[P] — no church in the wild

[Erasmus]

It was not natural, the manner in which nature persisted. The way it shone and glimmered like seasalt beneath the hot sun, crystallized specks of starlight over a tanned stone. The way the pines and the great oaks swayed to the breeze, their needles and leaves shaken with an emerald glow in the lack of moonlight. Odd enough – the lack of moonlight – as the night could not pierce the thick canopy of the trees, the moon's glow was a muffled and weak thing that merely illuminated each spindling vein across the backs of the leaves. It did not touch the ground, from whence sprung a plethora of orchid blooms and violets shielded under hosta greens. Each color spoke with resounding brilliance – reds dripped like wet rubies, lavender petals shifted with an opalescence. The blades of grass were twined like boar hairs, soft to the touch but risen underfoot – and nary a space untouched by flora. 

In the night, the sounds had changed. They were not the wary calls of cuckaroo and distant fawns in the brush – they were an echo of howling, of longing, of mournful sobs and the resolute interruption of a shriek unlike the rest. More pronounced was the hum that seemed to rise from beneath the ground, a low drone that pulsed and breathed, as if the soils should upturn with a heaving rib, and the mountainous volcano spread wide its great maw in yawn. The breeze is serenity in honeyed sway, an almost confectionate inhalation that is potent with lilac pollen and bergamot. It tousles the surrounding wildlife – but it is a wonder that they were not all moving to begin with, a collection of vibrance and vitality that all manifests in hivemind.

Despite these stunning abnormalities, the air possessed of itself the overwhelming feeling of extreme comfort – as if it was a place to rest, to cradle yourself in the roots of a swaying oak and breathe, sleep, dream... 

Erasmus does none of the two former. But he could not deny the presence of dream that lapsed over him like a wave – unbidden, unwarranted, and unstoppable. All things unfolded before his eyes as they were, a magnanimous menagerie of unforeseeable sights, a visionary's ambitions that could wet the palette with glory. The birds, stunning quartz creations of needle beaks and ruby eyes, and the obsidian gleam of shuddering feathers with star-pricked glares that watched ominously from their nests, their ticking jeers called from the curious pandemonium as he met clearing with clearing, the path unfolded from each footstep so as his calculative gait no longer hitched with hesitation. It moved as all else moved, naught but a machination unrolled from the conveyor – flesh and blood and feralty that matched the wickedness of the garden. Nightside of Eden; where forbidden tastes wrapp'd its every breath with timid contemplation, each flavor more vibrant than the last. It is smooth, lacquered respiration that he drew in easy as wading still clear waters, its sweetness a cloying taste that lingered on his tongue.

It was uncertain how long he had traveled or how deep into that forest he had wandered – time seemed to stop there where he was, though everything about it continued as if it could not apply. The sounds were no longer a concentrated mass of distant yelping and yowling and incessant clicking that seemed to carry on for miles – they were all around, evenly distributed through each tree and brush and loitering shadow that loomed with pernicious nonentity. The feeling is celestial. The hum is loudest there it appears, so loud it thrums in his ears and in his chest, stirring the uncoiling mass of shadows that writhe slowly at his core. It crawls beneath his skin like vericose vein, morphine mellow, dripping down his spine and flooding the senses with an unmatched high. It drones lowly, too low for the ground to shake (though it feels it should, it could, as if but a tad louder and the entire island could crack with the weight of its power and succumb to the terminus sea) and too thunderous to be ignored. It is all that carries him, deeper and deeper until his thoughts are no longer his own but something else.

It was in that moment that he discovered the creek – or it had discovered him, as it seemed here was natural for a creek to do, to unwind itself from shorelines and sweep the blissful naiads from dream to dream. A conscious earth. He stopped then, the hum a quiver through him, while his body stood still as glass. A hundred black stones lay at its shore, all glimmering and shifting like droplets of oil caught in their own worldly tides. For a while he stared, uncertain of their purpose or nature, as they continued to glisten with unearthly transference, and all but at once a single stone shed its iridescent skin and revealed beneath a polished, smooth river rock of pure obsidian. He marveled at its cool exterior, its sheen beneath the not-moonlight, the glow of faint green cast to everything but itself. Erasmus, taken by the drone of the island and the possession of awe, lowered his nose to brush against its softness.

In an instant, the smooth stone unfurled into a mass of writhing serpents, each one black and rippling and slithering madly from their point out to spread into the forest. They entangled themselves at the bed of the creek, wrapped and unwrapped about his hooves, their scales as thick and cold as the stone itself – they dispersed each, hissing and unwound into the night. One remained as Erasmus took a small step back to observe and evade some of the harmless assailants, and it coiled back in a tight S, its dark maw unfolded with fangs that pulled from its jaw. He appealed to its threat with his own, his lips curled back over his set that gleamed with a sharpness that outmatched its offender. Satisfied, the snake uncoiled and too disappeared into the brush.

