08-16-2016, 09:17 AM
To love is to die.
He has not loved since she ripped out his heart and spit all over it.
With her spittle, and the adoration in the eyes of his flesh and blood, he glued the pieces of his heart back together but it was too late, the poison had set in deep and Mandan was forever changed.
(If he had only stayed, never heeded the wind’s call to wander, he might be queen’s consort and still her lover but she tossed him aside like yesterday’s trash and played the hurt abandoned mare so easily. He never thought it within her to do that, but she loved her big spotted king more, and he loved nothing and not again.)
He had only truths now - harsh truths, a boorish mouth and enough pain in him to make his joints ache as if arthritic. Mandan would prefer a crippled life of hermitage but instead, he surrounds himself by those that care as little as he does - they all just want a haven from life, and somehow, they’ve intruded upon his. Or, he has offered them intrusion to his badlands, country as rugged as his face is as it stays turned to her in the dark. She glows, as if lit from within by heart’s blood and something else that he cannot put a name to because he lacks it, passion or purpose, maybe. He is bereft of either, to be honest, and while capable of a lie, he cannot lie to himself except where she-who-shall-not-be-named is concerned.
(He lied to himself, like she does - like they all do.)
“I suppose not,” he concedes to her statement and her shrug; she is altogether something else that is not likely to have come down amongst them often or very much - like a star, but not. Her next statement intrigues him despite his best efforts to show little to no interest in her, but he has already been caught in a subdued state and he is not his usual harsh self in her glimmering presence. “Why not?” and he cannot help the note of curiosity that has attached itself to his words; why do they not look at her? A horn-tip knocks against a branch above, knicking it, as he adjusts his head to regard her further. How could they not marvel at her, at the light she makes that shivers across her skin? Maybe that was starlight on glass, rounding out hips and ribs, smoothing down her skin, trembling across the make of her that made his breath hitch in his throat.
He cannot lie to himself, her beauty outshines even the salmon-bay of a mare that he once admired - loved, even. Mandan snorts to himself, not usually given to how one looks - beauty hides the cruel heart within, and he knows this all too well, as he lifts his head and tangles his horns further into the branches. He can feel a twig poke his head and he does not jerk away from the subtle pain of it; it serves to enforce the idea that beauty causes pain and even the delicate look of her is not enough to make him fall prey to the things that flare up in his brain, bright hot spots of things he will give no name to - not this night, maybe not ever. Glass, she says, and he almost murmurs it back to her but his mouth is sworn to silence as he swallows back the word that dances on his tongue.
“Impossibility should make no one uncomfortable in this day and age,” he mutters, feeling a stab of something horrid in his heart. By now, not a single one of them should be shocked by the unexpected - the land is rife with things that should by no rights exist but they do, and she is not any stranger than some of them that lurk out there. He cannot help himself though, Mandan is given to his impulses and they tell him to comfort her, so he does with a quick touch of his muzzle to her neck. She feels hard and smooth but alive, so very alive! That shocks him more than anything else about her does, that she feels as hot as the heat that she gives off in the dark, a tiny odd glow that should hurt his eyes but doesn’t.
He has not loved since she ripped out his heart and spit all over it.
With her spittle, and the adoration in the eyes of his flesh and blood, he glued the pieces of his heart back together but it was too late, the poison had set in deep and Mandan was forever changed.
(If he had only stayed, never heeded the wind’s call to wander, he might be queen’s consort and still her lover but she tossed him aside like yesterday’s trash and played the hurt abandoned mare so easily. He never thought it within her to do that, but she loved her big spotted king more, and he loved nothing and not again.)
He had only truths now - harsh truths, a boorish mouth and enough pain in him to make his joints ache as if arthritic. Mandan would prefer a crippled life of hermitage but instead, he surrounds himself by those that care as little as he does - they all just want a haven from life, and somehow, they’ve intruded upon his. Or, he has offered them intrusion to his badlands, country as rugged as his face is as it stays turned to her in the dark. She glows, as if lit from within by heart’s blood and something else that he cannot put a name to because he lacks it, passion or purpose, maybe. He is bereft of either, to be honest, and while capable of a lie, he cannot lie to himself except where she-who-shall-not-be-named is concerned.
(He lied to himself, like she does - like they all do.)
“I suppose not,” he concedes to her statement and her shrug; she is altogether something else that is not likely to have come down amongst them often or very much - like a star, but not. Her next statement intrigues him despite his best efforts to show little to no interest in her, but he has already been caught in a subdued state and he is not his usual harsh self in her glimmering presence. “Why not?” and he cannot help the note of curiosity that has attached itself to his words; why do they not look at her? A horn-tip knocks against a branch above, knicking it, as he adjusts his head to regard her further. How could they not marvel at her, at the light she makes that shivers across her skin? Maybe that was starlight on glass, rounding out hips and ribs, smoothing down her skin, trembling across the make of her that made his breath hitch in his throat.
He cannot lie to himself, her beauty outshines even the salmon-bay of a mare that he once admired - loved, even. Mandan snorts to himself, not usually given to how one looks - beauty hides the cruel heart within, and he knows this all too well, as he lifts his head and tangles his horns further into the branches. He can feel a twig poke his head and he does not jerk away from the subtle pain of it; it serves to enforce the idea that beauty causes pain and even the delicate look of her is not enough to make him fall prey to the things that flare up in his brain, bright hot spots of things he will give no name to - not this night, maybe not ever. Glass, she says, and he almost murmurs it back to her but his mouth is sworn to silence as he swallows back the word that dances on his tongue.
“Impossibility should make no one uncomfortable in this day and age,” he mutters, feeling a stab of something horrid in his heart. By now, not a single one of them should be shocked by the unexpected - the land is rife with things that should by no rights exist but they do, and she is not any stranger than some of them that lurk out there. He cannot help himself though, Mandan is given to his impulses and they tell him to comfort her, so he does with a quick touch of his muzzle to her neck. She feels hard and smooth but alive, so very alive! That shocks him more than anything else about her does, that she feels as hot as the heat that she gives off in the dark, a tiny odd glow that should hurt his eyes but doesn’t.