"Where brilliance is good and madness is better..."
Helovia Info
Helovia opened in February 2012! We are an active fantasy equine RPG
Where once the world narrowed into naught but gray dust and desolation, the gods called for life. Wielding the elements of fire and light, dark and wind, earth and water, spark and time, they have created Helovia. The realm is set within the mythical globe of Loorien, a planet rich with all variety of creatures and blessed with all manner of magic. Originally populated by nomadic, tribal characters, they've since grown into massive empires saturated with culture and history. Separated into four distinct segments of Helovia, called "The Regions," each band of horse strong enough and capable enough, took up the power and responsibility of leadership. Unicorns, old, wise and mysterious, took to the north, hidden in forests of mists and shadows and rarely making themselves known beyond their cliffs of the World's Edge. Equines, vast, organized and militaristic, split into two, one group went north to the Windtossed Foothills and the other group went south to the Dragon's Throat. Pegasus remained nomadic, making their homes in various parts of The Wilds in a migratory manner. For many generations, the land was peaceful and calm, but peace was never the way of the gods. With a clash of argument, war and bloodshed massacred Helovia, and in the aftermath, the realm was eerily quiet. Now, as newcomers sweep into this land, they are met with the lingering bitterness of the gods and the struggle to reclaim what was lost. Nothing remains safe or certain while sorcerers and soldiers alike brood and bide their time for revenge, honor and glory.
Site Wide Plots
Kaos :: The Beginning of the End ☼ - 6/2017 - Kaos placed Helovia in a time-bubble for a short period of time, but the Helovian gods are fighting back. But Kaos is powerful- far more powerful than anyone thought. This may be the beginning of the end of Helovia as we know it.
Kisamoa :: A New Kind of Kaos ☼ - 3/2017 - Kisamoa asks Helovians to help him restore the Spectral Marsh. Which side will you choose?
Invasions :: All Out War ☼ - 5/2/16 - New layout and the brand new invasion rules are up! Thank you for your patience and we look forward to getting started with this new adventure.
The Rift :: Gods Do Die ☼ - 8/2015 - Helovia Gods are saving the Rift from corrupt gods! Can Helovians band together against these foreign deities?
The Literal Ship ☼ - 2/8/15 - Oh no! You have to pair up for Valentine's day!
Sky Island :: Murder ☼ - 10/25/14 - Vesta has been found dead on the island, and the gods have called to you to solve the murder!
Sky Island :: Peace ☼ - 7/7/14 - An island has appeared in the sky! Clouds carry Helovians from the Veins to the sky.
Restoration :: We Welcome the Dawn ☼ - 9/21/13 - The sun has finally risen on this day, giving the land new light, but the Time God and the Sun God have yet to be seen.
Endless Night :: Broken Magic Plot ☼ - 8/30/13 - The earth god has returned and is walking across Helovia to heal the land. Every area can now be considered lush and prosperous, but the sun has still not risen.
☼ - 7/19/13 - The moon has risen in the sky, heralding the return of the Goddess of the moon. Lamp trees which light the paths have grown brighter, moon flowers which grow in dark places have begun to grow and prosper and the world is brighter, filled with a new hope.
Endless Night :: Dead Magic Plot ☼ - 6/22/13 - The gods of Helovia, in order to protect the world, have disappeared into the rift, leaving the world sunless, moonless and magic-less in their absence. Only the herdlands have a source of light, but lamp-trees with glowing leaves and branches sporadically line the popular roads and paths from place to place.
Doppleganger Plot ☼ - 6/20/13 - The God of Time is still struggling to close the rift though which the dopplegangers have come. He has requested that his brothers and sister assist in closing this hole, but without knowing why it opened, the task is proving difficult. Magic still remains faulty and hard to control, but the herdlands continue to be places of refuge for those who are fortunate enough to call these lands home.
ORANGEMOON cools off the lands with a a viscious force. Colder than normal, a sign of things to come during Frostfall, Helovia is bathed in a rich tropical lushness - albiet a cold one. The coastlines of the Dragon's Throat are pelted constantly by tidal waves, and the desert climate is humid but chilly. Ice begins to form early in the Aurora Basin leaving the winding trails slick and dangerous. The mists of the World's Edge coat everything in a glistening crystalline shine which encourages mould to grow everywhere. The Spectral Marsh is the only area which remains fertile, blissfully temperature and lush.
Cotm
Character of the Month for
June, 2017
WEAVER, Corporal of the Aurora Basin, is a relatively recent addition to Helovia and has taken it by storm. Branded with the seal of Death on her chest, intrigue and interest follow both her past and present. Though she is assuredly beautiful, her sometimes sharp personality reveals that there is more to this uni-peg hybrid than meets the eye. Proving herself able on the battlefield in the Basin’s warrior ranks, we can’t wait to see her test her mettle against the looming Kaos happenings! Congratulations!
Helovia RPG was created by Tamme and Blu and coded by Tamme also known as Schwartze. All coding, palettes and imagery are copyrighted to the website and are not for use outside of Helovia. Thank you to our ServerMaster for hosting Helovia. A special thanks goes to Neo for all of her coding help and fixing Tamme's errors, Boom, for her loyal service and creation of the Time God, and to Ali for her consistent contributions and dedication.
staring at the bottom of your glass
hoping one day you'll make a dream last
but dreams come slow and they go so fast
Pull out your heart to make the being alone .. easy...
The King I used to be, is dead.
And that was still true; the racist King of the Edge lay buried under many feet of snow and ice, frozen gracelessly in his white tomb. No gravestone marked where he had fallen; no date of passing was scratched into the ice. There had been no struggle. There had only been the long, cold walk, and slowly diminishing flame, and one step after the other grew slower.. and slower.. and slower.. until finally, there had been no more steps, only the cold, sinking deeper and deeper through flesh and bone.
Straight to the heart.
Valves and veins clogged up with ice Mauja the Frostheart, finally true to his name, had become buried by the light of dawn—by the pale sunlight arcing across the horizon, striking a shimmer in the snow piled on top of the corpse of his past self. There was no grave other than that: snow.
If Mauja paused to look back, he would still be able to find him, somewhere under all that ice, and if he wanted to, he could breathe some kind of life back into him—reanimate him, all flaming blue eyes and frost-breath, and wear his skin like armor.
But he didn't want to do that. That part of him was best left dead.
