i am the mace, the map, the fall and the high
They had done it. They had succeeded.
This knowledge eases the memory of being swallowed by beasts, of the blackness of the abyss and the certainty that his life had been forfeit. But he had done as he promised. He had served as a distraction and when he had been stitched back together on the beach an eternity later, the sun had burst from the sky.
There had been a strange sort of empty deep in his chest those first few minutes as he had tried to recover his senses. Then, as the sun had returned and light coalesced slowly into an indistinct shape beside him, he realized he had been missing something. Something that had taken shape into a large and predatory bird beside him on the sand.
He still couldn’t quite put it into words, but he had understood it deep inside his very being. Even as he’d stared into the sharp gaze of the juvenile raptor, he’d known it was a piece of himself given form.
Even now, weeks later, there is an uncomfortable sort of knowledge in seeing the bird as it keeps pace with him in the sky above. He had found in his new companion a unique and thrilling vantage point, their minds (and eyesight) linked as he had never imagined possible. It is both strange and comforting to know that he would never be truly alone in this world.
No matter how alone he might feel.
But Reave, in his usual fashion, had not stopped long enough to delve too deeply into the turmoil that are his own thoughts. Instead he had thrown himself wholly into this new and bright world, as though he could escape the consequences of his poorly thought out choices if only he moved quickly enough. If only he never took a single moment to pause and allow the thoughts to converge in the silence.
And so he moves without direction through the meadow, determination splashed across his red and white features even as it writ across every line of his body and through the bloodstains where glowing bone had begun to force its way through flesh. There is a ferocity he cannot quite escape, but it is one that has nowhere to go, instead revealing itself in his overly confident step and the blazing blue of his eyes.
reave
