Deimos the Reaper Run him like a blade; to and through the heart
Entangled and fixated on bits of enigmas and traces of inquiry (without death, without bloodshed, without persecution), he was allotted the carved ramparts of silence and intrigue, gazing back and forth from familiar to strange and unknown. He thought to give the boy a series of questions, dive past the layers of menace and wreckage and peer into the foundation of so many things: how is your father? Have you seen him? Do you know, some days, I actually miss your mother? But the words never came across, and he lowered his eyes, almost ashamed he couldn’t bring them to voice or speech – held back, tethered, tied by something unseen and intangible, as if the lost connections made him weaker, noted his faults and flaws, wove each and every defect so they became all the more prominent. He held onto many fixed lines and puncturing arches and demonstrative, devilish components, and to whittle away the fabrications, to peek behind the veil, to allow them to witness how far he’d truly fallen, was too much for his antagonistic prowess. So, instead of leaning into the fold, of becoming part of the chain between herd members and their ensnaring, guileless qualities, he stayed away, he backed off, he lingered in shadows and caves and catacombs; but afforded the boy the smallest of compassionate gestures, a fatherly nod, a hint of a smile, a ghost of the days spent with his sire’s engineering, tinkering sounds, a wraith of moments spent with his dam’s tireless lectures and banshee wails. “Thank you for your efforts,” was all that pulsed from his mouth, bestowing so many things in between: congratulations on finding his way back home, on becoming part of the ice and rime again, at still being a close companion to his son (a boy fashioned with so much rain that he had no issues grinning or reminding others of his existence), at doing his part in making the Basin strong, and potent. The Reaper knew he’d never given enough credit to the lad’s family, he couldn’t fill the hole, the void, left and resonating – but he tried, determined and resolute.
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@Ming Yue