a whisper to the gods and the men they have become – the shallow things with dust in their bones and fire in their eyes. What is death to the gods; wherein their vicious pulse survives the pain of neglect, tracing the hollow veins with cruel trepidation, and they are made ruins, ruined. Perhaps it is the nature of the wind, the watchful stars, and the howls in the night. Something moved within him, drawing its sharpened claws up and down the bone-white halls of his ribcage, drumming along his lungs and the soft pit-pat against his skull. It was pandemonium, it was instinct – this harrowing call to rise, this magnetism that pulled in his veins and puppeted his desires like mad frothing frenzy. Yet it yields to his passions, teeming with a what if hymn that drones and drawls and slips between the cracks of what now. He passes as a breeze along the moors, smoke charade and gambling flesh, a culmination of all things uncertain, unstable. A stagnant escapee from purgatory – it should not be, it should not exist. But it does in each breath, in each step, one by one carried further from its void until it threatens to become what it is. Ghost matter, a haunt in the heath; it scatters the dusk-fawns and gasps cold recognition into the timid hearts of the october hares that bound and withdraw tight to their humble burrows. A one-two ticking timebomb of discourteous reprieve – the hangman's noose gone empty – the common poltergeist's awry dread. This tomb martyr buries his aspirations in the black soils to churn a new world, new age madness fighting for a breath. And repetitive, he asks: which thought is my own? Which desire is true?
Existence is futile. He frets nightmares of purpose, while his dreams of torment are things of relief, as if the only monsters in the world are words and words from words, empty things that beat against the rock until nothing is left. These are the horrors of a machine, no doubt. The things that gnash and clatter metal to metal, tinning a hollow chime from the chest of an aluminum cage. but he is not a machine, is he? Perhaps they all are and didn't know it, but the slick tendons and sore bones beneath the fragile flesh spoke of something more tangible, more frightening than any dead thing cared to behest. Those sheepish grins in the courtyard bliss'd of gods and paltry pleasures, wine and cheese and thanks to the heavens above for our bountiful feast. They quarreled like rats over a heel of bread, squabbled like crows for a pretty penny. Some lucky bastards lay in their chaise, smoking a long pipe and dreaming of the good old days. The child in him sometimes marveled and wondered, what days were those? While the rest of him scowled and looked on to the emptiness presented. What wonderment it must be to feel, to consider the plush of that chaise and the cold metal of that penny, to taste the warm yeast of a fresh heel of bread. And gods, his deaf ear flicked back against the undertow of names and blessings all, subconsciously ignorant to the customs of anything other than the tales of bitter titans who shook the ground from beneath all fools. Those who razed cities with molten gold, and crushed mountains beneath their furious grip.
He recalled the tales his mother cooed to him when he was just a babe, sheltered beneath her wing and comforted far from the barracks that left his infant-bones aching with misuse. Any could be gods, child, if you drag them from the warring skies. But all gods fear a titan. A seedling to a wicked, gnarling thorn thistle that, her words were always so vague, so cold and matted with omen and grit and sorrow. They fell from her cheek like rain, staining her tongue with quivering sighs that rolled thunder in his heart. She said he was many things – and he was! A wolfish child, a lion brave and secretive tangle of shadows from a witch's shallow grave. Yet she never truly told him what he was, those words were always wrapped up in thick honey and choking sweetness that whispered tales of what once was. Some tales she said he was swept up from the shores of a black river, and not truly born to her but from the screaming skies and the pouring smoke that filled the forests with terror, or he was a small stone that fell from a god's eye and was swallowed by a serpent. That stone grew in the serpent's belly and swelled and swelled until the serpent had shed its skin, rippling with the gold of a god's ichor – it drank the river bed dry in its grief but found no satisfaction until it shook those glimmering coils from its back and revealed the polished stone for what it was. Sometimes she said the skies were angry that she stole him from them. Sometimes she hid him beneath her weight and love when the thunder would clash and the sea roared beyond, when the creatures yowled and screamed at the night and seemed to cry for nothing but his name.
All this, and he never knew what he was.