Pale eyes scoured the murky dusk of the southern grove, but he didn't know what he was looking for—the things he could never find, as usual, so they were better left unlabeled to soothe the aching disappointment their lack of presence brought. He had spent years in this kind of limbo before, but that time, he had made the mistake of allowing it to devour him. It had ruled his world, defined his thoughts, fueled his every action in the most backwards of ways, and in the end, it had only brought him further ruin. So this time, he held back, chasing shadows and lightning but never admitting that he did.
One shoulder leaned against a sturdy pillar, and four rough talons clutched metal beams on the worked glass roof; they faced opposite directions, heads moving, eyes sweeping. They looked for other things, though, mice, and whatever else that was unfortunate enough to be afoot.
But none of them had had any luck yet—neither with finding their friends, nor excess food. A small, fond smile curved Mauja's lips. There had been a time when both he and Irma had wondered if all that hunting would make her fat.. it felt like a lifetime ago.
But, in all honesty, it wasn't. Irma had hatched after he had lost the Edge. Those memories were tinged with the arctic cold of the Basin, and the auroras dancing in the skies. Those memories belonged to someone who had neither been the Frostheart nor Queen Mauja; they belonged to someone transient, someone who denied what he already knew and clung to the weight that was slowly dragging him down.
A man desperate to swim, yet causing himself to drown.
A man desperate to breathe, yet choking himself with his own hands.
Mauja's smile had faded, and the last of the blood-red sun slunk beneath the horizon. In so many ways it felt like he had gone back to his earliest chapters in Helovia, to re-write or to re-live them, he didn't know which yet—like a circle closing, a cycle beginning anew. And..
And, he wasn't sure he liked the feeling.
[ @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
You saw them first, and it was an eruption of many happinesses all at once.
The first happiness came from your excitement of seeing me fight someone again. You knew this place well—I’ll even say it was your favorite spot, let’s be honest. Because it never failed to yield someone that annoyed the absolute shit out of me and made the flame of a fight ignite in me, and you always loved watching me fight even if it frustrated you that I never allowed you to join me. Even now, when you were able to switch bodies in the blink of an eye, I still wouldn’t let you fight by my side. My fights were for personal, selfish things—and I wasn’t gonna risk you getting hurt for it.
But that happiness shifted, though--bursting into something else radiant and far more pure than your lust for an ass-kicking. It was also a lot less personal, because you knew what the impression did to me, that the image you sent me mentally was an image that already danced behind my eyes in ways that I’d never have admitted to you if you didn’t already know about it by default. You flapped your wings furiously from where you were perched on my neck; you knew I needed sleep but fuck that shit sleep is gonna have to wait. You tugged at the tips of my mane as you took off, soaring through the trees and into the clearing.
I followed—my movements a lot slower than yours was, my heart beating in a way you didn’t notice underneath the torrent of your own surging excitement.
You’d been waiting on this day for some time now; it was the very first body you had ever shifted into and you wanted them to see it because it was them that inspired it. You wanted to show them how much they affected you, how awesome you thought they were. So you shot for the rotunda like a bullet, and as you came upon those older owls sitting still and dignified like the marble they perched on--you gave a silly little hoot and circled them, the contrast between the three of you absolutely clear. But you didn’t care; you were just so happy to see them and you knew seeing Lee was gonna make me happy so you were double happy because, maybe, I’d fall asleep when we left.
The difference was marked between us; I emerged from the tree-line, and while your movements were jerky and hot and electric, my own were hesitant, lethargic, like I was walking at the bottom of the ocean. While you just showed up all up in their face, ready and willing for anything and everything—well. I stood there for a second, watching the pale body stand in the rotunda—watching the way he leaned against the pillar and wondering why I was even here.
It made sense, though, according to my flawed logic. I’d never once looked for him in my life; he just showed up randomly, dropping down whenever something fucked up was happening, whether I was aware of it or not. He showed up when the darkness crept; he showed up when his own shackles were getting too hard to bear; he showed up when I broke with Hototo’s passing and there was his shoulder offered, his mane a trap for the tears that I hated to cry. The last time I’d seen him was the rare instance there wasn’t some undercurrent of shit beneath our hooves—and honestly, if it weren’t for your blind devotion to those owls of his, I would be convinced that it had all been a dream.
“…Leos?”
I called but I didn’t know why I was calling him; I didn’t know what I would say to him, if I even wanted him to look at me, if I should even have the nerve to speak to him. What would I say? I didn’t know lack of sleep fucked with you so much. I wanna cry again so c’mere with that shoulder of yours and lemme dump it.Chico likes you so could you watch him for a bit while I look for a hole to bury myself in? I swallowed and approached the marble-spun structure—because reasoning and justifications aside, it was always, always, always good to see him. Lee: one of those things I haven’t fucked up yet.
I'm a princess cut from marble, smoother than a storm
and the scars that mark my body, they're silver and gold
Each beat of his own heart left a cold, gnawing feeling in his gut, like there was something wrong—something so fundamentally wrong that he ought to lie sleepless over it, until he figured it out.
But the problem was—there was no figuring it out.
He knew what it was, already.
The problem was the problem itself—that feeling, the circle closing.. the jaws closing... Slowly, his ears angled back and his face drew into one of tired defeat; what were his options, really? Running away? That wouldn't solve anything. He'd gone into this on a whim, but that didn't make him—well, okay, it sure as hell made him irresponsible to claim a position he had no clue what the fuck to do with just because he was selfish but the point was—he didn't have to be more irresponsible than he already had been.
Besides, Torleik was a fair King, and everything else aside, it was interesting to see where their awkward ship would end up. Mauja had never ruled with anyone in this sense, and least of all with someone he didn't know intimately, and, and, and—
There were about a thousand things to think, but not enough time to think them, and his thoughts ran like light itself to outpace the inevitable ohmygodmybrainistoofull but in the end, he couldn't hold it all in his mind and it shattered, and fell apart. It only made his face fall further, ears clenching to his neck as the muscles of his jaw tensed, and his eyes—they were dark, and haunted.
He needed someone. He needed.. he needed Kahlua. He couldn't vent all of this shit to Torleik, because Torleik was a stranger, and Mauja was pretty sure he sometimes had a stick hidden up his ass—but that was okay. Mauja would try to get it out of there. And maybe, one day, if their little ship didn't collapse in a storm or sailed head-first into some shitty cliff, he could vomit this out on his co-leader, because.. uhh... it mattered, right?
“…Leos?”
Let's re-wind—let's re-wind from another perspective, one not mired in awkward musings about boats and Kahlua and the past and boats and—literal boats.
