i heard there was a secret chord; ALL KINGDOM

[Reuen]

Is it just me, Or do you wonder if we're put here just to see, Dreams were dark, tainted. Shadowy figures wove their hands around me, tried to keep me there, lost within the empty space of my mind. They whispered terrible things. Lied, cheated me into staying there, wide-eyed and silent. They had sewn my mouth with stitches, took my tongue from me, my eyes. I could not talk, I could not see, but I could hear their whispering. Darkness, darkness with the thump, thump of my heart. The told me things, things that made no sense, things that froze me to my core. It was Mast's call that had them falling to the ground. their words fading but to a whisper in my ears. When I awoke, sweat patched my chocolate skin. Beads trickled down my face, my neck and behind the tender flesh of my loins. I lay there in the bushes, stuck on brambles and thorns. For a moment I gathered myself. Listened and found where Mast was. My eyes were shadows, and everything I saw blurred. It took me a while to get up and wearily make my way over, but I did. Sliding with every step, my scarred frame, sweaty yet healing now more and more each day. The raised fleshy ridges were not as scarlet in colour, peachy now and were showing greater signs of skin regrowth. Oh, but I'd be scarred as the trees with their nodes and riddles in their bark. As much as a mystery as the way the wind blows through the trees, telling them secrets that no one understands. I halt just before Mast, watching the King with a brighter eye than normal. I take his words in, ingesting, digesting. The roll around my empty skull. It seems foreign, indechiperable but I gradually make it out. Childlike, I turn my head, looking at each. Wichita. Tioga. I smile at the young girl, and turn my gaze to her mother. I owed her something, something that I would never know how to repay. Perhaps one day, one day I would. Fiasko, the painted queen. Jason next, I nod to them each, my nose bobbing in further, tossing up and day, side to side. I still feel as though my lips are stitched tight. My lungs wanting to call out, to cry with the agony that longs to fall from my mute tongue. But I open my mouth, and nothing comes. My salmon tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth, and my teeth grind nonchalantly. 'Home.' the eerie sound slips from my lips. Strange as the mysterious cry of the wolves at night, simple as the flutter of roses in bloom, and as gentle as the kiss of a butterfly wing. 'Home.' Because the Gates are home, and safe and I feel as though nothing can hurt me here. Even though the shadows past my vision, enter my mind and whisper dark things to me. I will always be safe here. 'I owe the Gates. Owe the Gates.' I pause, 'Gates are Safe, safe, safe.' Little do they all know the knots in my tail, my mane. The fresh wounds across my flanks. They all had a purpose, a nightmare that seemed to real, I feel the swell inside of me. My hollow eyes reflect the nightmare of nights past. Iron. Metallic and strong. Blood, as tangy as the steel across my skin. The pain. Oh, the pain, it had been like before, but sharp, intrusive. I lower my head, nose burying into the grass underfoot. How much heartache we can take, Without hanging from the tallest tree? - resident of the gates -