—like held breath,
the stars drew in their panting fires
☼
Through the truthful courtesy of his reply, Hälla could not decide if the nature of his words were refreshing, or infuriating. In some ways, he’d been a rare oasis awaiting her at the lip of darkness, unwittingly hauling her from the tomb in which she’d crept, the slumbering embers of vengeful wrath luring her from the crypt. He cleaved through the disarray with the caring attention of his presence, and it inspired her ire as much as it did her gratitude.
In other ways, she again thought him something of a fool, and she was unable to glean from the fuzziness of her thoughts what it was he thought he’d acquire from this interaction—for surely there was something he pursued. She considered that she appeared more distressed than she cared to, an easy target who wore a necklace of scars.
She had survived plenty—years of darkness creeping through with the languid shuttering of slow-blinking eyes, one grueling day after the next, until even her dreams were traitorous. She had endured the wretchedness of being twisted between two realities.
The first, another life entirely, and yet more agonizing than idyllic—
The second, the disarming reality of her untimely imprisonment within the catacombs.
Memories, emotions, were stirring unbidden now. She continued to swallow them down, unable to entertain the game beyond a brisk introduction.
“Hälla,” it was better than any of the options he’d supplied, even if they’d, true to her intent, lent her a mirror of his character. “My name is Hälla.”
The words rolled off of her tongue like silk, a pleasant truth within this bitter world of lies, and they served as a gentle lock upon the dam that’d threatened to break free, as if her too-full mind was momentarily contented by the release of information. Breathing her identity into the tepid air was a balm; a trapping of bandages that lay thinly over her many wounds.
It will heal, she thought, teeth gritted. All of it.
Whatever it may have been.
She didn’t notice how he braced in preparation to catch her as she stumbled, and it was undoubtedly for the better. Even so, her pricked ears twitched in his direction at his reply—almost idle chatter to fill the arid silence—and she drew in a breath.
Elsewhere. She hadn’t forgotten, of course, and she wondered if she came from elsewhere, too. He had asked her, but the only home she could immediately recall were the catacombs; her only family the skeletons and the cobwebs, and the bemoaning cries of… others.
Delumine, though—she knew that name. As she knew the name Solterra, Terrastella, Denocte; each of them venomous and harmonious, beautiful and wretched, within her mind’s eye.
His question ran in line with her thoughts, resonating through the boundless, splintering walls of her conscious. Small pieces flaked off, aching to remember, while others remained tightly fettered to their assigned cages. Whatever pain lay behind the bars, she both dreaded and yearned to know.
It would be a truth, at least—she hoped. It would be something other than Arjun’s lie.
“I was of Day Court, once,” she said slowly. And perhaps she would be again. She wondered if it still existed, if the solitary piece of her identity remained beyond the tombs. “And some place else, although I can’t yet remember.” The statement betrayed some measure of vulnerability, and as with every other piece she’d deliberately laid before him, it was an indirect measure of character.
His response to that statement would speak volumes—even if she could already guess to the care he would impose.
Smoothly, Hälla continued, her cloven hooves still tracking lightly over the warm sand. The dunes seemed to span on for eternity, and she could do nothing more than slow her pace to walk beside him. He was a welcome sight, compared to the infinity of sand.
“You’ve come a long way for a mere wanderer,” she observed. His words betrayed nothing, but his actions did. “Running from something? Someone, perhaps?”
Speech, @"Avallac'h"
the table changing game
the table changing game
