.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
03-06-2016, 08:13 AM
but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams
[ Continued directly from here. ]
How long had he been isolated with her? How many minutes had her nearly white and his pale blue eyes met, their voices hushed, smoky breaths in the moist chill of the Edge? It couldn't have been many—the stars had barely wheeled at all. Could it have been more than five-ten minutes, if even that?
It was such a short time that, in the long run, it became irrelevant. It was the blink of an eye, a mere breath, and yet, so much had changed—he had answered her call a broken, burnt man, and walked away from it with his scars smoothed out. His mind? Untouched.
Far beneath his striped hooves, the ocean rolled, as it always had. From the dawn of time, to the end of days—and the moonlight shimmered upon its ever-moving surface, lighting up the foam topping the wave crests. It was a relatively peaceful night, its constant breaking upon the limestone cliffs a low, rhythmic roar in the background. I could fall—
He could fall, and the wind would rush by him, and he could hit the ocean, and—what then? She had been very vague about the details. If he fell upon the rocks, and his body was torn open, shattered and sundered, would it, by some divine will, crawl back together? Or would his heart just lay there, bared and beating, running on sheer willpower?
Was he even real anymore?
"Angel," he murmured to the night wind; it picked up the shortest strands of his long hair, tugged at them with a soundless laugh. The curiosity—the desire to find the limits of his curse—was overpowering. He wouldn't die (—unless it had all been empty words).
But maybe, he would become too broken. Fade out of sight, out of mind. What a useless way to squander what you had been given.
Irma's talons squeezed his shoulder. The familiar pain was comforting—an anchor in this slow-spinning storm. She was still there, and she would remain, and he could still feel pain, and Diego, sitting on his ass, would remain, too. They would remain: forever. Was it a flaw born of his mortality that he could not even imagine 'forever'? No beginning, no end... His jaws clenched. He needed a horizon with an end. He had his own starting point; his birth. And once, he had been racing time towards his death, but now...
The stars hung low and silent, just like they had when his life, his confidence, had shattered. And for all their permanence, he had heard of stars which had winked out of existence, and of stars which had been born, new and fresh like hopeful lights in the dark vault of the sky.
Not even the stars were immortal—and yet he was.
To think that he would outlive them...
He stood upon the brink of an abyss, the sea a swelling roar beneath his feet; the owls rested their talons in his flesh, and the scythe laid cold and dormant against his shoulder. And he would remain here, long after the sky was robbed of all stars and wind and water changed the landscape irrevocably.
Mauja swallowed. He had never felt smaller than he did now.
How long had he been isolated with her? How many minutes had her nearly white and his pale blue eyes met, their voices hushed, smoky breaths in the moist chill of the Edge? It couldn't have been many—the stars had barely wheeled at all. Could it have been more than five-ten minutes, if even that?
It was such a short time that, in the long run, it became irrelevant. It was the blink of an eye, a mere breath, and yet, so much had changed—he had answered her call a broken, burnt man, and walked away from it with his scars smoothed out. His mind? Untouched.
Far beneath his striped hooves, the ocean rolled, as it always had. From the dawn of time, to the end of days—and the moonlight shimmered upon its ever-moving surface, lighting up the foam topping the wave crests. It was a relatively peaceful night, its constant breaking upon the limestone cliffs a low, rhythmic roar in the background. I could fall—
He could fall, and the wind would rush by him, and he could hit the ocean, and—what then? She had been very vague about the details. If he fell upon the rocks, and his body was torn open, shattered and sundered, would it, by some divine will, crawl back together? Or would his heart just lay there, bared and beating, running on sheer willpower?
Was he even real anymore?
"Angel," he murmured to the night wind; it picked up the shortest strands of his long hair, tugged at them with a soundless laugh. The curiosity—the desire to find the limits of his curse—was overpowering. He wouldn't die (—unless it had all been empty words).
But maybe, he would become too broken. Fade out of sight, out of mind. What a useless way to squander what you had been given.
Irma's talons squeezed his shoulder. The familiar pain was comforting—an anchor in this slow-spinning storm. She was still there, and she would remain, and he could still feel pain, and Diego, sitting on his ass, would remain, too. They would remain: forever. Was it a flaw born of his mortality that he could not even imagine 'forever'? No beginning, no end... His jaws clenched. He needed a horizon with an end. He had his own starting point; his birth. And once, he had been racing time towards his death, but now...
The stars hung low and silent, just like they had when his life, his confidence, had shattered. And for all their permanence, he had heard of stars which had winked out of existence, and of stars which had been born, new and fresh like hopeful lights in the dark vault of the sky.
Not even the stars were immortal—and yet he was.
To think that he would outlive them...
He stood upon the brink of an abyss, the sea a swelling roar beneath his feet; the owls rested their talons in his flesh, and the scythe laid cold and dormant against his shoulder. And he would remain here, long after the sky was robbed of all stars and wind and water changed the landscape irrevocably.
Mauja swallowed. He had never felt smaller than he did now.
Mauja
the white queen
