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02-08-2015, 01:23 PM
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One would have to look closely at her to see the way her limbs trembled slightly, her nostrils quivering and her ears twitching as she continued to gaze at Ktulu. Even her breath seemed to tremble, sparse as it was; she didn’t even blink as she stood there, waiting for her Aunt’s response. Her features were dulled, sunken to the point of collapse—and her expression remained empty of everything she had spoken of, detached from her words and the meaning within them.
Roskuld would have stood there for days and endless nights, standing as stolidly as she was. She was a golem—no. Perhaps she was only a husk of the mare-child she was, empty of her fear and her self-pity—or, perhaps she was so ultimately shattered, so impossibly doomed, that all she could do was profess her crimes to the grieving mother, and wish her hate upon her. Perhaps she thought the hate would save her, somehow. Perhaps she felt she deserved it. Then, from nowhere, a voice boomed behind her, and she jumped— --it was like I was ripped from the void I had been falling into, that I had tumbled into without any grips or handholds or anything—the slippery slope that I was dying in, that I was losing myself in (that I had lost myself in, briefly) and I was being pulled, tugged, yanked back into the living realm where the pain was still fresh and it was crushing my chest and I felt like I was bleeding out from the inside with the force of the misery surrounding me. In all honesty, that void was a gift; a soothing place where my pain was dulled, and I was free of the feeling of it, and I was too dead to face what I had done. But fuck that. Because I turned around and the bottom fell out and his blue eyes were there and so was the rest of him and suddenly everything that had shriveled away for just a few seconds blossomed again, rising inside of me at such a furious rate that there was no stopping what I did next: I fucking ran. I ran from my Auntie and her pain at losing her child. I ran from my Pa and the awful magnificence of the gods that had attended. I ran from the group that had come to mourn and curse and spat their holy names, the spirits that they had trusted in and, in turn, received disappointment. I ran from Jiji’s golden pain that I couldn’t stomach to see. I ran from Ma and the comfort she was offering Auntie (and the eyes that stormed at the sight of my Pa). I ran from the tiny fire that glared at me for my failures, from my Bro’s sadness at Hototo’s passing, from my moment of a defeat that I was finally, finally accepting, after all these years of its threat. I ran because there was Leos—and I had long since given up on redemption in my Pa’s eyes, in my Ma’s eyes, in the world’s eyes. In my eyes. I had accepted myself as a scrub so long ago it barely kept me awake at night anymore. But I… ...I don’t think I could bear his disappointment too. And I think that was where I drew the line. |
