Seraphina's death couldn't have hit anyone harder. And Eik is accustomed to life's blows. Anyone could read the stories written in his flesh, scars scattered like grotesque constellations, and anyone could only imagine the stories unseen, writ on the inside. Stories of bones and magic and a terrible, aching loss. (loss like that never leaves you, and with time you don't want it to-- absence becomes a friend, a
voice in the dark: "didn't you want a hunt, didn't you crave something as familiar as dismay, you--")
It would be too much to say the world was turned upside down. The word does no such thing on behalf of man. The sky is still up, the earth still down, and the sun still rises and falls each day, but as he walks through the canyons it does seem as though the colors of the desert aren't quite right. And when he finally returns to the court proper, the feeling of wrongness only grows as the walls of civilization rise up around him like tombstones. There is something missing, an essential shade of silver(, or blue, or gold) and his mind is having a difficult time drawing lines between the points.
(remember the library-- smoke rising like unwanted memories between you. remember, remember, remember what you lost-- what was taken-- don't you remember?)
As he walks the sandstone streets, it hurts to see the state of the court he had slowly come to think of as his. What hurts more is how his magic, at times beyond his control, made fierce with rage and sorrow, siphons the thoughts and feelings of the collective mind and floods his head with them. All that pain and anger and chaos, and the devilish glee that accompanies chaos, all of it good and bad and coming in waves he can't control--
But what hurts the most is the dawning realization of how selfish he had been. Wrapped up in his own grief and anger, captivated by vengeance, he hadn't even thought of Solterra and what this all meant for his country. It makes him feel sick.
(You've been gone too too long and look what happened, look at what you've done, death and war on your hands, your-)
A bell rings. His magic, casually gleaning through the minds of strangers in the street, has noticed something that needs tending to. It is a spark of recognition in someone's mind as he walks past. "That's Eik," they think, and he quickly, carefully reaches with his magic and snuffs out the thought (easy as blowing a candle) before it can grow and spread and trigger a chain reaction of thoughts. (a candle is easier to blow out than a wildfire). The stranger looks Eik in the eye for a moment, and all he sees is just another man with a blanket of scars. For a heartbeat he feels confused, but he does not know why. It must not matter, he looks away, and his mind turns to the coming day.
Eik makes sure of it.
In this manner the once emissary maintains anonymity as he walks the streets of the capitol, grinding his teeth and watching and watching and watching.
A bell tolls in soft peels and it echoes like death through bones when it rings and chimes across the court built out of stone.
A bell tolls and the city starts to listen. It opens up ears that are so trained now to the taste of violence on the night. It opens up just to start closing down, each horse listening to the tolling song like lambs listening to the crack of a whip driving them onward (onward, onward to the blade).
A bell tolls and she is there walking in the opposite direction of the lambs, She's bright and bloody and each of her steps seems like the mechanical twitch of an spider hunting. The setting sun shadows should feel cool against her skin as the heat of the day starts to die. But she can hardly feel the wind against her skin or the dust between her teeth.
She can feel nothing but the brightness and the coolness of the reaper (of herself). There is nothing but her steps, the steps of the lambs and the gray stallion walking like a ghost inside his map-skin made of scars. She wants to fill him in with ink and light, black and bright.
There is something in the horror hidden in all those map marks that makes her draw closer to him. She can almost hear the grind of his teeth and the ache of his soul that might be as marked as his form. Surely no lamb has every walked so wearily in such a skin and laid its head willingly upon the altar. She pauses in the street and blinks her eyes so they shine like a lighthouse shines in the sea.
She beckons his ship closer and closer and the rocks around them look bright as blood as she waits. The street spreads out around her like a stomach trapped between the bones of the walls.
For him she would wait forever, if only to know if his scars hold as many celestial secrets as her form does.
