Golden eyes watching our every move
Losing time without the sun or moon
It had never occurred to him to ask what she runs from. Everyone here seems to be fleeing something. Memories or history, a love gone wrong, the fearsome beasts that seem to lurk in every corner. They are always running. Even Ether, running from his own shame and inadequacy. Running from his loneliness.
In the end though, it doesn’t matter what they are running from. They all end up in the same place anyway.
He has long since ceased to notice the way the shadows cling to him, a darkness impossible to differentiate from his own skin. In darkness, it doesn’t matter anyway. That it might be alarming or unsettling to others had never crossed his mind. He has always embraced the shadows, the disquieting, eternal twilight as close to a home as he’d ever known. He’d never known anything else, not truly. Even when he’d been a boy of flesh and blood with marbled skin and coffee brown eyes the shadows had been his closest companion.
He blinks those yellow eyes at her when she utters her name, her voice low and surprisingly pleasant. Briseis. He clicks his tongue over his sharp teeth as he tastes the vowels and consonants of that word. Unusual and hard, not like the soft hiss of his own name. For a moment he is so distracted he nearly misses the question, too caught up in the odd sound. In the way words tumble across a tongue that has not been used to speak in so long.
When the question registers, he stills. ’Are you a shadow?’ she asks. Is he?
His head tilts as he peers around, seeing only the darkness of the gaping hole he had settled in. It’s with surprise that he realizes he is not full in her world. That a part of him had lingered in the safety of his shadow realm. With only a brief hesitation, he steps out, the portal sealing silently behind him as his eerie gaze returns to the dark mare. Dark, like him, but not quite. Not in the same way.
“Am I?” he asks, his tone quizzical. He hadn’t thought about it. Didn’t truly know the answer.
ether