Since the falling of the strange, perpetual dark, Illuminae has taken to staying close to the safety of home. That safety is of course as relative as anything else these days, but it feels better than nothing. Her family has a long history with the dark, with shadows and the night, and almost as long a history with the ancient forests of Taiga. It has been home to them for as long as it has existed, and there is something in the sameness and perpetuity that makes her feel like maybe she belongs here too.
It is why she never tried to follow Ryatah away to her home and her family, it is why she never fell into drifting like her sister did. Whatever it is that binds her father to these forests and ancient trees, the creeping half-dark that is now a full dark beneath the dense branches, it binds her here too.
And she finds, though she would never admit it, that she likes how it feels to be tethered to something.
Still, the dark is a lure in her blood as much as it is to anyone in her family, and it is hard not to explore beyond the safety of home. Somehow the dark outside the boundaries feels deeper, and she wonders if it is because so much of it is untouched by the abilities of her bloodline. It is dark without barriers, intangible and yet somehow made carnivorous by the beasts that roam inside it, by the ragged screams that fill the silence like fading static.
There is no getting used to it though, and when something crashes down through the sky, falling like a bleak, winged comet, she spins to face the sound of it with a scowl on her face. Dark flows up over her skin, concealing her in the night as effortlessly as if she made of it until only the single gold ring of her iris is visible. The monsters can of course still smell her, she is sure, but the cloak still makes her feel safer.
Demon.
The voice is male and made of gravel, nearly choked out by the sounds of a word in the perpetual eerie cacophony of night. But she clings to it, frowning, and moves without ever deciding what it is she plans to do towards the sound of that voice. The sounds that come next actually stop her in place though, sound of prey ripped apart and the burble of a stream oblivious to the war of the broken world it flows within. It's so wrong and unnatural that she very nearly leaves him, very nearly pretends she never heard anything at all.
But she is not yet entirely like her father.
So she stays.
She picks her way quietly towards the mass in the dark, the silhouette of bent wings and the stink of hot iron she knows to be spilled blood. Bile rises in her, her pounding pulse flushing too much heat beneath her skin and a roaring in her ears that nearly deafens her. She cannot tell what it is until she is close enough to touch him, until suddenly beneath her is a chestnut man with glowing gold markings and hair as pale as cornsilk.
He is so broken.
His wings, his bones, his perfect skin.
It breaks her, too.
She screams her fury, this sudden pain in her chest and the ache that might actually succeed in breaking her apart, the wrongness of this new world and how stumbling across something like this is no longer unusual. It’s so unfair. Darkness fractures across her body, her shadow cloak exploding outwards in shards of death the color of this eternal night. She cannot see where his beast went, but she hopes that will be enough to make it wary, to keep it from returning again until she can fix this. And she CAN fix this, she has to fix this.
Her delicate ears swivel as she reaches down to touch those dark lips to the almost copper shade of his shoulder. Truly she cannot tell whether there is still even any life inside him, but it doesn’t seem important as she pushes the healing magic into his skin. It leaves her in tendrils of shadow, ribbons of black night that settle over his skin and disappear, and she imagines they’ve gone somewhere beyond where her mismatched eyes can see to knit these broken pieces of him back together. It’s hard because fear distracts her, because every sound in the forest feels like it belongs to something that absolutely wants to kill her, and his dying body makes it all the more easy to understand what death would feel like.
But she stays, draining herself into him until something happens. Until he moves or breathes or speaks, until he stops bleeding, stops laying there like he’s already gone. Then she remembers his wing, the broken one with bone folded in on itself, unnaturally crooked. It will never heal well like that. So she takes the wing between her teeth, buries a silent apology deep inside a chest now beating itself ragged, and pulls it out straight again with all her might. She drops it, and then touches her nose to those bones too, imagining the fractures between them shrinking.
She is exhausted by this, and for a moment she stops, turning to his face to brush those dark lips over the smooth skin of his jaw. It is the kind of thing she would never do if his eyes were open, the kind of gentleness she reserves for absolutely no one. But it is easy to like someone she’s poured her whole heart into - easy because he doesn’t know she has, because if he wakes again it will be to hard eyes and a scowl, and a chest full of secrets he will never be privy to.
