For so long, curiosity had kept Michael alive.
He had walked, like many before him have walked, often to exhaustion and sometimes to the bring of death, or in the dead of winter, through a field scored by the claws of war and mountain after mountain that rise high above the sea. He had thought, once, that he would see the end of all things, that time would spin itself down to nothing before his ancient bones had even thought to thin, before his old, old heart turned soft and quiet in his chest.
Isra turns her pain to gold, her suffering to art, and her rage to nothing but the same deep drums that say war as they rattle. Michael sees, now.
This, not time's thin threads, not death, not anything else, but this is what it's like to stand face to face with armageddon, to hold it with arms too small and hope it will stop before it and everything around it is gone. Maybe this is why he feels so cold when she pulls away, a sort of bone-deep cold that bites far harder than the mountain.
She looks at him -- and she has always been one of the only people, ever, to look at Michael like he is not a ghost that rolled in with the fog -- in a way that makes Michael scared, for just a moment. The Earth has always told him to wake up but it's so loud, now. It sounds as close as she is, and twice as holy.
Michael knows. He knows like he knows few things.
If he does not close his eyes and lay down his head then who will? Not her. He wouldn't ask her to. But there must always be a grave to turn gold, and there must always be a body to fill it. This is the way of things. Michael will slough his skin in her fire because it is all he knows how to do: die, like a hero, like a martyr, like a thing that is not quite as small as he is.
Not today, maybe. But someday.
"I hope--" he starts, but she is staring at him and Michael fixes his face into one of vague resolve. "I hope they'll see reason, then."
Michael turns, again, to look over his shoulder at her graves, at her broken wall, at her burned pass. He is quiet for a moment, a long, long moment, almost to long to be a moment at all. Michael lowers his brow, tucks his mouth into a neat frown, and draws a breath.
"I think I'd have burned it anyway. But perhaps that's too spiteful."
She is looking at him and he feels like he is dying because she cannot. She is looking at him and she is bent the wrong ways, tied down by her rage and her pain and what he thinks is exhaustion but the edges are too blurred to tell for sure, and he is dying for her.
He had walked, like many before him have walked, often to exhaustion and sometimes to the bring of death, or in the dead of winter, through a field scored by the claws of war and mountain after mountain that rise high above the sea. He had thought, once, that he would see the end of all things, that time would spin itself down to nothing before his ancient bones had even thought to thin, before his old, old heart turned soft and quiet in his chest.
Isra turns her pain to gold, her suffering to art, and her rage to nothing but the same deep drums that say war as they rattle. Michael sees, now.
This, not time's thin threads, not death, not anything else, but this is what it's like to stand face to face with armageddon, to hold it with arms too small and hope it will stop before it and everything around it is gone. Maybe this is why he feels so cold when she pulls away, a sort of bone-deep cold that bites far harder than the mountain.
She looks at him -- and she has always been one of the only people, ever, to look at Michael like he is not a ghost that rolled in with the fog -- in a way that makes Michael scared, for just a moment. The Earth has always told him to wake up but it's so loud, now. It sounds as close as she is, and twice as holy.
Michael knows. He knows like he knows few things.
If he does not close his eyes and lay down his head then who will? Not her. He wouldn't ask her to. But there must always be a grave to turn gold, and there must always be a body to fill it. This is the way of things. Michael will slough his skin in her fire because it is all he knows how to do: die, like a hero, like a martyr, like a thing that is not quite as small as he is.
Not today, maybe. But someday.
"I hope--" he starts, but she is staring at him and Michael fixes his face into one of vague resolve. "I hope they'll see reason, then."
Michael turns, again, to look over his shoulder at her graves, at her broken wall, at her burned pass. He is quiet for a moment, a long, long moment, almost to long to be a moment at all. Michael lowers his brow, tucks his mouth into a neat frown, and draws a breath.
"I think I'd have burned it anyway. But perhaps that's too spiteful."
She is looking at him and he feels like he is dying because she cannot. She is looking at him and she is bent the wrong ways, tied down by her rage and her pain and what he thinks is exhaustion but the edges are too blurred to tell for sure, and he is dying for her.
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us."
@isra <3