As it vanished out of site, the sounds about the clearing hushed with an immediacy that would have stunned him if it were not for the constant hum that filled his blood.

The creek shifted, its silvery current sweeping with it the oily sheen of its hematite stones – until it ran dry at the same moment that the noise stopped. Erasmus drank in the shadows that caressed across his frame, the odd glow that filled the forest now dulled and trickled through in small spots that danced with a faint breeze. He turned behind him, watching the flowers blacken one by one. They did not die – not wilt and brown and wither to the grasses beneath them – they simply darkened at the multitudes, from vibrant reds and pinks and blues to velveteen petals of black and deep, bottomless purple, and on them sparkled dew with the radiance of a thousand stars. He turned back to the dried creekbed, and saw now that it was a winding rut filled with charred bones, fractured skulls and broken ribs that jutted from its belly, and he wondered if it had ever been a creek at all. 

And the drone turned from sweetness to pins and needles, first at his core and winding up his spine until his jawbone clicked with the spark. The faint, spent glow of the not-moonlight shimmered over his features, damp with dew and slight perspiration, sharp across his rigid features as they raised high above his shoulders. His horns shone with their onyx resplendence, his gold glimmering grins beneath the fingers of shadows pulled like a thin veil of smoke. He addresses the night as so, for he knows the dark watches. But not what it is. He feels it, cool and creeping as it does upon his spine - and the birds go silent. "what are you?" but he knows, he knows.

@Eshek

[Eshek]

eshek

“a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”

Eshek is the moonlight in the dark garden.

Bright stones are alive in the pits of her head, small pearls dusted with all the star-shine and universe-light that the deep black could hold. Galaxies are rushing through her veins and each moon-flower and each winter nightshade that is blooming out of season unfolds and leans a little towards the wake of her. She's a current, a tide, an entire ocean of brightness. The canopy when a breeze blows through hot and humid, seems to recall knowing all the bits of her. Each branch seems to reach down, and down, and down towards the crevice of her spine.

And maybe, maybe each tree remembers how to be a seed inside of her and each vine remembers what it felt like to grow along the wall of her chest.

Twilight follows her as she wanders along the strange creek. Obsidian rings against her hooves like hollow bell-song. It sings a mournful sound and each note rises down her dead nerves like terror holy and grotesque. Eshek smiles, and light pours out until the river current refracts strange bits of her into the dark treeline. Bits of her light catch on the tree bark and those pieces look like sharp bits of glass instead of light.

When she finds him, the golden boy, the night-black boy, the river has long dried out. Eshek does not wonder where the water has gone (didn't she drop her head back there to slake her dry, parched throat?). And when he talks to the darkness she only opens her mouth and light pours out. 

The moon has come to the thick forest and it's silver-bright against his black skin when she anoints him in the bits of her caught between the blackness. 

Her brightness (she leaves no shadow when she walks) drags across the strange graveyard and worms rise up like flowers in the sun-white glare. They wave in a airless wind-- back and forth, back and forth. Their mouths open up too, small gaps of blackness in the thinness of their segments. And Eshek hums to them, like a god humming to a congregation of bloody, bent mortals.

There are no words to answer him, only light, only a mighty moon that has swallowed up a hundred suns. But her smile, oh her too wide and too wicked smile, gives him a hundred different names of what she is.

Each ray of light dripping from her spells out that word, the only word....

e v e r y t h i n g

And in the silence, strange and heavy like silence always is (a song, a chant, a prayer of weight), the forest is still waving in the light and the worms as still swaying like wheat-grass.

@Erasmus

[Erasmus]

The first thing he recognizes of her is that she does not belong. It was not that he discovered she was anything of death, of destruction, nothing of that milky phosphorence that poured from her like a beacon spoke to him of the end. Though the worms at her heels writhed from the earth, kissing her heels with a merry famishment that praised her hymns and bowed to her step, it was not dissonance that emanated from her pores and met him with a spite unlike any he had tasted before. It was that she was not of this plane, and yet so wholly immersed in it, a part of it, like entangled roots through the upturned soils. Perhaps it was he that did not belong. Titan blood coursed through his veins, drummed furiously over his heavy bones and pounded in his ears – the hum, the hum of beetle wings, of flies, of larvae singing in the night. (And we scowl, we lurch beneath the light, for we know better in these shadows.) When she grins it is moonlight waxing over the garden, tendrils of light that swept and rushed and collided against his shadows with a vicious assertion. They pull across his sharp features, they lay sweeping over his softened curves, the valleys and knolls of youthful musculature bathed in unholy light. 

