hadn't he already done that? He had looked her in the eye and told her he had been with someone else; he had watched the way his words had bruised her, and watched, too, how effectively she walled him off. He would have left her alone if the world had not gone dark. It had been thrilling at first. Where once he had stuck to the shadowed parts – the forests, mostly – Beqanna was suddenly wide open to him. But the longer the dark stayed, the more foreboding it felt. He was familiar with darkness and danger – he was the monster in the shadows, the red-eyed creature of nightmares. This feeling that he could not shake, though, told him that this was more. Something more than him, something bigger. He looks for her with greater urgency after that, and though he has imagined a thousand times what it would be like to finally see her face, she still catches him off guard. He stutters to a stop, his bright red eyes piercing through the darkness to find her face. “Despoina,” his voice nearly cracks with disuse, and he worries what he must look like to her now. They have often met in darkness, but not like this. The shape of him is nearly indiscernible in this endless night, save for the eyes that glow like lit rubies. “I was looking for you,” he tells her truthfully, resisting the urge to step closer to her. torryn RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - despoina - 01-15-2021 DESPOINA It hurts to look at him almost as much as it hurt to never see him—and that she doesn’t understand. I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - Torryn - 01-24-2021 choke them on the ashes of the dreams they burned He can taste her pain and he wishes it did not taste as sweet as it did. There was a version of himself, long dead and lost in a maze of caves underground, that would have never dreamt of hurting her. A version of himself that would have seen the bruised look in her eyes and been cleaved in two by the pain on her face. But now all that remains is this shadowed shell of what he had once been, a smoke-filled skeleton that fed on pain and anger rather than light and love. He wars with himself, he fights this urge to press a finger to her pain and see how sharp he can make it; the part of him that recognizes how wrong it is, the part of him that doesn't want to be the source of her sorrow. The sound of her response — a single word, cold and heavy — makes something inside of him flinch, but it does not register in the shadows of his face. “Because I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he answers her honestly. He did want her to be okay — he wanted her to be happy, he wanted her to be with him but away from him, he wanted her safe but he wanted her all to himself. He couldn’t have all of those things. He knows this, but he refuses to see it. She catches him off guard when she shifts, and he steps back in confusion. The confusion eventually caves way to a flicker of anger, though he cannot place why. He is not sure if she was trying to intimidate him, or trying to drive him away, but he finds that both ideas send pinpricks of fury down his spine. It is difficult to see with the dark around them, but he shifts, too. The shadows that made him equine spin and tighten, leaving behind a canine shadow-beast to nearly match hers. It was a mistake on his part — he lacked control in this form, and when he speaks to her the words are a guttural growl spoken between sharp teeth. “You’re being difficult.” torryn RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - despoina - 01-31-2021 DESPOINA There is relief in finally giving into the anger. I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - Torryn - 02-16-2021 choke them on the ashes of the dreams they burned There is a moment where he thinks he is going to fight her. He imagines them clashing, hellhound and hell-shadow, and he wonders if he could actually bring himself to do it. He has attacked others before, but never anyone once he has learned their name. But to attack her, that would be something else entirely. She is not a stranger, and not a passerby that he has used for idle conversation as he stirs and toys with their emotions until he is full. She is the girl that haunts his days and his nights, the one that makes him wish he could just for once not be the monster he has become. He would never forgive himself for lashing at her. He doesn’t see how he could. He has hurt her before, on accident; he knows he has left a mark on her heart that never should have existed, and he knows he should have tried harder to heal it. Instead he had run, he had let himself think that by leaving her, he was doing her a favor. With their nearly matching red eyes locked on each other, both their hackles raised and teeth eager to sink into something, he realizes the full weight of what he has done. Seamlessly, he shifts back. The shadows roll and twist, his strange skeleton clicking into place until he is equine again, or as equine as he will ever be. “You’re right,” he tells her, his voice quiet, almost defeated. Holding her in his gaze he does something that he rarely does; something that he might regret, but he is so desperate to tame that anger in her eyes, even just a little. Very carefully and subtly he begins to drain the anger from her—nothing too drastic, just enough to hopefully persuade her from still wanting to attack. He doesn't consume any of it, either. He lets it all spill into the air and the ground, lets it dissolve and fade away. He does not take the hurt