He was back in the mountains again. Not intentionally, no, never again, but by some glitch in his guidance system that sent him wandering off to the places he never wanted to go.
But where did he want to go?
Nowhere.
Nowhere could make him happy. Nowhere would make him happy. He was always either judged by ten thousand eyes and then some, or alone. He didn’t want to be alone. He did. But didn’t. It was safe from the outside but so so dangerous inside. When he wasn’t alone it was dangerous inside and outside. No winning.
He kept walking. Always walking, always climbing, always pushing forward where there was everywhere to go and everywhere to go back to. There was never nowhere before or behind him.
Unless he died.
He looked over the ledge.
Nope. Not today.
His limbs trembled and stomach churned after that peek at death. He escaped into a rounded indent in the stones, like a shrine carved into a mountainside. No shrine-god waited for him there, he was certain.
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
As the ocean threatened to come crashing down once more, to sweep away what little was left of his humble home and ruined gardens, the young man had fled the lower courts of Denocte for the safety of the Arma mountains. No waves lapped at his feet where they didn’t belong, no, only soft dirt and wild vines surrounded him here.
He knows that he should return to Denocte, now that the danger has passed, but there is something that ties him here to the mountains, to the peace he thinks he’s never truly felt before. In the isolation and the silence, he thinks maybe he could rebuild himself.
Even so, when he sees the other man peering over the ledge--
he understands.
He follows the pale stranger into a barely-hidden cave, his teeth catching at his lips, and it’s some sort of half-buried courage that pulls the words from his lips.
“It’s tempting, sometimes, isn’t it -- the ledge?”
And Descartes, the first to admit
he supposed a body to be nothing
but a machine made of earth. Mere clockwork.
He found this a comfort because
you can always wind a machine back up.
Light hoofsteps follow him into the false-shrine, and he turns, quick like a startled adder but freezes at the stranger’s words.
”It’s tempting, sometimes, isn’t it — the ledge?”
He had jewels on his antlers and in his eyes, pale and scarred, something of a mirror image gone wrong. Toro said, ”No.” He is coarse as new sand and bristled as a boar, that private thought thrown into the open for him to deny. The thought of death made him feel sick. He didn’t want it. That was why he turned away, because it made him ill, because it was wrong, because if he hadn’t thought about it in the first place, he wouldn’t be feeling like this, wouldn’t be caught with his back to a not-shrine, would-be could-be death talk in the air. Truth be told, he was not an adder, or a boar, or coarse new sand. He was a frightened deer, a doe, even, and though he wouldn’t deign to call this one a stag, the stranger had managed to unnerve Toro with a single sentence. It was a power he did not like others to have. ”You must think about it often enough,” he said, words like dull gravel, not enough heart in them to sound sharp. He tried his best to deflect.
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
They breathe in the mountain-top air and they both know that they have come to the ledge for reasons only they might ever admit to themselves. The slightest tilt of his head sends the faint beams of sunlight refracting off the jewels on his antlers, and yet, he barely notices the light, his attention fully on the pale stranger. How easy would it be, His mind ponders casually, traces itself back to that ledge and imagines the weightlessness of falling, how simple it could be to end everything.
Beneath his eyes, the dark smudges seem deep enough to drown a city.
“Yes,” He answers, almost too-quiet, so painfully honest that even he flinches away from his own words. Too often, his mind chides, that feeling of weakness almost overpowering in how quickly he could become quagmired.
“Sometimes… it seems like all the time.”
And yet, he can't bring himself to commit the deed, can't bear to picture the look on his daughter's face should she hear the news of her father's death, and still he counts himself amongst the living.
He towers over the gem-studded deer, a walking corpse by the look of it but small as a mouse to Toro. His ears pin back as the other speaks, gives him the answers he did not ask for. He wants to say, “I didn’t ask,” but it seems so cruel and so wrong that he stays silent, back to the mountain wall. Even his tails have gone still.
Sometimes… it seems like all the time. He plays the words over again in his head. He didn’t want to have this conversation. He wanted to be alone, and then (now) he wanted the little honey boy to go away. This careless display of weakness, the vulnerable state a complete stranger would reveal to him - he didn’t want to see it. He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to say anything. For a long time he stares at the tiny almost-deer, until finally, his voice solemn, he says, ”But you continue on.”