Because there was this small, really small (almost edible-small) owl flapping about the Rotunda and hooting (both Irma and Diego were too dignified to hoot when they had a goddamned arsenal of other noises at their disposal (well, Irma did; Diego didn't hoot because it was better to stay silent instead of getting icy glares from Irma)) .. and for a moment, one set of arctic blue and one set of fiery amber eyes glared at the little creature through the gathering dark.
But then, something changed in those pale eyes, and Irma's head flicked to one side, then back, beak clicking once as she thought and felt, and.. and in a rustle of feathers she was up, gliding silently, and yes, there was Elding, and no lizard, so, improbable or not, it had to be—she feinted towards him, sharp talons stretched out, while Diego watched passively.
“…Leos?”
And everything changed about him; his ears flicked forward, his head snapped around, and the years drained from his shoulders as instinct kicked in and told him to be the strong one, be the shield. Because her voice, it was so tentative in some way, like, like maybe he wasn't real, just a lingering shaft of sunlight even after the sun had set—something that could be scared away.
And secondly, because the moment he laid eyes on her, the little ghost holding his heart with its cold hands was forgotten, shoved to the back of his mind.
She looked like shit.
She looked worse than he could remember having seen her, curled up on a crystal-dusted floor with tears flooding her cheeks and all sorts of gross things getting spilled on his mane.
Then, she had been ravaged by fresh loss; now, she looked like something about a week too late to its date with their grave.
"Elding?" The name slipped out of his mouth, not surprised, but more like the kind of shocked worry, the kind where you're still just standing in the same spot because you don't know what the fuck to do to solve it but all you want to do is rush over there and hope that something can be done.
Who cared that she was Ophelia's child. Who cared that Ophelia had more or less threatened him to keep his paws off of her.
Who cared that her name was actually Roskuld.
She was coming over, slow and ambling, such a stark difference from that idiotically flapping owl (Diego's appraisal of the situation, mind), and looking so rugged, so worn, so, so.. His mouth worked soundlessly before he left the comfort of his pillar, hooves clanging on the marble floor as he jogged over to her.
And what do you say? You look like shit?
No. If she'd had some kind of half-smile, maybe he would've—if she'd been covered half in thistles, maybe he would've. But she wasn't. She was covered in the filth of life, something that ate at her, and sat too deep to shake off.
What's happened to you?
And maybe, that's what you should ask, worried eyes skipping this way and that over her body, 'brows drawing closer and closer together as his heart snarled out who do I need to kill?
"What's wrong?" he breathed to her, softly, the moist night air turning his voice to a puff of translucent smoke.
What's wrong? he echoed with his heart, dark muzzle slowly reaching out to touch her cheek.
[ CHEST BUMP? I'LL D*** BUMP YOU BRO @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
Fucking nailed it.
At least that’s how you felt as you swooped in towards those owls—I mean, sure, maybe you were probably only a third their height with none of the class or the dignity but hey! You were an owl! You were feathery and you were flying and it was awesome because now you were in on the joke.
Heavy wings fell and something white and sharp flew for you—and maybe in a different life, in a different universe, your ass would’ve been grass and you would’ve been sitting pretty in something’s stomach as a weak-ass lunch. But you felt no fear as you saw the large snowy female swoop for you—if anything it excited you, spurring on that blind, star-struck devotion as she showed off her skills. So fucking cool--your mind was blowing and it was erupting in the back of my head and it felt like stardust flowing everywhere as you dove away from her talons, tiny wings beating swiftly in a tempo much quicker than hers as you tried to gain altitude away from her attacking (but not really) talons.
You swerved in the sky, much, much clumsier than she was—your happiness almost embarrassing to look at, your eyes wide and cheerful as you made all sorts of hooting noises (which were more like trills, let’s be honest, your ass wasn’t all owl like you believed yourself to be), wondering why the other one wasn’t joining in the obvious game you were playing with them. It was like a club—oh god, it was probably the most awesome coolest thing ever and this was probably the best day in your life.
My chest started glowing for you—well. Okay, not gonna lie. It was already glowing but your fiery happiness was making the glow almost too intense for me, a tangible pain that I had to breathe through steadily in order to take it. It was your happiness doing it—your happiness and that name Elding that I still didn’t understand, but tugged at me something fierce.
*“Elding?”*
How could something I didn’t understand mean so much anyway?
I stopped walking when he noticed me, whirling around to see me, my n…name slipping out of his lips with much more alarm than I was expecting. The very name itself was enough to make my bite my lip to keep me from—from what? Was I trying to keep some tears stuck in my skull again? It was easier this time, at any rate; Hototo had been a sudden thing that crashed down around me, a thing I hadn’t had time to process, a thing that caused a sadness to well up so violently that it had exploded outward, shattering crystals and plunging into hearts. But I had carried this thing for some time now, letting it haunt me at nights, during the day, whenever my eyes got too heavy. It was…
…it was becoming familiar, I guess.
But I wasn’t expecting to see the immediate worry in his eyes, the alarm—fear almost—contorting ice-like features of his face. But wait—oh yeah, I haven’t been sleeping, haven’t I? And come to think of it, my stomach was roiling in a way that I had come to ignore, because it was better than feeling an oily coat of nausea for letting anything slip down this throat. And I guess at this point the haze in my eyes was hard to ignore; maybe once upon a time I could’ve hidden it, acting all kinds of angry and ferocious like always, but I didn’t have the energy for it at that point.
I didn’t want to fake it. Not with Lee.
I wanted…I wanted to let it go. I wanted someone to know. Someone who could handle it; someone who wasn’t ruined by the very sight of me, who wasn’t sabotaged by my very presence. Who didn’t ”remember” something awful whenever they looked into my eyes.
*"What's wrong?"*
Everything, my mind screamed.
“Everything,” my voice whispered.
I stood frozen as he touched my cheek—keeping myself still, absolutely still, because his touch was almost enough to break down the dam behind my eyes and I…I didn’t want to break down again. Not now. And the other part of me wanted to fling myself at him, clutch at him, swing my head over his shoulders and let myself hold him and be held because I…
I…
…I don’t even know.
So I just stood still.
But I spoke to him, looking up at him with haunted eyes. “Lee,” I asked, something like a plea coming in my voice, “how do you fix a world that’s fucked by default?”
