10-11-2021, 01:13 PM
In the puzzle of his cryptic words, she finds the meaning that hurts the most. The one, perhaps because of the state of her heart so cracked and fissured and falling to pieces, that makes the most sense. I should have been more careful with you. Eight words to unlock the dark inside her delicate chest, eight words to steal the ground away from beneath her feet. Eight words that, when they settle like ash against her listening ears, sound too much like a kind of quiet regret she cannot unhear.
I should have been more careful with you.
It feels at once that these bones inside her skin are made of rock or lead or the weight of entire words, because suddenly she is too tired to do anything but look up at him with that secret brokenness in those aching blue eyes when he forces her gaze to find him. He says her name and it is pain that flares like broken light in the backs of those almost glacial eyes, pain, because she is sure now that he must wish they had never come together in that way that brought them this hurt, this brokenness, these awkward fractures of affection. Even if it also brought them Obsidio, a son he never knew he wanted, a son she knows he loves.
He would have had this son with someone else. Someone strong enough to not hold him like a secret, like a hostage from a father who might’ve loved him the very instant he knew his boy existed. Some strong enough to bear not one but both of the twins growing inside her belly, who wouldn’t have lost something so precious and irreplaceable. In this moment it is impossible not to agree with him, that he should have been more careful. He deserved more than this brokenness she gave him, more than this curse of loss and pain that seems to follow like a shadow at her heels no matter how hard she tries to be free of it.
But she will not keep him from his daughter, from the place on a hill beneath the Pampa skies that might become like a sanctuary from the strange garden that grows there now. “Of course.” Just two words, soft and broken, but she wears a smile on her mouth that is small and bruised, soft because she is so tired of being the thing that hurts him, hurts their son. Of being not enough for their daughter, sister, to survive.
She doesn’t reach out to touch him again, but it is the same love that now keeps her at a quiet distance, protects him from the ruin that loves her so. She says nothing while they walk together, does nothing but stare quietly ahead and disappear to the darkest parts inside herself where she will be too trapped to wound him in some way she cannot bear. When they arrive to the place where Revna rests in eternal sleep, a gentle sloping hillside that seems almost unrecognizable from that night without the starless dark to cast such deep shadows, Revelrie draws to a stop with her eyes drawn to the tree and the tangle of roots beneath it that had grown like a cocoon around their daughter. There are wildflowers growing around the roots, ivy climbing over the bare wood like streaks of forest green, and all of it smells like the newness of spring flowers. Like life and rebirth.
She is still silent when she turns finally to look up into Obscene’s face, to see what reveals itself in the shape of his expression and in the ruby of those lantern eyes. But as she does, a handful of petals come loose from one of the white flowers nestled overhead in the branches and fall like giant snowflakes into the night of Obscene’s mane. The urge to reach out and feel the softness of those petals is something that unfurls like a need inside her chest. But in this moment she only knows the stillness and the quiet and the way these fissures run through her like cracks in the frozen surface of a pond. Like she will always be a thousand incomplete shards of whoever she was meant to be.
“This is her place.” Her words come quietly, like raindrops from lips too tired to smile, too weighed down by the frown that clings to her like shadow. “Would you like some time alone here?” And even she doesn’t know if it is for him or her that she asks, because suddenly it feels like the only thing she can do to make things better is leave from here and set him free from the shadows of this pain.
I should have been more careful with you.
It feels at once that these bones inside her skin are made of rock or lead or the weight of entire words, because suddenly she is too tired to do anything but look up at him with that secret brokenness in those aching blue eyes when he forces her gaze to find him. He says her name and it is pain that flares like broken light in the backs of those almost glacial eyes, pain, because she is sure now that he must wish they had never come together in that way that brought them this hurt, this brokenness, these awkward fractures of affection. Even if it also brought them Obsidio, a son he never knew he wanted, a son she knows he loves.
He would have had this son with someone else. Someone strong enough to not hold him like a secret, like a hostage from a father who might’ve loved him the very instant he knew his boy existed. Some strong enough to bear not one but both of the twins growing inside her belly, who wouldn’t have lost something so precious and irreplaceable. In this moment it is impossible not to agree with him, that he should have been more careful. He deserved more than this brokenness she gave him, more than this curse of loss and pain that seems to follow like a shadow at her heels no matter how hard she tries to be free of it.
But she will not keep him from his daughter, from the place on a hill beneath the Pampa skies that might become like a sanctuary from the strange garden that grows there now. “Of course.” Just two words, soft and broken, but she wears a smile on her mouth that is small and bruised, soft because she is so tired of being the thing that hurts him, hurts their son. Of being not enough for their daughter, sister, to survive.
She doesn’t reach out to touch him again, but it is the same love that now keeps her at a quiet distance, protects him from the ruin that loves her so. She says nothing while they walk together, does nothing but stare quietly ahead and disappear to the darkest parts inside herself where she will be too trapped to wound him in some way she cannot bear. When they arrive to the place where Revna rests in eternal sleep, a gentle sloping hillside that seems almost unrecognizable from that night without the starless dark to cast such deep shadows, Revelrie draws to a stop with her eyes drawn to the tree and the tangle of roots beneath it that had grown like a cocoon around their daughter. There are wildflowers growing around the roots, ivy climbing over the bare wood like streaks of forest green, and all of it smells like the newness of spring flowers. Like life and rebirth.
She is still silent when she turns finally to look up into Obscene’s face, to see what reveals itself in the shape of his expression and in the ruby of those lantern eyes. But as she does, a handful of petals come loose from one of the white flowers nestled overhead in the branches and fall like giant snowflakes into the night of Obscene’s mane. The urge to reach out and feel the softness of those petals is something that unfurls like a need inside her chest. But in this moment she only knows the stillness and the quiet and the way these fissures run through her like cracks in the frozen surface of a pond. Like she will always be a thousand incomplete shards of whoever she was meant to be.
“This is her place.” Her words come quietly, like raindrops from lips too tired to smile, too weighed down by the frown that clings to her like shadow. “Would you like some time alone here?” And even she doesn’t know if it is for him or her that she asks, because suddenly it feels like the only thing she can do to make things better is leave from here and set him free from the shadows of this pain.
REVELRIE
it feels like falling, it feels like rain,
like losing my balance again and again
@Obscene