10-30-2020, 08:29 AM
Dark
She spends many long moments staring at the surface of the water, each individual ripple drawing her attention, claiming her until the moment they fall back into stillness. She wonders how long she will wait, even as she already knows that she will wait until someone finds her and asks her to leave. There is a sense of stubbornness at this endeavor, a willfulness she cannot name the basis of - except, of course, that she can. If the man in the lake exists, then maybe her mother is not insane. Maybe the pain is only that, only surface and cosmetic, maybe it is not a corrosive kind of ruin rotting her from the inside out.
And truly she does not know which to believe.
So she waits until she has lost track of the time, though probably only moments have passed, and she counts the ripples that fall apart like broken wishes. Fourteen of them, until she realizes almost belatedly that for the last minute or so, her dark eyes have been laying on the shape of a man beneath the surface. It’s odd though, she thinks, because there is no man at all, just the watery impression of one, all soft and flowing where there should be edges. She very nearly dismisses it, deciding that her eyes are playing tired tricks on a hopeful heart until he emerges without warning, looking no less unreal.
Of course I am.
His voice does nothing to set her any more deeply into reality, and in fact she frowns at him, her brow furrowing as it knits tighter at the center. He sounds like a voice spoken underwater, as much bubbled air and gurgled water as it is any real sound. The effect is eerie, and though she quells the urge, her instinct is to step back and away from him. “This is very odd.” She decides, tipping her delicate face slightly to the side to scrutinize him - his voice and appearance, and the utter contrast he is to the stories Luster told. He is not beautiful, she thinks, if only because he is not flesh, not soft or warm in any way. If anything, he scares her.
She watches him for moments longer, working him over like a puzzle in her mind. Is she dreaming? Her eyes lift to the world around them again, but she finds nothing out of place, nothing odd besides him. Would she know though if it were strange, or would the dreamscape quiet her suspicions and tell her everything made sense? Probably that. But he could also be a ghost, maybe, drowned in his grave and refusing to move on. He certainly looked the part. Though, truly there was only one way to be sure, one way to resolve this. So she peers back down at him, her head still tipped and inquisitive, her delicate expression soft and silvered with her own flickering lights. “Are you Stillwater?”
And truly she does not know which to believe.
So she waits until she has lost track of the time, though probably only moments have passed, and she counts the ripples that fall apart like broken wishes. Fourteen of them, until she realizes almost belatedly that for the last minute or so, her dark eyes have been laying on the shape of a man beneath the surface. It’s odd though, she thinks, because there is no man at all, just the watery impression of one, all soft and flowing where there should be edges. She very nearly dismisses it, deciding that her eyes are playing tired tricks on a hopeful heart until he emerges without warning, looking no less unreal.
Of course I am.
His voice does nothing to set her any more deeply into reality, and in fact she frowns at him, her brow furrowing as it knits tighter at the center. He sounds like a voice spoken underwater, as much bubbled air and gurgled water as it is any real sound. The effect is eerie, and though she quells the urge, her instinct is to step back and away from him. “This is very odd.” She decides, tipping her delicate face slightly to the side to scrutinize him - his voice and appearance, and the utter contrast he is to the stories Luster told. He is not beautiful, she thinks, if only because he is not flesh, not soft or warm in any way. If anything, he scares her.
She watches him for moments longer, working him over like a puzzle in her mind. Is she dreaming? Her eyes lift to the world around them again, but she finds nothing out of place, nothing odd besides him. Would she know though if it were strange, or would the dreamscape quiet her suspicions and tell her everything made sense? Probably that. But he could also be a ghost, maybe, drowned in his grave and refusing to move on. He certainly looked the part. Though, truly there was only one way to be sure, one way to resolve this. So she peers back down at him, her head still tipped and inquisitive, her delicate expression soft and silvered with her own flickering lights. “Are you Stillwater?”
The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity.
Dovev x Luster