06-09-2021, 07:21 PM
ILLUM
He stands shrouded in night despite that it is midday and the sun still sits high in the sky somewhere up above these ancient trees. Above, there is bright aching blue sky and sunlight that pools molten in the surface of everything it touches. There is day and light and bright, and he knows that the shadows are thin yet, mostly hidden beneath their solid pair. But down here beneath the cover of the forest, he has crafted the dark into night. There are stars that roost in the branches of the trees, stars that float like snow, untethered from whatever moorings keep them bound to their midnight prisons. They are different than the ones that glitter against the gauzy dark of his skin, different even than the glowing effervescent dust that clings to a mane no longer obedient to gravity. He has not grown used to the way it floats over his skin and in his periphery.
His eyes are on a sphere of light that some innate part of him knows to be moonlight. But the impossibility of that jars against his logic as he wills the light close enough that, should he have any desire to, he could reach out and touch it. He is entirely still though, quiet in his study of this sphere now crafting itself through the direction of his thoughts into something that looks as pitted and imperfect as the moon he’s seen in every night sky. It would be easiest to believe that he was losing his mind, finally, if not for the way the lunaflies have shed the shadows to flutter silently through that sleepy silver light.
He doesn’t realize he has company until the sound of that delicate gasp drags him from the depths of his thoughts. She is small and slender in a way that reminds him of the white-tailed does that occasionally startle from his path when he draws too near, especially when those liquid-dark eyes go wide and round at the very sight of him. He says nothing, only faintly curious at her presence at all until that glow bleeds from her skin in a shade of shining pink he has seen nowhere else. It is reflexive when he winces away from her light, shifting a few steps deeper into the shadows where it cannot reach him, where he cannot feel the bright of it burning through the dark of him.
It’s you.
His mouth is a sudden frown, his golden eyes forced blank of the confusion that wells up inside his mind. He is absolutely certain he does not know her. But she is sure enough that she steps closer, sure enough that he can see the fear bleed away from her features to leave only that shy smile behind. He does not retreat from her light this time. “It’s me.” He agrees, and then she speaks again and he finds himself suddenly lost in the memory of Hyaline in a storm, of Ryatah and that pain she had discovered inside his chest, of a girl nearly dead from the weight of the dark he craved. He had tried to pry the night from her skin, to coax those shadows away. But there had been no light to find her in the absence, only more shadow. He blinks, and his face is carved stone, something still and cool and entirely silent while she speaks again.
“You look different too.” He says when she is quiet again, though what he wants to ask is how she could possibly know him when he’d thought she had been too weak to even lift her dying head to see him. She must have, though. Despite every last instinct not to, he moves closer to her in the dark, close enough to study those dark eyes that are both familiar and not, hers and echo of someone he does not want to think about. “What else do you remember?” He asks, and for her his voice is something softer, something that might be kind if not for all that jagged dark inside his chest. But the dark in him loves her. She is delicate and gentle, and there is such tentative warmth in her eyes when she looks at him, something too much like trust and whatever ancient thing inside him had been shattered by Violence yearns to shatter her in the same way. It is only ever just barely within his self control to keep it quiet.
It takes everything inside him not to reach out and let the dark, his night, move like a caress across her glowing skin. To know what the burn of this rose-gold light will feel like should he ever let her close this distance between them, this necessary divide. “She never told me your name.” He says, and his mane is stardust drifting across the hazy dark of his midnight skin. “Did she tell you mine?” He is so close to her now, so on the verge of something even he is not brave enough to look into the eyes of.
His eyes are on a sphere of light that some innate part of him knows to be moonlight. But the impossibility of that jars against his logic as he wills the light close enough that, should he have any desire to, he could reach out and touch it. He is entirely still though, quiet in his study of this sphere now crafting itself through the direction of his thoughts into something that looks as pitted and imperfect as the moon he’s seen in every night sky. It would be easiest to believe that he was losing his mind, finally, if not for the way the lunaflies have shed the shadows to flutter silently through that sleepy silver light.
He doesn’t realize he has company until the sound of that delicate gasp drags him from the depths of his thoughts. She is small and slender in a way that reminds him of the white-tailed does that occasionally startle from his path when he draws too near, especially when those liquid-dark eyes go wide and round at the very sight of him. He says nothing, only faintly curious at her presence at all until that glow bleeds from her skin in a shade of shining pink he has seen nowhere else. It is reflexive when he winces away from her light, shifting a few steps deeper into the shadows where it cannot reach him, where he cannot feel the bright of it burning through the dark of him.
It’s you.
His mouth is a sudden frown, his golden eyes forced blank of the confusion that wells up inside his mind. He is absolutely certain he does not know her. But she is sure enough that she steps closer, sure enough that he can see the fear bleed away from her features to leave only that shy smile behind. He does not retreat from her light this time. “It’s me.” He agrees, and then she speaks again and he finds himself suddenly lost in the memory of Hyaline in a storm, of Ryatah and that pain she had discovered inside his chest, of a girl nearly dead from the weight of the dark he craved. He had tried to pry the night from her skin, to coax those shadows away. But there had been no light to find her in the absence, only more shadow. He blinks, and his face is carved stone, something still and cool and entirely silent while she speaks again.
“You look different too.” He says when she is quiet again, though what he wants to ask is how she could possibly know him when he’d thought she had been too weak to even lift her dying head to see him. She must have, though. Despite every last instinct not to, he moves closer to her in the dark, close enough to study those dark eyes that are both familiar and not, hers and echo of someone he does not want to think about. “What else do you remember?” He asks, and for her his voice is something softer, something that might be kind if not for all that jagged dark inside his chest. But the dark in him loves her. She is delicate and gentle, and there is such tentative warmth in her eyes when she looks at him, something too much like trust and whatever ancient thing inside him had been shattered by Violence yearns to shatter her in the same way. It is only ever just barely within his self control to keep it quiet.
It takes everything inside him not to reach out and let the dark, his night, move like a caress across her glowing skin. To know what the burn of this rose-gold light will feel like should he ever let her close this distance between them, this necessary divide. “She never told me your name.” He says, and his mane is stardust drifting across the hazy dark of his midnight skin. “Did she tell you mine?” He is so close to her now, so on the verge of something even he is not brave enough to look into the eyes of.
