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10-30-2016, 10:49 AM
like breaking diamonds with your hands
There it was again, that old twitch in his bones—run away, run away. The only way he had ever known to get rid of a problem, but he couldn't outpace his demons any longer. They were too many. Their haunting song followed him, their harsh cries giving him no respite; they were the sum of his regrets, of his lost chances, of closed doors and all the times his heart had broken. They yelled with all the fervor of his guilt, and a brittle promise to a now-dead daughter was all that held him in place. He had sworn to stop running, but what good was it, if he didn't know any other way to solve the problem?
His breath was hot in his chest, and sparks ran along the insides of his legs, demanding he pick up his hooves and run. It went like a twitch down his spine, a suffocating darkness welling up in the back of his throat—blind panic, because he didn't know what else to do.
She had died, and bled out, on sands, sands foreign, not silver like these, and one hoof gave in to the scream going along his nerves; it flicked up, then came down again. Grew still, as the rest of him, as he pulled back behind the ice shield. If he left now, he would hate himself for a coward, but if he stayed, what did he do but prove the point?
He didn't like his own misery staring him back in the eye.
He didn't like it laid out like a slit-throat corpse on a table covered in white satin, but that was what it was like; something about her brought out the worst, the most pitiful in him, and laid it bare for him to see. Every flaw, every crack, every dark, lost part of him that cried out for love but was smothered in ten thousand feet of snow and ice—
Confessions and confusions so deep he barely knew them himself.
What he craved was like a fire. Each time it came close, he shied back.
"You remind me of driftwood in still water."
Broken off, bleached bone-white by sun, coated by salt, once cast about by the fury of a storm and an ocean, but now nothing—like a beached whale, dying where it does not belong? Whatever she meant, it stung like salt in an open wound, and, subtly, his head shifted away. That part about her bringing out the most pitiful in him? Yeah.
(You won't get anywhere if you keep hiding the fact that you have a heart.)
But what was he supposed to do, show her just how pathetic he was, when something like an off-hand, cryptic comment hurt him? And besides, it wasn't her fault—she wasn't the one who had fucked him up. He was the one who had fucked himself up, and why should he blame her for grabbing him by the horn and forcing him to look at himself?
Had there even been a time when he had been able to do that, and not feel sick?
Praised by fire and coated in blood, had the elation been real? Or had it been nothing but a smoke screen to keep him from feeling sick at himself, and the hypocrisy? Was it cowardice, to be what he had been?
She stood up next to him, dripping sand and water, elegant, mysterious, a bastion of strength and light—confident, in a position of power. She gave nothing away as she baited him for his secrets, as she pried for ..something. She was the surgeon and the knife cold in her hands, and he felt so fucking thick—all she needed to do was twist the words around his mind and all of a sudden, she would've cut the secrets from his bones and that would've been the end of that.
The question, spoken as her eyes stared into his averted ones, caught him off guard. “Do you trust me?” Do you trust strangers? he wanted to reply, but guilt choked the words in his throat as he remembered, vaguely, the warmth of her body beneath his. “Why won’t you talk to me?” Do you think yourself the only one I won't talk to?
If he knew how to talk—if he knew how to pull the darkness from his heart and spit it out between his lips and not inhale it back down again—if he knew these things...
They should've called me Mauja the Bitter.
But they don't know anything about me.
"I don't even know how to," he said in the end, his eyes moving to the horizon without lingering on hers—afraid of what they might say, afraid of there being an unspoken promise if their gazes met.
[ @Maren ]
His breath was hot in his chest, and sparks ran along the insides of his legs, demanding he pick up his hooves and run. It went like a twitch down his spine, a suffocating darkness welling up in the back of his throat—blind panic, because he didn't know what else to do.
She had died, and bled out, on sands, sands foreign, not silver like these, and one hoof gave in to the scream going along his nerves; it flicked up, then came down again. Grew still, as the rest of him, as he pulled back behind the ice shield. If he left now, he would hate himself for a coward, but if he stayed, what did he do but prove the point?
He didn't like his own misery staring him back in the eye.
He didn't like it laid out like a slit-throat corpse on a table covered in white satin, but that was what it was like; something about her brought out the worst, the most pitiful in him, and laid it bare for him to see. Every flaw, every crack, every dark, lost part of him that cried out for love but was smothered in ten thousand feet of snow and ice—
Confessions and confusions so deep he barely knew them himself.
What he craved was like a fire. Each time it came close, he shied back.
"You remind me of driftwood in still water."
Broken off, bleached bone-white by sun, coated by salt, once cast about by the fury of a storm and an ocean, but now nothing—like a beached whale, dying where it does not belong? Whatever she meant, it stung like salt in an open wound, and, subtly, his head shifted away. That part about her bringing out the most pitiful in him? Yeah.
(You won't get anywhere if you keep hiding the fact that you have a heart.)
But what was he supposed to do, show her just how pathetic he was, when something like an off-hand, cryptic comment hurt him? And besides, it wasn't her fault—she wasn't the one who had fucked him up. He was the one who had fucked himself up, and why should he blame her for grabbing him by the horn and forcing him to look at himself?
Had there even been a time when he had been able to do that, and not feel sick?
Praised by fire and coated in blood, had the elation been real? Or had it been nothing but a smoke screen to keep him from feeling sick at himself, and the hypocrisy? Was it cowardice, to be what he had been?
She stood up next to him, dripping sand and water, elegant, mysterious, a bastion of strength and light—confident, in a position of power. She gave nothing away as she baited him for his secrets, as she pried for ..something. She was the surgeon and the knife cold in her hands, and he felt so fucking thick—all she needed to do was twist the words around his mind and all of a sudden, she would've cut the secrets from his bones and that would've been the end of that.
The question, spoken as her eyes stared into his averted ones, caught him off guard. “Do you trust me?” Do you trust strangers? he wanted to reply, but guilt choked the words in his throat as he remembered, vaguely, the warmth of her body beneath his. “Why won’t you talk to me?” Do you think yourself the only one I won't talk to?
If he knew how to talk—if he knew how to pull the darkness from his heart and spit it out between his lips and not inhale it back down again—if he knew these things...
They should've called me Mauja the Bitter.
"I don't even know how to," he said in the end, his eyes moving to the horizon without lingering on hers—afraid of what they might say, afraid of there being an unspoken promise if their gazes met.
[ @Maren ]
