.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
11-14-2013, 04:29 AM
The stars were shining brightly overhead, a shower of diamonds strewn haphazardly across the purple velvet of the night sky; I could not see them. Slick with sweat in spite of the bitter chill, each movement scorching my muscles afresh, I staggered half-delirious across the steppe. I was angry and didn’t understand why. I had to get away – I didn’t understand that either.
The earth unfolded before me like cubist’s nightmare: pitching wildly in every direction and smeared at the edges. The ground beneath my hooves seemed eager to slither away and cast me into the abyss. I wanted to turn out the contents of my stomach onto the virgin snow, but of course I could not.
I hurt.
It wasn’t a good hurt. I could not revel in my suffering as I had done before dear Althea, my bruised and bloodied flesh a resounding triumph. This pain grew inside me like a hungering cold, poisoning my mind and thickening my blood to the very knife edge of unconsciousness. I could not escape into my memories; I could only drag myself onward.
Exhaustion seemed almost a breathing thing, setting its claws deeper in my spine with every ragged gasp, every labored step I took. It felt like I’d run for days, and yet I knew I had managed perhaps twenty paces beyond the basin’s border on my own power. I gritted my teeth.
Even now, I did not fear death. Beneath the roiling agony and the panic and the vertigo and the world-swallowing fatigue, the basest part of me knew that I might die tonight. It knew, accepted, and felt nothing. What it – and therefore I – could not accept was dying here, abandoned on a flat frozen slab far too reminiscent of ‘home’.
I didn’t want to face the darkness alone.
My strength gave out; I toppled forward with my next step, legs suddenly a disobedient tangle as I half-caught myself on a knee before landing heavily on my side. The frozen ground against my cheek seemed to quench the fires raging in my brain. I chanced a glimpse skyward and immediately regretted it.
All the stars were bleeding.
@[Gabriel]
The earth unfolded before me like cubist’s nightmare: pitching wildly in every direction and smeared at the edges. The ground beneath my hooves seemed eager to slither away and cast me into the abyss. I wanted to turn out the contents of my stomach onto the virgin snow, but of course I could not.
I hurt.
It wasn’t a good hurt. I could not revel in my suffering as I had done before dear Althea, my bruised and bloodied flesh a resounding triumph. This pain grew inside me like a hungering cold, poisoning my mind and thickening my blood to the very knife edge of unconsciousness. I could not escape into my memories; I could only drag myself onward.
Exhaustion seemed almost a breathing thing, setting its claws deeper in my spine with every ragged gasp, every labored step I took. It felt like I’d run for days, and yet I knew I had managed perhaps twenty paces beyond the basin’s border on my own power. I gritted my teeth.
Even now, I did not fear death. Beneath the roiling agony and the panic and the vertigo and the world-swallowing fatigue, the basest part of me knew that I might die tonight. It knew, accepted, and felt nothing. What it – and therefore I – could not accept was dying here, abandoned on a flat frozen slab far too reminiscent of ‘home’.
I didn’t want to face the darkness alone.
My strength gave out; I toppled forward with my next step, legs suddenly a disobedient tangle as I half-caught myself on a knee before landing heavily on my side. The frozen ground against my cheek seemed to quench the fires raging in my brain. I chanced a glimpse skyward and immediately regretted it.
All the stars were bleeding.
@[Gabriel]
