The first thing he recognizes of her is that she does not belong. It was not that he discovered she was anything of death, of destruction, nothing of that milky phosphorence that poured from her like a beacon spoke to him of the end. Though the worms at her heels writhed from the earth, kissing her heels with a merry famishment that praised her hymns and bowed to her step, it was not dissonance that emanated from her pores and met him with a spite unlike any he had tasted before. It was that she was not of this plane, and yet so wholly immersed in it, a part of it, like entangled roots through the upturned soils. Perhaps it was he that did not belong. Titan blood coursed through his veins, drummed furiously over his heavy bones and pounded in his ears – the hum, the hum of beetle wings, of flies, of larvae singing in the night. (And we scowl, we lurch beneath the light, for we know better in these shadows.) When she grins it is moonlight waxing over the garden, tendrils of light that swept and rushed and collided against his shadows with a vicious assertion. They pull across his sharp features, they lay sweeping over his softened curves, the valleys and knolls of youthful musculature bathed in unholy light.
The boy in him screams a silent scream, some shriek that pulls from deeper beneath his feet and rips out of his body with an imminent fear that he has never known and never cares to know again – it threatens to rattle him, to jar him, to shake him from trance and command him away. It wishes to run, to flee to wherever that light could not touch. It peels back beneath his flesh with a grudging fright and tears at his muscles, and we realize that it is not a boy in him at all but the trace of mortality – something inside of him that dies with each minute, struggling to breathe under the weight of his birthright. If he were a man it would be the humanity screaming in a demigod, the lapse of disbelief that comes from faults that are entirely human, while the brash nature of a god flows full and conscious and certain. He stifles that boyish fear, swallowing it like a prickling knot in his chest. He discards it like a second skin.
She grins. It is light and divine and consuming and otherworldly.
He grins. It is cruel and wolfish, distorting his features with a darkness that shirk that light.
We grin with him.
She does not speak in words, not in one word or many, it can't be explained by any language in the world. It merely hums, and buzzes, and cries, and screams, and all at once the forest moves with it in telling – but not telling too much – and telling everything. She is light and blood and bone and blood and light, and something he knows is not mortal flesh but trapped there as he sometimes feels himself, trapped by veins like ropes that slid a noose around his throat. In his core something rolls like a stone, and slithers up his throat with a vicious laugh. It is not boisterous – it is somewhat menacing, relieved, as if all the tension had come to a head and washed over him suddenly, but all around him it sparked in ways that could send his hair on end. Her answer sent his blood to boil, it set his flesh on fire and his bones to a pining ache. It was not meant to be heard but to be felt, and such sensation was a livid, vibrant thing that cascaded over him in waves of epiphany.
He does not bow. (We would not allow it. Not to any god.) Though the worms and the larvae and the birds and the leaves and the flowers and even the dust fall in servile ranks, silent and despondent like the bobbing heads of beaten servants and gracious patrons. He stands tall, resilient, his composure an unearthly mesh of cool granite and steel and the gleam of gold that glows like rays of an incensed sun in the passing of her light. Something in him is rebellious against her being, and he does not fight it or question it. It simply is.
his eyes are full of light – of gold lapping in the bright iridescence, drinking it in greedily and allowing none to escape, none to reflect off the hot, sharp rind of its stead. it roves, it winds, it is a predator's glance that wraps her countenance in wonder and hunger. and he feeds. immersed in her ambience that swells around him, breathing it as air, as if he inhaled the sulfuric light and exhaled the smoke of shadow, mingled and twisted over the roll of his tongue, the glint of his fangs. never before had he witnessed a god. and he wondered, how he wondered; was she wrapped in his blood the way she was wrapped in the life and death that surrounded her? Were they connected like the tangled roots of bordering trees, taut and suffocating over years of gnarled thirst? Or was she a part of him as stardust was a part of him? As the river? As the stone? As the serpent?
