Here you can praise the light, having so little of it: it's the death you carry in you, red and captured, that makes the world shine for you as it never did before. This is how you learn prayer. LOVE IS CHOOSING, the snake said. The kingdom of god is within you because you ate it.
☼
In all the deaths that I have nearly died, I have been drowning.
There were near-deaths before that, of course, death after death after death as a girl; I did not know what it meant to drown, then, so they could not feel like drowning. After that night in the maze, however, I realized that all of those deaths, too, felt like drowning. Sinking beneath black water. Being devoured, and cold, choked out of breath. Dying was always a kind of drowning – every death was like being pulled into the sea, and the truth of the matter was that every death was almost the same. They only differed in the weight of their consequences.
I tried to teach myself to swim for months after the incident in the maze. I failed. There is nothing more to be said.
I do not know what draws me to the cliffs. Perhaps it is the fatalism that I keep tucked away in my rib-bones, the one that I have promised to myself that I will never let out again, for my children’s sake. Perhaps it is the night air, the twang of salt that lingers in its aftertaste. Perhaps it is bred from some desire to be alone with the sea, which is so unlike the desert that I almost feel like I can escape it when I am close enough to the shore. I do not know. It does not matter.
What draws me to him is the scent of blood.
I pick my way across the black slags of the cliff, burnished silver like a blade in the moonlight. My hair coils around me, tangles with my legs; my hooves slip on the salt-slick stone, but I do not fear falling. (My magic is always there, held inches out of sight. It throbs in my chest, now, indistinguishable from the pule of my own heart. I think that I am finally at peace with it. It is a weapon, but I think that it is finally mine.) Alshamtueur clinks a metallic rhythm at my hip, and, as I draw closer and closer to the large, white-and-gold silhouette on the cliffs, I hear it sizzle and crackle.
It is a warning sign that I disregard.
It is him again. I am surprised; I am not surprised at all. Bandages are bound tight around the soft curve of his throat, and a thin trail of blood dribbles from his lips, darker than salt-water or tears; he smells of alcohol. I draw forward up the cliffside, closer and closer, until I am standing at his side, and I study his face again. There is no war-paint on him now, and the moonlight has desaturated the bright colors of his pelt. Even the green of his eyes seems duller than I remember.
I settle into place, turning my stare out to sea. The waves are black as the night sky, and they froth too much, too violently to reflect the stars. If I were younger, I would not have cared for the troubled look on his face, for the copper-scent of blood intermingled with the sticky-sweet scent of the flower drinks that they were serving at the parties; I would not have cared that he was in pain. I might have cared for the bleeding, but only as a matter of function – not for the cut. Not that it hurt.
(I don’t even know his name.)
But I am not younger, now. I am older, and I am someone else, and I have grown tired of seeing people in pain. I want to care, now. I want to.
My eyes settle on the bobbing line where the waves meet the night sky, and, when I speak, I do not care if my words are the right ones or not; I only think of the way that my voice sounds almost as steady and certain as it does when Ambrose or Diana comes to me with a scraped knee, and I find myself gently bandaging it up. “What’s wrong?”
@Vercingtorix || <3 || atwood, "quattrocento"
Speech || Ereshkigal
☼
In all the deaths that I have nearly died, I have been drowning.
There were near-deaths before that, of course, death after death after death as a girl; I did not know what it meant to drown, then, so they could not feel like drowning. After that night in the maze, however, I realized that all of those deaths, too, felt like drowning. Sinking beneath black water. Being devoured, and cold, choked out of breath. Dying was always a kind of drowning – every death was like being pulled into the sea, and the truth of the matter was that every death was almost the same. They only differed in the weight of their consequences.
I tried to teach myself to swim for months after the incident in the maze. I failed. There is nothing more to be said.
I do not know what draws me to the cliffs. Perhaps it is the fatalism that I keep tucked away in my rib-bones, the one that I have promised to myself that I will never let out again, for my children’s sake. Perhaps it is the night air, the twang of salt that lingers in its aftertaste. Perhaps it is bred from some desire to be alone with the sea, which is so unlike the desert that I almost feel like I can escape it when I am close enough to the shore. I do not know. It does not matter.
What draws me to him is the scent of blood.
I pick my way across the black slags of the cliff, burnished silver like a blade in the moonlight. My hair coils around me, tangles with my legs; my hooves slip on the salt-slick stone, but I do not fear falling. (My magic is always there, held inches out of sight. It throbs in my chest, now, indistinguishable from the pule of my own heart. I think that I am finally at peace with it. It is a weapon, but I think that it is finally mine.) Alshamtueur clinks a metallic rhythm at my hip, and, as I draw closer and closer to the large, white-and-gold silhouette on the cliffs, I hear it sizzle and crackle.
It is a warning sign that I disregard.
It is him again. I am surprised; I am not surprised at all. Bandages are bound tight around the soft curve of his throat, and a thin trail of blood dribbles from his lips, darker than salt-water or tears; he smells of alcohol. I draw forward up the cliffside, closer and closer, until I am standing at his side, and I study his face again. There is no war-paint on him now, and the moonlight has desaturated the bright colors of his pelt. Even the green of his eyes seems duller than I remember.
I settle into place, turning my stare out to sea. The waves are black as the night sky, and they froth too much, too violently to reflect the stars. If I were younger, I would not have cared for the troubled look on his face, for the copper-scent of blood intermingled with the sticky-sweet scent of the flower drinks that they were serving at the parties; I would not have cared that he was in pain. I might have cared for the bleeding, but only as a matter of function – not for the cut. Not that it hurt.
(I don’t even know his name.)
But I am not younger, now. I am older, and I am someone else, and I have grown tired of seeing people in pain. I want to care, now. I want to.
My eyes settle on the bobbing line where the waves meet the night sky, and, when I speak, I do not care if my words are the right ones or not; I only think of the way that my voice sounds almost as steady and certain as it does when Ambrose or Diana comes to me with a scraped knee, and I find myself gently bandaging it up. “What’s wrong?”
@
Speech || Ereshkigal
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