I WANTED THEM TO LISTEN TO THE WOUND,
HEAR WHAT IT SPOKE
UNDERNEATH
Eik thinks the ringing of the bell is just another private sound that echoes in his mind (bells chiming, doors creaking open and slamming shut, whispers) until the Solterrans slowly fill the streets, trudging toward a destination that to him is at once known-- the source of the ringing-- and unknown-- what lies there?
He stands unmoving, a lone dusty rock in a river of flesh, and eventually he is not alone. There is another, moving upstream. They stand-- she with shining eyes and he with the opposite, eyes so dark that no light escapes-- until the river runs past and only the two of them remain.
When he gently reaches out to read her mind, invasion being almost second nature at this point, well... the true experience cannot be adequately depicted, for it involves senses foreign to all but Eik... but...
it could be most succinctly described as taking a plunge into caustic darkness. Once the shock of it passes, you hear snippets of thought which echo with a sense of great distance, as though the sound traveled through water. All the while you realize the dark water is not water but a sea of writhing black snakes, and there is no light at all except-- when he withdraws he is staring into those lighthouse eyes and for all their brightness they only make him think of the absence of light.
His ears are lowered, his nostrils flared. The feeling of dipping into her mind is painful even after withdrawing, the way acid on the skin will eat its way through to flesh, to bone. He paws at the stone street, not understanding the one word he heard chanted in that writhing darkness like a prayer.
"What is Eshek?"
His voice would echo in her head as a sound with no discernible source. She would know, of course, who the message was from. He knows it would be prudent to leave-- prudent to run. Still, he stands there grinding his teeth and still, the bell tolls.
Eshek can feel him. She can feel him revolving like a planet in the endless space of her. He is as hot as a star, full of fire and brightness that the black eternity of her wants to swallow. She taps at of the planet of him rolling inside her, she taps at it. She promises and begs.
Come closer. Dig Deeper. And then she steps closer in the real and says in that universe between them, Devour me. There is nothing she hides from him. But there is also nothing for him but death in the mansion of her but--
Pathways of bones pilled high into shrines. Pyres of rot lingering lonely and unlit. Lotus-faces are flowing, flowing down a river. There's smoke painting out words for him, bibles writ in soot and flame.
There's a sea too, a dead sea, a black sea. It's salty and metallic like blood and it feels like oil when Eshek swallows her light like spit. “It is,” she says even as she's still swallowing that spit and light. She shakes her head in a mirror-echo of his. When she drags her hoof across the dirt ants crawl out like small soldiers begging for annihilation. She pauses, blinks and the ants are dust beneath her dragging hoof.
“It is everything.” Could he not feel it? Could he not feel the expanses inside her that have no end but eternity? Could he taste the death and the rot that sits inside her like the sweetest desert made of nightshade? Oh she prays that he could! She prays, and prays, prays.
Can he read in her gaze that she would teach him?
She's still praying in words of moonlight and bloody ink when she reaches out her nose towards him, wondering if he's brave enough to touch her flesh instead of her sea. She waits and her eyes still pour out light like clouds pour out rain and thunder.
And the entire expanse of her is still gaping open like the jaws of a great-snake.
I WANTED THEM TO LISTEN TO THE WOUND,
HEAR WHAT IT SPOKE
UNDERNEATH
It seems to him that there are many things Eshek is not. But he had only tipped in hooves in her dark, spiraling waters.
So when she says it is everything, he looks again. More cautiously this time, he braces himself and then pins her mind like a spider beneath a magnifying glass. (a swarm of bees hums- come closer) squeezing firmly (dig deeper) but not so much that she breaks,
And he dives in. At the same time, he takes a step forward. The light that she shines sinks into his dark eyes where it does not escape. Her mind is a dry, rustling darkness, an ancient shadow that has outlived the light from which it was cast. She is familiar, so familiar! His ghosts gather round as gentle as butterflies and without seeing he feels them smile-- not at all sharp and wicked and eager the way they grin at him but gentle, like a greeting. Like a homecoming.