The boy in him screams a silent scream, some shriek that pulls from deeper beneath his feet and rips out of his body with an imminent fear that he has never known and never cares to know again – it threatens to rattle him, to jar him, to shake him from trance and command him away. It wishes to run, to flee to wherever that light could not touch. It peels back beneath his flesh with a grudging fright and tears at his muscles, and we realize that it is not a boy in him at all but the trace of mortality – something inside of him that dies with each minute, struggling to breathe under the weight of his birthright. If he were a man it would be the humanity screaming in a demigod, the lapse of disbelief that comes from faults that are entirely human, while the brash nature of a god flows full and conscious and certain. He stifles that boyish fear, swallowing it like a prickling knot in his chest. He discards it like a second skin.

She grins. It is light and divine and consuming and otherworldly. 

He grins. It is cruel and wolfish, distorting his features with a darkness that shirk that light. 

We grin with him.

She does not speak in words, not in one word or many, it can't be explained by any language in the world. It merely hums, and buzzes, and cries, and screams, and all at once the forest moves with it in telling – but not telling too much – and telling everything. She is light and blood and bone and blood and light, and something he knows is not mortal flesh but trapped there as he sometimes feels himself, trapped by veins like ropes that slid a noose around his throat. In his core something rolls like a stone, and slithers up his throat with a vicious laugh. It is not boisterous – it is somewhat menacing, relieved, as if all the tension had come to a head and washed over him suddenly, but all around him it sparked in ways that could send his hair on end. Her answer sent his blood to boil, it set his flesh on fire and his bones to a pining ache. It was not meant to be heard but to be felt, and such sensation was a livid, vibrant thing that cascaded over him in waves of epiphany.

He does not bow. (We would not allow it. Not to any god.) Though the worms and the larvae and the birds and the leaves and the flowers and even the dust fall in servile ranks, silent and despondent like the bobbing heads of beaten servants and gracious patrons. He stands tall, resilient, his composure an unearthly mesh of cool granite and steel and the gleam of gold that glows like rays of an incensed sun in the passing of her light. Something in him is rebellious against her being, and he does not fight it or question it. It simply is.

his eyes are full of light – of gold lapping in the bright iridescence, drinking it in greedily and allowing none to escape, none to reflect off the hot, sharp rind of its stead. it roves, it winds, it is a predator's glance that wraps her countenance in wonder and hunger. and he feeds. immersed in her ambience that swells around him, breathing it as air, as if he inhaled the sulfuric light and exhaled the smoke of shadow, mingled and twisted over the roll of his tongue, the glint of his fangs. never before had he witnessed a god. and he wondered, how he wondered; was she wrapped in his blood the way she was wrapped in the life and death that surrounded her? Were they connected like the tangled roots of bordering trees, taut and suffocating over years of gnarled thirst? Or was she a part of him as stardust was a part of him? As the river? As the stone? As the serpent? 

His chin rose, light running down the sharp rise of his cheekbone like milk, the shadows in his eyes glaring and gleaming with vengeful ware. "you are not me." Erasmus grins still but his words erupt as if a growl, as if he were scowling, low and pernicious and daunting. His expression is as of Apollo's damnable pride, a handsome trace of reluctance tailed in heresy. "but perhaps a part." The condemnation in his voice does not touch his eyes – which admire what they behold, in awe and curiosity, brimmed with a tenacity that aspires to violence. "why are you here?"

@Eshek

[Random Events]

A Random Event Has Occurred!

Her light is everywhere, drenching the dried up creek bed, the smooth river stones, the stallion’s face. Night turns to day in the blink of an eye, and all the orchids blooms and violets and midnight-blooming flowers wither beneath its stare.

The trees swell, soaking in her magic until they rupture with the force of it all. Her magic carves a hole into each of their trunks, that gapes open like a smile back at her. Leaves turn to ash and it rains down all around them.

It should be impossible, for anything to survive her.

But the island survives her.

The wind comes in to taunt them both, spiraling like a hurricane around their bodies. It tears at their manes and it howls in their ears - and slowly, slowly, it takes hold of her light.

And it bends it until the world is no longer sure if its her magic or its own, until a spot of darkness remains like a pillar standing between them. And within that pillar, if they look closer enough (and oh how the wind tries to bend their necks, to force them to look), is a map.

They may recognize the dried up creek first, with the pair of horses standing next to it somewhere in the middle.

On one end of the stream is the ocean, waves thrashing and foaming. On the other end is a meadow made of sand, and that sand is shifting. It opens like a mouth, and something tall and legless climbs out. It coils its long body and strikes, its shadowy feature reaching for the stallion’s throat -

- But with a sigh of the wind, it vanishes into smoke, and the map made of shadows turns to ash.

