There is something about the morning that is deceitfully beautiful. It rouses us with its brisk rays, glitters in the treetops and spins the sky into cotton candy and gold. But as the day wears on, that beauty cannot stay with us. The darkness of this world is a scarred tattoo upon our hides, one we must bear the agony of re-opening with every step and shuddering breath. We bleed in ways nobody can see, ache in places nobody will know. Deep inside the tunnels of our being we are rats in a maze, racing to find an end that we’re terrified to think of. The whip tastes our flesh greedily, hungers for more, and we trudge beneath it trying not to show every other damned soul the tears that still fall from our eyes even after the years we’ve wasted in this tormented land. In hopes of salvation we cry to the ancient beings who grace us with their presence so very rarely, but we are a tiny speck in the timeline they have existed within. They can do nothing to alleviate our agony, nor clot our wounds, for we have brought all this pain unto ourselves. Shamelessly we break hearts; greedily devour land; angrily injure souls. The wars we must sweat and bleed in are children of our own creation, and therefore it is our curse to bear. Beings with higher mental capacities are damned, and I mean that not in the way of intelligence. So long as the earth spins and we walk the land, we will spread the lifeblood of our ancestors across the soil. Perhaps some ancient Pandora doomed us with her curiosity, releasing the evils that plague us. Or are we the plague, and merely call the sire by the offspring’s name? Do we turn a blind eye to our own faults, if only to feel as if we can justify our own suffering? Is that the only way in which we can find substance in our lives? Are we merely imagining the joy we feel, the light we hope is at the end of a tunnel we walk alone?

I’m tired of walking alone.

The weight of a mind is a terrible thing to bear. I do not live with a gift, as my long shadowed leader once spoke tenderly into my ears. The world was never meant to accept my presence, I am merely a placeholder for all the possibilities and potential that could have borne a decent person in place of my wasted space. Somewhere in the large scheme of things, I was an accident. We all have our burdens, and mine is to know everything at every moment in my meaningless existence. What have I achieved, I interrogate myself. A few walks along a sandy shore with sorrow as deep as the sea that washes it into finery? A forlorn venture into icy lands with a boyish faced stranger? No, my life has been nothing but quietude and complacency. Perhaps a burst of sublime chatter as my wealth of simple knowingness overflows and breaches the container of my mind, seeking a well to drain the excess that I cannot keep inside for fear of physically bursting from the strain. 42,048,001 breaths since I started counting so very long ago. How many of them are wasted? How many could have been put to better use standing up for something of importance? Even simply giving out my name in hopes of forging bonds that I lack so heavily to this day? All my life I have been dazed, a melancholic machine of manipulating numbers and monotonous metronomic musings. Where is Rowan? I feel I should be the one speaking it, as if I am a nameless figure that ghosts across the peninsula without disturbing a single blade of grass or trembling autumn leaf. All I’ve ever wanted was love, and in that I have succeeded only in the slightest of ways.

Sohalia, how I cherish you. I feel as if we share the blood of dam and sire, with how you understand me with such perfection. I cannot fathom the depths of my own musings most days, and yet you haul me through each time with a gentle smile and loving touch. You have given me Skysong, who has burrowed so deeply into my heart it is as if she is a fissure, a great canyon that I never wish to be without, and she fills it daily with her love and attentiveness. Resplendence, who has been at my side at my weakest, the only soul to understand the crushing intimidation of life itself, of fear. Of terror inspired and instilled by something we cannot visualize or verbally explain.

Three fireflies to guide me in a world of darkness, one which has consumed the only place I’ve ever dared to name ‘home’. All around me there is nothingness. The ticking in my head grows louder, the rhythmic beating of my heart triple-timing in the echoes of my ears. The consistency has not changed, the counter is far from off, and yet I feel as if every breath and heartbeat tears apart my head in the utter silence left in the disappearance of the gods. It is all I have left to focus my curse upon, and soon instead of counting every beat or breath, I count the seconds in between, or perhaps the duration of one or the other. I drive myself into a tearful frenzy those first few hourless days. My mind cannot comprehend a change in routine. The sun rises and sets approximately every twelve hours, and yet now I am left bereft and sightless in far more ways than one. All I can comprehend is that I am running, that the earth is still spinning beneath my walkers. I am somewhere undeniably moist, and I stumble through a consistency similar to mud. My legs are frozen, and I am scared scared so scared mother where are you why did you abandon me? I don’t recall being here, but then again I can hardly make the monstrosity I was born with work with my psychotic emotions currently. I stumble and thrash, force myself into this unknown substance, and do anything to focus on the noises that do not bring attention to myself, my body, my diseased soul and curse of curiosity. I am utterly destroyed, composure shattered, and finally I can understand the agony lurking beneath my own blinders.

I can move no longer, and stand shuddering against what feels like a poplar tree. I have nowhere left to run, to hide. I only have one option left, and it makes my insides shudder and quake until I fear they will simply fall through the weak canvas of my skin to disappear into this void of blackness. There is nothing else I can do, and finally I reach internally for the one box I have never opened, the one latch that has remained unflipped for fear that accepting mental breakdown would kill me. Somehow, in this new world at this very moment, I cannot fathom why I ever would have been afraid of death in the first place. Why should I continue to fear letting go of my mental restraints? Why grasp for a parachute to slow my freefall into madness? Perhaps letting my own curse destroy me will make the awful ticking ticking tock tock tick stop.

I open the box.

I am Pandora at last.

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This is Rowan's death thread; if you would like to say goodbye to her after she has been wounded, please post! Order is irrelevant here. Resplendence to post first please as Rowan will be protecting her when she dies.

Tags:
@[Ulrik]
@[Resplendence]
@[Skysong]
@[Sohalia]