[P] I'd rather be a hammer than a nail

[Vercingtorix]

 

I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail yes I would, if I could, I surely would, I'd rather be a hammer than a nail yes I would, if I only could, I surely would. Away, I'd rather sail away like a swan that's here and gone. A man gets tied up to the ground, he gives the world its saddest sound, its saddest sound

A

s a young lieutenant, I stood on a beach just like this one and stared at the carnage of my first battle. I had heard of tertiary care at the Academy; they had taught it as one teaches science, or mathematics, or a simple principle of astrology. The most severely wounded, those that could not be saved without extraordinary measures, were left where they lay as the salvageable were dragged to medical tents and cared for. Medical interns ran from body to body, tying ribbons to their horns. 

Black meant dead. 

Yellow meant severe, but could be saved with care. 

Blue meant they needed immediate attention, but they would survive. They were severely injured, but savable. 

Green meant they needed care, but could wait for.

Red meant they were dying. They might be saved, if there were time and limitless resources. But they were dying, and there was never enough time to save the severely injured and the dying. The lost causes. In the academy, we joked that a red ribbon meant a gold star or Medal of Honor. We joked a red ribbon would immortalize us.

I remembering, standing on that beach just like this one, the way it felt as if I stood on the edge of a vast cliff; because the battlefield had not been littered with strangers, but with friends and brothers in arms. The man dying at my feet, a red ribbon tied to his horn, had been my classmate for the last four years. We had shared stories and laughter and sparred on the practice field. 

When I raised my eyes from his gasping body—because he was simply that, a body, a body barely living—it was to stare at a field of bodies, ribbons blowing from their horns. Black, yellow, blue, green, red—they caught the light as it flit through the clouds, and snapped sharply in the wind. 

Now I do not even remember his name.

Now, the beach before me stretches emptily away.

The black sand must have belonged to some volcanic eruption when Tempus was a child. The water licks starkly against the surface; bright blue, beneath a brighter blue sky. The black absorbs. The black seems lightless and I walk the line between shore and sand, where the surf chases up the line of beach to strike cooly against my hooves. Clear, and sharp, and bright—the ambience of the day seems the epitome of a knife or other blade. The air, so crisp to breathe, it stings. 

I should feel alive, here. I should feel alive. And I do, with a prickling of awareness; an involuntary wiring between myself and my surroundings. This has become perpetual. A constant state of heightened awareness as I, a predator, listen for prey or for threat or for both. The birds overhead careen away when they spot my roving shadow; and the crabs scurry into the water. I am not here to hunt, and yet— 

I want to. 

I want to, and I hate myself for the wanting.

I raise my face toward that too-bright sun, and close my eyes. I inhale the salt and brine and think how once, as a young man, I would have found it beautiful. The sun never shone in Oresziah as it does here. But the moment of appreciation, the moment where I decide, is inconsequential and brief.

Perhaps I should have spent more time. 

But the scent is in the air, and I follow it; the meandering walk becomes a trot, and I follow the sharp curve of the beach into a quieter cove. Here, the water seems serene. The ocean rushes in at the mouth but turns still and quiet through the maze of jagged rocks. Before me, their weaves a trail of prints in the sand. 

My father taught me, as a boy, that a wolf walks in a singular line; the hind leg follows the foreleg, and so their pads step only where they have already stepped. It makes for quieter walking. The same for lions. The same for most predators. 

An anatomical impossibility for an equine, but not for us. Not for the lithe, the fluid; the Changed. Not for those less flesh and more water. Not for those who are halfway to animal already. Not for he and I. 

I find him in the quiet, shaded cove. The far side of the inlet is hidden by redwoods so steep we are cast into shadow. The sea seems subdued. The sea seems to hold her breath.

“And how,” I ask, quietly. “Is Boudika?” 

« r » | @Amaroq

inspo images: here here

[Amaroq]

amaroq

Where have all the holy gone?
Is there no one to condemn you?

A

maroq is not Changed. He only is, as he has ever been. As his kind were.

And maybe that is what will kill him. Perhaps he never should have come to Novus; perhaps he should have never come back. In the still, silent north, in that world held by ice, the only thing he would have had to adapt to was being alone.

But a wolf does not wonder what it should have done, and a lion does not question whether it should change. Those things are for men only. They only live - and so, too, does the kelpie.

It’s the quiet coves like this one the seals flee to when they hear the orcas calling each other. Amaroq waits for them, languid on the beach, cool in the shadow of the redwoods. He looks like quartz shorn from the jutting cliffs, save for the wave of his hair as pale as foam running up the beach.

Three storm-petrels pass low over the water, swift and dark as their own shadows. An eagle wheels overhead, slowly, before landing in a high fork of one of the trees. The cove is sheltered from the wind, sheltered from the waves, sheltered from the midday summer sun.