He was his mother's death, his father's best kept secret, the stone forged of smoke and terror which the serpent swallowed and caught in his throat – that drank the river dry and shed its skin along the stygian shores to retch an abominable thing. But for what, he was halved of his right. And for this he wandered each night, because it was the only thing he knew – his blood sang out to him, his bones moved to ache and trailed the moon like a compass. All the unrest and unhappiness swelled inside of him like a rock in his belly, but it had begun to grow its vines and wrap its thorns around his pleasures, his thoughts, his needs, until it was all he knew. Something in him moved yet, on and on, replacing his unequal parts with vicious things anew until he was no longer dead, no longer a machine but a living, breathing conjurement of daemon breath and hot flesh roving. Less a boy, and more a wolf.
It was this nature of knowing, or the lack thereof, that brought him to the mountains that evening. He chased the sun until it disappeared behind the peaks, and he was relieved to follow the whispers of the night that broke over the dusk. Dew settled meekly upon the grounds, rested a glossy sheen of gold over his austere features that spoke leagues of wonder and mercurial twitches of a vague agony. The trail had winded him to the height he reached – and his gaze trailed over the pepper of pines that bowed far below, a coarse sheet of rock that dove deep into the prairie brush. It could frighten the common timid yearling, but he found no interest in divining a thought of death here, he knew it was not his grave. It was a thing of awe regardless, the way the fog hung to the bottom and clambered its way up, up, as if it threatened to swallow him as it rose to meet him. He turned his attention then as it made its half way, refocused on the trail that disappeared between two shadowed shelves and a spine of granite that trailed on forever. Even despite being an arrogant thing at times, he was not so foolish to stray from that path. He had found bones at the bottom, those disfigured skeletal remains with parts where there shouldn't be parts and fractures that seemed an immediate doom, or a labored injury that suspended death at arm's length laughing. A friend to what common sense remained, he strove to keep himself above sea level.
Around the bend, the sunlight bore over the horizon and painted the granite slabs in peach and brilliant gold, set fire to his shoulder in its glimmering fashion, the strains that broke through like cracks in marble. He paused to squint past the gleaming light, beholding all that lay beyond the pass of Denocte, before he turned his attentions back. As he did so, the sun had caressed a faint hint of stone pillar that seemed offset from the more rugged forms around it. It sat behind the cover of looming pines and withered boughs of summer trees that outstretched their arms desperately for the dying light. It lay beyond the beaten path – but it was there, and his eyes dropped to the ground that seemed to form, just ever so faintly, a deer-trail through the juniper brush, which he could only assume led to the structure. There were less pitfalls around this risen ground, though he didn't doubt if he strayed too far from that vague road, he would meet an end similar to those grinning corpses at the bottom of a long drop. But this was not his time for death. He obliged the call that rose then, as the swelling breaths pushed against his chestplate and his legs had already found themselves ambling for the glowing pillar through the rock and trees. There were a few sets of hoofprints in the dusty dirt, half hidden by leaves and granite dust but surely there, though he didn't pay enough attention to be sure that there were prints leaving just as casually as they seemed to arrive.
The temple – is that what it was? - was a pristine thing of sharp carved marble – or quartz, or moonrock, or petrified starlight – that rose from the granite like a spring. He marveled at the craft of this existence, and found himself entertained with following the veins of gold and silver that ran through the walls. Smooth, cold, his hoofbeats shook dust from the floors (except where those other hoofbeats were pressed, here and there in explorative manner) and echoed in the hollow halls. He paused when he came to an inscription in the stone, and his mind grazed over it as fingertips pressed to the cold marble, thumbing over each engraved character in wonder. The overall design appealed to his quiet pride, some kinship in resemblance to his own appearance – the strains of gold that they both shared, and found some comfort in the chill that surrounded him.
Comfort, that is, until he heard another slip and clatter of hooves from deeper in the temple. His eyes chased to the source, their owner silhouetted in the hall. A creme-splashed dun mare that stood, and perhaps had not seen him just yet, but surely would. In truth he wasn't wholly discomforted in the way that he was fearful of a stranger's calculative eye – moreso discomforted by the fact that there was another, solely, that he could not enjoy the discovery alone. For this reason he stood still as the marble walls about him for a long, drawing moment, his gold eyes lain heavily on the woman while his skin twitched with misanthropic woe. He is a rugged child, not a sort of rugged that is dirty or disheveled, or even overtly rough - rugged in the way his design is sharp at every edge, and the way it sharpens at each second, as if his skin is metal plated and his spine is a ridge of obsidian daggers. The shadows fall against him, so that the veins of gold and the lustre of his matching eyes are the only striking things about him. He is deceived only by the glow of the marble walls, that he could almost emulate were it not for their opposing contrast. In that moment, he is less a wolf... and more a dragon. He feels his fangs softly against the inside of his lips and his tongue rolls to greet them in remembrance, but a part of him relies on the lazy hope that he does not have to use them.
