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09-01-2013, 12:57 PM
The warm water lapped and cajoled at his muscles, mended the torn, worn fragments of sinew, and stitched coiled seams until the smoking air of its divine caresses left him besotted into vulnerability. For once, the rigid stance broke, the sharp, conjoining lines of undulating influence, power, slackened, and he was left gliding an easy breath from his fixated lungs, dreaming of raptorial reveries, of predacious assaults. The slits of his puncturing eyes closed, ghosted over the transient, ephemeral courtship of tranquility and treachery meeting, mixing, converging and descending over his nonchalant features. Lulled and listless, strangled and tattered from the mutinous grasp of the devil, he basked in the sultry swoon of the spring’s gentle, assuaging hands, slipped gratefully into its hold like a forlorn child, sickened by its depths but incapable of straying away from its toying ministrations, unwinding, calming, loosening the threads of his eternally taut figure. The most vivid of sirens, it streamlined along his shoulders, pooled against his haunches, left droplets of heated tendrils coasting in gallant rivulets, searing, smoothing, simmering along the intertwined aches, captured by its archaic spell of restoration and renewal. Even in the heady musk he didn’t retreat, allowed the imprisonment of his form to slink further into its boundaries, adrift, varnished and reassembled again by its wholesome luster, locked into repose. When had he last tempered the skill and breadth of his predilection, the temptation and rancor of his ignited bloodshed? When had he last calmed, not felt the fury of damnation licking over the tendrils of his ichor? The silent queries were left unanswered in his mind, for the memories were long past, distant, fleeting and idle, and instead of feeding the seditious splendor of his twisted, nefarious heart again, he brandished the unclenching of his jaw, the fluttering of his eyelids pressed against his cheeks. The Reaper could think of war, could dream of malice, could play witness to the standing, guardian peeks or dabble his eyes towards the horizon, but instead, his mind, uncluttered, unfettered, entered placation, lost to the ends of the earth in quiet, patient detachment.
Deimos’s leisure ceased to last, however, when the sounds of another approached. He nearly thought to ignore their presence, to feast on the dredges of their echoes and displeasures as he disregarded their intentions, essences and existence, but a familiar scent rumbled through his nares, his name enamored and postured by a wraith. Piercing eyes opened immediately thereafter, widened for fractions of a second at the thought of being unguarded in her apparition, the creature whose patience, persistence and perseverance led to too many unraveled secrets and washed away enigmas – until the General’s stare narrowed in speculation, as if he were never too far from treating the world to more unholy bombardments, more scattered, maimed bodies. His voice was an entirely different manner, invoked by a short gulp, a haggard breath, shoved and forced into a grating, harsh, unrelenting torrent of invocations, “Huyana,” finishing on a tenuous, breakable gasp. The sharp intake of air forced his lungs to cease their ambient disapproval, and he allowed the layers of the restless moment to pass in strangling, choking defiance of his former bliss; that she hadn’t caught him enjoying being restored to former glory, former health, former dominion, supremacy and fortitude. Deimos said no more, and returned to his cold, calculating study, perused her form, her face, her features, for the signs of liveliness once coating her vocals, the silly, inane desires of hope and benediction.
But here, she seemed entirely robbed of euphoria, elation, the quiet, unsung peace and repose she fluttered and hoisted aloft for him to see and drink in, the subtle, sweet intoxication of ambrosia he sometimes devoured, savored, without her looking. Like a girl wed and bed on a garden of thorns, she’d become a blue body concaved where hardy, healthy flesh once laid, awkward and angular, bones jutting from sides, unhealthy, gangly, delicate and infirm, words that should have never described her corporeal form. Was this a specter then, and he was dreaming, hallucinating in the mending bath? Had the sweltering mountain air poisoned his lungs and dazed his senses until he knew naught but incantations, beguiled by passing hauntings and deliriums? He tilted and inclined his head, extended further examination of her still, contrite form upon the bank, and realized her frame, while meek, while fragile, still remained Huyana, with regret passing through her stare and breath. Forever sullied by the actions of her people, carrying the weight of shadows and dawn, and for some reason, he almost growled at the distaste of her displeasure. Why was she so troubled? Why did she harbor shame, for what had she done to harpoon and lace herself with the traces and sketches of humiliation? He knew the sentiments of such reeling emotions well, the bitter, intoxicating sweep of its immoral justifications, of being captured, of being bereft of curses and bestowals, of striving for liberation and being close enough to taste it, teased, tantalized by the prospect of triumph, and to be ultimately disappointed, dismayed, humiliated when one’s ability simply hadn’t been enough. Had she begged and pleaded for something beyond her reach, tempted, allured and beguiled, swept into the seams of darkness, until she no longer slept, until she no longer ate? And should he have been irritated, vexed, that the sea nymph, like so many others, hadn’t descended into the arms of their enemies to fight, to corrupt, to chain and imprison? That she’d disappeared, vanished, into the inky veils of night?
The Reaper didn’t move from the water, didn’t sigh, didn’t query, didn’t question, didn’t bark or voice his disapproval as he would to his men, foolish and unwise, ghosts mislaid and wandering. The dispassionate flow of his features entwined into slender threads of inquiry, a brow raised in calculation, lips twisting and then parting from their inexpressive line, words uttered, clipped, short, segmented to a rich, sharpened point. “You are rueful.” There were no inquiries etched into their fine edge, but she’d understand his invitation to discourse, and if she disregarded the notion, he wouldn’t pry again, let her keep another secret tight against her chest.