He extends his nose. When she exhales he is reminded of fruit rotting in the sun, offerings left on a forgotten altar. "I think you're wrong," he speaks simply, had never learned to speak any other way, even as an emissary. (devour me) When he finally reaches across those last few inches to touch her, it takes deliberate effort not to shudder at the feel of her skin.
He thinks she is wrong, he thinks Eshek is not everything, and he wants to show her why.
First he shows her what love feels like. The light of it (a pure light, nothing like the mockery that leaks from her eyes) though it is not the brightest-- indeed, surrounded by her infinite darkness, from far away it might seem as insignificant as a single star pulsing weakly in the vast night sky-- it illuminates the crevices of her mind, the spaces between the stacks of bones. It pulses, brighter and bright with each strobe, and then before it grows too bright (he is a private man, after all, and only shares enough to make a point) he shows her hope: far-flung, teal, glowing. Hope made only brighter by how far it is risen, sloughing ash like a dragon does its skin.
Last he shows her a memory. He is standing at the edge of a cliff, watching the waves toss themselves upon the rocks below. Marveling at how easy they make it look. The wind tugs at his mane not today and the sun warms his back not today and somehow, not just that day but every day after, life persisted against its better judgement. And life was all the more beautiful for it.
When he turns off the light of thought and and feeling and memory, the darkness seems to ring with loss-- can she hear it?-- does it matter?-- and he realizes those damn bells are still ringing, too, and the sound of them itches beneath his skin unscratchable.
"You don't belong here." He only needs to murmur now, close as they stand, and in his haggard eyes is something resolute. All the scum of the earth flock here now like a pilgrimage, and Solterra buckles with the weight of them but the wind whispers not today and the sun warms not today and he knows that if the days upon them should become the last in his too-long life, he won't leave this world before ripping the unholy light from Eshek's eyes.
First she takes his love shining at her like a bright star. She lets it wash over her, mournful that the shores on which it finds itself shining are thick as mud and hungry as quicksand. It glows and heats and still all that she is stands as thin horned as a sickle moon and just as bright and shrouded in darkness. To all that light she smiles, and pulls at it like mud pulling at bones. She says, I know you in my bones. I have loved and I still love.
Death loves everything as it holds it and carries all its sorrow down, down, down.
Then she takes his hope and that too she welcomes like a the dead trunk of a tree welcomes the ants and nests full of eggs. It soaks her like a cold rain and she turns belly-up all the dead leaves in her memories towards the drip, drip of his hopeful raindrops.
Death loves water most of all, water enough to build in the deep a city of sea-worms and barnacle crusted statutes.
“You are young.” She says and her voice is silver dripping from the moon, droplets of light that streak through the darkness in holy rays. His memory is shining bright in her and it's almost brighter than the hundred sun running in streaks of brightness through her veins. Eshek smiles and brushes her nose against his cheek and she opens her mind a little wider. Space yawns gap-jawed and boneless in the center of her.
She shows him life, a city of worms living in her dead-sea and of ghosts who have been given life over and over again. Of course life prevails. Eshek wants flowers to bloom in the sunshine of him, she wants bees to hum and thrive in the gardens his love could make.
Death knows that life prevails until it comes.
Death is patient.
Eshek is patient. Eshek is loving. Eshek is hopeful.
The bells are still ringing. Her bones are ringing with the way this stallion has strummed his memories against her like notes of a song she's been waiting to learn. She's alive with the sound of him, as alive as death can ever be-- alive with light and music. “Of course I belong here.” Each of her eyes watches him like the sun watching the crown of the clouds, and she does not say not today.
Instead she says, each day dies, even as it lives it dies..
I WANTED THEM TO LISTEN TO THE WOUND,
HEAR WHAT IT SPOKE
UNDERNEATH
He had not expected her to receive him. Oh, she does not turn from his light and his little trinkets of memories but instead she opens herself to him! Opens like arms or jaws or thighs, makes him feel wretched and lost, a little boy in a landscape beyond dreams putting black flowers into his mouth. Somewhere the moon is shining violet.