My breathing was shallow—but I did my damndest to keep it steady and I guess I was succeeding. “It’s like,” I blabbed on, letting my mouth run with Lee—because it was a thing I was able to do with him, “It’s like…we were just united together, this whole big-ass team against the murders and the Moon Goddess ‘n everything. But now it’s like…the moment shit gets too calm, someone’s gotta start some shit and fuck it all up and I don’t even know—“
The intensity in my gaze rose as I looked at him. “There was an invasion, Lee.” My voice turned desperate and broken, the image of those two little babies and that deranged woman swimming in my vision, “Some assholes from the Edge and the Basin just—they just jumped into the Falls and I still don’t understand why but it’s like—“ My chest started to heave; I stumbled closer to Lee, somewhere where his chest would be, blindly groping for an embrace that would soothe the wild rocking thing in me. “I met these two little girls, Lee,” I damn-near sobbed into his neck, “I met them crying in the meadow and they were so confused and scared and angry and I told them it would be okay but how do I fix this shit for them? How do I beat away the armies of two herds? Why wasn’t I there, Lee?” My voice started rising, almost hysterical. “Why wasn’t I there in the first place? Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Keep this shit tight from assholes running around just—just starting shit ‘cuz they got enough people to do it? Because they fucking can? Who’s that evil?”
“And then I—“ but I cut myself off at that point, because my soul was about to fly out of my mouth (Your mother isn't sure what to do with you? That's your fault. You're awful--) but I wasn’t sure if I could confess that special, personal horror of mine without breaking completely. So I—I shut up awkwardly, my body shivering in a way that had nothing to do with an Orangemoon chill.
my blood is a flood of rubies, precious stones
it keeps my veins hot, the fires find a home in me
“Everything.”
She was still there—muzzle pressed against her cheek, he could feel her, and she was still there even though a roaring blackness had taken over his world. He saw nothing—heard nothing—there was just that surging wave of darkness, vertigo washing through his soul.
He felt nauseous.. out of breath, like he'd been running for days on end, heart trembling and floor falling out from under him.
What's wrong, he had said, and she had said,
everything.
A beast with sharp, poisoned teeth lodged in her back, its black venom already running through her veins.
How do you save someone, when you can barely stand up yourself? How do you fix someone else—fix the everything for them—when you can't even outpace your own demons? They held his tail, and they held it tight, hanging on for the ride (somewhere, white wings were flapping, some strange sense of duty making her play with the bird while Diego feigned disinterest). Last time, he'd just been there. Last time, she'd just needed.. a presence...
This.. was bound to go so much deeper.. and she was a smart kid, she had to be, logic demanded it—whatever it was that was about to come out of her mouth was bound to hurt, in one way or another. It felt like laying his head down underneath an axe, that wait, heart strangled by its own veins.
“Lee,” and the eyes that had stared through her suddenly grew sharper, focus returning, meeting her gaze.
She still looked like shit. Her eyes looked like shit, like the poison had spread there too, clouding up whatever she saw, “how do you fix a world that’s fucked by default?”
How about by asking someone who has the answer?
Mauja's only experience with fucked-up worlds lay in helping to fuck them up, and his mind ran bloodied images in front of his eyes with merciless clarity—memories, every single one of them. Memories. Not dreams, not fantasizes, not some far-off story turned to implausible gossip, not even artistic renditions, but fucking memories and he could still smell the blood.
I don't know what you're talking about, he wanted to protest, why do we have to fix this world, what's wrong with it, I don't know, life sucks, collective suicide?
“There was an invasion, Lee.”
She might as well have punched him in the face.
There was an invasion, Lee.
There was an invasion.
There was an invasion.
There was an invasion.
There was an invasion, Lee.
Some assholes,
invaded.
My name is fucking Mauja and I'm an asshole. Pleased to meet you.
How could he fix her broken, fucked-up world if his own moral compass was apparently pointing in the most goddamned direction? It pointed somewhere, gods knew where, down some shortcut to hell probably, and his breathing was shallow and quiet (did he even breathe at all? he wasn't sure, he couldn't tell, he felt sick and his heart was hammering way too fast, like thunder). He—he—he—he'd fucking been there. He had come there. He'd been asked to come, more or less; he'd come and he'd been ready to fight for a cause he had only borrowed for the moment, because Ophelia had made it seem right. She had given him reason. She had told him it was okay. She had allowed him to become a mule, content to let someone else take responsibility—
They were screaming in his head now, those memories. Screaming, but he hadn't cared, because someone else had said it was okay, that it was right—
But everything was just wrong and he knew nothing and he thought he had known something at least but turns out he didn't and—
And then she asked the question to which he had all the answers.
“Who's that evil?”
Your mother. Archibald, and Kaj. Kahlua. And.. I.
He was still staring away, tense, cold and rigid like a statue—as ever, she shamed him, cradled against his neck, so raw and passionate and.. and.. beneath all those funky words and her electric, nearly savage eyes she had a heart that was so much more golden than his.
Frostheart.
No—he was dead and buried.
"I was there," he finally said, to the night, talons and wings slicing through the air with precise grace, voice as heavy as his heart. Gods, he just wanted to fall to—no, through—the goddamned floor and rewind and never have to have this conversation or think of these things or, and, or.. or, or, and.. and.. running away again, aren't we?
And I wasn't there to stop it.
I was there to fight.
Because I could.
He wanted to defend it—to say that it was the kind of shit that happened, that Kaj and Archibald allowed everyone who wanted to to stay, but war causes trauma, doesn't it?
He thought of he Magnar, and how they had battled for generations to regain their ancestral homeland, taken from them on a whim by the renegade unicorns—and he thought of Myrkdalur, of the exhaustion and the blood and the pain .. and he thought of that first sunrise, of co-existence and peace.
"I am a monster, Elding," he finally said, something quiet burning around his words, around his eyes, a lonely sparrow of flame lighting up the dark for a moment before disappearing in a crackling flash.
You make me a monster.
[ @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
*"I was there.”*
My breath fell out of my chest, squeezed out of me, brittle and cold against his neck. I couldn’t look at him—but why was I allowing myself to touch him? (Because I was still an infant too helpless to do anything but lay in her own filth). I backed up a step, my eyes razing him over, feverish and searching and mournful that he might have a scar or an injury or something else fucked with him that had nothing to do with purple thistles (but thank god I didn’t see anything on him—he was pristine and he looked a bit rounder than the last time I saw him and I guess he was looking fine--)
But I backed up another step to look him in the eye—to force myself to look him in the eye, even though it was a torture and I wanted to hide from him and the failure I had laid at his feet. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I should’ve been there, I should’ve—“ I gasped and shook my head, waving it back and forth as a hot wave of shame started to bubble over my eyes, “I should’ve been there to help you, I should’ve—“
*"I am a monster, Elding.”*
“No, shut up, you’re not,” I said with a broken voice, and I swear I was gonna lose it if I kept looking at him; I tucked my head away, my eyes screwed all the way to the right so they wouldn’t have a chance to even contemplate forming tears. “At least you were there,” I muttered—but it was more like a mewling and I hated myself for it, “At least you were there to fight.”
