Isra who is neither man nor king
“the clouds gathered behind the army as if a creature alive, black and churning in fury.”
“the clouds gathered behind the army as if a creature alive, black and churning in fury.”
T
his is why all the heroes are dead, all the knights dissolved into dust, and the saviors broken down into piles of burned flesh and feathers. Hope has turned into bone and salvation is nothing more than a hundred rivers of blood running out to the horizon on the tide. In his look there are a million other men, and kings, with their empty crowns of gold and not a drop of courage enough to say, no.They do not have courage enough to bare their teeth to the gods and the black space beyond them and below that word over and over again like a chant. No. No. No.
But I do. I have wrath where he has apathy eating away the brightness of everything that he could be like entropy eating at a bit of muscle. I hope his knees were bloody from digging out the survivors and I hope his dreams are full to bloating with the suffering of the people beneath his city. I hope, oh I hope, that he will understand when I lay my teeth at his throat before I scream, no.
And I wonder if he can see the sea or fire enough to evaporate it in my gaze when I tremble with empathy and fury. Mercy has failed me over and over again, but this-- this has taught me that I must be smoke, and steel, and magic to rattle down the stars and their dark shadows so that there might be light enough to blind the darkness back, back, back.
A million men have failed, a thousand kings.
I am neither.
“How easy it is for you to sound so cold.” I say and imagine my teeth at his throat so that he might learn how the words should vibrate in his blood. But I want to say, how easy it is for you to fail and let my teeth do more than lay like petals instead of bone against him. I step closer to him, turning dust to diamonds and more flowers that no one but me cares to bring all the hollow cages of the dead. Does he see softness or violence enough to take his cold stone throne from beneath him?
Perhaps I should have lived in the desert, where softness is weakness and blood split worth more than gold. Perhaps I should learn to love the barren sand as Eik does.
Perhaps....
“Have I ever told you the story of the sea and I, Orestes?” There is no gentleness in my look, none of the story-teller brightness that should be in my eyes at the beginning of a tale. “Or how the primordial ocean, and broken men, and kings have all tried to take choice away from me?” I try to smile instead of snarl like a rabid thing, I try to be gentle with another thing without courage. I exhale, and inhale, and it is a wonder that we can breathe this air at all.
“Would you like to know all the ways how they tried to break me down to nothing but down-softness and swan-white purity?” Our shoulders brush again, in the death darkness, and I feel like I am burning embers brushing against bones cold enough that they belong at the black bottom of the sea.
I smile in the gloaming with the dust of the death caught between my teeth like pearls I want to choke on. “Or should I tell you about how all the monsters with chains forged out of love and salvation are nothing more than all this dust tracking our hoof-prints like we are lines of ink on a map?” I do not look at him, I cannot, not now with this dark apathy that pretends to know the world in his gaze.
The catacombs almost seem to welcome me, another thing that should have died over and over again for a million purposes that were not my own, as I pass the sun king. And when I lift my nose to the pathway beyond the walls, the one leading to the sea, it's almost impossible to tell whether it is Fable or the Sea roaring outside the darkness.
Does it even matter which, when my magic starts to turn dust to water and maggot to butterfly around us?
@Orestes | "speaks" | notes: <3