"You are young." He makes a sound. It is like a laugh and a cough and a gasp at the same time. But mostly a laugh, a barking laugh, empty of humor or joy. His bones already ache unless drenched in salt water and his back already feels bowed from the weight of the years he's lived. If this is youth, how miserable age must feel.
And yet-- she does not feel miserable to him. Or does she? He is confused by her shadows, her light, and whether her welcome is friendly or hungry. He is disgusted and angry and uncomfortable.
"Of course I belong here."
Of course she belongs here.
Of course. A river would not change its course, a blade would not bend, a truth would not cease to be true simply because he wanted it to. What ever gave him that sense of entitlement? Was it love? Or loss? Or maybe all of it, all the ways he's been torn apart and pieced back together again, all the blades pushed into and pulled back out of his chest, all the sand in his wounds and the heavy, thankless stone eyes of his country.
He thought-- it was so foolish, but he had thought-- no, he believed that he could be so full of anger and so full of grief, so overflowing with these black-eyed emotions that weakness would become strength. Diamonds are crushed into existence by the weight and the heat of this world, so why not-- so when will it be enough-- so what--
He draws away, feels the air rush in dry and warm where her skin once pressed against his. "What are you?" He takes a step back, breathes in Solterra, feels a little more grounded and a little more lost. "I don't understand," he shakes his head the way a bell might toll. The way it does toll, relentlessly. "help me understand."
The sand tastes like gold on her teeth, hard sharp and full of blood. He looks like diamonds. He's slick with grit. Each scar cuts a facet across his skin and Eshek, who is counting them, thinks that there is no other jewel in the world like this one. What other diamond can grow love in the center of it, love enough and full enough to form blood diamonds from darkness?
For Eshek there is no other name for stones now, no other name but gray (and sad, oh so sad). He looks like he could have been dropped down by some beast on the moon-- gray, pitted and soft as dust. She smiles, and moonlight leaks out.
All the air rushing between them feels like nothing against her skin. It is not hot or cold, home or homesickness. It is nothing but wind on which sand runs, and runs, until the world looks dirty and fouled. She hates the sand, she hates the gold and the wealth. All she wants is diamonds, slick and cut. Blood and shine. Blood and shine.
That's all death is in the end, blood and shine. Red skin with light pouring out from every crevice like a rainstorm of redemption.
“Don't.” She says, but what she is saying is: don't pretend you are not a stone, don't pretend that all you are is alive. But what keeps pouring out from her in shine, shine, shine are words that sound like: “Do not ask me questions when you already know what I will say. You have always known.” Religion lies writ in the cracks of her teeth, and across the char scrawled across her bones like suffering is scrawled across him like a honeycomb. She thinks he will understand all the things she means to say.
Eshek blinks. Light goes out. Light goes on. The sun rises and sets in the pits of her face.
A god blinks.
A god turns away.
The sand still tastes like gold on her teeth. A god still wants diamonds.
A god is gone, into Solterra. Solterra who is fat and bloated with sorrow.
I WANTED THEM TO LISTEN TO THE WOUND,
HEAR WHAT IT SPOKE
UNDERNEATH
The bell stops tolling and the street fills with bodies.
(or-- or were they always there?)
Bodies dusty and thin, bags of bones and eyes-- eyes mostly empty (defeated, broken) or guarded, cautious. They don't know their walls mean nothing to him, they don't know he can read the back of their eyelids, the inside of their skulls before he even realizes that he wants to.
The god fades away into the crowd and the sand like she had never even been there, leaving a sour taste in his mouth and a drumming in his chest he doesn't understand. He knows her, he's always known her.
He's hers,
he's always been hers.
He can and will fight it but in the end it will be him, and his death, and his heart in his hands.
She was right. Everything she said, and everything she didn't, is right and it angers him. He makes a soft sound, a heavy exhale, and continues on his way with his head held low.
BUT THEY COULD ONLY SEE ITS SURFACE
@Eshek Thank you for another lovely thread! <3 this was a weird one but I loved it
