[P] The Praise of Thunder

[Eik]

The story he tells triggers a rush of memories that leave him feeling raw and weary and so very old.

(a flaxen mane blows in the wind-- a mare sings to a child (his child) a song in an ancient tongue-- a skinned whale lies on the rocky shore--)

Fill him with water and it would leak out in a hundred places-- there are so many cracks, too many holes... yet for all that's been taken from him, nothing is is really gone. For all the damage that's been done, he is still whole. Different, but no worse a man than he was before it all. No better, either, but that's a given.

(Not everyone rises from the ashes, and not everyone burns in the first place. Life is not as beautiful and magical as that, and it sure as shit is not that simple.)

He barely notices the prick of her horn. He does not mind bleeding, in fact tomorrow's scab will remind him of today, and assure him that it was not all just a dream. Still, he accepts her apology, as unnecessary as it is, by leaning into her warm touch. “The name of god absolves nothing, forgives nothing.” He shivers, and her lips move up his spine to his cheek. The sensation of fire follows soon after. First fire, then strength-- the way a blade or armor is forged. He absorbs her silent promises.


"We could stop it from happening again. You and I."

He does not feel strong enough to stop a god with tooth and hoof, but she offers something more than that. She could elevate him in ways rage and sorrow alone could not. Calliope, who holds the gods accountable for their sins. He shivers again, hot and cold. Wanting and afraid. In her presence anything feels possible, but he wonders... Stopping the gods seems as futile as stopping the flow of a stream. Push a boulder into the river and the water will simply find its way around.

But the important thing is that she does not offer vengeance. She offers justice, and those who don't know the difference have never had to balance the two. The quiet man wants to scream yes, his body wants to bleed it. But the gentle, persistent calculation of his mind overrides it all. He would not be alive if he made decisions on emotion alone.. And he must not make promises that he cannot keep.

So he looks at her long enough so she will understand, long enough that she can see the want in his eyes and the way he can barely restrain it. If he hadn't met Seraphina, perhaps he wouldn't bother with restraint. If only the desert didn't call to him for protection. If only he weren't just slightly greater than himself. And as he lets himself be seen he looks into her, he drinks in her fire and lightning and he sees the lion that crouches in wait behind her blue, blue eyes. "I know," he says, although what he might really mean is I believe, and the storm is all but forgotten now even as it whips against their faces and shakes the ground beneath them and sets the world alight.

"How will I ever find you again?" He almost expects her to dissolve into the storm before he can make out her answer-- It seems like the sort of trick the gods would play, dangling something good before him only to yank it away once more.

-     -     -
There is no better way to know us
E I K
than as two wolves, come separately to a wood

@Calliope he's gonna exit in the next post. He'll for sure be thinking about this interaction for maany days to come <3