I clutched at you in my head; I reached for you with crying fingers in my mind, for the glow that sped through you as you flew in the sky, believing yourself a hero. The idea that she was playing with out of a sense of duty simply…flew above your head (snort). You thought it was because she found you as awesome as you found her—and the bubble of admiration swelled in your breast and you’re too young for love but it there was still this puppyish thing going on inside you that made you giddy and flit through the air, a tiny speck of feathers soaring with the greats.
That feeling of euphoria was enough to—well. It at least steadied me and stopped the shaking, and I was glad I didn’t have to depend on Leos’ weight and warmth to keep me grounded. It would’ve felt…awful to touch him again, this piece of trash that didn’t deserve anyone’s touch of any kind that didn’t bring pain with it.
“…I don’t know what to do,” I croaked, the same confession over and over and over again slipping passed my gums and my lips. “Those babies—that woman--how can I…?” My eyes trailed back to Lee—at the way he stood frozen, like he was disgusted, like he was torn with memories of a battle I should have been there to fight--where I should’ve been there to cover his back and beat back the hordes even if it cost us our lives—
“….I really am awful, aren’t I?” But this was a question for me; an answer to the echoes in my head that refused to let me sleep.
Ginnungagap—the primordial void, the yawning gap—was the empty space in which the world began. In the south, it bordered on fire and flame, and past the north, the ice lay thick, layer upon layer upon layer.
"North of the void the storm howled through darkness and cold over the desolate Nifelheim. The rivers welling up from the yawning gap were frozen to ice by Nifelheim's chill. Rime covered the ice."
She was the fires of Muspelheim, and he was the stoic, frozen north—and the space between them was the space where these worlds met.
But in that moment, he doubted something would spring from it, that something would rise from the ashes of their burning souls—that there would be any kind of rebirth. She left him alone in his chill, ice crawling over his skin where she had touched him, and left her traces of warmth.
If she stood by him long enough, maybe he would, finally, crack and melt.
Frost..fucking..heart.
He didn't want to meet her gaze. He didn't want to see what he could practically taste, to have it laid so bare in her eyes that he couldn't ignore it. He didn't want to let her in. He didn't want to tell her the truth. He didn't want to ruin something he had come to cherish more than he had anticipated. He didn't..
He didn't want to have to leave her alone in this dark world, because he knew how fragile she was.
But he was afraid, that it was what was going to happen, that the gap between them would yawn wider and wider until he couldn't detect even the slightest trace of her warmth.
All would be the cold, desolate darkness of his soul—he would be left to walk his lonely realm of stone and ice alone, dragging the heavy, bloodied sword in his wake.
She was protesting, and he didn't meet her eyes, frozen and stubborn, staring into the deepening darkness. Do you know what you are saying? It was the voice of his monster, of his deepest, darkest reason, so smooth and logical, so collected, not at all clenching its jaws together to keep the hot tears from spilling from icy eyes; it's voice nearly a sinister purr, you are sorry you were not there to help me take their home from them?
It hadn't even been a war.
It had been shameful and ridiculous and, yes, disgusting.
“Those babies—that woman--how can I…?”
You can't, he wanted to say, to turn those eyes upon her and stare at her and let her see how the salt nearly burned his whites to red with all that he held back—
But he couldn't. This was hard enough as it was. And the worst part? It was so much more rational than the time when he had yelled at Kahlua.
No, wait—the worst part was that he didn't want to hurt her.
But he feared, was dead certain, that he would.
"You are not awful," he finally said, speaking too slowly, each word cold and dead, simple weight falling from stiff lips. It wasn't her fault. She wasn't to blame. She hadn't been there, a wolf to pick off any stragglers, so ready to fight on slowly diminishing loyalties and whims and.. you have no right, he had yelled at the cretin desecrating Quinn's body.
And what right had Mauja had, to be just another number in the reckoning? What right had he had to stand there, with only a borrowed cause?
What right—when had he ever done something right?
Honesty is hard, brother.
"Elding, I..." And it was so tempting to say Roskuld, just to catch her attention and clear her stubborn ears, but she wasn't Roskuld to him—she was lightning, she was that stubborn kid curled up on the floor and crying because love hurt so damned much. She was.. he didn't know what she was. He just knew that he cared and that he was holding the knife to his own heart, pressing it in bit by bit with words because he felt like a liar, foul and vile. "I wasn't there to defend them," he finally whispered, ears angling back and terror lacing every word—just as it laced every beat of his heart, his pulse a roar, jaw trembling. And at last, he turned his head, eyes looking for hers. Looking at her was the least he could do—what she deserved, to stare into a gaze that was so unused to displaying anything but now it roared fear.
I'm afraid of losing you.
"I was there to make sure the Falls were lost."
It was barely more than a breath, just the faintest swirl of air in that vast, yawning void—that abyss that stretched between them, devoid of anything.
In that moment, it felt infinite.
[ @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
I wasn’t ready.
*"You are not awful,"*
I wasn’t ready.
*"Elding, I..."*
I wasn’t ready.
I was watching the way he seemed so broken, always melancholy. Like there was always something painful gnawing on him; like there was always something with claws spurring him in his back, a creature of ice that pierced him every day, every hour, every second--and oh god I had been ready to comfort him, to soothe the aches in his psyche cuz I knew that losing that fight would fuck him up—
--and he looked into my eyes and it was like shattered glass there, aimed to stab, ready to plunge (that should’ve been my first clue); but I was going towards him to embrace him again, to touch him, maybe, because that was a thing that I could do whenever he was broken and needed to be put together again—
--but I wasn’t ready—
*"I wasn't there to defend them.”*
--I wasn’t ready—
*"I was there to make sure the Falls were lost."*
--I wasn’t ready--
--for everything to b r e a k.