We have magic, too, the forest laughs.

 

---

@erasmus and @eshek will notice an anomaly in the light that pools out of her. A pillar of shadows rises into the air between the two horses, and if they look closely, the shadows begin to move, forming itself into a map. On one end is the ocean - on the other end, a beast. And although they stand somewhere in the middle, it seems the island is telling them there are two places they could go.

Each participant has been awarded +100 signos.

Enjoy!

[Eshek]

eshek

“a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”

The forest becomes pillars of wild-wood. Light is catching on the bark like it's blood instead of everything. The trees turn sharp, and brittle, and they are broken up by flecks of black when the ants starts to crawl up them in neat little lines. “No.” She says in iridescence and the teeth flashing between her red, red, red lips cut the brightness. “I am not all of you. But I could be.” Her hooves make hardly a sound as she moves closer, and closer, and she begs that wolf in his sneer to growl.

She would drink the sound of it like wine.

A waiting reservoir inside her mockery of skin starts to open up when she watches his golden eyes drink her eyes, and his shadows start to nibble on the endless ends of her. Eshek starts to remember how her ribs used to hug, and how her skin used to embrace, and how her flies used to crawl up and beg for lungs. She starts to remember how much she loves violence, and becoming, and being. Another step brings her closer.

The island starts to come to life around them and she does not turn the pits of her eyes to swallow up the sight. When the trees rain down ash and leaves she only sighs for the press of death against her spine. Each lick of her tongue against her lips brings a little more of that magic to her throat, and her belly, and that hollow, hungry universe. She wonders if it tastes like salt, or dirt, when she watches a flake catch in the empty place below his eyes.

It's only as the island comes calling that she closes her eyes against the whip of the wind, because she knows that her light has already sunk into the air. Her moths scream when the wind dashes them against the wild-wood, and her worms eat the ash like seed and water. She does not open her eyes again until the blackness is spreading and making of itself a map.

She does not notice it reaching for the stallion's throat. But if she did, oh if she did--

Eshek drags her teeth along the shape in the blackness and laughs when it sinks to nothing and falls around her skin. She laughs with the forest and says, “Of course you do”. And then she licks the rest of the ash and soot from her lips and sucks it out from between her teeth.

“Which direction will you go?” Her ribs are still aching with the memory of an embrace and she does not need to wonder if he would survive the true shape of her.

No mortal could.

@Erasmus

[Erasmus]

HOW CURIOUSLY DO THE MITES AND THE BEETLES STIR – HOW DO THE WITHERED EDGES OF THE TREES FIND THEIR PLACE IN THE TOW OF DESTRUCTION, HALVED IN THEIR AGONY BENEATH THE WEIGHT OF LIGHT. OF FLOODING LIGHT – OF PENETRATIVE GLOW, SEVERE AND HARDLY SHIMMERING BUT A GREAT FLOW OF MILKY MOON-WHITE THAT ATE AND ATE AND ATE. THE SAPLINGS DID NOT KNOW SUCH TERROR. THEY BENT AND STRAINED, SILENT MOANS AGGRAVATED IN THE WAY THE BOUGHS ABOVE TOSSED AND HISSED THEIR SHUDDERING LEAVES TO ASH. BUT THE GREAT TREES WITHSTOOD IT WITH QUARREL, AND THEIR SKINS WERE RATTLED WITH THE THOUSAND FEETS OF BEADY ANTS, EACH WITH THEIR ARMOR RAISED. TO PLEASE, TO GRATE, ALL IN LINE AND QUARTERED BY THE CADENCE OF CHAOS. O BUT SHE IS NOT THE HAND OF FATE, NOT THE FACE OF DEATH – AN EMISSARY, CRUEL AND ENDLESSLY HUNGRY. WE REMEMBER HER. BUT FEAR DOES NOT RISE TO THE FLESH OF THE TITAN-BORN, HE DOES NOT SHARE THE HORROR WITH NATURE UNDONE BENEATH THE WHITE-HOT PRESS OF DESTRUCTION. THE LIGHT TIP-TOES AT THE EDGE OF HIS HOOVES, IT SMOOTHS ALONG HIS FEATURES, IT THREATENS TO WEAVE AGAINST THE GLIMMERING GOLD COILS THAT SPLIT HIS SHOULDER. IT ACHES TO ACHE, TO PERSUADE HIS FLESH TO PEEL, TO GIVE, TO ACCEPT.

