09-05-2016, 04:19 PM
When they had bedded down together the night before, beneath a sky of dark and silver and gleaming constellations, the world had been whole. Whatever wounds still existed between them were at least healing now, and their family was entire, they were safe. Offspring had left no room in her heart for doubt or darkness with his quiet assurances, and when he had asked her to come back with him to their home of snow and ice, there hadn’t been even a flicker of hesitance in her mind. Things were good now, better, and for the first time in a long while, Isle did not doubt her place at his side.
But things are never quite what they seem, and when she wakes to feel Offspring’s nose pressed urgently to her skin, she just knows. Her eyes had leapt to his, quiet and pleading, dark and darkening still, and then they had run together as a family, stirring those of the Kingdom they could find. The ground shifted and quaked, it breathed great shuddering sighs beneath their hooves, and then suddenly it was just gone. She leapt, but it felt like falling into darkness, and she did not miss the instant that Offpsring’s warmth was pried away.
She wakes as the rest of them do, with worry in a heart now split wide and aching. She cannot find her mate, the keeper of her heart, cannot pick his silhouette out of the innumerable shadows hurrying to and fro, cannot pull his voice from the cacophony of sounds that bruise the air around her. But where the others can deafen themselves against the calls, Isle cannot. They ring past her ears to burrow like parasites into the flesh of her brain, and her knees buckle with the effort of remembering how to exist at all. Minds are not meant to hold so many different voices, and hers begins to break.
It is thoughtless when she stumbles forward, half running and half falling down the unevenness of a mountain she does not know. Perhaps it by the grace of a kindly fairy, or by the instinct carved into her body from years of traveling the Tundra mountains, but she does not fall to her death. She stumbles on, nearly blinded by the pain in her head, until without warning the voices fall abruptly silent. There is nothing, not even a whisper. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so relieved by the quiet, if the noise hadn’t hurt so much, she might’ve paused to question why.
But she doesn’t.
Great, gasping breaths carve themselves from her lungs until as last she is calm enough to notice the metallic scent permeating the air and notices the red of swollen wounds on her knees and legs. As the adrenaline fades, her discomfort grows, and her body feels stiff and bruised when she takes an uncertain step forward. She is hurt, though not seriously, and as she looks around it is clear that many have suffered the same.
The journey down the rest of the mountain is uneventful, blessedly silent but for the few still calling out for friend and family. By the time she reaches the bottom, dusk has already fallen, and the sky is the color of rust and blood, of watery sunshine, and it reminds her of the morning, of a world torn-apart. She turns away from it, shivering, her dark face etched with deep shadow. It is then that her eyes are drawn to a shape in the half-dark, to a pair of red gleaming eyes, and her heart explodes within the cage of her chest. “Offspring.” Her words are a whisper of sound, the keening of a wounded heart, but they sound so sweet when they take the shape of his name. “You’re alive.” She doesn’t mean to say it out loud, to let him see the dark depths of her worry, of the pain ripping her chest apart. It seems selfish somehow, selfish to fall apart now in his embrace when she is certain he is already busy trying to put the pieces of his own heart back together. But it is said, and there is nothing she can do now but stumble toward him on unsteady legs, into the warmth and strength of an embrace he has always saved for her. “Never,” she says as she reaches him, tripping once over her own tired feet before colliding with the safety of his chest, “I never want to be without you, Offspring.”
i am well aware of the shadows in my heart
But things are never quite what they seem, and when she wakes to feel Offspring’s nose pressed urgently to her skin, she just knows. Her eyes had leapt to his, quiet and pleading, dark and darkening still, and then they had run together as a family, stirring those of the Kingdom they could find. The ground shifted and quaked, it breathed great shuddering sighs beneath their hooves, and then suddenly it was just gone. She leapt, but it felt like falling into darkness, and she did not miss the instant that Offpsring’s warmth was pried away.
She wakes as the rest of them do, with worry in a heart now split wide and aching. She cannot find her mate, the keeper of her heart, cannot pick his silhouette out of the innumerable shadows hurrying to and fro, cannot pull his voice from the cacophony of sounds that bruise the air around her. But where the others can deafen themselves against the calls, Isle cannot. They ring past her ears to burrow like parasites into the flesh of her brain, and her knees buckle with the effort of remembering how to exist at all. Minds are not meant to hold so many different voices, and hers begins to break.
It is thoughtless when she stumbles forward, half running and half falling down the unevenness of a mountain she does not know. Perhaps it by the grace of a kindly fairy, or by the instinct carved into her body from years of traveling the Tundra mountains, but she does not fall to her death. She stumbles on, nearly blinded by the pain in her head, until without warning the voices fall abruptly silent. There is nothing, not even a whisper. Perhaps if she hadn’t been so relieved by the quiet, if the noise hadn’t hurt so much, she might’ve paused to question why.
But she doesn’t.
Great, gasping breaths carve themselves from her lungs until as last she is calm enough to notice the metallic scent permeating the air and notices the red of swollen wounds on her knees and legs. As the adrenaline fades, her discomfort grows, and her body feels stiff and bruised when she takes an uncertain step forward. She is hurt, though not seriously, and as she looks around it is clear that many have suffered the same.
The journey down the rest of the mountain is uneventful, blessedly silent but for the few still calling out for friend and family. By the time she reaches the bottom, dusk has already fallen, and the sky is the color of rust and blood, of watery sunshine, and it reminds her of the morning, of a world torn-apart. She turns away from it, shivering, her dark face etched with deep shadow. It is then that her eyes are drawn to a shape in the half-dark, to a pair of red gleaming eyes, and her heart explodes within the cage of her chest. “Offspring.” Her words are a whisper of sound, the keening of a wounded heart, but they sound so sweet when they take the shape of his name. “You’re alive.” She doesn’t mean to say it out loud, to let him see the dark depths of her worry, of the pain ripping her chest apart. It seems selfish somehow, selfish to fall apart now in his embrace when she is certain he is already busy trying to put the pieces of his own heart back together. But it is said, and there is nothing she can do now but stumble toward him on unsteady legs, into the warmth and strength of an embrace he has always saved for her. “Never,” she says as she reaches him, tripping once over her own tired feet before colliding with the safety of his chest, “I never want to be without you, Offspring.”