WHY SHOULD MY SLEEPY HEART BE TAUGHT / TO WHISTLE MOCKING-BIRD REPLIES?
☙❧
It has been a long, long time since I have been below the ground. Maybe that is why, as I descend deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of caverns, I feel like I am growing sharper and sharper with each moment, less like a girl than a dull and rusty blade.
I didn’t rot, exactly. I don’t think that blades can rot, even if they are made of bone – but I did decay, and every tangled root that protrudes from the ceilings and the walls makes something inside of me stutter. Maybe it is the smell. Scents mean nothing to a sword, of course, but, to a girl, the smell of moist soil and earthworms and slow-moving rot is like the grave. I have been in it-
More times than I remember how to count, and I don’t really mind the idea of going back, to tell the truth. (I know that it will happen eventually; the certainty is nearly a comfort, by now.) What disconcerts me is the memory of decay, the memory of slowly slipping outside of my skin – and worse, abandonment. I do not like to remember my body swallowed by roots, the sense of earthworms and digging beetles crawling across my frame. I do not like to remember the cold, compressed darkness, or the creep of moss. It isn’t uncomfortable, exactly. I didn’t hate it, and I wasn’t afraid, because a sword cannot hate, and a sword is never afraid. It was more like, year after year, grappling with the inevitable. It was like laying your head down on the executioner’s block and then waiting for hundreds and hundreds of years – innumerable, probably – for the knife to come down on your neck. It was nearly peaceful. (I was allowed to be forgotten.) It also lasted too long.
That does not matter. I am a girl, and not a sword, and when I saw the gaping, dark hole in the earth, I could not help but be called down to where it leads.
When the mushrooms begin to appear alongside the path, I do not even realize that they are glowing. I am still near the mouth of the cave; I do not notice the light. It is only when I go deeper, when sunlight slips away entirely, that I realize that the path is lit on either side by thick patches of luminescent blue mushrooms. I have never seen anything like them before, even in the deepest and darkest parts of the Gold, and I spend a few moments too long with my nose to a patch of mushrooms, examining each mottled navy spot on their caps and only pulling away when the spores make me sneeze.
I walk for some time. I do not know how long – I am so far from the sun that it is hard to tell. Eventually, the cavern pools out around a great, underground lake, which is illuminated by something like jagged blue crystals protruding from its bottom. Everywhere I look is blue. The water is too blue, and so are the walls, and the shadows dancing along them. I cannot help but wander closer to the edge of the lake; I wonder if anything is living down here. Surely, there is something-
Eyeless fish and bone-white salamanders. A little flicker of silver, like something buried in the bottom of the pool-
I lean over too far.
I lean over too far, and suddenly the world tips over, and I am looking at nothing but cold water. My wings snap out, but their valiant effort to support me is futile; I go crashing into the lake with a cataclysmic splash and a shriek that I barely hear echo through the caverns before my ears are submerged.
@Sayyida || she's, uhm, hmm. not very observant. || elinor wylie, "the falcon"
Speech
☙❧
It has been a long, long time since I have been below the ground. Maybe that is why, as I descend deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of caverns, I feel like I am growing sharper and sharper with each moment, less like a girl than a dull and rusty blade.
I didn’t rot, exactly. I don’t think that blades can rot, even if they are made of bone – but I did decay, and every tangled root that protrudes from the ceilings and the walls makes something inside of me stutter. Maybe it is the smell. Scents mean nothing to a sword, of course, but, to a girl, the smell of moist soil and earthworms and slow-moving rot is like the grave. I have been in it-
More times than I remember how to count, and I don’t really mind the idea of going back, to tell the truth. (I know that it will happen eventually; the certainty is nearly a comfort, by now.) What disconcerts me is the memory of decay, the memory of slowly slipping outside of my skin – and worse, abandonment. I do not like to remember my body swallowed by roots, the sense of earthworms and digging beetles crawling across my frame. I do not like to remember the cold, compressed darkness, or the creep of moss. It isn’t uncomfortable, exactly. I didn’t hate it, and I wasn’t afraid, because a sword cannot hate, and a sword is never afraid. It was more like, year after year, grappling with the inevitable. It was like laying your head down on the executioner’s block and then waiting for hundreds and hundreds of years – innumerable, probably – for the knife to come down on your neck. It was nearly peaceful. (I was allowed to be forgotten.) It also lasted too long.
That does not matter. I am a girl, and not a sword, and when I saw the gaping, dark hole in the earth, I could not help but be called down to where it leads.
When the mushrooms begin to appear alongside the path, I do not even realize that they are glowing. I am still near the mouth of the cave; I do not notice the light. It is only when I go deeper, when sunlight slips away entirely, that I realize that the path is lit on either side by thick patches of luminescent blue mushrooms. I have never seen anything like them before, even in the deepest and darkest parts of the Gold, and I spend a few moments too long with my nose to a patch of mushrooms, examining each mottled navy spot on their caps and only pulling away when the spores make me sneeze.
I walk for some time. I do not know how long – I am so far from the sun that it is hard to tell. Eventually, the cavern pools out around a great, underground lake, which is illuminated by something like jagged blue crystals protruding from its bottom. Everywhere I look is blue. The water is too blue, and so are the walls, and the shadows dancing along them. I cannot help but wander closer to the edge of the lake; I wonder if anything is living down here. Surely, there is something-
Eyeless fish and bone-white salamanders. A little flicker of silver, like something buried in the bottom of the pool-
I lean over too far.
I lean over too far, and suddenly the world tips over, and I am looking at nothing but cold water. My wings snap out, but their valiant effort to support me is futile; I go crashing into the lake with a cataclysmic splash and a shriek that I barely hear echo through the caverns before my ears are submerged.
@
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
