03-20-2022, 08:14 PM
Ryatah
WHEN I WAS SHIPWRECKED I THOUGHT OF YOU
IN THE CRACKS OF LIGHT I DREAMED OF YOU
She is getting better.
She is getting better, only her better is not good.
She is getting better, meaning the caution that had tried to take root in her chest had been overcome, like weeds encroaching until they strangle the entire garden.
The darkness that followed her home from the void—the kind that wove confusion in her mind and plucked at her idea of reality until her sanity began to fray—had tangled itself into the darkness that had always lived there, until the two were indiscernible and she forgot why she needed to be afraid. She forgot why she had taken shelter in Hyaline, why she never strayed far from Atrox, or from all the other things she has labeled as safe.
Because she has never been a thing made for safety.
Her body is a mapwork of scars, of the mistakes she has made and all the times she has chased that electric, live-wire high of danger when she should have been shying away from it. There is the mark on her hip designed by the god she refused to distance herself from, the uglier scar that now mars her chest from where Gale had gruesomely ripped out her heart, and all the other smaller markings in between that told a story of a time she lingered too close, pushed herself too far.
She is not meant for being safe, and she remembers that now.
It itches beneath her skin, the tension that crawls along her veins like a sickness, and she wonders if she can find a way to make it bleed.
So she goes out into the dark, because she forgets what it means to be afraid of it.
Or maybe she goes out into the dark because she remembers exactly what it means to be afraid of it.
She bypasses the lands that she is already familiar with, the ones that she has learned to navigate even when blind. Instead she finds herself in the newly uncovered place she has only heard whispers of, moving amongst the ruins almost as if a specter in the night. Only, she is far too bright—her entire body is lucent with that ethereal glow, trailing stardust from grand wings, and a halo of light brimming over her head.
Somewhere behind the cloud cover a sliver of moonlight tries to strain through, but she is not looking up at the sky. She is peering into the dark in front of her, wondering what her light might draw from it.
She is getting better, only her better is not good.
She is getting better, meaning the caution that had tried to take root in her chest had been overcome, like weeds encroaching until they strangle the entire garden.
The darkness that followed her home from the void—the kind that wove confusion in her mind and plucked at her idea of reality until her sanity began to fray—had tangled itself into the darkness that had always lived there, until the two were indiscernible and she forgot why she needed to be afraid. She forgot why she had taken shelter in Hyaline, why she never strayed far from Atrox, or from all the other things she has labeled as safe.
Because she has never been a thing made for safety.
Her body is a mapwork of scars, of the mistakes she has made and all the times she has chased that electric, live-wire high of danger when she should have been shying away from it. There is the mark on her hip designed by the god she refused to distance herself from, the uglier scar that now mars her chest from where Gale had gruesomely ripped out her heart, and all the other smaller markings in between that told a story of a time she lingered too close, pushed herself too far.
She is not meant for being safe, and she remembers that now.
It itches beneath her skin, the tension that crawls along her veins like a sickness, and she wonders if she can find a way to make it bleed.
So she goes out into the dark, because she forgets what it means to be afraid of it.
Or maybe she goes out into the dark because she remembers exactly what it means to be afraid of it.
She bypasses the lands that she is already familiar with, the ones that she has learned to navigate even when blind. Instead she finds herself in the newly uncovered place she has only heard whispers of, moving amongst the ruins almost as if a specter in the night. Only, she is far too bright—her entire body is lucent with that ethereal glow, trailing stardust from grand wings, and a halo of light brimming over her head.
Somewhere behind the cloud cover a sliver of moonlight tries to strain through, but she is not looking up at the sky. She is peering into the dark in front of her, wondering what her light might draw from it.
AND IT WAS REAL ENOUGH TO GET ME THROUGH —
BUT I SWEAR YOU WERE THERE