TUCSON
because regret drives you as crazy
as the taste of swallowed words
as the taste of swallowed words
T
ucson arrives at the Steppe like a one-man stampede. .
He is anger and dust and fury. The tension of the air is held just beneath his wings so that, when he tucks them just so, he descends from the sky with swift violence. The earth nears him recklessly and Tucson hits the ground at a lope to keep his momentum from flinging him face-first into the ground. The shock of the impact goes up his knees into his shoulders and then, accordingly, his hips. It hurts and for a moment, brief and inconsequential, he feels his age.
Then the moment is gone and the stallion tosses his head, snorting. He does not know why he is angry. There is only a steady stream of the sentiment, and it comes from the night before when he had, perhaps, one too many drinks. The tavern he frequented had kicked him out, again, and he stumbled back to the soldier’s output sodden drunk. There was a sharp edge to his anger, and an even sharper one to his recklessness. The words of his commanding officer were resonant in his mind. You piece of shit… You’re the opposite of what a Terrastellan is supposed to be.
Tucson was finding out more and more he wasn’t cut out to be a soldier. How could he explain, babbling drunk, the only thing he’d ever learned how to do was kill? How could he say, I don’t know what I’m supposed to be if I’m not just a wandering vagabond? Those words were too much for him, too large, and his mind could not comprehend nor articulate the complicated sentiments that now plagued him. Tucson had never been taught the emotional intricacies of loneliness, or fear, or heartache. Everything he had ever felt could be answered with a bottle of bourbon or violence, and Daisy Mae came to him more and more often in him dreams, saying: You gotta stop suppressin’ Tucson, it ain’t right, y’gotta talk about it hon. Talk to me.
Tossing his head, breathing in the bright summer air—he thought of that. Talk to me. And all the words he wished he could say die in his chest before he can even think them, because it is unattractive to feel things so volatile, so brazen, so full. The only way to let the fullness out of his chest was to feel something else and so now he seeks it like an addict. Tucson looks around with his bright amber eyes and locks them on the only other figure at the Steppe—the bay with spotted wings. He recognises her as the new sovereign, a word as foreign to him as the land he lives in now.
“Ay’ there, lass.” he calls over the space between them. “Looks t’me like we could do each other a'favour.” And wasn’t that the truth? He bowed his head in a way that is almost mischievous, if not for how sharp the gesture is. As he bows he says, “Let’s dance, sweets.”
@Messalina | "speaks" | notes: this took soooo long i'm sorry!
Summary: Tucson lands rather aggressively at the steep and challenges Marisol to a "dance."
Attack Used: 0
Attack(s) Left: 2
Block Used: 0
Block(s) Left: 1 (
Item(s) Used:
Response Deadline: September 26th (also RB and I discussed my lateness and it was okay <3)
Tags: @
