06-05-2017, 03:26 PM
She follows at his shoulder, silent to match the pensive quiet that seems to brew in him endlessly these days. But it is not a peaceful quiet, not the same quiet it had been in their days before the reckoning - the ones spent together in the hills and snow of their frozen Tundra home. This quiet eats at him, consumes him, steals him from her more and more every night. Her lips find his shoulder, a gentle kiss against skin that burns feverishly hot, against a black that is broken by the pink slashes of scars from an impossibly long past.
I am one hundred and thirty seven years old. She hears his voice again, an echo rattling in her thoughts, reminding her that it is a past she does not know, a piece of him he has not shared - that he is still, decades deep, a stranger to her.
He moves away from her to make his way to the top of a nearby crest, just a humble knot in the earth so that those who gather will be more easily able to see him. She nearly follows, knows that he would probably prefer her at his side, prefer her cheek against his shoulder. But as he calls out and so many faces gather around him, she hesitates. Jord and Nymphetamine are the first to come, and both are familiar, both from before, both who have seen this man as a king of the tundra and know that he is a leader worth following. They move to his side and she steps back, invisible as all eyes are on him, touches a kiss to his hip and turns to disappear into the crowd below.
She finds a face she only barely recognizes instead, a quiet face on a quiet man, bay like her, standing just outside the main circle of bodies. It is by his side she takes her place, meaning to include him in this circle of old friends, in a sea of old faces like the echo from a past he did not share with them. She touches her mouth to his dark neck in quiet greeting before settling close enough for their hips and shoulders to brush, as easy in their closeness as she has always been before.
More gather, some she recognizes, some she doesn’t - most, though, are those who will remember him as a king of the Tundra or of early Tephra, those who will not hesitate to let him lead again. But there are some, like the stallion beside her, who seem more reluctant. Either in their quiet or their politeness, or, like the black stallion who spat at Jord’s feet, in more open discontent. But one by one, each person who stays pledges themselves to Offspring as they had before, and Isle can feel a knot she had been unaware of loosen somewhere deep in her chest.
Isle herself is silent, she feels no need to voice her allegiance to him - any who know of him will also know of her and that her loyalty has always, always been to him. That she has always chosen him. Instead she is soft and quiet, dark eyes flickering from face to face as she listens to what everyone says. They are open and accepting, question nothing, and she cannot help but wonder if she is the only one who realizes this man is not the man from before. That whatever it is that burns inside him and pulls him from her side in the night is quietly, subtly, forging someone new.
i am well aware of the shadows in my heart
I am one hundred and thirty seven years old. She hears his voice again, an echo rattling in her thoughts, reminding her that it is a past she does not know, a piece of him he has not shared - that he is still, decades deep, a stranger to her.
He moves away from her to make his way to the top of a nearby crest, just a humble knot in the earth so that those who gather will be more easily able to see him. She nearly follows, knows that he would probably prefer her at his side, prefer her cheek against his shoulder. But as he calls out and so many faces gather around him, she hesitates. Jord and Nymphetamine are the first to come, and both are familiar, both from before, both who have seen this man as a king of the tundra and know that he is a leader worth following. They move to his side and she steps back, invisible as all eyes are on him, touches a kiss to his hip and turns to disappear into the crowd below.
She finds a face she only barely recognizes instead, a quiet face on a quiet man, bay like her, standing just outside the main circle of bodies. It is by his side she takes her place, meaning to include him in this circle of old friends, in a sea of old faces like the echo from a past he did not share with them. She touches her mouth to his dark neck in quiet greeting before settling close enough for their hips and shoulders to brush, as easy in their closeness as she has always been before.
More gather, some she recognizes, some she doesn’t - most, though, are those who will remember him as a king of the Tundra or of early Tephra, those who will not hesitate to let him lead again. But there are some, like the stallion beside her, who seem more reluctant. Either in their quiet or their politeness, or, like the black stallion who spat at Jord’s feet, in more open discontent. But one by one, each person who stays pledges themselves to Offspring as they had before, and Isle can feel a knot she had been unaware of loosen somewhere deep in her chest.
Isle herself is silent, she feels no need to voice her allegiance to him - any who know of him will also know of her and that her loyalty has always, always been to him. That she has always chosen him. Instead she is soft and quiet, dark eyes flickering from face to face as she listens to what everyone says. They are open and accepting, question nothing, and she cannot help but wonder if she is the only one who realizes this man is not the man from before. That whatever it is that burns inside him and pulls him from her side in the night is quietly, subtly, forging someone new.