“NO YOU WEREN’T!!" my voice ravaged out of my throat, savaged and ruined and a mess of shattered things, shrill as it emerged from a throat it had destroyed on the way up—because maybe it was my soul I was hurling at him, as I backed away from him, quick, desperate steps that stumbled as I drew away from him—
“No you weren’t, no you weren’t, you’re lying--” and my voice was crumbling as it chanted these stupid, childish things and my eyes were darting at him and around him and over there and here and beneath our feet and in the sky, looking, searching, pleading for a reason, a sign that—
--that this was right--
--or it was wrong and he was telling me a lie, a lie with lips that never lied to me before—
--but the image of those little girls crying in the meadow slid across my vision—
( I can't promise to always be here--)
--that deranged woman cantered across my mind, wondering if I was gonna kill her—
( --but I will never leave you until death takes me--)
--and my own words rang back at me, mocking mocking mocking my sorrow—
(Who’s that evil?)
(They’re made to be broken--)
--and everything in me was breaking, crumbling, crashing and you were falling from the sky from the force of it; my shattering hit you like the force of a cannonball and you lost yourself for a second and you fell for some feet, disoriented and confused, your wings useless against the surge of my—
--my—
--oh god Lee—
--why the fuck—
--why--
“Why?” I asked, my eyes snapping back to him; wide and desperate, my breath wild and broken as my gaze pierced into him, my words echoing in my pupils (why why why why), “Why were you there?” It was damn-near a moan, a dirge of some kind—because this was a day I had long expected to happen.
Lee was always a good thing that couldn’t last. I knew it from the very beginning, when things had started falling inside me at his touch; I knew, I fucking knew that he was something too good to be true, a dream that I had to be woken up from one of these days by the cold slap of reality (I mean, fuck--I didn’t even know his real name and he didn’t know mine either. How could something like that last--?)
The tears I had been perilously close to crying had dried up—or frozen over, I’m not sure which. I stood a ways away from him—like the shatter in my breast had been from that bond I had felt whenever I came near his weight and scent, his presence. Like that bond had snapped and the wires were flailing too wildly to come near again, their points hot and electric and dangerous—ready to lash if you came to close.
It felt like the bond had broken--because Lee had disappeared.
For the first time--I realized I didn't know who this stallion was.
“….Lee,” I said again, so soft, so soft, because my voice was dying and it was nothing but a croak that still wanted to believe he was just a liar, just a liar-- “….Leos. Why were you there?” Give a reason, give a reason that was good, give a reason for those weeping children, that crazy, skeletal mare—
these dead men walk on water
cold blood runs through their veins
the angry river rises
as we step into the rain
It was less than a second—nearly less than a heartbeat, but not quite. His heart had frozen in his chest, ceased its panicked rhythm, held its fucking breath along with the rest of him as he braced for impact.
Not physical impact—not the kind where bodies clash and minds collide and there's blood and bruises and friction.
But the kind of impact where you hear the sterling sound of your glass world breaking, and then you feel it come raining down in a shower of shards. Because this thing, it didn't fall and hit the hard ground—this thing exploded up in the air.
He wasn't ready, either.
He was all sorts of choked, unable to draw breath for that thing lodged in his throat, heart stiff and silent because—because—just because.
“NO YOU WEREN’T!!" she yelled, just a fraction of a moment later, her voice—her voice plunging the fine dagger all the way into his heart, and punching the breath out of him. He tried to draw another one in, to fill up those empty lungs, but he couldn't—the only thing he achieved was a ragged kind of gasp, a hitch through widened nostrils.
I wish I were,
but he couldn't say anything. His control was fraying—he could feel it, at the edges of his eyes, the slight blurring of his vision, in the irrational, erratic twitch of his ears as the one he had sworn to protect slowly began to understand what he had said.
What he had actually said.
Honesty, brother.
It wasn't cathartic. It didn't ease anything. It felt like shards of glass rubbed into his eyes, his throat.. like he was swallowing them and they ripped everything inside up and the only good thing about it was that he didn't have to bear the burden of having lied to her.
It was too late, even if he'd wanted to do it, too late because she'd never believe him if he took it back, and he couldn't do that to her, and oh god that breath was dangerously close to turning into a sob, but he couldn't stand here and fucking cry because he was a monster and he did not deserve her pity or want it or even need it—
—he just needed her.
There was no forgiveness for blind faith; it did not make him any less guilty.
Martyrdom is only a blindfold that increases the bitter pain.
This was no beautiful suffering, not some kind of purge he went through for angelic, higher purposes—there was only the filthy truth of life embedded in those shards as they coursed through his veins, tearing up the things that made life worth living.
I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—
but I can't make it undone.
The worst thing wasn't the truth—the worst thing was that feeling, that thing putting his heart in frozen shackles.
The feeling of having let her down.
He wasn't good enough. He wasn't good enough, for her—he wasn't worthy of her presence, and,
he just brought this pain with him wherever he went, didn't he? Ophelia.. Kahlua.. and now her—Elding. “Why?” she was asking, and the answer was so simple—so disgustingly simple. He had spent the majority of his life rationalizing violence. He had spent the majority of his life practicing violence. He had spent the majority of his fucking life ruining others for his own gain. You don't walk away from that without scars—and his ran across his heart and mind, a kind of callous, desensitization; he had learned not to think. The enemy was a gray and nameless blur, etched too vividly in his memory, blood-stained and—
faceless, that dark voice whispered, they were faceless when you killed them.
It's how easy it was—she had said, we are invading, Midas will pay, and she had played towards his honor and his flawed sense of justice.
She had made it seem noble.
"Ophelia," he answered her bitterly—Ophelia, who always seemed so pristine and so holy, so.. flawless and graceful, so angelic, so.. so harmless.
But she was a demon, wasn't she? Just like the rest of them?
Why had he fought?
A simple request. A simple reason. Something familiar.
—I never laid hands on any of them—
But it didn't matter. He had been ready to. Part of him had wanted to.
Could you abstain violence? Could you live the rest of your life without touching anyone with the force of your fury behind it again? Could you survive without that outlet?
Mauja had no middle ground—when he fought, he fought. When he fought, he tapped on every reserve of anger he had ever hoarded, all those little moments where his control reined in the mounting rage, all those little moments of irritation, and.. and everything he kept locked up in his icy little jar.
Your mother, he wanted to say, to spit out that final thing that was stuck between his teeth—but he couldn't do it. He couldn't do that to her as well,
“No you weren’t, no you weren’t, you’re lying--”
Leos,
ljós. It means light.
Dagrenning... Dögun... Afturelding.
Was there to even be a dawn after this impossible night?
