you can't get struck by lightning
if you're not dancing in the rain
As tormented as he might be (like a deep, unsettled sea roaring against the cavities of his body), Hestoni will come to realize that this silence between them will allow him to be the most peaceful he will be for quite a while. There is only the crackling of the flames that dance across her body, a warm noise amid the sharpness of Nerine. While she hears the music of the Jungle in his powerful respirations, he hears the melody of their marriage in the chatter of the fire. It had been the flames that had drawn him to her in the first place — and then it had been the fierceness of her tongue that had kept him there. The noise is a stark reminder of the nights spent sleepless in their marriage bed, of the days they would chase each other along trails and beneath waterfalls, of the seasons that ebbed and flowed with the pregnancy and labor of each child they created as a symptom of their love.
And so he swells with love in the moments before she breaks his heart.
He hadn’t meant for her name to drag tears from her eyes and force her to lean down as if the entirety of the sky had fallen upon her shoulders. Perhaps the sky had fallen on her shoulders when they sealed their matrimony — at least his sky had, colors of a romantic sunset sky dotted with wispy clouds settling across her spine. It leaves Scorch as the one to keep that pretty atmosphere from sharpening like a knife and slicing his throat, spilling all that lovesick blood into the bitter Nerine snow. Perhaps she had lost the reminder of her purpose in his absence. He had been there to offer her kisses and words of encouragement, softly massaging away the pieces of her that ached from the weight of that sunset sky. He had been there to nestle against her when the sky turned dark and heavy from the thunderstorm clouds and he had been there to cherish the moments when the sky was as light and dainty as a butterfly’s wing. Yet his disappearance had made the kisses and encouragement and touching and joy grow dusty and cold. And perhaps she had forgotten.
Perhaps the broadness and the strength of his red shoulders had made it easier for Hestoni to carry her sky — to lift it high enough where she could watch the birds swoop and cry above her head. He keeps her sky with him now, cradling the weight of it against his back like a precious babe. And yet she has dropped the weight of his own sunset atmosphere; it has shattered into a million pieces and formed itself into a weapon that will strike his tender heart and the ache of that pain will force him to consider her own sky (yet he will merely consider it, never dropping it).
Regardless of skies and marriages and the metaphors that bind the two together, Scorch’s tears form a dragon’s mist against her cheeks and he takes a step forward. Even as the heat of her flame threatens to eradicate the protection of his skin and muscle, he takes a single step forward. It is the action of a man longing to comfort the one whom he adores, even without knowing what is causing her sorrow. And then she is erratic; a shifting mosaic of emotions and behaviors and responses that Hestoni almost can’t tell the difference from one stained glass piece from another.
Her laughter scares him. It is frothy with tears and laced with irony. There are hints of insanity in that laugh, so raw and jagged-edged that his heart grows cold and nervous amid the warmth of his chest. When she stops — as cold and stony as the granite cliffs that line Nerine — he almost knows what she is going to say. There are no specifics, but their hearts and souls and minds are so tightly wound that he can feel the wrongness of it. He can feel the pressure of the pain already beginning to snip at the strings of his heart, unwinding that instrumental muscle to drain the blood from the vessels of his body. She is a shell of herself, still wrapped in that protective fire, and that fact drags a shaky breath from his nervous lungs.
The bullets are not weak. They are true to their course, having plotted their angles and lines in the moments between her inhale and their deployment. And they hit him with such a force that he staggers physically, kneeling in the snow at her feet. The stone he had tripped over moments before pierces into the skin of his right knee. Although blood spurts forth from the gash (staining that once-pure snow into shades of deep maroon; as though it were a symbolism of the streaks of pain she leaves on their once-holy marriage) he feels no pain from it.
Hestoni’s heart is a mess and he cannot breathe. Those damned bullets have found the meat of his very being — the power of his heart and the swell of his lungs and the tenderness of his brain — and decidedly shredded them all until they are meager pieces of what had once been. The world is hazy; Scorch is hazy. The smoke from her shotgun’s muzzle has shrouded his once-rosy world in colors of gray and black and torture.
Not only once did she betray him, but twice.
Not only once did she seek to find another’s love, but twice.
Not only once will she bring forth a bastard child, but twice.
Not only once she has broken his heart, but twofold.
Finally, he can breathe. It’s a long rattling breath at the end of her begging; a statement of an exclamation point to her sobbing sea of apologies. It’s a breath that is slippery and crackling with the tears Hestoni hadn’t noticed sliding down his face. They fall into the bloodsoaked snow, mixing together to create a wintery concoction of pain and grief and the sharpness of betrayal. When his head finally rises from its craned position close to the ground (nose almost touching the bitterness of the snow), he doesn’t see the absence of her fire.
And how entirely ironic and symbolic is that: their romance began with the warmth of those flames and their romance shall break with the disappearance of those flames.
“I…” He aims to say more, but the sky she had vowed to hold is crushing him now. Tender, lovesick clouds of pale pink and rose gold dance around his head like mocking cherubs. He is lost in the brilliant colors of that sunset sky that crashes against his windpipe now, and the air lacks the oxygen he needs to survive. She has let it slip from her shoulders in favor of Brennen and Brunhild and the children they have produced and now it is crushing, crushing, crushing. “You…”
His face twists as he rises from his position bent at his knees by the weight of her sins. The heat of his blood streams down his legs now, soaking into the feathers of his legs and exposing the slick edges the stone has created. “You will stay here.” It’s the coldest his voice has ever been and even then it is warm: a deep rumble reminiscent of the Jungle and its humidity, the sound of a waterfall eroding away the minerals of rocks, the grumble of an unsettled jaguar among the shade and the bramble. “This is your home.” As much as the Jungle is their forever home, lost to the time and wrath of Beqanna, he knows she has found something akin to security in Nerine. “You have…” He pauses, face twisting into an expression of heartbreak that he has never made before. “You have family here.” Family that is not his. Children that are not his.
He wonders what they look like.
Are they like her?
Are they like their parents?
A moan is dredged from the remains of his shattered heart. The noise of it would bring tears to the eyes of even an outsider; it is the sound of raw grief and terrible pain. “I need time,” he says after a moment. Although he has been away for years, the time was as fleeting as a midday nap and her betrayal will scar him beyond the edges of time. Perhaps eventually he will be able to kiss her sides again, but the thought of it now only reminds Hestoni of how they will swell with the growth of an outsider’s child.
He steps closer, despite his last comment, but the consequences of his knee make him limp with the movement and grit his teeth at the sudden pain. It burns in a simplistic, perfect way: in a way that correctly infuses such pain throughout his entire body. Yet Hestoni steps again, coming close enough to press the sweetest of kisses against the roughened plane of her cheek. His eyes close with the heartfelt motion (although the heart that is felt is one that is shredded and destroyed by her actions) and he pulls away after a rabbit’s breath. “I will still love you, il mio fuoco.”
Hestoni turns rapidly, but the action of walking away from her is painstaking. He limps slowly through the snow, shouldering aside the snowdrifts while leaving a trail of body-warmed blood, but he doesn’t look back until he is past the edges of Nerine.
Hestoni
@[Scorch] wow hello sad boi novel