06-10-2022, 09:13 PM
cause if we don’t leave this town
we might never make it out --
He is young, yet he is no stranger to hardship.
He had been born with a hunger that he did not understand, a pang in his gut that his mother’s milk eventually could not satiate. Eventually his teeth grew sharp and his instincts did too, but all he tasted when he had his fill of meat was guilt.
And then he watched his home drown beneath the rising waters, watched as Loess disappeared beneath a tide it could not overcome. They were lucky, his family, that they all escaped alive. The luck stopped there, as he went on to see all the ways his family might fall apart. Much like flooding water, it was a slow disaster, the kind you see coming but think you have time to outrun. He watched his twin sister close in on herself, and watched as his father disappeared. He watched as his mother became as distant as one of the stars she used to be, lingering right where they could see but no one could ever quite reach her.
He was alone when the storm struck Tephra, and alone when the news circulated to him of the fog that had swallowed Taiga.
He is alone, too, when he responds to the call that leads him to the mountain. Glancing up with navy-blue eyes to where the fairy hovers above them, he is surprised at the wings that unfurl at his sides—they are not like the feathered ones he has seen on most, but rather ones made of moonlight, silver and glowing and nearly transparent.
He follows her to where she leads them, to where the clouds churn uneasily and lightning flickers erratically. A nightmare is what they ask for, and wryly he thinks to himself how could he ever possibly choose? Eventually he settles on the one that unnerves him the most: the one where he dreams that the predator inside of him morphs into a monster that he cannot control, where wild game no longer satisfies him. When he wakes from the nightmare he is covered in a sheen of sweat, and the memory of the blood he had spilled from his parents and his sisters—staining his stark white mouth and streaked across his chest—greets him every time he closes his eyes for the next several nights.
It is a foolish fear to hold onto, when he has no family to speak of anymore—no one left to hurt.
He deposits the nightmare without a second thought, and enters the storm.
we might never make it out --
He is young, yet he is no stranger to hardship.
He had been born with a hunger that he did not understand, a pang in his gut that his mother’s milk eventually could not satiate. Eventually his teeth grew sharp and his instincts did too, but all he tasted when he had his fill of meat was guilt.
And then he watched his home drown beneath the rising waters, watched as Loess disappeared beneath a tide it could not overcome. They were lucky, his family, that they all escaped alive. The luck stopped there, as he went on to see all the ways his family might fall apart. Much like flooding water, it was a slow disaster, the kind you see coming but think you have time to outrun. He watched his twin sister close in on herself, and watched as his father disappeared. He watched as his mother became as distant as one of the stars she used to be, lingering right where they could see but no one could ever quite reach her.
He was alone when the storm struck Tephra, and alone when the news circulated to him of the fog that had swallowed Taiga.
He is alone, too, when he responds to the call that leads him to the mountain. Glancing up with navy-blue eyes to where the fairy hovers above them, he is surprised at the wings that unfurl at his sides—they are not like the feathered ones he has seen on most, but rather ones made of moonlight, silver and glowing and nearly transparent.
He follows her to where she leads them, to where the clouds churn uneasily and lightning flickers erratically. A nightmare is what they ask for, and wryly he thinks to himself how could he ever possibly choose? Eventually he settles on the one that unnerves him the most: the one where he dreams that the predator inside of him morphs into a monster that he cannot control, where wild game no longer satisfies him. When he wakes from the nightmare he is covered in a sheen of sweat, and the memory of the blood he had spilled from his parents and his sisters—staining his stark white mouth and streaked across his chest—greets him every time he closes his eyes for the next several nights.
It is a foolish fear to hold onto, when he has no family to speak of anymore—no one left to hurt.
He deposits the nightmare without a second thought, and enters the storm.
-- tiernen.