“do you know what this is?" his voice rolls, but it is distinct – it should sound like a young man's, full of life and vigor and pride, but it doesn't. It sounds ambiguous and deep, whiskey hot and winding like the deepest, blackest river. It is a whisper just as much as it is a roar; the words drip with a looming weight, like a stroke fuse peppered with flame. Tense, begrudging, but not without its subtle courtesies. After all, most of his mind screams that he should leave, and just wait until she is gone, then explore it on his own. But the rest of it growls an answer to the question he posed for her, This is mine.
Existence is futile. He frets nightmares of purpose, while his dreams of torment are things of relief, as if the only monsters in the world are words and words from words, empty things that beat against the rock until nothing is left. These are the horrors of a machine, no doubt. The things that gnash and clatter metal to metal, tinning a hollow chime from the chest of an aluminum cage. but he is not a machine, is he? Perhaps they all are and didn't know it, but the slick tendons and sore bones beneath the fragile flesh spoke of something more tangible, more frightening than any dead thing cared to behest. Those sheepish grins in the courtyard bliss'd of gods and paltry pleasures, wine and cheese and thanks to the heavens above for our bountiful feast. They quarreled like rats over a heel of bread, squabbled like crows for a pretty penny. Some lucky bastards lay in their chaise, smoking a long pipe and dreaming of the good old days. The child in him sometimes marveled and wondered, what days were those? While the rest of him scowled and looked on to the emptiness presented. What wonderment it must be to feel, to consider the plush of that chaise and the cold metal of that penny, to taste the warm yeast of a fresh heel of bread. And gods, his deaf ear flicked back against the undertow of names and blessings all, subconsciously ignorant to the customs of anything other than the tales of bitter titans who shook the ground from beneath all fools. Those who razed cities with molten gold, and crushed mountains beneath their furious grip.
He recalled the tales his mother cooed to him when he was just a babe, sheltered beneath her wing and comforted far from the barracks that left his infant-bones aching with misuse. Any could be gods, child, if you drag them from the warring skies. But all gods fear a titan. A seedling to a wicked, gnarling thorn thistle that, her words were always so vague, so cold and matted with omen and grit and sorrow. They fell from her cheek like rain, staining her tongue with quivering sighs that rolled thunder in his heart. She said he was many things – and he was! A wolfish child, a lion brave and secretive tangle of shadows from a witch's shallow grave. Yet she never truly told him what he was, those words were always wrapped up in thick honey and choking sweetness that whispered tales of what once was. Some tales she said he was swept up from the shores of a black river, and not truly born to her but from the screaming skies and the pouring smoke that filled the forests with terror, or he was a small stone that fell from a god's eye and was swallowed by a serpent. That stone grew in the serpent's belly and swelled and swelled until the serpent had shed its skin, rippling with the gold of a god's ichor – it drank the river bed dry in its grief but found no satisfaction until it shook those glimmering coils from its back and revealed the polished stone for what it was. Sometimes she said the skies were angry that she stole him from them. Sometimes she hid him beneath her weight and love when the thunder would clash and the sea roared beyond, when the creatures yowled and screamed at the night and seemed to cry for nothing but his name.
All this, and he never knew what he was.
He was his mother's death, his father's best kept secret, the stone forged of smoke and terror which the serpent swallowed and caught in his throat – that drank the river dry and shed its skin along the stygian shores to retch an abominable thing. But for what, he was halved of his right. And for this he wandered each night, because it was the only thing he knew – his blood sang out to him, his bones moved to ache and trailed the moon like a compass. All the unrest and unhappiness swelled inside of him like a rock in his belly, but it had begun to grow its vines and wrap its thorns around his pleasures, his thoughts, his needs, until it was all he knew. Something in him moved yet, on and on, replacing his unequal parts with vicious things anew until he was no longer dead, no longer a machine but a living, breathing conjurement of daemon breath and hot flesh roving. Less a boy, and more a wolf.
