[open] there is never a day that goes by; any

[Offspring]

something has been taken from deep inside of me;
the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.

  The sun is bleak yet blinding, weaving its light between the brittle, dried branches and stirring the crystalline ice crystals that cling precariously above the moist soil below. It is a dreary morning, one that is slow moving and seemingly endless – his own breath is shallow, but a cloud of carbon dioxide lingers still with each exhalation. Winter; it is the only reprieve he has from the tepid humidity of the volcanic land he had long since claimed as his own - one that he savors, for it is always too short.

  He longed to once against tuck himself within the arctic tundra, to savor the icy wind against his thick, muscled skin, to thrive within even the harshest blizzard – he yearned for the many days he had once wasted, loitering in the frigid wasteland that had become every bit a part of him as his own heart, as his own soul.

  The fiery ember of pyrokinesis that burned deep within him held no comparison to the way wielding ice once made him feel – the fire is scathing, burning and he loathes every part of it. It is as if some higher power had sensed what small bit of comfort he had taken in the ice and bestowed him with fire as a way to mock, to taunt him.

  There is nothing (nothing) left for him now – it is all a distant memory, and yet –

  And yet.

  A grunt rumbles from the tense restraint of his throat as the ridge of his brow line furrows, the darkened rims of his red eyes narrowing in disbelief. A pale, flightless figure – lingering in a small clearing, flesh and bone - a small reminder of what had once been, of what was.

  ”Hurricane,” his voice is rough from disuse, reverberating off of the dense foliage surrounding them as he presses through the thicket, emerging from the west. ”a pleasant surprise, brother.” A pause, as his gaze studies the carved lines of his broad cheek, of his weary and frustrated eyes. A man, lost as he had been. As he always would be.

  ”I miss it, too,” he says, knowingly.

wounds so deep they never show; they never go away.
like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.

Offspring