☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות
"you know when you become / something it eats you? the teeth / in my hand. the weight of the handle, / the meat separating from the bone."
"you know when you become / something it eats you? the teeth / in my hand. the weight of the handle, / the meat separating from the bone."
Ruth-in-the-mirror is watching me. Of all the Ruths that I have encountered, she seems to be the one I see the most often – I think that she might be following me, like a leopard (or, better, a sandwyrm) stalks its prey. Oh, it doesn’t feel terribly insidious at first. Just a disturbance in the sand, something you could mistake for the wind. (She is behind the crystal. She is just a reflection.) And then – the sound, like something sliding. But couldn’t that, too, be the wind? (What does it matter if she smiles,like she sees you? What does it matter if her mouth is full of teeth?) But then-
A snap, and a smattering of blood.
A crown of spires rises from the landscape, uncomfortably reminiscent of teeth. I weave between them, the low clack of my hooves the only reprieve from the unsettling silence of this place. (I cannot even hear the wind.) Ruth-in-the-mirror follows behind me, slipping from spire to spire, reflection to reflection; she brushes past another Ruth, and then another, and slips, briefly, beneath me, like I am standing on the surface of water and she is reflected in the ripples. (When she does, I think I catch a strange copper-tone glimmer to her skin, like-)
I do not think about her stalking. I do not think about the way the crystals are mocking me, damn them; I do not think about the Ruths who smile, or the Ruths who cry at their parents’ funeral, or the Ruths who look bright and beautiful and marble or alabaster, the Ruths who are cut out of some softer, more precious stone. I do not think about the Ruth whose mane cascades down her neck as a mass of snakes, like my brother, or the Ruths with gilded horns and sandstone wings. No, no. I don’t think about them at all.
What I think about instead is that I need to find Ishak. I am not troubled by his absence, of course. I am no bleeding heart, but he is, and he will certainly be-
I’m sure that he will give me hell for this.
There are a few spindly weeds poking up, between the shed-skin of crystal, or glass, or- something. I can’t piece together what it is; for all my family’s wealth, I cannot recognize the material. (It is likely unnatural – like all the rest of this place.) I slip down row after row. They aren’t identical, but they are all nondescript, and, with so many eyes watching me, so many troubled refractions – one for each shard, one for each crack, one for each angle -, I can’t possibly tell where I am going or where I have been.
My attention is captured – briefly – by a Ruth-in-the-mirror. She is lying on the ground, and bleeding from the neck; I recognize the silver glint of my scalpel, and then the shape of an Ishak I don’t look at too closely. But the Ruth-in-the-mirror, the one that is always just a step behind me – that Ruth-in-the-mirror, her lips curl and stretch too far back, and she crouches like a cat, though she shouldn’t be able to, and, somehow, he doesn’t notice her at all-
I look away before I can see the bloodbath.
(I wonder, briefly, if she will devour him. Eat him all the way down to the bone.)
The blood drips past its boundaries; it is still below the crystal, but I see it beneath my hooves. I am no longer sure who it belongs to.
I continue to walk, to pace down different pathways, wondering if she is still following, wondering if they can get out, and wondering what it will mean for me if they do-
I hear Ishak’s voice. Faintly. Calling me. He sounds close, relatively – not too close, and, in this sea of glass, he will still be hard to find. (It could be a siren song; a mimic of his voice, like all those things in the mirror. But I have not heard them speak yet. I know I can’t trust my eyes, some of them are too close, but maybe my ears…)
I press forward, towards what I think is the source of the sound. There are more Ishaks in the mirror as I draw closer, as though the source is nearby-
“Ishak?”
The soft, untroubled cadence of my voice is reflected back to me, as though it is in the mirror, too - I try not to think about the unnatural way it echoes off the crystals, like a clink.
@Ishak || going to go ahead & toss these up.... so I can go back to owing you Properly || sam sax, "ribs"
A snap, and a smattering of blood.
A crown of spires rises from the landscape, uncomfortably reminiscent of teeth. I weave between them, the low clack of my hooves the only reprieve from the unsettling silence of this place. (I cannot even hear the wind.) Ruth-in-the-mirror follows behind me, slipping from spire to spire, reflection to reflection; she brushes past another Ruth, and then another, and slips, briefly, beneath me, like I am standing on the surface of water and she is reflected in the ripples. (When she does, I think I catch a strange copper-tone glimmer to her skin, like-)
I do not think about her stalking. I do not think about the way the crystals are mocking me, damn them; I do not think about the Ruths who smile, or the Ruths who cry at their parents’ funeral, or the Ruths who look bright and beautiful and marble or alabaster, the Ruths who are cut out of some softer, more precious stone. I do not think about the Ruth whose mane cascades down her neck as a mass of snakes, like my brother, or the Ruths with gilded horns and sandstone wings. No, no. I don’t think about them at all.
What I think about instead is that I need to find Ishak. I am not troubled by his absence, of course. I am no bleeding heart, but he is, and he will certainly be-
I’m sure that he will give me hell for this.
There are a few spindly weeds poking up, between the shed-skin of crystal, or glass, or- something. I can’t piece together what it is; for all my family’s wealth, I cannot recognize the material. (It is likely unnatural – like all the rest of this place.) I slip down row after row. They aren’t identical, but they are all nondescript, and, with so many eyes watching me, so many troubled refractions – one for each shard, one for each crack, one for each angle -, I can’t possibly tell where I am going or where I have been.
My attention is captured – briefly – by a Ruth-in-the-mirror. She is lying on the ground, and bleeding from the neck; I recognize the silver glint of my scalpel, and then the shape of an Ishak I don’t look at too closely. But the Ruth-in-the-mirror, the one that is always just a step behind me – that Ruth-in-the-mirror, her lips curl and stretch too far back, and she crouches like a cat, though she shouldn’t be able to, and, somehow, he doesn’t notice her at all-
I look away before I can see the bloodbath.
(I wonder, briefly, if she will devour him. Eat him all the way down to the bone.)
The blood drips past its boundaries; it is still below the crystal, but I see it beneath my hooves. I am no longer sure who it belongs to.
I continue to walk, to pace down different pathways, wondering if she is still following, wondering if they can get out, and wondering what it will mean for me if they do-
I hear Ishak’s voice. Faintly. Calling me. He sounds close, relatively – not too close, and, in this sea of glass, he will still be hard to find. (It could be a siren song; a mimic of his voice, like all those things in the mirror. But I have not heard them speak yet. I know I can’t trust my eyes, some of them are too close, but maybe my ears…)
I press forward, towards what I think is the source of the sound. There are more Ishaks in the mirror as I draw closer, as though the source is nearby-
“Ishak?”
The soft, untroubled cadence of my voice is reflected back to me, as though it is in the mirror, too - I try not to think about the unnatural way it echoes off the crystals, like a clink.
@
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
