cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Forest (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=73) +---- Thread: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony (/showthread.php?tid=28614) Pages:
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cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - jamie - 01-02-2021 Jamie
How the shadow thing thrives in such terrible darkness. It puts a thrill in his chest that he makes no effort to exorcise. In all his years, he has never been so horribly, horribly alive. He aches with his aliveness, the shadow thing. It is the most visceral of all infections. And ironic, too, that something so intrinsically connected to death should vibrate with so much life. The heart beats something wild, frenetic, chaos in the cage of his ribs. He wanders through this strange darkness simply to experience it. As if he might draw it into his skin. As if he is not already made of this darkness. The things (creatures, friends, allies, he will never call them monsters) do not trouble him. He is one of them, he is certain of it. This is not the first time they have met, these great, terrible, powerful creatures. They had tried to destroy him in the underworld, had sunk their razor-sharp teeth into the curve of his spine until they eviscerated the bone and he died a second, more terrible death. And now they do not spare him so much as a curious glance. He smiles his shark-tooth smile and wanders and lets his legs carry him where they will. He has no destination in mind, only knows that he is not ready to return to Pangea. Surely news of his victory has traveled there by now, they do not need to hear it from him. Despite the new magic thrumming in his veins, the breath still rattles as he draws it. As if it is a tangible thing dragged across ribs. Ahead, a figure begins to emerge and, though he has lived nearly his whole life in the darkness, he cannot decide whether they are strange or familiar. ( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME ) @[laura] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - evia - 01-02-2021 we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
A year has passed since she has seen him. RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - jamie - 01-02-2021 Jamie
Once upon a time, he might have recognized her anywhere. She had been so beautiful that it pained him to look at her. How he had snapped at her not to come any closer because he felt her beauty like a physical ache. He had averted his gaze so as to not let it cripple him any further. He had been so weak then. And then she had emerged from the depths of the river sometime after the weakness had been drained from his body. He had been someone whole and real and worthy then, but their encounter had been brief and she had slid back into the water and he had slid back into the shadows. So much has changed since then. Since he had looked at her frame, heavy with child, and asked her about love. A foreign thing of which he knew almost nothing. He’d asked her as if he had any business asking it. What would she call him? Mine. The shark-tooth smile deepens. “You,” he breathes back, coming closer still. Darkness emerging from darkness. He is not afraid to look at her now, though he sways on his feet the closer he gets. “Look at you,” he murmurs, which is to say that he can look at her. “Beautiful, even in all of this darkness.” ( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME ) @[evia] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - evia - 01-16-2021 we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
She has wondered, so often, about him. She has thought about how he must have been something that she dreamt up—some curious imagining in the long hours on beaches and in the saltwater. He was so very different from anything that she had ever known and perhaps only because of that, she knew that he was not wholly the making of her own mind. She could never have dreamt the rasp of his voice or the curious roundness of his yellow eyes. She simply did not have the imaginative willpower to bring him forth. @[jamie] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - jamie - 01-31-2021 Jamie
The darkness belongs to him. It has always belonged to him. But he belongs to things that stir in the shadows, the creatures that watch them, those terrible souls that had sunk their teeth into the meat of his spine and pulled him apart in Death. He belongs to Death. And Death belongs to him. But he does not tell her this. He makes no effort to differentiate between Death and this all-encompassing darkness. To him, they are one and the same. They are for him and he is for them, just as she belongs to the water and the water belongs to her. How difficult she finds it to exist too far removed from its depths, so too does he struggle to exist outside of the realm of this darkness. The darkness should remind her of him. He is the victor, he is changed on a visceral level, but he does not gloat. He is not pompous or arrogant. It still makes his heart spasm to think that he should be so deeply connected to the darkness in her mind. To think that she has thought of him at all, that she has not needed prompting. How cruel he had been when he’d snarled at her at the edge of the river, warned her away. How weak. But he tilts his peculiar head at her now and thinks that perhaps neither of them are the same now as they had been then. “You have thought about me,” he says, though there is something contemplative in the ghostly rasp of his voice. He edges closer and reaches for her then, making himself solid so that he can finally feel her. Smooth and warm. “What have you thought?” he asks and then brings that strange head to rest against the smooth plain of her shoulder with a rattling sigh. ( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME ) @[evia] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - evia - 01-31-2021 we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
The moment has the pitch and feel of a dream, but Evia does not mind. @[jamie] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - jamie - 02-08-2021 Jamie
He wonders what he could learn about her now. He is something altogether different than the thing he had been the last time he’d seen her. He had been restored then, but he had still been weak. Feeble. He had not been worthy of her company then. And now? Now he wears a confidence that might border on arrogance. And yet. And yet he is still moved by her, this creature that had emerged from the water and forced him to avert his gaze because it had pained him to look at her. He had been so wholly unused to beauty then. Perhaps he still is, but he is without weakness now. He touches her and she touches him back and he is reminded of the frustration that had bunched up in his throat the last time he’d tried to touch her, to be touched by her. It fills him with heat, a quiet thrill that spirals through the network of his veins (and he is certain they are real now, certain that he is truly made of flesh and bone and blood). His own freakish eyes fall closed as she presses her mouth sweetly against the hard edge of his jaw. Is it reverence? Does he want it to be? There is no conscience to warn him against the wanting of worship. A new thrill courses through him to hear her say these things, to be the object of this affection. He smiles that same ink-black shark-tooth smile and draws his mouth away, refraining. “So much has changed, Evia,” he murmurs in that same rasping tone, “I don’t think you made me up inside your head.” He exhales a wheezing breath, wonders if this is something he can now heal. “I think I am real.” ( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME ) @[evia] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - evia - 02-20-2021 we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
Could she ever understand him? @[jamie] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - jamie - 02-20-2021 Jamie
He knows now that he belongs to Death. He belongs to Darkness. He belongs to the things that writhe in the shadows. But he knows, too, that there will always be some part of him that belongs to her. Because he had asked her what she’d call him and she’d said Mine. Or, at least, that’s how he remembers it. And he had believed it then and perhaps there is some small part of him that wants to continue to believe it now. She touches him and he can feel the heat of her breath and it calls to mind how it had made him ache to have her so close and not be able to feel her. And now he turns his head and he presses his own lips to the plains of her forehead, kisses her as sweetly as a shadow thing knows how. He belongs to Death the same way she belongs to the sea. But perhaps there is some small part of him that wants to believe that she belongs to him, too. “I want to show you something,” he murmurs, drawing away from her then. He wedges a few paces’ worth of space between them and studies her a beat before he closes those freakish eyes again. He relaxes, releasing his grip on the magic he keeps pulled tight around him, the magic that keeps him draped in shadows. The darkness bleeds away to reveal the equine beneath, a plain gray thing just like his parents, like his sister. He emits a soft glow, simply so that she can see him through the darkness, and meets her gaze with plain brown eyes. No one else has ever seen him this way. “This,” he mutters, taking a step toward her to bump her shoulder with that plain dark gray mouth, “this belongs to you.” He exhales a rattling breath and pulls the darkness around himself again. ( FROM THE DESTRUCTION, OUT OF THE FLAME YOU NEED A VILLAIN, GIVE ME A NAME ) @[evia] RE: cut open my heart, right at the scar, laura pony - evia - 02-28-2021 we are slaves to the sirens of the salty sea
She does not understand magic. Not the kind that her father is made of. Not the kind that weaves her mother from winter itself. Not the kind that forced others to fall under Ivar’s bidding. She certainly doesn’t understand the magic that surrounds him now. This death and darkness. These things that should frighten her but instead intrigue her. Calling to her in the shadows and pulling her forward. @[jamie] |