or the sorrow; he leaves it because he knows he has no right to use his power to take them from her. He had caused it, and he would not allow himself the easy way out. “I’m sorry, Despoina. And I would do anything to get you to forgive me.” Involuntarily he steps forward, but he stops himself, afraid of angering her again, afraid of making her leave. “Tell me. Tell me what it would take, and I'll do it.” torryn RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - despoina - 02-20-2021 DESPOINA The anger is such a shield for sadness that it does not take long for it to fold. The second he begins to drain it—the second he looks at her and apologizes—she loses her grip entirely. It bleeds from her and she is left as a husk with nothing but her sadness to swell in her, the tides washing up along the shores of her heart. She shifts as he does, and she feels even smaller than she had before. She shrinks, dropping the delicate curve of her nose down to her chest, her inky hair curtaining in front of her iridescent face. I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - Torryn - 02-25-2021 choke them on the ashes of the dreams they burned He can see the way she nearly wilts after he has removed all the anger from her, and he almost feels guilty for it. He would rather see her bristling and furious than subdued the way she is now, as if he had reprimanded her. But he is weak and he also cannot bear for the anger to be directed at him, doesn't know how to shoulder it. He has not yet learned how to fix the things that he breaks, does not even realize that this is going to be an uphill, losing battle that he fights for the rest of his life. He stares at her, beautiful and delicate, with that feral side that he had never seen until now. He stares at her and thinks of what they could have been like if he was not this. He wonders if she would have even spared him a second glance as the plain roan boy he had been. There had been nothing special about him—brown eyes in a family of yellow-eyed shadow creatures, with no kind of affinity to the shadows to speak of. He can’t decide which is worse; being this nightmare that she at least was drawn to, or never being seen by her at all. Slowly, he shakes his shadowed head, his head angled down to hide the harsh glow of his red eyes from her. “I don’t think we can be friends, Despoina.” The tendrils of shadow that shift and twine around his face shield the way he is clenching his jaw, and the way he grinds his teeth as if he could turn the emotions to dust and swallow them. He wishes he could ignore the hunger—a different kind than what he is used to—gnawing like some rabid beast in the pit of his gut. But before he knows it he is stepping forward, and he sweeps his nose along the bottom of her jaw. He holds her there in the glow of his red eyes for a moment, and then hesitantly brushes his lips against her cheek. “I don’t want you to be my friend,” his voice is a low rasp now, and he is close enough to feel the warmth that radiates from her skin; everyone always felt so warm compared to him, but she was something more, something electric. “I want you to be mine.” torryn RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - despoina - 02-28-2021 DESPOINA Despoina doesn’t know what she is without her sorrow. I guess the sound of your voice in the aching will just have to do RE: can you see a light burning round the bend; torryn - Torryn - 03-21-2021 choke them on the ashes of the dreams they burned The new beast that he can feel coiling in his gut is not one that he is familiar with. He knows how to sate the other beast — he knows how to find sorrow and rage and ruin, knows how to coax it from them if it is not organically there. He hates that he has now grown so familiar with it that he can pinpoint its exact needs and wants and knows how to keep it at bay. But this, this gnawing need to have her, to lay claim to her in a way that he would never let anyone else, that is something else entirely. He had not felt like this that night with Breckin; she had been lovely and captivating, but she had not been the answer he was looking for. When Despoina reaches for him, when she presses herself beyond the shadow and to the strange mass beneath that served as his skin, it is like she has melted herself into his bones. He can feel the stutter of her heart, a predatory sense that he wishes he did not have, but in this moment she has transcended from victim and prey into something else entirely. He is no longer searching for her sadness; he is not trying to draw away her sorrow and despair. He only wants to pull her close, to wrap her in his shadows until they devour her whole. He drapes his shadowed head over her neck, the long, smoke-like tendrils of his mane now billowing around the two of them as he brings her in close. “I wish I could promise that I’ll never hurt you,” he rasps into the groove of her throat, where he runs cool lips against her skin. “But I don’t want to make you promises that I cannot keep,” he continues, the words quiet and laced in sorrow because he wishes he could promise her things like that; wishes that he did not have an insatiable need that was indifferent to her own feelings, the beast that was sure to break her heart. “You could do so much better than me, Despoina,” he pushes closer, shadows crawling across her shoulders as he drags his nose down her back, a possessive growl building in his chest when he breaths into her hip, “but I’m far too selfish to let you.” torryn |