Could he bombard her, burden her, with even more truths? He looked to her, to her eyes, to her sides, her nostrils, all these little signs and his mind replayed her voice time and again. Why?
"She asked me," he whispered, something hot—shame—boiling in his veins, in his voice, touching his tongue with every scalding word. "And I just.. did."
I am a sword drenched in the blood of those my wielder calls enemies.
And so suddenly, it stared him in the eye—the raw, naked truth.
He did not exist.
He had a body, one of flesh and blood.
But he was soulless.
Mauja was a name as empty as his deceivingly white husk.
[ @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
05-13-2015, 03:04 PM (This post was last modified: 05-13-2015, 03:16 PM by Roskuld.)
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
Ophelia, he says to me.
(--from miles and miles away--)
And—get this—I actually didn’t know who he was talking about at first.
You flailed in the air, lost and disoriented for some moments—the feeling of my shattered psyche scraping against the edges of your mind. As soon as you got control of your wings and your spinning head you rocketed for me, tiny wings beating furiously for me; and when you came upon me there was a little zipsnck! and a burst of lighting and when you landed on me, tangling yourself in my mane, you were this itty-bitty blue-tailed lizard pressed close to my skin, my heartbeat dominating yours—and I loved you for it, I swear I did even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Because you knew I needed you right then, or I needed someone, some trickle of warmth to unthaw my frozen limbs. You could feel how wildly I was shattering on the inside—and how desperately I needed something warm to keep me in place.
Because it was dawning on me--who Ophelia was. I’ve never ever called my Ma by her name; it tasted strange on my tongue and in my head to mark Ma’s red-tipped features as Ophelia. It sounded…right and wrong at the same time, as imperial as she was, as sophisticated and feminine as she was, in ways I would never, ever be able to emulate—but it was cold, hard and harsh around the edges of my mouth as I tasted it, a stiff name for a stiff noble in some stiff land that froze over with the ice of polite, stoic indifference.
And—somehow—that fit, too.
“Of course,” I breathed—my voice ragged with another thing growing to replace the empty thrashing of my shattered heart. It was rage, that same blinding rage that had consumed me the first time I heard the Basin’s name associated with that travesty of war. “Of course, of course she asked you, of course--“ I babbled darkly, the words loose out of my mouth, scrambled and directionless as I shook my head repeatedly, as though trying to knock the sense out of it—
--of course it would be my Ma to make Leos into a monster--
--of course that's how fate would play out--
“’I thought for years that those who resided in this land were evil fools’,” I screeched in a mocking tone, my voice bitter and so, so sick, “ ‘but fucking Shapes invited me to see differently.’ And look! Look—I guess they aren’t such assholes aren't they? Aren’t they?!” You squirmed in my mane and I guess you were trying to clutch me and let me know that everything was gonna be alright but there was a black haze coming over me and I couldn’t stop it and—
“She’ll say anything, won’t she?” I spat, bitter poison dripping from my fangs and you were learning awful things about the name “Ophelia”, “she’ll say anything to get you to do anything she wants and who cares if it’s a lie? Who cares if it shreds you up later? ‘I thought this herd was evil but now I see differently’—‘Given the chance, I'd have you all over again’—“ I was spewing things at Lee that I’d forgotten he didn’t know; that I’d forgotten to keep hidden. “Well way to FUCKING PROVE YOUR POINT MA!!”
I kicked at the ground; a stone was thrown from under the striking of my hoof and above my back there was a CRACK and a sizzle as wings sprouted there for seconds, emerging by the heat of my passionate despair.
But it fell from me, almost instantly—and I stood there gasping and empty, left with these frayed ends of something between Leos and me. My eyes were wet—but I’d forgotten that I wasn’t supposed to cry anymore. I was unraveling—exhaustion was catching up—and I wobbled where I stood, unfocused and unbalanced, the world seeming to tilt underneath me even as my own world started crashing all around.
“….why?” I asked again, a croak in the back of my throat. Why did it happen? Because for all the screaming and the ruin and the heartbreak and the shattered homes and families and alliances and trust--for all of it, no one has yet to tell me why it happened in the first place.
It was a despair so much deeper than any he had felt before—a choking, roiling blackness that settled like a fine film of dust over his heart, veins, lungs, eyes. He could barely breathe, too allergic, too disgusted, to himself—just knowing that those lungs would swell with air, with life, but that all the sparks in his heart were dead, cold embers. He could see it—he could see it in his mind, feel it, that empty, barren cavern in his chest.
Stale blood in dusty veins.
I don't exist.
Elding was yelling, screeching, her voice transformed into the voice of a wounded beast spilling out its black, poisoned blood—and somewhere in her back, he knew there was the shaft of an arrow sticking out, and he knew that he had helped put it in her back.
But he was just staring at her, too shocked to say anything—to feel anything.
I don't exist.
He was nothing.
He had it, hearts and lungs and red blood, oxygen fueling his farce of a life—but that was it. That was it. It didn't matter what he told himself. It didn't matter what others told him. It didn't matter whatever little kernel of fucking gold Sarazheha had thought he'd seen buried in the ice.
It didn't matter, because it was all lies anyway. It didn't matter because he was what others had made him—what others expected of him—what was needed.
“….why?” she asked, so pitiful and pathetic, trying to find again that creature of light she had made him into—but finding, what? The disappointment of his hollow soul, and the monster her fucking Ma had made him into?
And what the fuck do you answer to that, the spectral images of wings still burned into his retinas?
Because I'm expendable.
Because I do.
Because Mauja didn't exist.
He was breathing fast and shallow, suddenly aware of it, like he was trying to swallow the fucking panic with his lungs, or somehow dodge it, but suddenly he was backing away from her with his head high and eyes wide, rolling in their sockets—
—and his ass collided with a pillar and he screamed, a sound unlike any he had ever made in his life as it exploded out of his throat, cutting through the heavy night air and out into the ruined tranquility—
—and somehow he was half outside the structure, shoulder sliding down smooth marble to join his shattered heart on the ground as he collapsed in a graceless pile, sobbing and doing something, like he was trying to hide beneath his forelegs or claw his eyes out against his knees or just anything to get the terror fiend out of his head.
Because it sat in there, cold and dark and smooth, with a Cheshire grin and purring, content, because finally, finally he had understood—finally he had understood that he did not exist beyond the soft sound of his own name.
Mauja—the empty soul.
I don't exist.
[ 1,000 whoop whoop pull up @[Roskuld] also idk what the fuckkkk happened here. ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
05-16-2015, 01:38 AM (This post was last modified: 05-16-2015, 02:06 AM by Roskuld.)
