i've been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night
and now i see daylight
and now i see daylight
When it had first come, the darkness had crippled her. It closed around her like a fist, and while she had never been afraid of it before, she is afraid of it now.
Because here in the dark everything is quieter, but the voices in her head are louder. The birdsong has all but muted, the dull roar of conversation that rose from the common lands had turned to hushed whispers. The only sound was her heartbeat in her ears and the ghosts that tried their hardest to reach her.
There were rumors of things that lurked in the night, too, but Narya had not seen them herself. She didn't trust her ears, either. Her mind was already so full of indiscernible voices that there were times she could not differentiate from the living and the dead, from real and intangible. From a ghost in her mind and a monster in the forest.
She was going to lose her mind, she was sure of it.
She is in the depths of the forest, swallowed by the darkness. She wonders if she stood here long enough if darkness would simply become her; if she would dissolve to shadow, or to nothing. If maybe the creatures she had been warned against would come for her and maybe that was the secret to finding the sun again.
If she stares into the dark long enough, she almost thinks she can see something. Shapes forming from the shadows, strange things that seem to shift toward her. And something that looks like a light, too. She blinks, and the light is still there, and for a moment all is silent—her mind, her heart, her breath. Seemingly against her will her legs begin to move her forward, even though all of the what if's are sending pinpricks of fear up her spine. But she is so tired of the dark. She is so tired of the threat of monsters she cannot see, and thinks that maybe she is ready to see them; let them take her, for all she cares.
There is the faintest echo of what could have been a laugh, but the sound is not bright and happy like the laughter she is used to. There is something almost sinister to it, and accompanied by what sounded like something crashing off into the forest, it startles her to a stop. She almost does not notice the boy standing there, but when she does she can feel herself shrinking back. But he has seen her, or at the very least heard her. She hadn't been terribly quiet in her approach, overcome by that strange reckless streak that she was.
She stands, her heart hammering uneasily in her chest, unable to make out his face—if he seemed friendly, or if she should be just as afraid of him as the monsters. “The lights,” she says, forcing the soft tremble of fear from her voice, “is that you making them?”
Because here in the dark everything is quieter, but the voices in her head are louder. The birdsong has all but muted, the dull roar of conversation that rose from the common lands had turned to hushed whispers. The only sound was her heartbeat in her ears and the ghosts that tried their hardest to reach her.
There were rumors of things that lurked in the night, too, but Narya had not seen them herself. She didn't trust her ears, either. Her mind was already so full of indiscernible voices that there were times she could not differentiate from the living and the dead, from real and intangible. From a ghost in her mind and a monster in the forest.
She was going to lose her mind, she was sure of it.
She is in the depths of the forest, swallowed by the darkness. She wonders if she stood here long enough if darkness would simply become her; if she would dissolve to shadow, or to nothing. If maybe the creatures she had been warned against would come for her and maybe that was the secret to finding the sun again.
If she stares into the dark long enough, she almost thinks she can see something. Shapes forming from the shadows, strange things that seem to shift toward her. And something that looks like a light, too. She blinks, and the light is still there, and for a moment all is silent—her mind, her heart, her breath. Seemingly against her will her legs begin to move her forward, even though all of the what if's are sending pinpricks of fear up her spine. But she is so tired of the dark. She is so tired of the threat of monsters she cannot see, and thinks that maybe she is ready to see them; let them take her, for all she cares.
There is the faintest echo of what could have been a laugh, but the sound is not bright and happy like the laughter she is used to. There is something almost sinister to it, and accompanied by what sounded like something crashing off into the forest, it startles her to a stop. She almost does not notice the boy standing there, but when she does she can feel herself shrinking back. But he has seen her, or at the very least heard her. She hadn't been terribly quiet in her approach, overcome by that strange reckless streak that she was.
She stands, her heart hammering uneasily in her chest, unable to make out his face—if he seemed friendly, or if she should be just as afraid of him as the monsters. “The lights,” she says, forcing the soft tremble of fear from her voice, “is that you making them?”
narya
@[crowns]