THE ANCIENT SKY BURROWS IN
WITH ALL THE DEAD WORDS
WE CARRY AND CANNOT USE
Silence was once mine, and no one could ever take it from me.
Some people say the same about their voice, but I knew that to be untrue. I knew how tongues could be ripped from the mouth. I had seen how the throat could be slit, just so, not to kill but to silence.
Not to mention the sounds they could force from you if they knew you would make it: the begging and the whimpering, the kicked-animal bellow of submission. I hated these sounds. I hated to think of myself making them.
But something was changing in me. Something was growing, hungry, selfish.
-
I was only a quarter mile into the catacombs. Some rich librarian (I know, I know-- rich librarian? Solterra never ceases to surprise) had chartered an expedition to search for an ancient library, so close to being forgotten it existed only as a myth-- its story whispered around the fireplace, wondered about in the slurred space between waking and dream.
I was only a quarter mile in and already I missed the sun. I had never appreciated it until it was gone-- they say that’s how it often goes. When I heard footfall behind me, I quickly turned and raised my torch against the tomblike darkness. I stared without fear into the shadows beyond the torchlight, and I asked in a voice that did not waver:
“Who’s there?”
I was bigger than my silence. Better.
D U N E
[changed to be open on 11/22 <3]
07-12-2020, 10:44 PM - This post was last modified: 11-29-2020, 05:16 PM by Dune
i sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief
H
eat evaporates from my skin like a snake fleeing a flame, the archway behind disappearing around a bend. It rests, as I now do, under some old path into sacred lands that have since been levelled with the rest of the world. Perhaps I should laugh at the irony, at the reminder that all great things fall.
I do not.
There is only silence as I am left to walk forward into the shade.
Miriam...she would have loved a secret adventure here. A picnic with the skeletons who do not lie in her past. Perhaps, one day, I will take her. Then I will remind her that she is godly. I will remind her that she is divine. She, who hid so much from me. She, who I left in the end.
I want to feel shame.
I want to regret.
But there is a purr inside of me. A slumbering beast that is all too content with our decision. She will not let me know the taste of failure. My sails are pulled into shadow by her command, and even when she slumbers she pushes me onward, ever onward, to a destination that will bring me...what?
Glory.
Yes.
We have promised my father glory once more on the Dumas name. I will not disappoint him. I cannot. Now, Henry is still a ghost in his armor. Beautiful and winged and serving the Halcyon as best he can, but he is not the man I once knew. His life is as much an enigma to me as my future.
I know so few things anymore, but I know that I will rattle the stars.
I know the taste of Miriam as much as I know my own name. I know her bleeding heart and woeful ways. I know this is the home she so loves to hate…
Is that what drives us now around another bend, toward a light that glows not from the sun? Rounding the corner, there is shadow and light for but a moment. It flares before my eyes and I step back, squinting.
My little monster opens a single eye, just a crack, and smiles her little smile. I beg Vespera to send her to sleep again.
”Were I ghost, what would you say?” I whisper to Dune who is so like and unlike an Ieshan. His skin is brown as theirs could be. But he does not carry himself as a noble. He is not her.
Disappointment is ash on my tongue and I scrape it away with the fruit jelly I’d had for breakfast. ”It’s awfully far away to be so alone.” Does he fear this as Henry has come to fear these dark places?
My brother cannot be alone in the dark any longer.
I pity him most of all.
A fallen giant.
An angel un-winged.
An utter disappointment.
THE ANCIENT SKY BURROWS IN
WITH ALL THE DEAD WORDS
WE CARRY AND CANNOT USE
Dune turns and lifts the torch and sees- to his surprise- a woman. A unicorn, tall and pale and decidedly pretty, eyes fierce and bright in the glow of the firelight. He sniffs. She smells rich. Like jellied toast and tea, perfumed baths and other luxuries. But not Solterran rich, . Deluminian, if he had to guess, or maybe Terrastellan.
“Were I ghost, what would you say?”
A noble foreigner, playing tourist in the catacombs of Solterra… asking about ghosts. Dune’s brow raises in scepticism. Who the hell is this woman, and is she pulling his leg? The question is asinine- ghosts don’t show themselves to nobodies like him. And even if they did, he wouldn’t waste any time talking to them. Bad luck that.
Despite the disdain that runs through his thoughts, Dune replies smart and slick- he had always been quick on his feet. “I’d say you’re the prettiest ghost I’ve ever seen.”
“And the only one,” he bites off with a tart smile. It was best to play nice with nobles; their favor could get a man far. But gods it could be hard sometimes. There is something decidedly eerie about her, something spiderlike in the way she looks at him, but he brushes this off as a trick of the light or a product of the circumstance. It’s not exactly a friendly atmosphere, meeting someone under the earth and all.
He smiles wryly when she speaks of being alone, certain she has no idea what life was like for someone like him. How many times he had stood in a crowded room and felt more alone than he did down here among the dead. “Ah, well. Good thing I’m not alone anymore. What brings you down here?” He swings back around and beckons her to join him as he walks deeper into the catacombs.
mourn, and mourn, and mourn for where we stand, gravity persists
H
is skepticism is delightful on the planes of his face, casting his already cream and chocolate lips into further contrast, his lashes easily throwing spires onto those sharp cheek bones. I eat it up as a drunkard downs his beer - quickly, seemingly sloppily, but not a drip of it falls to touch the earth.
Nor do my eyes slip from the prize.
Clucking my tongue, I bares her teeth in something resembling a smile. There is nothing friendly in the motion. Nothing diplomatic. It is barbaric and beautiful and terrifying. Perhaps some old battle-bred girl had worn the same look as they charged into what would only be left soon as blood and bones smeared on turned soil already thick with sweat and loss. I, after all, come from a line of monsters in disguise. It is a look I’ve practiced in the mirror, a look I perfected in training. Even my father pales when he sees me grin.
“Quick, too, eh?” It isn’t really a question at all, despite my tone rising like my pale brows.
Gently, offhandedly, I sweep a loose strand of hair from my forehead, tucking it back into the pin that keeps it from falling into disarray. Some days, my hair is the most lovely thing. Others, it makes me look the monster I know I hide.
Another beat passes, and at last his smile is bright upon his face. It chases the skepticism away, feigned interest pertinent, perky, peaking from the corners of his mouth, beckoning from those chocolate eyes. My brow raises, I step closer.
With barely a breath, I whisper rather dramatically, “Prowling.” My eyes laugh, I know they do. Henry used to both love and hate my dramatics. Miriam would giggle, too, when she was not so lost in my skin or drunk on memories that made her more painting than girl.
But she isn’t here. And he isn’t here. And neither of them would be. This is exactly the sort of place, a place for ghosts and boogeymen, that I know they would not go. No. Miriam does not leave her house unless she must.
I was her must, once.
Pensive, at last, I know there’s a wrinkle in my brow when I’m staring into his torch. It is from more than the light, of course. Does he feel the way my heart beats a little unevenly, a little unsettled? This place does not scare me, and perhaps that makes me more a fool. He does not frighten me, either. I know how easily flesh is cut from bone.
I hate that she’s here even when she isn’t. Miriam. Without looking away from the light, from a face that is not mortal, I return to my haunted volume, saying “Maybe I’m looking for a ghost, too,” as though it’s another comment in passing about the weather.
Miriam is always a force of nature, after all.
Even her memory wrecks me.
