02-18-2018, 01:31 PM
It is impossible for the son of the volcano to slink.
Below his hooves, the earth shifts with the strain of his weigh, each step in life cost him more than it would cost a lighter beast. After him, before him: smoke floats, heralding his approach with rich, heady smoke - an out of place scent in any world other than Tephra.
His presence had never been obscure - he was a man on fire.
Yet, for all his grandeur, he was easily unmade. His little sister didn't need him to protect her anymore, but maybe she never really had. Ceara had uncovered his guilt, rejected his expressions of remorse (vulnerability) with commands (threats) of her own. She had burned him and all he does was slink back home. She was more like Offspring than he would ever be.
Except he can't slink - he can't even do that right.
The waters part before his broad chest as he lowers into the channel, momentarily dousing the flames which make up his tail. He dips his heavy skull below the gentle swells water, allowing the fire along his crest to spit and boil the water around it before those flames too are doused. He didn't feel like fighting today. Blowing the air from his nostrils he submits to the salty water as it washes over his face, into his ears. A thought fills the space which had been thoughtless- preoccupied with primitive sensations, water, and fire - and he doddles it, testing it and himself. This dark thought - a hollow, dangerous thought - takes him deeper into the water, lower and lower to where his dense muscles and airless lungs would have him rest.
As his lungs begin to burn, dark lids flutter open to grey-blue blur and the experiment is over. His solid legs begin to churn of their own accord, bringing him to oxygen, pulling his weight onto the sand - dripping, re-born, flameless, and naked.
Levi
so scream you, out from behind the bitter ache.