my rose garden dreams, set on fire by fiends
He has torn his scars open again.
Gritting down a wince, Caine rolls his shoulders back and forth, back and forth, the pain florescent, until he realises what he is doing and stops. A line of bright blood oozes out of the sutured flesh, down his leg, and into the wilting grass.
He has descended halfway down from the Veneror, and he thinks—though he doesn't know, with any certainty—he is approaching the border of Dusk. It is difficult to navigate, when everything is so close together. When trees loom above you instead of shrink below you, a ripple of green, red at the edges. Paths fork in and out of the forest like snake tongues, strips of brown against green, and with only a glance and a tilt of his wings he knows he is flying north, towards Solterra, or south, towards Denocte, or southwest, towards the marshlands of Terrastella.
From the ground, he knows nothing except that paths eventually end somewhere.
For a time he walks, ignoring the way his blood marks his passage like a trail of melted licorice. He could try flying again, though that would only tear his scars open more and Caine knows that doing so would not be ideal.
He has slit enough throats in the past to know how vital blood is to the body.
It would also hurt, and while he has never been averse to pain, when there is only himself and the little spotted rabbits that dare to peek at him through thorny blackberry bushes, they are too small and flighty to work as good distractions.
There is one looking at him now, its pink nose wriggling nervously in the air. He extends a wing out towards it. When it flees, white tail bobbing, he cannot help but feel a stab of melancholy.
I should have brought bandages, he thinks to himself dryly. The top of his wings are coated in blood. But he has only his shadow cloak, draped carefully behind his wings so that blood would not seep into it, and the cloth is entirely too fine, entirely too magical, to be used for such a benign purpose. It would be like using Saint Volta to gut a rabbit.
Sacrilegious, Caine thinks, and his mouth quirks into a glancing grin.
His head bobs heavily on his neck. He has walked from dawn and it is now near night, the sky painted in sleepy lavenders and pinks. If he squints his eyes he thinks he sees Terrastella, its ivory gates shining like a beacon at the end of the road, where trees thin to rolling meadow.
But it is still so far, and his head is heavy. Groaning, Caine presses his cheek into the trunk of a maple and breathes in the sharp, honeyed scent of its sap.
When he closes his eyes, he imagines himself wading knee-deep into a sea of blood.
Gritting down a wince, Caine rolls his shoulders back and forth, back and forth, the pain florescent, until he realises what he is doing and stops. A line of bright blood oozes out of the sutured flesh, down his leg, and into the wilting grass.
He has descended halfway down from the Veneror, and he thinks—though he doesn't know, with any certainty—he is approaching the border of Dusk. It is difficult to navigate, when everything is so close together. When trees loom above you instead of shrink below you, a ripple of green, red at the edges. Paths fork in and out of the forest like snake tongues, strips of brown against green, and with only a glance and a tilt of his wings he knows he is flying north, towards Solterra, or south, towards Denocte, or southwest, towards the marshlands of Terrastella.
From the ground, he knows nothing except that paths eventually end somewhere.
For a time he walks, ignoring the way his blood marks his passage like a trail of melted licorice. He could try flying again, though that would only tear his scars open more and Caine knows that doing so would not be ideal.
He has slit enough throats in the past to know how vital blood is to the body.
It would also hurt, and while he has never been averse to pain, when there is only himself and the little spotted rabbits that dare to peek at him through thorny blackberry bushes, they are too small and flighty to work as good distractions.
There is one looking at him now, its pink nose wriggling nervously in the air. He extends a wing out towards it. When it flees, white tail bobbing, he cannot help but feel a stab of melancholy.
I should have brought bandages, he thinks to himself dryly. The top of his wings are coated in blood. But he has only his shadow cloak, draped carefully behind his wings so that blood would not seep into it, and the cloth is entirely too fine, entirely too magical, to be used for such a benign purpose. It would be like using Saint Volta to gut a rabbit.
Sacrilegious, Caine thinks, and his mouth quirks into a glancing grin.
His head bobs heavily on his neck. He has walked from dawn and it is now near night, the sky painted in sleepy lavenders and pinks. If he squints his eyes he thinks he sees Terrastella, its ivory gates shining like a beacon at the end of the road, where trees thin to rolling meadow.
But it is still so far, and his head is heavy. Groaning, Caine presses his cheek into the trunk of a maple and breathes in the sharp, honeyed scent of its sap.
When he closes his eyes, he imagines himself wading knee-deep into a sea of blood.