His chin rose, light running down the sharp rise of his cheekbone like milk, the shadows in his eyes glaring and gleaming with vengeful ware. "you are not me." Erasmus grins still but his words erupt as if a growl, as if he were scowling, low and pernicious and daunting. His expression is as of Apollo's damnable pride, a handsome trace of reluctance tailed in heresy. "but perhaps a part." The condemnation in his voice does not touch his eyes – which admire what they behold, in awe and curiosity, brimmed with a tenacity that aspires to violence. "why are you here?"
The boy in him screams a silent scream, some shriek that pulls from deeper beneath his feet and rips out of his body with an imminent fear that he has never known and never cares to know again – it threatens to rattle him, to jar him, to shake him from trance and command him away. It wishes to run, to flee to wherever that light could not touch. It peels back beneath his flesh with a grudging fright and tears at his muscles, and we realize that it is not a boy in him at all but the trace of mortality – something inside of him that dies with each minute, struggling to breathe under the weight of his birthright. If he were a man it would be the humanity screaming in a demigod, the lapse of disbelief that comes from faults that are entirely human, while the brash nature of a god flows full and conscious and certain. He stifles that boyish fear, swallowing it like a prickling knot in his chest. He discards it like a second skin.
She grins. It is light and divine and consuming and otherworldly.
He grins. It is cruel and wolfish, distorting his features with a darkness that shirk that light.
We grin with him.
She does not speak in words, not in one word or many, it can't be explained by any language in the world. It merely hums, and buzzes, and cries, and screams, and all at once the forest moves with it in telling – but not telling too much – and telling everything. She is light and blood and bone and blood and light, and something he knows is not mortal flesh but trapped there as he sometimes feels himself, trapped by veins like ropes that slid a noose around his throat. In his core something rolls like a stone, and slithers up his throat with a vicious laugh. It is not boisterous – it is somewhat menacing, relieved, as if all the tension had come to a head and washed over him suddenly, but all around him it sparked in ways that could send his hair on end. Her answer sent his blood to boil, it set his flesh on fire and his bones to a pining ache. It was not meant to be heard but to be felt, and such sensation was a livid, vibrant thing that cascaded over him in waves of epiphany.
He does not bow. (We would not allow it. Not to any god.) Though the worms and the larvae and the birds and the leaves and the flowers and even the dust fall in servile ranks, silent and despondent like the bobbing heads of beaten servants and gracious patrons. He stands tall, resilient, his composure an unearthly mesh of cool granite and steel and the gleam of gold that glows like rays of an incensed sun in the passing of her light. Something in him is rebellious against her being, and he does not fight it or question it. It simply is.
his eyes are full of light – of gold lapping in the bright iridescence, drinking it in greedily and allowing none to escape, none to reflect off the hot, sharp rind of its stead. it roves, it winds, it is a predator's glance that wraps her countenance in wonder and hunger. and he feeds. immersed in her ambience that swells around him, breathing it as air, as if he inhaled the sulfuric light and exhaled the smoke of shadow, mingled and twisted over the roll of his tongue, the glint of his fangs. never before had he witnessed a god. and he wondered, how he wondered; was she wrapped in his blood the way she was wrapped in the life and death that surrounded her? Were they connected like the tangled roots of bordering trees, taut and suffocating over years of gnarled thirst? Or was she a part of him as stardust was a part of him? As the river? As the stone? As the serpent?
His chin rose, light running down the sharp rise of his cheekbone like milk, the shadows in his eyes glaring and gleaming with vengeful ware. "you are not me." Erasmus grins still but his words erupt as if a growl, as if he were scowling, low and pernicious and daunting. His expression is as of Apollo's damnable pride, a handsome trace of reluctance tailed in heresy. "but perhaps a part." The condemnation in his voice does not touch his eyes – which admire what they behold, in awe and curiosity, brimmed with a tenacity that aspires to violence. "why are you here?"
@Eshek
