pain. it is ever present. It is all consuming. It is the ghost that does not let me sleep. I fight it ever night. I rage against it every hour. Still it holds me tightly. Still it thinks me lover. Pain… it is something that will never go away.
She unfurls from her wings like an orange blossom opening. All fire and freshness. Something new. Something beautiful.
And if Dalmatia is beautiful then she is twice as tragic. Her heart is splayed on some cruel god’s table, pinned as a butterfly with a microscope atop. There is a probe that delves in over and over. That cold and cruel god, the one that never answered when she would pray and pray and pray until she screamed herself hoarse and felt blood leak from her bitten lips, would only press deeper an deeper, finding another hidden crevice to learn every day.
She grits her teeth as she rises, feeling the way her bones creak from the cold. Once, she was young, supple, beautiful. Like a young willow tree eager to face the wind. Those days are gone. Her youth is faded like a withering plant and the winter of her life has taken all but the very last breath from her.
And that breath is fire.
And that breath is revenge.
The once-Halcyon presses through the crowds as a bludgeon. People move or they are moved. She does not care for their glares. She hardly notices the way some step nearer, threatening.
But she is the bogeyman they whisper of.
She and Cicero both haunt the markets of Terrastella.
They are the monsters kept hidden from this delicate little world.
And she wears a sneer to wash away the innocence of sleep. Her brows draw down as she climbs ever higher. It is a small mercy, she thinks, that her wings were not clipped when she was put into the prison beneath the cliffs. Instead, they were left to rot and wither. She was left to rot and wither until Marisol saw fit to unleash her if only to unleash a bloodhound with fresh meat.
The reason matters so little.
In the months since her release, she has grown strong again. Ribs are not claws gripping for the stars. Her spine is no longer a xylophone for ghosts to dance their fingers upon. But her eyes. Oh her eyes are the same cold, dead green things as they stare from the beautiful tower over the fields of flowers.
Bodies. Broken hearts. Criminals to be. They all swarm like maggots in her once-beloved city. They are all just corpses waiting to be.
But they are not hers to make.
Dalmatia drags down air at last and unfurls piebald wings. They are larger up close and far more picturesque when reaching for the heavens. Even chained, even betrayed, even hungering, she is unbroken.
@'open'
And if Dalmatia is beautiful then she is twice as tragic. Her heart is splayed on some cruel god’s table, pinned as a butterfly with a microscope atop. There is a probe that delves in over and over. That cold and cruel god, the one that never answered when she would pray and pray and pray until she screamed herself hoarse and felt blood leak from her bitten lips, would only press deeper an deeper, finding another hidden crevice to learn every day.
She grits her teeth as she rises, feeling the way her bones creak from the cold. Once, she was young, supple, beautiful. Like a young willow tree eager to face the wind. Those days are gone. Her youth is faded like a withering plant and the winter of her life has taken all but the very last breath from her.
And that breath is fire.
And that breath is revenge.
The once-Halcyon presses through the crowds as a bludgeon. People move or they are moved. She does not care for their glares. She hardly notices the way some step nearer, threatening.
But she is the bogeyman they whisper of.
She and Cicero both haunt the markets of Terrastella.
They are the monsters kept hidden from this delicate little world.
And she wears a sneer to wash away the innocence of sleep. Her brows draw down as she climbs ever higher. It is a small mercy, she thinks, that her wings were not clipped when she was put into the prison beneath the cliffs. Instead, they were left to rot and wither. She was left to rot and wither until Marisol saw fit to unleash her if only to unleash a bloodhound with fresh meat.
The reason matters so little.
In the months since her release, she has grown strong again. Ribs are not claws gripping for the stars. Her spine is no longer a xylophone for ghosts to dance their fingers upon. But her eyes. Oh her eyes are the same cold, dead green things as they stare from the beautiful tower over the fields of flowers.
Bodies. Broken hearts. Criminals to be. They all swarm like maggots in her once-beloved city. They are all just corpses waiting to be.
But they are not hers to make.
Dalmatia drags down air at last and unfurls piebald wings. They are larger up close and far more picturesque when reaching for the heavens. Even chained, even betrayed, even hungering, she is unbroken.
@'open'
