11-13-2018, 11:56 PM
He comes because his sister cannot, because when this call took shape in their minds, Luster was all too ready to make the journey to the Mountain to find out what was needed of her, how she could help. But she is not like him, unattached, unnecessary. She has her boy, their brother, and that little family she’s gathered to herself with her gentle affections, her willingness to love and protect. She has children now, too, yet unborn and growing, filling her to near comic proportions as she waddles along the beach each morning. It is for them that she is so willing to go, for them that she wants to find this cure. Heal them, save them, protect them at any cost.
But she is needed here.
So he goes instead because he is needed by none, bound by a dozen promises he makes to her as she presses her lips to his forehead and watches him take to the skies. He knows he is wretched, that left to his own choices he would have ignored the call, let someone else suffer for the mistakes that have been made. Too brittle, too broken, too hard to care anymore.
Except that boy must still live inside him somewhere, a little seed of good, some stray part of him that can remember loving his family so deeply, can remember feeling honor-bound to protect those that had once been a part of his home. It must not have been completely eradicated from him else he wouldn’t have come at all. Not even to spare his sister the pain of losing her children should this task prove to be too much for her.
He cares, but he doesn’t mean to.
He cares, but he is trying everyday to forget how.
When the mountain looms before him large enough to blot out the sky, he lands and folds those white and dark wings to his sides. There are those who gather together in the shadows below, standing close enough to touch and talk and lend each other comfort, friends who must have chosen to do this together. But there are others like him, stoic and stone-faced, focused. Silent. Too busy trying to look like they don’t suddenly regret having come alone. They keep their eyes glued to the crescent of demi-gods, trying to glean secrets from eyes made of steel and marble.
“Those brave enough will go to Icicle Isle. You will find the heart-shaped pond and bring back several frozen stems of water; the first ingredient in a cure for this pestilence that has been released on Beqanna.”
It sounds likes a fools errand, so strange and pointless. Stems of water? He can feel his jaw tighten, lines of tension carving themselves in valleys across dark cheeks. But he promised Luster, can imagine so clearly how quietly disappointed she would be in him if he abandoned the task now. How she would smile anyway and brush a kind kiss to his forehead, tell him it was okay, that she understood. That of course she wasn’t mad.
Mad would be easier though, easier than such quiet, gentle disappointment spilled from a false-smile.
“But it will not be easy. You will have to do so without any of the gifts we have previously allowed you.”
He can feel his mouth pull into a sudden snarl, more surprised than anything else because these gifts were his, part of his body, part of his spirit. He’d never known any kind of life without his wings, without the sky on his face and the sun painting wet, gold streaks against his gleaming black skin the higher, closer, longer he flew. But the man stomps, disappears in a shower of spark, and he takes with him the rest of the council, and any chance for Illum to change his mind.
The wings are gone, ripped painlessly from his back. The shadows strangely absent from where they usually sneak and slither across his skin. He feels suddenly wrong, suddenly vulnerable, immediately furious. But it is done, finished, and yet so very far from the end.
He disbands from the group without a word, paying no attention to any of the other faces near him as they strike out alone or with friends, obedient, or perhaps keeping promises like he is. He doesn’t know, doesn’t care, doesn’t wonder at all because none of them mean anything to him. His sister is the only thing that keeps him here, those promises and her sad, worried eyes.
Why then, does he find reasons to look around, glimpse faces in his periphery as he gains his bearings in a world hardly recognizable from down so deep in its belly.
The journey is, blessedly, not as difficult as it might have been for someone who hasn’t viewed the world from above like a map unfurled. He can picture the wide river that runs from the base of the Mountain all the way up through Hyaline and further, well into the Taigan forests that had been his home for so long. Finds it easily by the sound of its current and the cold smell it sheds as winter tries in vain to freeze the waters. He is careful to stay on the shore, staying dry for as long as he can, while he can, forced in only when the mountains of Hyaline grow so jagged and narrow that there is no other option.