Everything is calm, when the black-faced man comes walking along the beach, following Amaroq’s own tracks.

The unicorn watches his approach as calmly as he watched the eagle, as calmly as though he were expected. Yet within his chest his heart is quickening, and his idle hunger turns to something red, and as sharp as his teeth.

It is quiet enough to hear the man’s voice, quiet as it is cast over the water. Still, for a moment the kelpie doesn’t answer - he only begins to move toward Vercingtorix with a slow gait more tiger than horse. The scar on his shoulder does not ache, but he is aware of it all the same.

Only when they are a length apart does he pause. “You are only a ghost to her,” he tells the man, before his lips curl into a snarl, baring his predator’s teeth. The shells and bones in his hair chime warning when he lowers his head, aiming the pale point of his horn toward the stallion’s heart. “And you will be only a corpse to me.”

He does not wait; he only drives forward, and there is no mistaking him for only a horse.

@Vercingtorix | <3

rallidae

[Vercingtorix]

 

I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail yes I would, if I could, I surely would, I'd rather be a hammer than a nail yes I would, if I only could, I surely would. Away, I'd rather sail away like a swan that's here and gone. A man gets tied up to the ground, he gives the world its saddest sound, its saddest sound

T

he most difficult transition I ever had to make revolved around the fulfillment of my purpose. I had been born to a fight a war—and that war, once won, stole from me my sense of direction. The war had been the path. I had sacrificed everything to fight in it; and most importantly, I sacrificed my ability to see beyond it. The winning, in and of itself, became both his greatest triumph and his most severe loss. 

No one ever thinks the war will end.

No one ever wonders if they might truly become a hero; and if, when they become that, there is no pinnacle to reach after. 

Yes. 

The winning caused shook my resolve in who I was, what I was meant to become. My happiness, woven intricately into that of my work, faded as the sun does at the end of each day. In a blaze of glory. With the victory, the end, I faced a life I never thought possible: the after. 

And for a man who grew accustomed to living each day through with extraordinary purpose, this is a fate worse to me than death. 

Perhaps, in that, we are both victims of Change; not in the essence of becoming something else, but in being unable to. Because it is not I who am the ghost, charging across the beach—no. 

No. 

I am only a soldier, chasing them. 

The ghost of myself. 

The ghost of the world that, to me, can be measured against. Can be quantified, and understood. 

You are the only a ghost to her, he says cooly. That chilly demeanor does not last; he bares his teeth to me in a fashion I am not yet comfortable in. 

I let him come; and in my mind, my pride welling to the point of overflow, I think of all the smart responses I might give. 

She is a ghost to me. She died, long ago.

(Except she didn’t. Except she isn’t). 

You cannot kill me. 

(I am already a corpse of myself). 

I do not believe in ghosts. 

(I have been one walking for years). 

Thank you, for letting me steal a piece of myself back. 

(Just in this moment. Just in the charge across the sand). 

Thank you, for reminding me I am a soldier again. 

(And this is a war I already won). 

The distance between us allows me to measure his approach; to, in my mind’s eye, picture his stride once the distance closes and the moment of impact nears. 

Everything slows.

(This is how it ought to have been, when Sereia struck. Each second slowed to familiar predictability. They are so fast! I had almost forgotten how fast—and yet, I think, not as fast as I—) 

At the last possible second, I lurch to the side with a downward glance of my horns. The gesture intends to act as a parry, allowing the forward momentum of his strike to carry him past me. Almost simultaneously, I pivot on my hind legs. I mean to strike with my horns or hooves; I intend to strike with weapons I know—

And instead my mouth cracks open wide, wide, wider—

And my teeth catch the light—

And instead I aim to bite the tender flesh just above the groin, where the hind leg meets the stomach. 

I have never been a conversationalist in battle. I have never aimed to intimidate, to speak threats or promises or boasts. I am the epitome of my movements; of the beat, beat, beating of my heart. I am more alive now than I can remember feeling since Sereia; and perhaps I will never overcome this. Perhaps I learned too young and lost too late for me to ever recover. 

To live, to strive, to find purpose I must be on the edge of death. I must barter everything at once, or else feel dissatisfied.

Because right now, in this moment before impact, in the breaths that exist between the movement of a clock's second hand--in the breaths that exist between the dropping sand of an hourglass--in these moments, in these small infinities, I am myself. And it is only in these small infinities that I am true.

(It is only here, wanting blood and hoping for it, that Boudika's name no longer matters. The war, which is won, feels as if it still might be lost). 

We are all only ghosts. 

« r » | @Amaroq

inspo images: here here