It was this nature of knowing, or the lack thereof, that brought him to the mountains that evening. He chased the sun until it disappeared behind the peaks, and he was relieved to follow the whispers of the night that broke over the dusk. Dew settled meekly upon the grounds, rested a glossy sheen of gold over his austere features that spoke leagues of wonder and mercurial twitches of a vague agony. The trail had winded him to the height he reached – and his gaze trailed over the pepper of pines that bowed far below, a coarse sheet of rock that dove deep into the prairie brush. It could frighten the common timid yearling, but he found no interest in divining a thought of death here, he knew it was not his grave. It was a thing of awe regardless, the way the fog hung to the bottom and clambered its way up, up, as if it threatened to swallow him as it rose to meet him. He turned his attention then as it made its half way, refocused on the trail that disappeared between two shadowed shelves and a spine of granite that trailed on forever. Even despite being an arrogant thing at times, he was not so foolish to stray from that path. He had found bones at the bottom, those disfigured skeletal remains with parts where there shouldn't be parts and fractures that seemed an immediate doom, or a labored injury that suspended death at arm's length laughing. A friend to what common sense remained, he strove to keep himself above sea level.
Around the bend, the sunlight bore over the horizon and painted the granite slabs in peach and brilliant gold, set fire to his shoulder in its glimmering fashion, the strains that broke through like cracks in marble. He paused to squint past the gleaming light, beholding all that lay beyond the pass of Denocte, before he turned his attentions back. As he did so, the sun had caressed a faint hint of stone pillar that seemed offset from the more rugged forms around it. It sat behind the cover of looming pines and withered boughs of summer trees that outstretched their arms desperately for the dying light. It lay beyond the beaten path – but it was there, and his eyes dropped to the ground that seemed to form, just ever so faintly, a deer-trail through the juniper brush, which he could only assume led to the structure. There were less pitfalls around this risen ground, though he didn't doubt if he strayed too far from that vague road, he would meet an end similar to those grinning corpses at the bottom of a long drop. But this was not his time for death. He obliged the call that rose then, as the swelling breaths pushed against his chestplate and his legs had already found themselves ambling for the glowing pillar through the rock and trees. There were a few sets of hoofprints in the dusty dirt, half hidden by leaves and granite dust but surely there, though he didn't pay enough attention to be sure that there were prints leaving just as casually as they seemed to arrive.
The temple – is that what it was? - was a pristine thing of sharp carved marble – or quartz, or moonrock, or petrified starlight – that rose from the granite like a spring. He marveled at the craft of this existence, and found himself entertained with following the veins of gold and silver that ran through the walls. Smooth, cold, his hoofbeats shook dust from the floors (except where those other hoofbeats were pressed, here and there in explorative manner) and echoed in the hollow halls. He paused when he came to an inscription in the stone, and his mind grazed over it as fingertips pressed to the cold marble, thumbing over each engraved character in wonder. The overall design appealed to his quiet pride, some kinship in resemblance to his own appearance – the strains of gold that they both shared, and found some comfort in the chill that surrounded him.
Comfort, that is, until he heard another slip and clatter of hooves from deeper in the temple. His eyes chased to the source, their owner silhouetted in the hall. A creme-splashed dun mare that stood, and perhaps had not seen him just yet, but surely would. In truth he wasn't wholly discomforted in the way that he was fearful of a stranger's calculative eye – moreso discomforted by the fact that there was another, solely, that he could not enjoy the discovery alone. For this reason he stood still as the marble walls about him for a long, drawing moment, his gold eyes lain heavily on the woman while his skin twitched with misanthropic woe. He is a rugged child, not a sort of rugged that is dirty or disheveled, or even overtly rough - rugged in the way his design is sharp at every edge, and the way it sharpens at each second, as if his skin is metal plated and his spine is a ridge of obsidian daggers. The shadows fall against him, so that the veins of gold and the lustre of his matching eyes are the only striking things about him. He is deceived only by the glow of the marble walls, that he could almost emulate were it not for their opposing contrast. In that moment, he is less a wolf... and more a dragon. He feels his fangs softly against the inside of his lips and his tongue rolls to greet them in remembrance, but a part of him relies on the lazy hope that he does not have to use them.
“do you know what this is?" his voice rolls, but it is distinct – it should sound like a young man's, full of life and vigor and pride, but it doesn't. It sounds ambiguous and deep, whiskey hot and winding like the deepest, blackest river. It is a whisper just as much as it is a roar; the words drip with a looming weight, like a stroke fuse peppered with flame. Tense, begrudging, but not without its subtle courtesies. After all, most of his mind screams that he should leave, and just wait until she is gone, then explore it on his own. But the rest of it growls an answer to the question he posed for her, This is mine.
@Morrighan