It is a relief when he reaches the forest of Taiga, disappearing immediately into the trees and wilds where the wind cannot find him so easily. He knows this land almost intimately, nearly follows an old route to a burned out tree trunk where the word home sits on his tongue and in his memory in a way that makes him ache inside. Island Resort was beautiful, truly, but it was nothing close to what he had felt here in these forests. He stays for as long as he can, perhaps longer than he should, but by the time he emerges again into the open vastness of Nerine, he is warmer and drier.
The journey through Nerine is less familiar, and he moves only with the knowledge that he needs to be heading north, that just beyond the edge of this kingdom is the frozen hell-hole he has been so careful to avoid thus far. Why anyone would want to live in a place blasted with such arctic temperatures and sparse grazing is beyond him. But he goes because he must, because if in his sorry, worthless life he can do one good thing, then maybe it won’t all have been a waste.
Maybe his family, his twin, can forgive him for this thing he has become.
He reaches the far end of Nerine feeling the strain on his body, the ache in his muscle and his teeth from where he had been clenching his jaw so tight. It is instinct that tries to unfurl his wings as he takes a step toward the water, it is rage and remembering that make him bellow and crash into the surf without them. He is not a powerful swimmer by any means, has in fact had very little practice with it at all. Why would he bother when he had wings to take him wherever he needed to go. But this aching pain that collides in the form of cold and fatigue against his skin and his bones and the muscles seizing painfully below is something he knows well, loves in his twisted, broken way.
He embraces it with a strange softening in the tension of his dark eyes, an easing in the furrows along his brow and cheeks. This is something he knows, this pain, this punishment, this eternal dark that swells so hungrily beneath waves the color of midnight and capped with icy foam. It is something he can lean into, surrender to. Something he loves.
He swims until his lungs start to fray, until the seams holding his chest together are aching and tearing and pulling apart, until his breath comes in wet, ragged coughs because he is breathing in as much as he isn’t, swallowing what he should not. Oh but he loves this, needs it, craves it because it is all he deserves and the only thing he will ever have. It is the whisper of death at his heels, begging him to stop fighting so hard, to give into the lethargy wrapping gentle, affectionate fingers around his kicking heels.
But he doesn’t stop, doesn’t give in, doesn’t seem to realize the moment his feet strike something hard and sturdy until he’s dragging himself out of the water, head low and eyes so wild, chest heaving so hard it might split in half.
But she is needed here.
So he goes instead because he is needed by none, bound by a dozen promises he makes to her as she presses her lips to his forehead and watches him take to the skies. He knows he is wretched, that left to his own choices he would have ignored the call, let someone else suffer for the mistakes that have been made. Too brittle, too broken, too hard to care anymore.
Except that boy must still live inside him somewhere, a little seed of good, some stray part of him that can remember loving his family so deeply, can remember feeling honor-bound to protect those that had once been a part of his home. It must not have been completely eradicated from him else he wouldn’t have come at all. Not even to spare his sister the pain of losing her children should this task prove to be too much for her.
He cares, but he doesn’t mean to.
He cares, but he is trying everyday to forget how.
When the mountain looms before him large enough to blot out the sky, he lands and folds those white and dark wings to his sides. There are those who gather together in the shadows below, standing close enough to touch and talk and lend each other comfort, friends who must have chosen to do this together. But there are others like him, stoic and stone-faced, focused. Silent. Too busy trying to look like they don’t suddenly regret having come alone. They keep their eyes glued to the crescent of demi-gods, trying to glean secrets from eyes made of steel and marble.
“Those brave enough will go to Icicle Isle. You will find the heart-shaped pond and bring back several frozen stems of water; the first ingredient in a cure for this pestilence that has been released on Beqanna.”
It sounds likes a fools errand, so strange and pointless. Stems of water? He can feel his jaw tighten, lines of tension carving themselves in valleys across dark cheeks. But he promised Luster, can imagine so clearly how quietly disappointed she would be in him if he abandoned the task now. How she would smile anyway and brush a kind kiss to his forehead, tell him it was okay, that she understood. That of course she wasn’t mad.
Mad would be easier though, easier than such quiet, gentle disappointment spilled from a false-smile.
