somebody shine a light
I'm frozen by the fear in me

I shouldn't let you get any closer—

He was full of sparks inside, little irrational things flitting listlessly about beneath his skin (—drifting like cinders from a fire). And he couldn't trust them, those flickering shadows haunting past, present and future—a cold, callous darkness with no sense of right or wrong, no morals, no standards, just a whirl of teeth and knives. In that darkness lurked the leashed beast, the one which dogged his every movement; he could kill her, and not miss her, because he did not miss her even when she was alive. He did not miss anyone, not really, not until he paused and thought about it and then it gripped his heart, hard and harsh, until he forgot about it again—

Little by little, day by day, night by night, Mauja began to realize that his world was not their world. He did not move to the same music. I missed you—where did you go?

It was just a facet of it, a tiny portion, a thread curling its way uncomfortably through his broken excuse of a life.

She was smiling. She was bright. She seemed as youthful and innocent and exuberant as ever, a trait he wondered if age would dull; if she were put through what he had put himself through, would she still come out of it smiling?

But he still smiled, too, a small little thing curving his dark lips, hiding the worn teeth and conveniently forgetting the taste of how many ever skins it had been between his teeth. Breath, life, still smoked from his nostrils in white clouds. Blood still ran beneath his skin.

(So, then, what is immortality?)

"I suppose you won't explain to me what happened back there, though maybe it isn't my place to know," and his blue gaze, silver in the moonlight, shifted to the trees beyond them. "But I figured I would ask. I do care for you after all Mauja. Whether or not the feeling is mutual is something I can only leave up to you."

His silence spoke the words his voice could not.

You didn't ask anything.

But to be so .. childishly literal... Like gods, what had he expected, honestly? All he'd done was land himself in a situation he had to explain, because no one who had seen it had understood a single fucking thing (well, maybe except Tembovu, but it hurt to think of him, it hurt it hurt it hurt—). Had he for one moment thought Tembovu would stab him to death, then and there? Stand by as blood splattered onto Myrrine, as his body collapsed beneath the plummeting of his blood pressure?

"There is little reason to madness," he finally said, voice light in the darkness, his tone touching the words with a caution one might treat the enraged with—as if looking too deep into them could cast some of that insanity back.

She forged on, though, and his eyes roamed from the trees to her body, her eyes. So, her reasons for seeking him out had, in part, been less altruistic. And whatever that was about, her behavior was enough to inflame even the bones of the dead with curiosity. Her tail swished (a snap of his eyes—), her hooves shimmied through the fog. He could practically hear the nervous fluttering of her pulse.

"What's the matter?" he asked her, gently, marveling at how well he imitated himself.

(Maybe it was just an act all along—)

[ @Myrrine ]

somebody make me feel alive
and shatter me