holding too tightly, afraid to lose control [any]

[Tioga]

Autumn enters on summer’s coattails, making green leaves fade into vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows.  The breeze is silken, cool against my fading black pelt, just enough so to spark alertness against the dragging afternoon. Only the toughest meadow flowers cling to life, an ill-fated attempt to exist far past their allotted time. I’ve found the meadow out of habit, a small clearing within the trees that I seek refuge from the others in. A place where the trills of larks are seldom, somewhere I can be alone with my thoughts.

A funny thing thoughts are, you’re the only one to hear them, if you choose not to say them aloud. Though still you remain susceptible to judgment from your own conscious, it’s a lose-lose situation if I ever knew one. I barely conceal the errant things that touch my mind and sometimes I don’t even bother, unable to stand the concentration it takes. So many secrets clog my brain and burn against the back of my eyes as they demand to be spilled. A constant struggle is raged within me, I want to be good to my home the Gates, to serve it.

Mother, though the timid, tractable creature she was, needed protecting. I would do that for her, keep her safe, our home safe if I could nothing else. Our relationship is rocky but I love her, even if I can’t express it well. She has the best intentions, as most like her do, and I try not to fault her for her shortcomings. But I do-I do so many things I should not.

The Congregation doesn’t understand me, not really, mostly because I won’t let them. I shuffle idly through the tall grass, tall enough to brush my barrel. Today my ears ring, the sound fading in and out as I find a place to lay down.

html by Call

[Kernick]

endlessly, she said

Autumn's reign is colourful. Oranges and browns, crimsons and mauves. The treeline of the Gates, bares naked limbs, boughs looking like gnarled fingers beckoning me forth. The spires of burgundy light, from the dying sun, pierce through, falling like wine into goblets, in my path. I’m there, in the moist cove of bark and leaves, staring out into the vast expanse of the Gates. The mottled green and brown grass looking like a sea of foam, flickering in the autumn breeze.

They’re out there. I see them, their eyes, thousands and thousands of eyes, staring back at me. Wanting, needing. I lower my neck, my head resting on a nest of pinecones and gorse. I had made it, to make some warmth, for the lack of it from my mother was terrifying. She fed me, she watched me, but oh, there was no warmth. I did not think she was capable. Her blank stare, albeit her touch is soft, but is not motherly, needing, wanting. Thus, I hide, in the cove of birch and ash, hiding from those eyes, those prying ears.

They’re watching. They’re in the shadows, their eyes unblinking. I shiver against the wind, nestling myself deeper into the nest of gorse, the thistles poke in my tender cocoa flesh, knotting in my wispy silver mane. I’m a duplicate of my mother, a chocolate coat and a silver mane and tail, and as duplicates go, I am her parallel. We bear significance in the way the knots entangle, the way the pinecones leave their delicate indentations against soft flesh. We both look as empty and hollow was each other, if only there was the love, the warmth I had seen in the other children and their mothers.

But they, they did not have the eyes staring, ever present, they did not hear the creaks of doors, somewhere, everywhere. And they, they did not hear the distant cackle and whip of chains. In the woods, in the shadows. It was no wonder my mother was a wreck, they were everywhere, everywhere…

Then I spot her, the girl whom my mother talks frequently. Her copper eyes, they aren’t like the shadows that watch, that prey upon me. She’s resting, not far from me, her form nestling beneath the spires of dark tendrils. I watch, I watch like a hawk, like the crows that settle in a murder above, with the same sister stare, but mine, mine is long, lengthy in their observation before I finally break through the nestled gorse hiding I had made, and slowly, ever so slowly, make my way over to her.

I stand not far, and yet not close, my head lowering to the ground, where I snatch at a few weeds and thoughtlessly chew, they do not fill what my mother’s sustenance does, but it is a habit I’ve began, and will continue. To chew thoughtfully yet pointlessly, before spitting out the course weeds and watching them lay beneath my feet, forgotten. Much like me, and seemingly, much like Tioga, also. I shuffle gently, a smooth sound coming from my lips, yet nothing more.

K E R N I C K

khaos x reuen

[Tioga]

The shadows fold over me, but they are not cast by the trees. The light is smothered, put out too quickly for it to be anything stationary.  My eyes flutter upwards, turning from the earth where they had rested trance-like. Blinking silently at the form that blocks the sun’s rays, I find no surprise, if I were to expect anyone it would be him. Kernick, I think simply to myself, the young, silvery shadow blots the hollow.  The boy reminds me of my mother, favoring her color with his dark base and fair hair. The only difference was mother would forever be vibrant, and dear Kernick would fade, much like myself.

 He chomps away at the drying grasses, making a hardy effort to fill his too young belly.  The unfinished, chewed-up stalks fall heavy, and limp to the ground. My nose threatens to turn away, to crumple at the sight of the spit covered, green wads.  Somehow, I manage to not empty my stomach.

His mother is rarely fit to care for him, and even still, he is rarely around to care for. Sporadic comings and goings, fill the youth’s life. The child is oft absent and this fact does not escape my notice.  Little did. Little in the way of things I could see, things I could feel and experience as a silent observer.

I watch him as he hovers, inching my way and his feet do move back and forth, unsure. Attempts at speech do not come easily, instead his efforts barely rewarded with soft whispers that aren’t even words. My ears are ringing too loud to hear him anyways, the dull disquiet numbs me, makes me wish I could gauge them and take out my frustration.  I sigh and let it file gently out my mouth in greeting, one of my ears turns lazily forward and I look up at him without much raising of my dial.

”What? Do you want to lay down?” Perhaps I speak too harsh, too loud but I have no way to discern these things. I offer a gesture with my words, turning my sooty head towards my stomach before my coppery stare finds its way back. ”You’ve been missing a lot Kernick.” I relay this knowledge like it is no big deal, some common everyday conversation.

html by Call