Shadows form, snaking across the loam with broadening silhouettes. I note each of them, my gaze held far longer, storing them in my mind's eye. I try and clutch onto as much as I can memory wise; filing them with some sort of trepidation. My memories flit like birds, and all I have left are the remnants of forgotten feathers. I hold those feathers close to my heart, and soul, hoping that one day all those feathers will piece together and i'd understand things. Know things. Find out the secrets locked inside my skull.
My hollow grey eyes move to Wichita, they smile like my lips. My voice strings together a smooth dulcet tone. 'Reuen. Reuen is fine..' I say with pieces of a smile like puzzle pieces, tearing at my lips. I feel fine. The Gates are home, the Gates are safe. My body is slowly healing, even if my bones still protrude, my wounds still ache with new peach flesh and occasionally weeping crimson tears. I am feeling better, and having friends, having some form of a family unit just made the shadows that more bearable. Just after Wichita, a buckskin enters. His eyes wander and I meet them, momentarily I see the shadows just behind his eyes, he speaks of good intentions, of following Wichita. But it does not make the fear sliding up each nodule of my spine any better. I watch him, eyes lucid behind the matted cream locks that the wind torments, strewn across my scarred face, like wisps of filigree across chocolate.
Fiasko grabs my attention when she speaks. My attentive ears curve, capturing her words and slowly piecing them together. My hooves are unstable, shifting uncomfortably between one, the other. My selling barrel heaves every now again with a stolen breath. My tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth as I speak. 'Reuen wants to help. Help the Gates. Reuen will go with Mast.' I nod, slowly turning my attention to the pallid King. I agree with myself, gently lifting my foreleg and pawing at the most earth underfoot. He mentioned the chamber. The chamber. It fills me with a sense of longing and fear, and it's the emotions that thump within me. For being so numb when I flew into the Gates, to feeling things. I was unsure where to place them. 'Reuen will help, like the Gates helped Reuen.' I draw my nose low, touching the earth, feeling the strange pulses beneath. Fiasko had mentioned traits, mentioned the unusual gifts given. But my attention turns to Jason. His glare at Mast, his uncertainty does not go unnoticed, it is just I, the one with the every roaming eye, and the empty mind, that notices it. I step forward, closer to him. He had helped me, the steely blue man. I pressed my nose into his shoulder, a soft, gentle gesture. Nothing more, nothing less. We all were a family, a unit, here. And I wondered if this is what it had been like before.
Before the blood. Before the pain. I shiver at the sharp memory that strikes me like a thousand needles, burying into my head and forcing me to see the shadows dance just beyond my eyeline. I divert my attention to little Tioga, trying to draw her innocence, steal the slithers of purity. Anything nice, anything light and pure to banish the darkness that creeps along my skin, my eyes. 'Tioga. Tioga will be strong. Unbeatable.' I nod, the bob of my head follows on and on, more like a toss, careening tendrils of stained cream falling like foamy rivulets over my weedy neck.
I say no more, and proceed my silence. My corpse-like pose, as still as a statue. My eyes flitting from each once more.
Reuen
the little ruined girl
resident of the gates |
