are you ready for a perfect storm? any. {M}

[Offspring]

something has been taken from deep inside of me;
the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.

 The air is still – unusually so, and as such, it is stagnant with the tepid humidity of summer. Though its grasp has not yet taken hold of the land, it brushes along the rim of the atmosphere with its spindly fingertips, leaving his skin dampened with sweat, trickling slowly along the length of his behemoth form.

  He is not tucked away within the thicket as he might usually be, though there is a deep preference for silence and solitude that he cannot cleanse away. Rather, he is but a pillar of stoicism at the rustling shoreline, as the frigid water roaring before him gently splashes against his fetlock beneath the setting sun, while its vivid brushstrokes of tangerine and lavender casts its dim light across the smooth boulders lining the river.

  His breathing is shallow – he is weary, and tired, but that is not unusual for him. Fatigue had long ago settled into the tender marrow of his bones, and he had grown accustomed to exhaustion festering away at his temperament. He is restless, and the sinewy muscle lining the statuesque physique is terse, and twitching, as he quietly shifts the heft of his weight from one side to the next.

  Above him, darkness descends, and with it, a blinding moon rises above the horizon in a clear, bright sky, littered with bright, glimmering starlight – but he does not care for any of it. His eyes, with an intensity not unlike a burning ember and as deep of a red as glowing magma, stare intently at the churning water before him, wondering why the current had not swept him out to sea when he was younger – much, much younger than he is now – and why it hadn’t drowned him when it had the chance.

  Instead, the fire within him burns fiercely, leaving his mouth dry and his mind on edge. Where ice had once lingered, now there was only a hot, scalding flame – one hot enough to burn any who dare tread on it.

  He is soon stirred from his contemplation by the rustling of movement to the north – and as he turns the broad expanse of his cheek towards it, his steady yet fiery gaze quietly analyzes the feminine figure standing a mere yard (or maybe two) away from him. She is as dark as he is, blending in with the darkness of descending nightfall, but her eyes are glowing a pale green in stark contrast to the dark tresses that lay across her forehead and jawline.

  There is tension coiled in her limbs, much like his own, and though he is initially wary of speaking to her (there is something unnerving about her, and if he were even slightly more mindful and alert, he would have felt the presence of her magic in his veins – alas, there is a trace of familiarity in her eyes that he recognizes).

  ”There are no answers hidden in the river, if that is what you seek. I’ve looked.”

  There is a faint lacing of amusement in his tone, but the humor does not quite reach his eyes.

  ”You look different. Less .. colorful. No antlers.”

  Perhaps he is wrong in his assumption of her identity, but there is a tingling in his skin that says he isn’t.

wounds so deep they never show; they never go away.
like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.

Offspring