It is why she never tried to follow Ryatah away to her home and her family, it is why she never fell into drifting like her sister did. Whatever it is that binds her father to these forests and ancient trees, the creeping half-dark that is now a full dark beneath the dense branches, it binds her here too.
And she finds, though she would never admit it, that she likes how it feels to be tethered to something.
Still, the dark is a lure in her blood as much as it is to anyone in her family, and it is hard not to explore beyond the safety of home. Somehow the dark outside the boundaries feels deeper, and she wonders if it is because so much of it is untouched by the abilities of her bloodline. It is dark without barriers, intangible and yet somehow made carnivorous by the beasts that roam inside it, by the ragged screams that fill the silence like fading static.
There is no getting used to it though, and when something crashes down through the sky, falling like a bleak, winged comet, she spins to face the sound of it with a scowl on her face. Dark flows up over her skin, concealing her in the night as effortlessly as if she made of it until only the single gold ring of her iris is visible. The monsters can of course still smell her, she is sure, but the cloak still makes her feel safer.
Demon.
The voice is male and made of gravel, nearly choked out by the sounds of a word in the perpetual eerie cacophony of night. But she clings to it, frowning, and moves without ever deciding what it is she plans to do towards the sound of that voice. The sounds that come next actually stop her in place though, sound of prey ripped apart and the burble of a stream oblivious to the war of the broken world it flows within. It's so wrong and unnatural that she very nearly leaves him, very nearly pretends she never heard anything at all.
But she is not yet entirely like her father.
So she stays.
She picks her way quietly towards the mass in the dark, the silhouette of bent wings and the stink of hot iron she knows to be spilled blood. Bile rises in her, her pounding pulse flushing too much heat beneath her skin and a roaring in her ears that nearly deafens her. She cannot tell what it is until she is close enough to touch him, until suddenly beneath her is a chestnut man with glowing gold markings and hair as pale as cornsilk.
He is so broken.
His wings, his bones, his perfect skin.
It breaks her, too.
She screams her fury, this sudden pain in her chest and the ache that might actually succeed in breaking her apart, the wrongness of this new world and how stumbling across something like this is no longer unusual. It’s so unfair. Darkness fractures across her body, her shadow cloak exploding outwards in shards of death the color of this eternal night. She cannot see where his beast went, but she hopes that will be enough to make it wary, to keep it from returning again until she can fix this. And she CAN fix this, she has to fix this.
Her delicate ears swivel as she reaches down to touch those dark lips to the almost copper shade of his shoulder. Truly she cannot tell whether there is still even any life inside him, but it doesn’t seem important as she pushes the healing magic into his skin. It leaves her in tendrils of shadow, ribbons of black night that settle over his skin and disappear, and she imagines they’ve gone somewhere beyond where her mismatched eyes can see to knit these broken pieces of him back together. It’s hard because fear distracts her, because every sound in the forest feels like it belongs to something that absolutely wants to kill her, and his dying body makes it all the more easy to understand what death would feel like.
But she stays, draining herself into him until something happens. Until he moves or breathes or speaks, until he stops bleeding, stops laying there like he’s already gone. Then she remembers his wing, the broken one with bone folded in on itself, unnaturally crooked. It will never heal well like that. So she takes the wing between her teeth, buries a silent apology deep inside a chest now beating itself ragged, and pulls it out straight again with all her might. She drops it, and then touches her nose to those bones too, imagining the fractures between them shrinking.
She is exhausted by this, and for a moment she stops, turning to his face to brush those dark lips over the smooth skin of his jaw. It is the kind of thing she would never do if his eyes were open, the kind of gentleness she reserves for absolutely no one. But it is easy to like someone she’s poured her whole heart into - easy because he doesn’t know she has, because if he wakes again it will be to hard eyes and a scowl, and a chest full of secrets he will never be privy to.
ILLUMINAE
we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break
@[Nashua]