THE NOT-MOONLIGHT POOLS IN THE HOLLOW PARTS OF HIS EXPRESSION THAT DIVE INTO HER OWN WITH A VIRULENT REFUSAL. AND HOW BEAUTIFUL HE IS IN THE NATURE OF MILD FURY – THE POUT OF HIS CURVED LIPS, DRAWN TIGHT AGAINST WAITING FANGS; THE SHARPNESS OF HIS EYES THAT BIDE IN MESMERIC SHADOW, AND THE WAY THE LIGHT CUTS OVER HIS SHARP CHEEKBONES. IT IS CRADLED IN THE LIKENESS OF HIS SKULL – INDEED, A PORTRAITURE OF DEATH THAT PAINTS HIM BONE-WHITE AT ITS HIGHEST POINTS. SHE SPEAKS - NO - AND THE LIGHT SLIPS ACROSS HIS FEATURES AS HE MOVES TO SNAP AT A SOARING BEETLE. IT TASTES LIKE DIRT AND SULFUR IN HIS MOUTH, PROMPTLY SPIT AT HER FEET. ITS WINGS FLUTTERED ONCE, TWICE, TWITCHING GRIMACE OF DOOM BEFORE THE LIGHT EMBRACES IT AND REDUCES IT TOO TO ASH. THE SHADOWS RETURN FAINTLY, A VEIL THAT PASSES OVER HIS FACE AND TOYS WITH THE LIGHT THAT RECEDES.

WHEN SHE MOVES HE IS PINS AND NEEDLES AND GRATING HOT MALICE. HIS SMOOTH EDGES SHARPEN, HIS AMUSEMENT IS WHITTLED TO REPUGNANCE. HE DOES NOT SNARL – BUT O HOW HE HUNCHES LUPINE, HIS SHOULDERS SQUARE AND HIGH AND READY, THE HUM SWELLS WHERE HER WORDS FALL SHORT AND HIS EARS SLIP BACK BEHIND HIS CROWN. HE LOOKS AND SEES THE WAY HER SKIN MOVES WITH SOME PECULIARITY HE CANNOT COMPREHEND – HOW IT IS RUSSET, NO, HOW IT IS BLOOD RED AND GLIMMERS WITH DEW, WITH PERSPIRATION, WITH THE REFRACTED RAYS OF NOT-MOONLIGHT THAT EATS AND EATS AND HAS LEFT HER SOMETHING NOT QUITE DEAD AND NOT QUITE ALIVE. HE SEES THAT SHE ALMOST RESEMBLES A SKINNED CARCASS IN THE LIGHT, A CADAVER THAT SHOULD NOT BREATHE BUT EXHALES THE FUMES OF CARNAGE AND DECAY. HE SEES HOW THE LIGHT SPILLS BETWEEN HER TEETH LIKE IVORY MOLTEN, HOW IT DANCES IN THE CRACKS AND THE CRAGS OF HER WHERE THERE SHOULD BE SHADOW. AND TO THIS, HE WONDERS – A DEEPER WONDER THAN BEFORE, DEEPER THAN FEAR AND TREPIDATION, DEEPER THAN ANY INKLING OF MORTALITY THAT THREATENED TO PRICKLE UP HIS BACK AND WHISPER RUN INTO HIS EAR – HE WONDERS IF SHE BLED WHEN SHE WAS CUT? WAS IT THICK AND HOT AND METALLIC? DID IT POUR THIN AND EARTHY AND HAVE AN AFTERTASTE OF ASH, OF SULFUR? DID IT RUSH OUT OF HER LIKE VIBRANCY, LIKE MOONFLOWER NECTAR?

ANOTHER STEP, AND THE PINS AND NEEDLES ARE DAGGERS. HIS BLOOD IS HOT. IT IS HUNGRY. IT IS FURIOUS. IT IS A BASTARDIZED COURSE OF ICHOR, HALF MORTAL AND HALF TITAN, SOME ABOMINABLE MIXTURE THAT DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO BE CONTAINED. IT RUSHES AGAINST HIS SILHOUETTE, PULSING WITH THE RHYTHM OF WARDRUMS. WITH THE BEAT OF THE HUM THAT FLOWS WILDLY THROUGH HIM, UNTIL IT SUBMITS TO THE ROAR. HE WONDERS WHAT HE WOULD BE IF HE DRANK THE LIGHT FROM HER. WHAT WOULD HE BE IF HE ALLOWED HER IN? ALLOWED HER TO BE A PART OF HIM? (WE FROWN IN DISGUST. SHE IS A CHILD, TO US. LESSER, CHAOTIC, RECKLESS, INSATIABLE. BUT HE DOES NOT HEAR US.) WOULD SHE RENDER HIM A CULMINATION OF ASH AND LIGHT AND INSECTS? WOULD HIS PORES RUSH WITH HIS BLOOD AT LAST, HIS INSIDES CHURN WITH THE DISGRACE?

