.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
06-11-2017, 02:06 PM
i am the vanguard of your destruction
Make that three times dead, three times risen.
His black muzzle lay on whatever passed for the ground around here, his neck on the driftwood—the rest of him, in the mud-stained blue of the sea. Part of a shoulder was visible. His mane floating haphazardly on the gently rocking waters.
He was thin. Too thin again. The point of his shoulder jutted accusingly in the light, and while he was not rotted, he was slimy in a way that told he hadn't just spent a few minutes dunked in the sea. It had been much, much longer.
Much longer.
The sound of his life was fragile and sodden; each weak breath rattled wetly, sides contracting in a cough too feeble to achieve anything. His lips were slack. His visible eye half-open. His pulse slow and sluggish, carting around black blood and fucking starlight instead of oxygen—moon-glue keeping him together, when he should've come apart.
He hadn't asked about the finer points of their deal when they'd made it. He certainly wasn't invincible. He wasn't immune to anything. He just couldn't die, some celestial drive kicking in whenever he hit the point where he should've passed on, and keeping him alive through something that tasted far too much like debt and willpower. It repaired him just enough to keep him from being too broken.
He didn't want to tests its limits.
He had cuts, courtesy of the crustaceans trying to eat him. They oozed dark blood and water and some pale, glittering substance. It evaporated quickly, as if shy, or unwilling to admit it was the reason his brain hadn't died and his body decomposed and his latest awake moment had truly been his last, a burst of panic and his lungs and heart exploding as the merciless sea swallowed him and denied him air.
Oh, he was careless. Reckless. He didn't give a shit and that was his problem.
Had his life depended on it, he could've gotten out of the glacier. Had his life depended on it, he could've fought the angry waves and the current.
But it hadn't.
Myrrine's might've, though.
Too late for that.
Are you alive? the voice asked; it fell on deaf ears. The faint sounds of his breathing didn't change. His ears didn't flick. His eye, drying, didn't blink. Mauja! another cried. Still no reaction.
The nudge rolled his head. The snowflake charms clinked against one another. Flashed in the sun before falling back into the tangle of his mane.
Still nothing. (The signal's lost.) Just static on the radio. Bleak imitations of coughs. Wet, impossible breaths into waterlogged lungs.
And those two wet, sad, feathery bundles bobbing on the faint waves next to him.
His black muzzle lay on whatever passed for the ground around here, his neck on the driftwood—the rest of him, in the mud-stained blue of the sea. Part of a shoulder was visible. His mane floating haphazardly on the gently rocking waters.
He was thin. Too thin again. The point of his shoulder jutted accusingly in the light, and while he was not rotted, he was slimy in a way that told he hadn't just spent a few minutes dunked in the sea. It had been much, much longer.
Much longer.
The sound of his life was fragile and sodden; each weak breath rattled wetly, sides contracting in a cough too feeble to achieve anything. His lips were slack. His visible eye half-open. His pulse slow and sluggish, carting around black blood and fucking starlight instead of oxygen—moon-glue keeping him together, when he should've come apart.
He hadn't asked about the finer points of their deal when they'd made it. He certainly wasn't invincible. He wasn't immune to anything. He just couldn't die, some celestial drive kicking in whenever he hit the point where he should've passed on, and keeping him alive through something that tasted far too much like debt and willpower. It repaired him just enough to keep him from being too broken.
He didn't want to tests its limits.
He had cuts, courtesy of the crustaceans trying to eat him. They oozed dark blood and water and some pale, glittering substance. It evaporated quickly, as if shy, or unwilling to admit it was the reason his brain hadn't died and his body decomposed and his latest awake moment had truly been his last, a burst of panic and his lungs and heart exploding as the merciless sea swallowed him and denied him air.
Oh, he was careless. Reckless. He didn't give a shit and that was his problem.
Had his life depended on it, he could've gotten out of the glacier. Had his life depended on it, he could've fought the angry waves and the current.
But it hadn't.
Myrrine's might've, though.
Too late for that.
Are you alive? the voice asked; it fell on deaf ears. The faint sounds of his breathing didn't change. His ears didn't flick. His eye, drying, didn't blink. Mauja! another cried. Still no reaction.
The nudge rolled his head. The snowflake charms clinked against one another. Flashed in the sun before falling back into the tangle of his mane.
Still nothing. (The signal's lost.) Just static on the radio. Bleak imitations of coughs. Wet, impossible breaths into waterlogged lungs.
And those two wet, sad, feathery bundles bobbing on the faint waves next to him.
