10-17-2021, 09:57 PM
She can find no escape from this dark that lives inside her chest, no reprieve from this ache that feels like fingers wrapped around every rib and pulling softly in a dozen different directions. It is worse that she is the sun, that she is made of molten brightness and morning rays, that every part of her burns like a beacon in the dark. But nothing reaches what lives inside her, nothing can salvage the heart that beats only to fall apart, the way it tries every single day to fall out of her chest and bury itself in the dirt at her feet.
It is a kind of brokenness she would not have thought possible. Something worse than when night had bullied the sun out of the sky and left it vast and starless and filled below with creatures who thrilled for the hunt. That had felt like death, but this feels like dying in perpetuity. Like an unraveling that nevers stops, like all her bones have broken and there is nothing but pain to hold all her ragged edges together.
She is cracked. She knows this because thoughts slip from her almost constantly now - not always entire sentences, but words with certain emphasis, certain weight. She knows because strangers watch her with bland friendly eyes while she smiles at them like her world is perfect and she is the light that she is made of; they smile until they frown because her mask has slipped and they see what actually lives behind such beautiful molten eyes. Not the sun, not the day, but a living, burning brimstone darkness.
She thinks it must be Hell that burns inside her, because how else could these demons in her chest thrive so well.
It is dark still, and though it should have been easy for her to keep track of the passing time, of the shape of the stars and the position of the moon where it hangs full and heavy in the sky, she is too trapped inside her own head to notice. Perhaps that is why she nearly stumbles over the sprawling legs of someone sleeping quietly in the grass near her feet, why she only just barely throws her wings out like sails to halt her motion. The suddenness of it makes her heart race, and the racing of her heart makes the light beneath her skin glow a little brighter over this sleeping stranger.
She takes a few quiet steps backwards, casting him in faint shadow and she steals away from him with her light, but she cannot help but to imagine him like an angel fallen from somewhere higher than she can fathom. He is a shade of pale grey like ash, too dark to be white, too pale to be like storm clouds, and his wings seem somehow more powerful than hers. Broad and heavily feathered, built with more muscle than the smaller gold and dark appendages that sit on her own shoulders. Angel? This is the thought that falls through her widening cracks. Peaceful.
They tip from her like points of conversation, words unspoken and yet shared all the same, and the more she tries to quiet them, the faster they spill. Pain, sleep, exhausted. Peaceful. Dead? He is so still, so still that she cannot help but to move closer again, to reach out and touch the feathers along the outer edge of one of those ash-pale wings. Her light spills over him like a shy, watery dawn. “Are you real?” It is a whisper, it is the sound wings make when they brush against delicate skin, it is the sound a raindrop makes when it strikes the sun-warmed stone. Or have I finally lost my mind.
It is a kind of brokenness she would not have thought possible. Something worse than when night had bullied the sun out of the sky and left it vast and starless and filled below with creatures who thrilled for the hunt. That had felt like death, but this feels like dying in perpetuity. Like an unraveling that nevers stops, like all her bones have broken and there is nothing but pain to hold all her ragged edges together.
She is cracked. She knows this because thoughts slip from her almost constantly now - not always entire sentences, but words with certain emphasis, certain weight. She knows because strangers watch her with bland friendly eyes while she smiles at them like her world is perfect and she is the light that she is made of; they smile until they frown because her mask has slipped and they see what actually lives behind such beautiful molten eyes. Not the sun, not the day, but a living, burning brimstone darkness.
She thinks it must be Hell that burns inside her, because how else could these demons in her chest thrive so well.
It is dark still, and though it should have been easy for her to keep track of the passing time, of the shape of the stars and the position of the moon where it hangs full and heavy in the sky, she is too trapped inside her own head to notice. Perhaps that is why she nearly stumbles over the sprawling legs of someone sleeping quietly in the grass near her feet, why she only just barely throws her wings out like sails to halt her motion. The suddenness of it makes her heart race, and the racing of her heart makes the light beneath her skin glow a little brighter over this sleeping stranger.
She takes a few quiet steps backwards, casting him in faint shadow and she steals away from him with her light, but she cannot help but to imagine him like an angel fallen from somewhere higher than she can fathom. He is a shade of pale grey like ash, too dark to be white, too pale to be like storm clouds, and his wings seem somehow more powerful than hers. Broad and heavily feathered, built with more muscle than the smaller gold and dark appendages that sit on her own shoulders. Angel? This is the thought that falls through her widening cracks. Peaceful.
They tip from her like points of conversation, words unspoken and yet shared all the same, and the more she tries to quiet them, the faster they spill. Pain, sleep, exhausted. Peaceful. Dead? He is so still, so still that she cannot help but to move closer again, to reach out and touch the feathers along the outer edge of one of those ash-pale wings. Her light spills over him like a shy, watery dawn. “Are you real?” It is a whisper, it is the sound wings make when they brush against delicate skin, it is the sound a raindrop makes when it strikes the sun-warmed stone. Or have I finally lost my mind.
aureline
dear wilderness, be at your best
her armor is thin as the fabric of her dress
@Ashhal