vercingtorix
—« my brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. he held it up to my ear. 'listen,' he said. 'life and no escape.' »
T
hrough the doors of the castle, I find myself searching for the monster rumored to inhabit it: like the island before, I half-expect to be met by a hall of mirrors rather than darkness, and to stare not at a beast but at tenfold my own reflection, my own eyes, my own scars.I had asked Elena to share the most monstrous thing she had ever done; and in the darkness, the quiet that follows my reply, I later regret the question. I should have asked what do our mortal monstrosities become? My imagination is wild with the potential; but Damascus has already taught me the fearsome shape that our sins take, has already showed me more vividly than I could have imagined myself—
There have been very few I have ever been happy to have leave me— she says, and as she says it, I think of Bondike and his admission. Always, my thoughts return to that event. I recognize it as a catalyst; as the turning point of who I was and who I would become. I blame him—her—for that hidden truth, for the variable that I could never have prepared for.
We never promised to tell the truth, we never promised anything at all. Her words belong to a dream, almost. I cannot help the way I exhale, almost in relief—but after that everything moves too quickly. It is Damascus and his tremendous head; the glass that falls upon us like rain. I turn my head to shelter her beneath the arc of my neck and shoulder, and recognize the luminous vapor for what it is. For sleeping. For dreaming. Damascus had used it on me one night, when I had been unable to rest—
Take me home, Torrin— she says, as I breathe it in.
Take me home to my daughter—
But all I see as Damascus barges through the window, swooping down to envelop us in claws and wings and glowing yellow vapor, is a black beach full of bones.
(Before it all goes black, before there is nothing but the iridescence of Damascus' black scales, I think I see eyes: I think I see eyes the same color of my own down that endless black hallway; I think I hear a resonant cry, like a breaking, and will never realize that it had been my own).
ooc: damascus takes them homeeee
