you have heard the stories about how the dead have already cried, like crushed grass and wilted flowers and memories carved into stone, then forgotten.
You're bleeding, Elena says.
Jask follows her eyes toward his shoulder, a movement just slow enough to catch the eye, a movement that seems like it creaks without making a sound, the sort of crawling patience that comes from only spiders, and insects, and Jask. He follows her eyes to the gash on his shoulder and stares at it almost boredly, the blood welling up and dripping in wet little plinks. It is red until it is a rusty brown past his knee.
For a moment she looks at him and he sees it, the emptiness that he feels: her face is a shield that's protecting nothing, just a void behind both of her eyes. She looks like the canyon he is, yawning and howling s the wind blows through, but still deep, and dark, and red all the same. Jask has seen it before, in his brothers, stripped of their magic like he was. Jask knows, now, why it is that eyes always turn from him.
Any creature that looks like that, still and empty as a haunted house, makes the skin crawl-- even his.
--And then, quick as it had come, it is gone. You're bleeding, the medic repeats, and Jask is still smiling, some polite facsimile of the real thing, when he responds: "I am."
Elena looks into his eyes, two red and the one scarred, milky white. She looks straight at the wreckage that is his face, too many sharp things cluttered together: sharp horn, sharp eyes, sharp scar, sharp bones. Elena looks at Jask and he sees that same emptiness struggling for purchase as she bats it away. It's a valiant effort. He would admire her if he could.
"No need to apologize," he says. "some of us are forgetful."
There is pity blooming in Jask. He remembers being like this, the struggle to remain conscious in a mind that wants to be anything but. He remembers the clawing fear. He remembers the anger and bile. He remembers fear, like fear never before. It does not cross his mind that Elena looks just like him because she is him, in a sense, that all his holy silence is filling her. it is not something that can cross his mind. She is a kindred spirit, nothing more.
The wind picks up the ends of his robe, floating it off of his ankles.
"Its okay." he says, and then, more truthfully than he has said anything else: "I don't think you can."
jask
Jask follows her eyes toward his shoulder, a movement just slow enough to catch the eye, a movement that seems like it creaks without making a sound, the sort of crawling patience that comes from only spiders, and insects, and Jask. He follows her eyes to the gash on his shoulder and stares at it almost boredly, the blood welling up and dripping in wet little plinks. It is red until it is a rusty brown past his knee.
For a moment she looks at him and he sees it, the emptiness that he feels: her face is a shield that's protecting nothing, just a void behind both of her eyes. She looks like the canyon he is, yawning and howling s the wind blows through, but still deep, and dark, and red all the same. Jask has seen it before, in his brothers, stripped of their magic like he was. Jask knows, now, why it is that eyes always turn from him.
Any creature that looks like that, still and empty as a haunted house, makes the skin crawl-- even his.
--And then, quick as it had come, it is gone. You're bleeding, the medic repeats, and Jask is still smiling, some polite facsimile of the real thing, when he responds: "I am."
Elena looks into his eyes, two red and the one scarred, milky white. She looks straight at the wreckage that is his face, too many sharp things cluttered together: sharp horn, sharp eyes, sharp scar, sharp bones. Elena looks at Jask and he sees that same emptiness struggling for purchase as she bats it away. It's a valiant effort. He would admire her if he could.
"No need to apologize," he says. "some of us are forgetful."
There is pity blooming in Jask. He remembers being like this, the struggle to remain conscious in a mind that wants to be anything but. He remembers the clawing fear. He remembers the anger and bile. He remembers fear, like fear never before. It does not cross his mind that Elena looks just like him because she is him, in a sense, that all his holy silence is filling her. it is not something that can cross his mind. She is a kindred spirit, nothing more.
The wind picks up the ends of his robe, floating it off of his ankles.
"Its okay." he says, and then, more truthfully than he has said anything else: "I don't think you can."
@
