the heaviness in my heart belongs to gravity; kensley

[kensley]

i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose He wonders about the war but does not know how to ask about it. He wonders who else was involved. Foolishly, he wonders about Kennice. About his mother and father. And then the rest of his siblings. And the heartbeat catches when he thinks about Keiran. His nostrils flare as the breath turns thin and he has to look away. He nods absently and studies the mottled turf underfoot. He glances up when she speaks again, the corner of his mouth quirking in a placid smile as he lifts his head. “I suspect we all suffer the same ailment,” he muses. There, another twinge in the hollow cavern of his chest. Because it is new for him, a gift he had not deserved. A gift he’d stolen from his sister as he’d kissed her head, swallowed her blood, felt the life drain out of her and into him. “There’s no sense in aging when you’re not dying, I guess.” But that does not mean he has not lived several lifetimes or that he’d felt as if his own mortality had rapidly been catching up to him when he’d gone to visit Keiran. He circles back because he cannot help it. Because he is perhaps more curious about his home – or what has become of it – than he’d realized. He’s seen war, certainly. But the Kensley of old had been passive and kind. He had not fought, watching from the sidelines instead as war ravaged the world he knew. It turns his stomach to think of it now. “What was the war fought over?” he asks. shattered son of jarris and plumeria