The hardest thing is getting the noise of it out of his head.
That awful heartbeat, the continuous drumming, like leaning his cheek against the chest of a beast. August thinks that it is a little unfair, that this should be the part that sticks with him - why not the musical sound of pearls falling from withered berries, or the dry rustle of ivy-leaves before they blew away, or the first sight of that strangely vivid shore?
Like Minya, he hides how he feels, how uneasy it makes him. They are practiced at this; they have been since the beginning. Before the Scarab - or, perhaps more fairly, before the death of his mother and before he learned the scent of blood in baking heat - there was nothing duplicitous in August. Now everything feels like a game where the winner has the truth and nobody mentions the stakes.
He smiles at her, the way she turns his question on him like it might be a knife. “Maybe I am,” he says, and laughs. “The thought of death doesn’t panic me any more than it does you, Minya.” After all, they had both seen it before. After all, they both would again.
If he is surprised when she brushes past him, when she continues on with her head high as though this were no bridge born of black glass and stranger things but a catwalk lined with would-be lovers, August doesn’t show it. He just follows, her words rolling as gently through his mind as the waves lap at the bridge.
When they reach the end, the tension of the crowd presses down like a golden hand, heavy on his back. The heartbeat sounds in his ears like his own, and when he closes he forgets the smell of sea-salt and whatever lies beyond the wall; instead it is his own heart in his ears, the same ragged racing feeling as when he was a boy with bright eyes watching a slaughter. Horses falling neatly as trees, sharp cries punctuating the air like the whistling of an axe. August tries to keep his eyes open, and looks at all the horses around him, and guesses at their secrets, and lets the time pass.
At last, the wall collapses. At last, paradise is revealed.
He finds Minya again, then - she is so hard to lose, with her bright antlers and her dark skin and the way her trinkets are never silent. Like a cat with a bell, he thinks, and twice as likely to strike - but as he sidles alongside her it is he who looks feline, languid, easy. Another little lie.
In truth, he is relieved. In truth, he is terribly eager to explore that strange expanse before him, where even now a breeze stirs and birds call and light changes like water.
“Well?” he says to her, and his grin glints like a mouthful of pearls between his teeth, and the only dreadful heartbeat is his own.
@Minya
That awful heartbeat, the continuous drumming, like leaning his cheek against the chest of a beast. August thinks that it is a little unfair, that this should be the part that sticks with him - why not the musical sound of pearls falling from withered berries, or the dry rustle of ivy-leaves before they blew away, or the first sight of that strangely vivid shore?
Like Minya, he hides how he feels, how uneasy it makes him. They are practiced at this; they have been since the beginning. Before the Scarab - or, perhaps more fairly, before the death of his mother and before he learned the scent of blood in baking heat - there was nothing duplicitous in August. Now everything feels like a game where the winner has the truth and nobody mentions the stakes.
He smiles at her, the way she turns his question on him like it might be a knife. “Maybe I am,” he says, and laughs. “The thought of death doesn’t panic me any more than it does you, Minya.” After all, they had both seen it before. After all, they both would again.
If he is surprised when she brushes past him, when she continues on with her head high as though this were no bridge born of black glass and stranger things but a catwalk lined with would-be lovers, August doesn’t show it. He just follows, her words rolling as gently through his mind as the waves lap at the bridge.
When they reach the end, the tension of the crowd presses down like a golden hand, heavy on his back. The heartbeat sounds in his ears like his own, and when he closes he forgets the smell of sea-salt and whatever lies beyond the wall; instead it is his own heart in his ears, the same ragged racing feeling as when he was a boy with bright eyes watching a slaughter. Horses falling neatly as trees, sharp cries punctuating the air like the whistling of an axe. August tries to keep his eyes open, and looks at all the horses around him, and guesses at their secrets, and lets the time pass.
At last, the wall collapses. At last, paradise is revealed.
He finds Minya again, then - she is so hard to lose, with her bright antlers and her dark skin and the way her trinkets are never silent. Like a cat with a bell, he thinks, and twice as likely to strike - but as he sidles alongside her it is he who looks feline, languid, easy. Another little lie.
In truth, he is relieved. In truth, he is terribly eager to explore that strange expanse before him, where even now a breeze stirs and birds call and light changes like water.
“Well?” he says to her, and his grin glints like a mouthful of pearls between his teeth, and the only dreadful heartbeat is his own.
@
August - -
this above all: to thine own self be true
STAFF EDIT***
@august has rolled a 2! He has been awarded +80 signos.