ANOTHER STEP, AND THE FOREST HISSES WITH FERVOR. THE WIND SWEEPS BETWEEN THEM AND TUGS AT HIS MANE, AT HIS HORNS, AT HIS FACE – IT BATTERS AGAINST HIS SHOULDERS, IT DEVOURS THE LIGHT THAT PASSES BETWEEN THEM AND CARVES A DEEP HOLLOW IN IT. FOR A MOMENT HE HOLDS TO IT, HE WATCHES AT IT SETS FIRE TO HER, RIPPING BACK THE KNOTTED LIGHT AND SIFTING THE ASHES THAT FELL. AND BETWEEN THEM, POURING A WINDING SHADOW LIKE INK. IN IT UNRAVELS THE LIKENESS OF THE WITHERED CREEKBED, AND AT EACH END WRITHES THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE AN OCEAN AND THAT LOOK LIKE A BRUSHLAND WASH. WHEN HE LOOKS TO THE END THAT PAINTS THE OCEAN HE SEES THAT THE TRAIL NARROWLY DESCENDS FROM THE CREEKBED – IT DISAPPEARS INTO THE DARK OF THE NIGHT UNTOUCHED BY THE NOT-MOONLIGHT. AND WHEN HE LOOKS TO THE OTHER...

HE DOES NOT SEE THAT THE THING CRAWLS OUT FROM THE SAND. HE ONLY SEES THAT IT EMERGES AS A WORM – A SERPENT – SOME TWISTING MASS OF WRIGGLING CONTORTIONS THAT UNFOLDS AND BEARS BACK AGAINST ITSELF. AS IT LASHED FORWARD, ERASMUS SHRUGGED HIS SKULL FROM ITS RANGE SO THAT ITS MAW HAD JUST BARELY PRESSED THE POINT OF HIS HORN – BEFORE IT CASCADED OVER HIM IN A DISSIPATING SMOKE. WITH IT FLUTTERS THE TATTERED EDGES OF SHADOW THAT DRIFT FROM THEM LIKE ASHES INTO THE NIGHT AIR. AS HE WATCHES THEM, HE SEES THAT THE MOON HAS TAKEN PRESIDENCE OVER THE NAKED BOUGHS OF THE TREES – IT LINGERS HIGH ABOVE, A THIN RIND THAT GRINS DOWN UPON THEM.

HE CANNOT TELL IF IT IS A CHALLENGE OR A THREAT.

THE UNDEAD SPEAKS AGAIN. IT IS WHITE NOISE, WASP BUZZING, A MAD, PUNGENT SWEETNESS THAT POISONS THE AIR. ERASMUS LETS HIS EYES FALL UPON HER AGAIN AND THIS TIME IT IS NOT WITH AMUSEMENT ; IN HIS EYES BURN A HERESY THAT SHINES BRIGHTLY WITH THE DIM REFLECTION OF THE TRUE MOON, A RESILIENCE THAT ASPIRES TO MISCHIEF.

WITHOUT ANSWERING HER, HE TURNS INTO THE DARKEST PART OF THE FOREST – A PLACE HER LIGHT DOES NOT TOUCH YET, TOWARD THE DIRECTION OF THE SANDY MEADOW. HE DOES NOT KNOW WHY, OR WHAT IT IS THAT HE IS SEARCHING FOR NOW. HE ONLY FEELS IN HIS BONES THAT HE MUST – THAT IT IS HIS OBLIGATION TO DO SO, TO FIND WHAT IT MEANS. HE RECALLED THE SMOOTH STONES AT THE SHORE OF THE CREEK THAT SPLINTERED INTO THE COILS OF A HUNDRED SNAKES. AND HE THINKS BRIEFLY THAT HE MAY HAVE SEEN THEM RUSH IN THIS DIRECTION. FOR WHAT? HE MUST KNOW. HE MUST SEE. FOR ONE SMALL MOMENT IN THEIR MEETING, HE HAD THOUGHT THAT THEY WERE HER DOING. BUT HE SEES NOW THAT THE FOREST DOES NOT BOW TO HER. IT DOES NOT BELONG TO HER. IT DOES NOT WAIT FOR HER.

FOR WHOM DOES IT BOW?

