WHAT IS DEAD AND WHAT WILL LIVE SHARE THE SAME BED.
tomb-cradle: another definition of Stigma.
I am, slowly, becoming acquainted with the concept of winter.
The cold still bothers me, in a way, and the listlessness; it is strange to walk through a forest in the morning and find it leafless, or look into a pond and find it still, or to see snow. I can still scarcely wrap my head around the concept. The frost that grows like flowers on the windows in the morning during the coldest parts of autumn was shocking enough. Discovering what water was like when it froze over – that something could freeze at all - was a different experience entirely.
I was mystified by the ice and snow, at first. I still am.
I find the cold far less mystifying. At first, it was sharp and wonderful; every biting wind was something to be cherished. I am already tiring of it, however, and I am not sure I should take pride in the adjustment or that it should horrify me. (I have already made up my mind to cherish every bit of this world, while I am still in it – every bit of spellbinding beauty, and every ugly tangle.)
I can barely see the citadel, from where I am standing in the fields. When I am within it, I still find myself staring up, and I do now, too, towards the furthest and highest reaches of the great, stone structure. I wonder when it will become uninteresting. The thought that it might is alarming.
The grass was dense, when I arrived. Winter has killed it, or else put it to sleep - it has yellowed and browned in equal measures. The result is somber; a landscape of dull, sickly shades impressed against a cloudy grey sky. I wonder if it will snow again soon.
The faded colors make it all the easier to see her, when I do.
There is a girl – maybe – approaching me. I think that she is younger than me, though I do not think that she is younger by much. (It is hard to tell; something in the way she carries herself.) I am not sure if she is the red of a rose-bloom or blood. Perhaps there is no distinction; I have been the blade plunged into the chest of some careless enemy, and I have seen with my unseeing eyes the way that it can spread out like the petals of a newborn flower.
I decide to split the difference. She is red in the way that a holly-berry is red, and the splash of white across her coat is like patches of snow.
(She carries winter about her in more than simple coloration. As she steps closer, I notice the way that the grass grows black and brittle beneath her hooves; what she touches seems to die.)
She comes closer and closer, her stare halfway between vacant and terribly alert. When she finally stops, I would barely have to move to touch her; the corkscrew spire of her horn is precariously close to my face.
“Hello,” I say, softly. “Who are you?”
@Isolt || I adore her. | preface of Stigmata, Cixous
"Speech!"
EVERYTHING IS RISK, SHE WHISPERED.if you doubt, it becomes sand trickling through skeletal fingers.☙❧please tag Nic! contact is encouraged, short of violence
