12-11-2022, 08:51 PM
It is the soft tone of her voice that truly startled him. He had expected the hiss of a snake, not unlike familiar females of the shadows that raised him. They had sprouted just like the shoots beneath him in the dark ages of malicious plots, seeking out the seductive rays of the sun only to harness the power for their own purposes. These were women that brought the mighty to their knees, that mocked his appearance, that kept him beneath them, crawling like a worm to so much as be allowed to share the same air they breathed. It was quite normal to be ignored and equally normal for him to taunt their affection if one could call it that. But this voice, in stark contrast to her physique, fluttered into his ears and landed as though a butterfly, entrancing him with far more intrigue than even the horn which beckoned to him.
His weight shifts, allowing the lone wing to settle back in its place at his side. That is where it really belonged, tucked neatly and tight as if a shield to her question. She had meant the stub; he knew because everyone he had ever met had stared at it with accusation. But startled as he was by her voice, he hesitates, not knowing the intention behind it. Was she being sarcastic? That was something he had grown accustomed to growing up. Smart remarks about his inferiority, rhetoric concerning his disgrace and his replies all the same of the lowly worm since that was his place in the kingdom. He thought at first of an instinctive reply, but it did not escape his lips. Instead, the pause lingers in the air, far longer than is polite as he considered her form and function further. Again, her beauty lightens him, and he supposes her voice suits her, or at least the idea of her that he has begun to build of her. Pretty things ought to have pretty sounds, he decides. And then, what of her question?
"No," the stub twitches in response to an underlying muscle, "I was cursed from birth with a twin whose body made no room for its growth. A cruel joke played by the gods to craft a flightless heathen in the kingdom of the wretched or maybe some kind of karmic atonement for all the devils that came before me."
"Does yours?" he says, bringing the attention back to her magnificent horn.
His thoughts now wandered back through his memories of the pale sister he shared his time with. She was a sickly thing, all bones and not a trace of natural pigment in her albino eyes, and he tried to remember the sound of her voice, but he could not. He had lost her when they were children despite his best efforts to protect her. She had become a toy, a plaything of the perverted men who passed her around like a maiden du jour. He had been too weak himself to fight them off, and even if his screams bothered one, there would quickly be another to tear them apart. This was the way of Hell, and he was meant to accept it. His heart wept for her, but it was locked inside his ribcage, silenced, and kept in line because Bunoarroti knew his place as all creatures did who dwelled in the dank chambers. In the end, he would never know what became of her, though he often wished and dreamt that she had closed her eyes in reverie, her body knowing the warmth of the sun in some wildflower spotted meadow and was released from her torments. It was the kindness thing he could think of -- there was no place for them beyond death that could offer such reprieve from the life they had been born into.
"No," he responds to her voice again, a gentle tug back to current circumstances.
This strange forest, the faint scent of Carnage wafting through comes back to him. Whatever happenings filled this place, they hardly concerned him. It would be difficult to draft him as a soldier in another war he had no ties to. He had been forgotten as he wished, defeated and ego dismantled. There was nothing that could sway him into the Devil's politics, nothing left worth suffering for. He had paid the price for his freedom and his consciousness was at ease.
"Although," he says, "I wouldn't mind taking on your dangers."
Bounarroti seems to laugh at this, gesturing back to the pinecones. He had always fancied himself a white-knight, protector of the innocent -- knowing full well there was no such thing. He liked to imagine places far away in which idle creatures went about their lives without looking over their shoulders. A place absent of dark whisperings where he stood watch, a faithful servant to Peace and Happiness. It was a silly remnant of his childhood, certainly, he knew, but these were the sort of daydreams one has when they rebel against their upbringing.
His weight shifts, allowing the lone wing to settle back in its place at his side. That is where it really belonged, tucked neatly and tight as if a shield to her question. She had meant the stub; he knew because everyone he had ever met had stared at it with accusation. But startled as he was by her voice, he hesitates, not knowing the intention behind it. Was she being sarcastic? That was something he had grown accustomed to growing up. Smart remarks about his inferiority, rhetoric concerning his disgrace and his replies all the same of the lowly worm since that was his place in the kingdom. He thought at first of an instinctive reply, but it did not escape his lips. Instead, the pause lingers in the air, far longer than is polite as he considered her form and function further. Again, her beauty lightens him, and he supposes her voice suits her, or at least the idea of her that he has begun to build of her. Pretty things ought to have pretty sounds, he decides. And then, what of her question?
"No," the stub twitches in response to an underlying muscle, "I was cursed from birth with a twin whose body made no room for its growth. A cruel joke played by the gods to craft a flightless heathen in the kingdom of the wretched or maybe some kind of karmic atonement for all the devils that came before me."
"Does yours?" he says, bringing the attention back to her magnificent horn.
His thoughts now wandered back through his memories of the pale sister he shared his time with. She was a sickly thing, all bones and not a trace of natural pigment in her albino eyes, and he tried to remember the sound of her voice, but he could not. He had lost her when they were children despite his best efforts to protect her. She had become a toy, a plaything of the perverted men who passed her around like a maiden du jour. He had been too weak himself to fight them off, and even if his screams bothered one, there would quickly be another to tear them apart. This was the way of Hell, and he was meant to accept it. His heart wept for her, but it was locked inside his ribcage, silenced, and kept in line because Bunoarroti knew his place as all creatures did who dwelled in the dank chambers. In the end, he would never know what became of her, though he often wished and dreamt that she had closed her eyes in reverie, her body knowing the warmth of the sun in some wildflower spotted meadow and was released from her torments. It was the kindness thing he could think of -- there was no place for them beyond death that could offer such reprieve from the life they had been born into.
"No," he responds to her voice again, a gentle tug back to current circumstances.
This strange forest, the faint scent of Carnage wafting through comes back to him. Whatever happenings filled this place, they hardly concerned him. It would be difficult to draft him as a soldier in another war he had no ties to. He had been forgotten as he wished, defeated and ego dismantled. There was nothing that could sway him into the Devil's politics, nothing left worth suffering for. He had paid the price for his freedom and his consciousness was at ease.
"Although," he says, "I wouldn't mind taking on your dangers."
Bounarroti seems to laugh at this, gesturing back to the pinecones. He had always fancied himself a white-knight, protector of the innocent -- knowing full well there was no such thing. He liked to imagine places far away in which idle creatures went about their lives without looking over their shoulders. A place absent of dark whisperings where he stood watch, a faithful servant to Peace and Happiness. It was a silly remnant of his childhood, certainly, he knew, but these were the sort of daydreams one has when they rebel against their upbringing.
BUONARROTI
haven't I fallen far enough?
OOC: Sorry for the delay -- I caught the stupid covid! argh