THE ASH THAT CLINGS TO THE WITHERED SPRIGS OF TREELIMBS CASCADE ACROSS HIS PELT, UNTIL THEIR FRESHER COUNTERPARTS ARE LEFT WHERE THE LIGHT HAD NOT STRAYED. BUT HE IS SURE THAT IT IS BEHIND HIM LOOMING, EATING, HUNGRY AND SWARMING. HIS MOTHER WARNED HIM THAT THE GODS WERE GREEDY, IMPATIENT, INSATIABLE THINGS. THEY WERE THE ONES WHO IMPRISONED THEIR CREATORS. SELFISH, CARNAL. HE THINKS TO THE TALES THE ELDERS TOLD OF POWERFUL GODS, OF ENDLESS GODS, OF CRUEL GODS AND GREAT GODS THAT WOULD LAST UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD AND BEYOND, AND THE NATURE OF THAT END TO BE AT THEIR WILL. HE THOUGHT OF HIS MOTHER'S TALES OF HOW THE GODS WERE NO MORE THAN A STAR TO BE WISHED UPON. A STAR IN THE EYE OF THE FATES, THAT WITHERED WHEN FORGOTTEN. (WE SCOWL AT HER FROM THE SHADOWS, WATCHING HER LIGHT CREEP FAINTLY IN THE NOOKS BETWEEN HIS VERTEBRAE.) ERASMUS PAUSED JUST BEYOND THE ENCROACHING NOT-MOONLIGHT, FALLING AGAIN WHERE THE SHADOWS LOOM. HE SWUNG HIS HEAD SLOWLY BACK, THE SLOPE OF HIS SKULL FRAMED IN THE SHUDDERING LEAVES. HE LOOKS UPON HER AND WONDERS IF SHE IS A FADED STAR. HIS EARS FLICKED, TONGUE SMOOTHING ALONG HIS LIPS AND HIS TAIL SNAPS ANOTHER OF HER FLIES FROM THE AIR. "this way." 

@Eshek

[Eshek]

eshek

“a fathomless chaos of eternal night.”

Ah, she thinks, he is not ready.

It's there like scripture in the titanic violence of his youth. She can read the lines of it in the gold cut through his skin. All she can see of him is the faint touch of the fantastic in the way his teeth are only brave enough to snap at flies and ash. He's too far away now, to peel back all the layers of her and watch the way her light would pool at her belly in droplets of dew.

She almost regrets that he wasn't bold enough to leech a universe out from the bloody hollow of her throat. Then, then, then--

-then she could have saved him, anointed, blessed him.

But he's already walking away, towards the cool gloaming darkness. The curl of his spine is lupine, although she thinks that he doesn't know enough about the ways in which a wolf is made to stalk, and growls, and bare his teeth. He is not bold enough to hold her, not yet. Eshek is made for starving wolves, and dragons, and snakes bursting from the sand with venomous fangs and gnashing tongues.

So she does not follow the way that her light does. Her red, bloody-redness, only stands as still as the moon at midnight. Only her light is reaching for him now. It's saying, don't go, don't go.. And maybe it's begging for titanic lighting, and rage, and the discovery of what will be left of her when all this mockery of skin is peeled back from her brightness.

But again, there is that thought, ah, and an inhale, he is not ready. So it's away that she turns, towards the memory of a roaring sea and a wall of ivy beating to the same song as her universe. She turns back towards wrongness, towards things not as simple as dark forests. She turns back to the places that boys who have not learned how to truly growl do not dare to go.

Eshek dares. Her growl shakes loose the stars and sheds layers of silver off the moon like young spiders. All her brightness flares solar. “Remember then, it's always the sea. Remember that when the darkness starts to feel hot and molten against your skin and all you want is salt.”

And then Eshek, the one is is more than a star or moon chewed out from the darkness, does not look again at him as she walks back towards the shore stretching out like bone.

@Erasmus

[Erasmus]

BUT THERE IS US, THERE IS WE. WE DO NOT ALLOW IT, DO NOT ALLOW HIS APPETITES TO WAX AND WANE LIKE THE LIGHT THAT POURS IN THE HOLLOWS OF HIS FACE, IN THE CRAGS OF HIS RIBS AND THE SHALLOW WELLS OF HIS BREAST – WE CROON AGAINST IT SOFTLY IN HIS EAR, BUT WITH HISSING REPRIEVE. HER BLOOD IS ASH. HER FLESH IS ROT. IT IS NOT FOR YOU TO TASTE – DO NOT DESPAIR, DO NOT DECAY. YOU ARE OURS YET. AND AS HE FEELS HER EYES PULL HIM, THE WHISPERS OF THE DARK DO CROON AS THEY WILL – AND HE TASTES WHAT HE THINKS IS THE BITTER FAINTNESS OF DEATH WHEN HE THINKS ABOUT HER, TOO SICKLY TO THINK OF THE RUST IN BLOOD. IT LINGERS ON HIS TONGUE WITH EVERY TEMPTATION, AND IN ITS VAGUE CONTEMPT HE FINDS A GROWING DEPRAVITY. WHEN HE LOOKS BACK TO HER IT IS EVER PROMINENT, AND HE DOES NOT SEE THE RESPLENDENCE OF A CELESTIAL, THE BLOOD-RED OF AN ALTAR, THE SACRIFICE OF REPENANCE. HE SEES WHAT WE SEE. ROT. RUIN. DESTRUCTION. SOMETHING ABOUT HER LOOMS LIKE A SCYTHE, AND WHILE HE ADMIRES ITS FINALITY HE CANNOT HELP BUT DISTRUST THE BITTERNESS THAT LINGERS WHEN THE SALT OF THE ASHES IS LICKED AWAY FROM HIS LIPS. THERE IS SOMETHING LIKE DESPAIR THAT GREYS THE BRILLIANCE OF THE NOT-MOONLIGHT, AND IN IT IS FILTERED ABHORRENCE. 

