Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped. Sarkan didn’t hear the reapers crying their war-song or the thunder of hooves through a forest still dead from winter. He couldn’t; his ears were too full of the low roar of his blood, the tearing of vines through soil, the crackling of branches, the tremble of dead leaves. He felt grim and savage and certain that once he killed this man, the trees would remember themselves, that they didn’t have arms to reach and fingers to grab (fingers that already encircled one of his legs like one of his own snares). And he would kill this man, would bear him down into the dirt and cut him to bits small enough for the crows to carry off. Each baring their teeth, they prepared to meet - but they never got the chance. The gray’s mouth becomes an O of surprise when something solid and red crashes into him with the thud of flesh and bone meeting. His breath is knocked from him, the knife flung from his grip. Sarkan scrabbled to recover it, turning as he did to face this new enemy - only to gasp when her horn drove into his chest, into his heart. There was no awareness left when the beast leapt for him, and sank its teeth and claws into his pale skin. His whole body shuddered and, thrashing, fell. One moment he’d been certain of victory; the next his sightless eye was reflecting a flat gray sky, foam and blood flecking the corners of his mouth. Sarkan might have thought it was fate, being killed by a unicorn - might have approved, even, if he hadn’t been the victim of it. But the stallion didn’t have the time to process what was happening before he died. Which was a blessing, really, given the way the unicorn and her beast set on him afterward. @Ipomoea @Thana |
Private - fragile as a flower
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you be the wind
i'll be the wildflower
Ipomoea has never been stabbed before. He learns he does not like the feel of it. It feels a bit like ice, when the knife first touches his skin. The sound it makes is a bit like a wail; and he wonders in a cold, detached sort of way if it cried for him, or for the man who wielded it. Maybe it cries for both of them. Maybe that is right of it. For a moment, all Ipomoea sees is Sarkan’s eyes staring down into his own - ocean-dark, lapis lazuli, the blue of the sky opposite the sun. Endless, like oblivion. His magic burns inside him, burning away the ice of the knife when Sarkan turns and pulls it away. His magic fills the hole it left, even as his papaver-red blood begins to spill. He can hear Rhoeas begin to run, somewhere deep in the woods; but all he feels is the rage. His rage, Ro’s rage, the forest’s rage; perhaps that is why blood is red, the color of fury. But if that was true, he wonders then why Illuster was always red in the spring, and why everyone said the red flowers were the earth’s way of pledging peace. Later, he would stand in the meadow and ask them. But now, he only watches as the forest rips itself in half, and two monsters crash into the third. They drag him down, down, down, and when he falls into the earth Ipomoea’s magic holds him there. Roots and thorns wrap like a noose around his neck, his legs, his muzzle; and for each leaf that turns to dust, there is another blooming to take its place. Even when the roots turn black and the vines turn brittle, still they hold onto him. And still Ipomoea watches, as the blood runs down his chest and falls from Thana’s lips. He does not know when he finally turned away, if it was before or after the poacher becomes just another body in the woods. At first he only walked, walked until the forest was green again and the sounds of something - someone - dying began to fade. He walked until his legs began to shake, and still his heart beat to assure him that he was not the dead thing being left in the woods tonight. And he walked until the blood on his chest began to feel more like fire instead of ice. Then and only then, did he begin to run. And where each drop of his blood and magic falls, a poppy blooms in its place. @sarkan @thana |
