[P] nainsook

[Sabine]

The mountains part like wings - tawny and solemn - that beat above the castles of Denocte. Her memories of this earth seem suddenly bloodless in lieu of the glittering country that stretches like a waking cat, arching the dark Night hills that slumber beneath a turbid sky. Her mind dared not rival the magnificence of reality.  Each step taken feels leaden, feels debilitating, and it does not take the barb of an eagle's eye to catch the way her sylphlike shoulders wilt and cave. Perhaps, if one should stumble upon the young girl, you might notice the crude tousles in her curls that have bound themselves so tightly against her crest - and you would feel that such disarray looks amiss upon a girl with eyes like blue orchids. Sabine had not thought she would again walk the path that lead back toward her birthland, not after all that had since passed. The last time she had touched this earth, she had been plagued by the sight, scent and sound of a man who should have been long dead; Sabine had since prayed to Gods she did not believe in to first crush the madness that held her head in a high-church fever and, when that had failed, to then take him from the soft nook of her arm, for she could not deliver to him the paradise he should need.  But the madness did not wane and his voice never left her heart -- even now, she could feel the gasoline chill pressing against the nape of her neck like an eye she could not avert.  And Acton was only the first.  But she cannot not think of that now; not when the alpine scree drops into thin air only inches from her feet, when the thinness of that air seems to beckon her closer with each passing moment.  It would be so easy, wouldn't it? To close her eyes and lean, momentarily, a little too hard to the left. Sabi imagines the way she might initially stumble (lungs billowing, muscles yielding) before the chasm would reach up to claim its long-awaited prize. She doesn't think it would hurt -- better than burning, better than bleeding, better than the death that was alive within her ribs.  The thought clings on long enough to bring her weary pilgrimage to a stop, and as she casts a wistful gaze down-down-down into the black, Sabine cannot not help but realise, if she takes that final step, there is not a single soul alive to miss her when she was gone.  ♣ -

art by rallidae | table by kezz

@caine