He does not have the foretelling to know he is witnessing a transformation — and yet a part of him knew already, from the time he first laid his eyes on the storm-grey girl in the mountaintop chapel, that it was only a matter of when and not if. He had known then that she was a seed waiting to take root, a sprout he could not yet name.
He had hoped for a different kind of transformation.
He had hoped to see a wildflower meadow beginning to bloom again despite the fire that had rendered it to ash days before.
He hoped, he hoped, he hoped —
Sometimes it seemed all he had was a fistful of empty dreams, a thousand wishes for a world he wanted to help create. An earth he wanted to cultivate, a thousand gardens he tended to compulsively every day, as if a single flower could change the course of his fate. And maybe it could — or maybe it might have, if he could learn to be less like a man and more like the earth. But all they ever did was take, and take, and take, and destroy that which they could not take — and he was no exception to his race.
And all that was left after the trees were felled and river was drained was one
big
terrible
scar
spreading across the land like a plague. And still, and still, it was not enough. She had told him that once, in the temple on the mountain, head bowed at Oriens feet. She had told him of the way she destroyed the world for love, and in the end had received neither. She had prayed for forgiveness, and he had believed her. She had talked about deaths in the forest, and he had drank in her words and let them consume him in every way she had intended. And for every body she had left to rot in a shallow grave, she had awakened a monster hungry for blood in him.
Emersyn drips, and talks, and grins. And all of those monsters are coming awake in him again, and his magic is speaking in aches instead of words when it says Let me free. It rises and it burns and it cuts away the parts of him that he had once loved, the soft parts that he had once thought of as strengths but now he knows to be weak.
And what is left, in the holes he cuts into his own heart?
It is not the flowers. It is only a dark pit of rage, and magic, and grief, and the memories of all the things he’s lost spinning around like a whirlpool sinking down into the depths of him.
He does not laugh, or smile, or give in to her nightmare when he says “you are not going to die, Emersyn.” Ipomoea looks over one shoulder — to Thana, dark, and silent, and waiting — to Andras, all blackened rage and sparks and thunder — and he nods.
And when the vines rip through the cottage floor and tear into the Emissary’s skin with their thorns, the magic coiled in his belly starts to purr.
“You are only going to rot.”
More than you already have, the look in his eyes promises.
He had hoped for a different kind of transformation.
He had hoped to see a wildflower meadow beginning to bloom again despite the fire that had rendered it to ash days before.
He hoped, he hoped, he hoped —
Sometimes it seemed all he had was a fistful of empty dreams, a thousand wishes for a world he wanted to help create. An earth he wanted to cultivate, a thousand gardens he tended to compulsively every day, as if a single flower could change the course of his fate. And maybe it could — or maybe it might have, if he could learn to be less like a man and more like the earth. But all they ever did was take, and take, and take, and destroy that which they could not take — and he was no exception to his race.
And all that was left after the trees were felled and river was drained was one
big
terrible
scar
spreading across the land like a plague. And still, and still, it was not enough. She had told him that once, in the temple on the mountain, head bowed at Oriens feet. She had told him of the way she destroyed the world for love, and in the end had received neither. She had prayed for forgiveness, and he had believed her. She had talked about deaths in the forest, and he had drank in her words and let them consume him in every way she had intended. And for every body she had left to rot in a shallow grave, she had awakened a monster hungry for blood in him.
Emersyn drips, and talks, and grins. And all of those monsters are coming awake in him again, and his magic is speaking in aches instead of words when it says Let me free. It rises and it burns and it cuts away the parts of him that he had once loved, the soft parts that he had once thought of as strengths but now he knows to be weak.
And what is left, in the holes he cuts into his own heart?
It is not the flowers. It is only a dark pit of rage, and magic, and grief, and the memories of all the things he’s lost spinning around like a whirlpool sinking down into the depths of him.
He does not laugh, or smile, or give in to her nightmare when he says “you are not going to die, Emersyn.” Ipomoea looks over one shoulder — to Thana, dark, and silent, and waiting — to Andras, all blackened rage and sparks and thunder — and he nods.
And when the vines rip through the cottage floor and tear into the Emissary’s skin with their thorns, the magic coiled in his belly starts to purr.
“You are only going to rot.”
More than you already have, the look in his eyes promises.
@
was asked to go first, to keep them from killing em!
”here am i!“