AND THEN, IT IS MORE THAN NOT-MOONLIGHT.

IT IS THE FLARE OF A DYING STAR, THAT GREAT AND FURIOUS REPRIEVE IN SUPERNOVA FLIGHT – HE TURNS HIS HEAD SLIGHTLY FROM THE BLAST, AND THE SHADOWS DEEPEN IN THE DARKEST PARTS OF HIS SCOWL WHILE THE LIGHT THREATENS TO PERVADE. SHE SPEAKS LIKE INTERSTELLAR THUNDER, AND THE CASCADE OF INFINITY BLOTTING EACH SWIRLING BLACK HOLE. SHE SPEAKS LIKE THE DEEPEST PARTS OF THE SEA, THOSE PARTS INTO WHICH HE HAS STARED AND FEARED LIKE THE BLACKEST PARTS OF HIS DREAMS. IT IS WITH TURMOIL. IT IS WITH WRATH. IT IS WITH SQUALOR. IT IS WITH THE BRIMMING HOTNESS OF A THOUSAND SUNS AND THE BITING COLD OF A HUNDRED WINTERS. ALL WITH HER HUM THE BEETLE WINGS, THE DESOLATE THINGS, THE HOLLOWED CADAVERS OF LOCUSTS AND SKELETON LEAVES THAT SHUDDER WITH THE WEIGHT OF HER GROWL. IT IS A CHALLENGE. IT IS REJECTION. AND ALL TOO SUDDENLY, THE HEAT REDOUBLES IN HIS BLOOD AND RUSHES WITH AN EQUAL FEROCITY. HIS SCOWL SHEDS ITS BOYISH MENACE AND RIPPLES WITH VEINED SNARL, A FANGED GRIN THAT SHIRKS HER WORDS WITH UNGODLY ARROGANCE. GARGOYLE CONTEMPT. THE HEAT DRUMS AGAINST HIS FLESH AND HE TURNS TO THE BRILLIANCE WITH A HUNGRY IRE.

BUT IT IS TOO LATE, TOO LATE.

WHEN THE LIGHT IS CAPSIZED AND ALL IS LEFT TO SETTLING DUST, THE RIND OF HER RED, RED SILHOUETTE IS LOST TO THE DISTANT GLOW OF THE SHORE. THE SEA, IT FRAMES THE FINAL TRACES OF THE TREES IN THE TOUCH OF HER GLOW – AND HER WORDS ARE LEFT TO RESONANCE. WHEN THE DARKNESS FEELS HOT AND MOLTEN. IT IS ALWAYS THE SEA. THE SEA. BUT HE THINKS OF THE CUNNING ISLAND AND ITS PECULIAR MAGIC. HE THINKS OF THE SPACE BETWEEN THE SEA AND THE GREAT SHADOW SWEPT FROM DESOLATE SANDS. AND HE THINKS, WITH PRECARIOUS HUBRIS, THAT PERHAPS A GOD MAY ALSO BE MAD.

AS THE NOT-MOONLIGHT BEARS AGAINST THE HORIZON AND SHIMMERS FAINTLY AGAINST THE BONE-WHITE SHORES IN THE DISTANCE, THE DARKNESS RECLAIMS THE PLACES IT WAS SHUNNED FROM WITH AN EAGER MALICE. SHADOWS ENTANGLE IN THE CROOKS OF HIS ANGLES, NESTLE WARMLY IN THE SHALLOW PLACES BETWEEN HIS MUSCLES. HE BLINKS, ONCE, TWICE. AN EXPRESSION AS COLD AS A WINTER CHILD OUGHT BE, AND HE TURNS HIS BACK ON THE SEA AND ITS HOSTILE INTRICACIES, KNEADING THE COOL BLACKNESS OF THE NIGHTLY FOREST.

finite.