06-21-2021, 08:32 PM
ILLUM
He would have laughed if he knew she thought him to be some kind of deity, something more than mortal and wrong and entirely broken down to his barest parts. He has seen his reflection, has seen the way he’s changed into something that is both more than he was and entirely less, and he does not think God. He thinks he is the erosion that has always been inside his chest, the dark that lived inside him long before he recognized whose eyes were staring back at him. It was only a matter of time until it consumed him, until he became the deep and the dark and the absence of anything at all.
He just hadn’t expected the stars.
They made him feel lighter in a way that was unexpected, made that knot in his chest loosen just a little, just enough to breathe.
He finds it curious the way she searches him so openly, and he cannot help but wonder what it is she thinks of as her eyes trace the dark impermanence of his body, his stars, the silhouette of large feather wings. He thinks she should be frightened of him, but there is no new tension coiling beneath the shimmering dapples of her dark skin. Perhaps not a mouse after all.
“Not everything.” He says, and when her eyes finish their quiet exploration and return to his face, his own steady gaze is carefully flat and waiting. “Though you seem to have noticed that for yourself.” He doesn’t move a single step, but night billows around him as though it follows the laws of liquid, spilling silently over everything in his general vicinity. His eyes move from her face to study her, and though she gave him no invitation to do so he studies her plainness openly. She is a shade of brown that would be entirely unremarkable in such a colorful world if not for the way its deepness reminds him of the deep forests of home.
Her voice is something quiet, but it reclaims his attention anyway as he returns to studying her face, studying a pain he imagines he can see flitting around in the backs of her eyes. “You were dead?” The question is flat because he forces it to be, forces his golden eyes to be still and blank despite the curiosity that burns inside them with the ferocity of stars gone supernova. The dark around him deepens, his mane a web of silk stardust drifting above his neck.
In the next instant he is nearly nose to nose with her, having teleported through his own shadows to stand close enough to look down into eyes a shade of blue so dark they could belong to his night. At a distance he had thought them as brown as her coat.
He is glad to be wrong.
“Would you like to see the forests of my home?” His eyes flash now, a brilliantly dark gold better suited to a molten sun than any silver star. “I don’t know of any place darker.” Besides himself, of course, he thinks behind the slow crawl of a dark, humorless smile.
He just hadn’t expected the stars.
They made him feel lighter in a way that was unexpected, made that knot in his chest loosen just a little, just enough to breathe.
He finds it curious the way she searches him so openly, and he cannot help but wonder what it is she thinks of as her eyes trace the dark impermanence of his body, his stars, the silhouette of large feather wings. He thinks she should be frightened of him, but there is no new tension coiling beneath the shimmering dapples of her dark skin. Perhaps not a mouse after all.
“Not everything.” He says, and when her eyes finish their quiet exploration and return to his face, his own steady gaze is carefully flat and waiting. “Though you seem to have noticed that for yourself.” He doesn’t move a single step, but night billows around him as though it follows the laws of liquid, spilling silently over everything in his general vicinity. His eyes move from her face to study her, and though she gave him no invitation to do so he studies her plainness openly. She is a shade of brown that would be entirely unremarkable in such a colorful world if not for the way its deepness reminds him of the deep forests of home.
Her voice is something quiet, but it reclaims his attention anyway as he returns to studying her face, studying a pain he imagines he can see flitting around in the backs of her eyes. “You were dead?” The question is flat because he forces it to be, forces his golden eyes to be still and blank despite the curiosity that burns inside them with the ferocity of stars gone supernova. The dark around him deepens, his mane a web of silk stardust drifting above his neck.
In the next instant he is nearly nose to nose with her, having teleported through his own shadows to stand close enough to look down into eyes a shade of blue so dark they could belong to his night. At a distance he had thought them as brown as her coat.
He is glad to be wrong.
“Would you like to see the forests of my home?” His eyes flash now, a brilliantly dark gold better suited to a molten sun than any silver star. “I don’t know of any place darker.” Besides himself, of course, he thinks behind the slow crawl of a dark, humorless smile.
@[Risa]