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
The pale stranger is tall enough he has to crane his head backwards, peering up like Toro might be the kind of God that lurks upon mountains and lets one young man spill out his sorrows unabidden. ”But you continue on,” rings in his ears after too many breaths of silence, after the boy shows the soft skin of his throat in his vulnerability, and he could almost weep at how kind the solemn reaction is compared to the only other time he had given voice to his thoughts of death.
(The scars on his cheek are testament to how badly his father had reacted. He had learned never to mention such things again.)
“Yes,” He exhales, still so quiet you might have to strain your ears to hear it, and in his mind he can still see Theodosia standing there. “I can’t -- I can’t let her down like that.” The words tumble from his lips like a prayer, like if he stops he might never be able to speak of this again, and his voice trembles with every word. “She doesn’t know, and -- I don’t ever want her to find out how weak her father is.”
He wonders if this mountain God would understand the loathing he feels for himself, the self-hatred that runs a heavy current beneath his words, and he chokes out a bitter sort of laugh at himself.
“S-sorry… you probably have better things to do than listen to me.”
It continues. He squirms, now, the little whispers of the broken boy fill the half-cave like a frightened elephant. His chest feels tight, his stomach leaden. No. No, no, how weak her father is no, no, no, no - he doesn’t want to think about sad kids and weak dads and wandering into the forest’s heart to find mother sobbing over a man who might never come back. The man was his father. And now it is him.
“S-sorry… you probably have better things to do than listen to me.”
Does he?
Toro presses his flank to the wall, harder now, as if he could lean into it and disappear, be melded into the mountainside and become one with the rock and silence. His endeavor fails, but he has hope.
He is reminded of a great many things that jab at his soul in the night, in the day, at all times but he keeps it away so well, so so well but his father gave up when he didn’t get what he wanted and so -
”You’re stronger for not giving up.” His tone is bitter and maybe too harsh but father didn’t care when the going got tough until there was nothing left to fight for. Except his family. Except his wife. Except his child. Toro’s lip twists into a snarl and he looks away; it’s not this one’s fault, but it rings too familiar and he wants to beat the shit out of all the words living in the shrine.
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
His breath leaves his lungs in a shuddery sigh, the kind that comes just before a storm of tears, but his eyes are strangely dry despite the sadness that dwells deep in his chest. He learned young not to cry, that tears only made the anger worse somehow, would twist his father’s lips into a sneer every time the tears fell.
Crying during one of the punishments only made things worse.
Crying was weak.
His laugh this time is shaky, just as choked as the first but not half as bitter, and somehow the stallion’s words echo as both truth and lie in his mind, some sort of twisted mockery of everything his father had once tried to teach him and what he has come to understand since then.
His eyes widen, rounded ears tucking back along his head and he’s a child again with the bitter tone of Toro’s voice, shying back and away from the larger stallion until his rump hits the wall. The snarl is all-too-familiar, so close to his memories that for a moment his father’s face hovers before him instead of Toro. He makes himself smaller by habit, holds his breath and tries to disappear into the wall behind him.
Don’t cry he wills the little deer boy, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry but then he chokes some kind of laugh but he’s backing away now, ears pinned, eyes wide and he’s doing the same thing as Toro, trying to disappear into the mountainside. It’s a shame they cannot.
He didn’t want this, and now look what happened. They were stuck in a cave like two rabbits in the same trap, each thinking the other was the terrier come barreling through their home. It was likely neither of them was.
He steps forward, heartbeats nearly wrenched from between his ribs. ”I didn’t mean to - you’re not - it’s not you.” His tone is pleading, he always fucks it up, doesn't he? But he tries to think like this is a rabbit or a child and heaves a deep sigh. ”My father was worse.” He hopes that thinking for once might do something good for him. He almost forgets this boy has a girl.
you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
The entrance to the cave is just a few feet to his left, and yet the young man doesn’t turn tail and flee, merely presses himself back against the cold stone of the cave walls and wishes for the magic that had once cloaked him from sight so easily. His magic is cut-off here, the warm weight in his chest gone, and he can’t even muster the simplest of illusions no matter how much he might have tried.
There is no hiding here, no ability to blend into the mountainside.
“Not… me?” He questions, the concept foreign to him -- when everything was his fault, how could this mood shift not be caused by him as well, by his bothering the God, but --
Since when do Gods have fathers? It’s a question that breaks through some of his fear, although his ears stay firmly pressed against his skull even as he peers at the horned man through the dim light.
“Mine wasn’t that great either,” He offers as an apology for the upset he had caused.
