THE SEA DISSOLVES SO MUCH AND THE MOON MAKES AWAY WITH SO MUCH MORE THAN WE KNOW--ONCE THE MOON COMES DOWN AND THE SEA GETS HOLD OF US CITIES DISSOLVE LIKE ROCK-SALT AND THE SUGAR MELTS OUT OF LIFE
Orestes will always go back into the water; always, always. Even now the touch of it against soothes away his hurts, placates his mind. If he were to die here, if her horn were to pierce his flesh or her rot were to reach his heart, Orestes would float back to the sea; and although the thought fills him at once with a kind of poignant regret it also meets him with relief, with assurance.
Ariel would have liked to ask, why are you thinking so much of death? but the answer to that question is present in the form of a mahogany mare and her companion borne of suffering and suffering alone. Ariel’s chest resounds with the beating of his heart and again, brilliant and furious, he begins to shine like the sun. A part of him wishes to challenge this creature of lore and darkness, what do you expect of the desert, if not a suffering like no other?—
and Orestes only spares a glance, nearly disapproving, at the Sun Lion that rages enough for all of them against the darkness of the light. He feels deeply envious of his bonded, for a moment, and the vivaciousness with which he shines, the righteousness with which he lives—if only it were all so simple, so black and white.
She does not answer his question at first, and the pain of waiting is far worse than the pain of any blood she has ever drawn. His eyes follow her, imploring, and her movement to the shore opens up a loneliness in him so deep Orestes does not know if he will recover—
then, at last,
I cut out the emptiness.
He cannot know the name on the tip of her tongue. Orestes cannot know the thing that staves off the abyss; he can only watch as she begins to turn away, into the forest.
Ariel’s snarl continues to rip the air like tearing cloth; it intensifies when the woman glances back, just a single time.
“And when you’re ready I can cut it out of you too.”
Orestes is left in the silence of her resounding words, and Ariel’s fading fury. After several endless seconds, the only sound are the forest, and the river that berates him. Orestes wants to follow her; he wants to demand more; he wants to know exactly what she means, even with already knowing it.
And when you’re ready I can cut it out of you too.
He hears it again, and again, and again and the more it repeats the more he hears the phrase,
I can’t die so far from the sea.
Orestes no longer knows who said it to him, or why it matters; perhaps it was even his own voice. He stands there for a small eternity; he stands there until the press of water is almost too much, is almost enough to drag him away. And then, fatigued, he presses from the river and onto the bank where his companion waits. He leans into Ariel’s side; and after a pause, the lion begins to lead him from the forest, along the winding river, back toward their desert home.
The encounter has left him feeling no more resolve, or certainty; only a gaping absence, a reminder of what it feels like to be lost. He finds an irony, as he reflects, that this encounter had him bearing questions for her. The last time it had been the other way, the last time she had asked him and as the horizon breaks, as the darkness seeps from the sky and his beloved Solis returns, so to does the poem he finished for her—
It is a great stag running and running in a beautiful forces, with dusk fading upon the horizon. Everything is blue, soft, cold. Everything is still except the deer that is running so fast, so elegant. There is a wolf at its heels but you hardly see it against the foliage; it is a blur, not a shape, as the stag bounds endless and graceful. The wolf fades back, away from the deer’s heels, and as you watch the sun edges the end of the world and the stag leaps toward safety—but as he leaps the forest comes alive, and a wolf that was in the shadow leaps to meet the stag just as he believes himself free from the jaws of death, just as the light of the fading day fills his eyes, just as he reaches the brilliant pinnacle of survival, of tomorrow, of life. It feels like the moment the stag leaps and sees from the corner of his eye his own death; he thinks, I made it, but even as he feels the truth of that thought he knows the truth of his fate.
Orestes no longer knows if he is the stag, or the wolf, or the moment in between.
@Thana || I LOVE HER SO MUCH ALWAYS and your characters always give mine development so thanks for a lovely thread <3
IRON WASHES AWAY LIKE AN OLD BLOOD-STAIN, GOLD GOES OUT INTO A GREEN SHADOW, MONEY MAKES EVEN NO SEDIMENT AND ONLY THE HEART GLITTERS IN SALTY TRIUMPH OVER ALL IT HAS KNOWN, THAT HAS GONE NOW INTO SALTY NOTHING
