you say that you're still hungry
then bite the plates and break your teeth
then bite the plates and break your teeth
There was a specific moment when consciousness returned to him, delicate as a butterfly breaking wet-winged from its chrysalis. In that moment there were no clear thoughts; too much magic was still trickling through his cells like they were cheesecloth, and the chaos and noise was still reverberating in his skull, his teeth, setting all his bones to shivering.
But when he did feel again, when he blinked his eyes open and found himself in the late-summer sun on the coast of Denocte, the first thing he felt was disappointment - not for losing the relic, or the island, but for keeping his life.
It surprised him, that feeling and the weight of it; it was the first time he’d ever wished himself dead.
And yet he found it didn’t fade. It was joined by others - a kind of dizzy relief, an acute nausea that nearly brought him panting to his knees, a dull-toothed sense of failure that he hadn’t earned or won or been given the Relic. More and more emotions came winging down, like his body had ceased to exist as the magic relocated him and now all his thoughts were coming winging back, one by one, like butterflies descending in fucked-up magic jungle. Below them all, certain as his heartbeat (or the heartbeat of those berries as the very beginning of the dream-not-dream):
you should be dead, you should be dead. He had seen that sand-skinned snake, the monstrous creature with the bear skull, the silent screaming mouth; he had run for all of it, open-handed, greedy for miracles, and he had been found wanting.
Nobody had found August wanting before, except himself.
Now, there was no denying it, the island itself was crumbling to bits, sinking back into the waves. He watched it go with a singing ache between his ribs, grateful to be too far to do anything about it, too far to even see the figures of horses fleeing down the bridge except for the black shapes of them, small as swarming flies.
He couldn’t yet think about those other-deaths, couldn’t yet process the ragged worry gnawing at his gut for all his friends.
But he was glad the island was dying, and he was sorry to see it go, and as it passed below the hungry dark of the ocean his heart beat slowly against his ribs and every pulse felt like something stolen and unearned.
@NA
STAFF EDIT***
@August has rolled a 1! They have been awarded +2 exp.