“But it will not be easy. You will have to do so without any of the gifts we have previously allowed you.”
He can feel his mouth pull into a sudden snarl, more surprised than anything else because these gifts were his, part of his body, part of his spirit. He’d never known any kind of life without his wings, without the sky on his face and the sun painting wet, gold streaks against his gleaming black skin the higher, closer, longer he flew. But the man stomps, disappears in a shower of spark, and he takes with him the rest of the council, and any chance for Illum to change his mind.
The wings are gone, ripped painlessly from his back. The shadows strangely absent from where they usually sneak and slither across his skin. He feels suddenly wrong, suddenly vulnerable, immediately furious. But it is done, finished, and yet so very far from the end.
He disbands from the group without a word, paying no attention to any of the other faces near him as they strike out alone or with friends, obedient, or perhaps keeping promises like he is. He doesn’t know, doesn’t care, doesn’t wonder at all because none of them mean anything to him. His sister is the only thing that keeps him here, those promises and her sad, worried eyes.
Why then, does he find reasons to look around, glimpse faces in his periphery as he gains his bearings in a world hardly recognizable from down so deep in its belly.
The journey is, blessedly, not as difficult as it might have been for someone who hasn’t viewed the world from above like a map unfurled. He can picture the wide river that runs from the base of the Mountain all the way up through Hyaline and further, well into the Taigan forests that had been his home for so long. Finds it easily by the sound of its current and the cold smell it sheds as winter tries in vain to freeze the waters. He is careful to stay on the shore, staying dry for as long as he can, while he can, forced in only when the mountains of Hyaline grow so jagged and narrow that there is no other option.
It is a relief when he reaches the forest of Taiga, disappearing immediately into the trees and wilds where the wind cannot find him so easily. He knows this land almost intimately, nearly follows an old route to a burned out tree trunk where the word home sits on his tongue and in his memory in a way that makes him ache inside. Island Resort was beautiful, truly, but it was nothing close to what he had felt here in these forests. He stays for as long as he can, perhaps longer than he should, but by the time he emerges again into the open vastness of Nerine, he is warmer and drier.
The journey through Nerine is less familiar, and he moves only with the knowledge that he needs to be heading north, that just beyond the edge of this kingdom is the frozen hell-hole he has been so careful to avoid thus far. Why anyone would want to live in a place blasted with such arctic temperatures and sparse grazing is beyond him. But he goes because he must, because if in his sorry, worthless life he can do one good thing, then maybe it won’t all have been a waste.
Maybe his family, his twin, can forgive him for this thing he has become.
He reaches the far end of Nerine feeling the strain on his body, the ache in his muscle and his teeth from where he had been clenching his jaw so tight. It is instinct that tries to unfurl his wings as he takes a step toward the water, it is rage and remembering that make him bellow and crash into the surf without them. He is not a powerful swimmer by any means, has in fact had very little practice with it at all. Why would he bother when he had wings to take him wherever he needed to go. But this aching pain that collides in the form of cold and fatigue against his skin and his bones and the muscles seizing painfully below is something he knows well, loves in his twisted, broken way.
He embraces it with a strange softening in the tension of his dark eyes, an easing in the furrows along his brow and cheeks. This is something he knows, this pain, this punishment, this eternal dark that swells so hungrily beneath waves the color of midnight and capped with icy foam. It is something he can lean into, surrender to. Something he loves.
He swims until his lungs start to fray, until the seams holding his chest together are aching and tearing and pulling apart, until his breath comes in wet, ragged coughs because he is breathing in as much as he isn’t, swallowing what he should not. Oh but he loves this, needs it, craves it because it is all he deserves and the only thing he will ever have. It is the whisper of death at his heels, begging him to stop fighting so hard, to give into the lethargy wrapping gentle, affectionate fingers around his kicking heels.
But he doesn’t stop, doesn’t give in, doesn’t seem to realize the moment his feet strike something hard and sturdy until he’s dragging himself out of the water, head low and eyes so wild, chest heaving so hard it might split in half.