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
Why, why, why, why, why.
It was a chorus in my head.
Why, why, why, why, why.
It had harmony and everything to it.
My body still shivered, my joints and my shoulder blades aching in a way that screamed tired. The way your body tries to tell you you’ve been staying up too late and the moon’s been watching you fuck up. You should go lay down. You should go lay down. Even the lizard ass in my eye was telling me to go lay my ass down, because inside you were screaming, except you don’t scream in your mind and lizards can’t scream anyway so you weren’t actually making noise.
You were just so confused, though. Seeing Lee was supposed to make me happy, like it did before. That’s what you’d come to associate with Lee; stupid, blinding happiness that I couldn’t control, unraveling inside me in a way that was impossible to ignore—blossoming like the petals of a flower that grows in a place that’s too hot and humid to keep in your house, so you gotta let it bloom freely where you don’t normally water but it’s cool cuz it keeps itself alive anyway. You didn’t understand this all-consuming shatter within me that was happening; you didn’t understand why I was despairing and so was he, so was he, and you didn’t understand why we didn’t run to the meadow to cover ourselves with thistles again. You didn’t understand. I was supposed to be able to sleep later; I wasn’t supposed to be collecting another nightmare to keep myself jostled and walking like a dead man.
I kept myself breathing—in, out, in, out, steady, a rhythm, getting the chilly air into my chest to circulate the bullshit a little bit more. My eyes were vague, off to the side—flooding and swimming and angry with the water that was gushing around, salty, bitter, stinging—
--WHOA SHIT—
--and then my head shot in the air, my everything, from ass to nose to ass, rigid-alert with the most powerful blast of a voice I’d ever heard in my life. It was ice-water on my nerves—a wailing siren on my brain—and it jolted my body awake, or at least as close to awake as it could be, and you scurried into my mane and I didn’t blame you cuz if I had a mane to scurry into I’d do that shit, too.
I’d never thought a mortal voice could make such a sound.
And I was watching Lee—I was watching him back away from me, watching the terror descend on his eyes, watching everything unravel so suddenly, because ice usually melts, doesn’t it—but this was an explosion of crystals and shards, the detonation of a mask that he had kept so pristine, so calm with a composed, controlled sadness that only allowed tears to drip instead of rush out in one giant explosion of panic--
--and I was watching as he collapsed against the marble pillar (shattered crystals at his feet), clawing at himself, like he was ripping himself apart, like he was ripping himself apart--
--and all I could feel for him in that moment, sudden and blinding and pure and oh so hot so hot so hot—
--was hate.
“No you fucking don’t,” I snarled, wild with the thing that was throbbing in me, and you were beside yourself as you emerged from my mane, zpsnck!ing into an owl again, flapping about wildly as I stomped for Lee where he lay broken on the ground, marching with hell’s fury in my eyes—
--because you could feel the compulsion rising in my breast, could feel the need, the uncontrollable urge, the desire to wreck his shit--
--to beat him further into the ground--
--to kill this sorry bastard--
(--You have no reason to fucking cry—)
--and it was the very first time you’ve ever pleaded with me not to fight someone—
--but I was marching and he was sniveling on the ground and my temper was flaring and there was an image, a terrible, fiery image of me—
--stomping down--
--throttling him--
--spitting into his open rib cage--
--and as I bore down on him I reached with my muzzle, my teeth bared—
--(to catch him by his ear)—
--(to rip that shit off)—
--(to catch him by the neck with my fangs and wring him out to dry)—
--and when I clamped down, I had a huge mouthful of his—
--mane.
“Get UP!!” I screamed through the thick, wavy locks in my mouth (well I guess it sounded like “Geh’ UGHG!!” or something), “Get up, get up, you’re not nearly done with this shit and I ain’t gonna let you--”
--what?
Quit?
Is that what he was doing?
I yanked against him, pulling his mane with such a tight grip of my teeth—willing him to rise and face the mess he had allowed to have happen. Because I don’t care what kinds of words MaOphelia could have used to turn him into a monster—the fact of the matter is, Leos was a grown-ass man and had the capacity to think about some babies in a grassy waterfall.
He was a grown-ass man who was tall enough to look me in the eye and tell me why.
He was a grown-ass man who could face his actions (his actions) and own them, or fix them. (or try.)
He was a grown-ass man who still had breath enough to fight.
Well, fuck. He had wanted to fight so bad. Here’s the motherfucking battle.
(get up.)
[Here's the Why Song for shit's 'n giggles :D]
"talk"
And it was just that fucking thing tearing at him, at his skull, and he didn't know if it was trying to get in or out. It was just there and he was rubbing his head vigorously at his knees, pawing frantically, eyes wide and dry and mad but each breath broken, rattling out of his lungs along with a mouthful of panic.
I can't—
Damnit, I can't—
Because he knew it, bone-deep, soul deep, and he saw it in everyone's eyes, how they knew it too—
—angel—
—and then they saw that he was no angel and he saw that fucking light go out in their eyes when they realized that he wasn't going to save them, when they realized he wasn't some fucking savior or paladin—when they realized that he was just a hollow vessel for whatever they fucking projected on him.
He felt it out, like the snake of a tongue flicking out for their scents, and he adapted. He became. He lived for them, and did for them—
—and suddenly he couldn't reconcile it anymore.
There was Phi's need pitted against Elding's need.
The war machine, the winter soldier, pitted against the dawn's light. A demon, and an angel. Both of them existed within the same fragile, white body, but neither of them existed beyond the moment.
Who was he when he was alone? Who was he when he slept, when he dreamed?
Angel or demon?
Who the hell was Mauja?
I don't exist.
It was another ragged gasp coming down his throat, sides heaving as he inhaled panic. You don't understand—
She was a titan. She was a fucking goddess. She could fucking fly. She was destruction, annihilation, she was his hope and his dreams and his heart, but more than anything, she was—
—Elding.
Her teeth connected with his mane, forcing another shattered scream out of his raw throat, as if her very presence burned him—but he couldn't say anything, his fractured self like a shattered cup desperately trying to hold water.
It just ran between his fingers, like his life.
And somewhere, deep inside of those unworthy pits of his heart, anger ignited.
It was deep—a slow flame flickering through his marrow, a raw darkness edging his eyes—not the sheets of blue fire, not that rage.. something slower. Something deeper.
Something old and bitter.
When she had shattered, he had given her time.
When he shattered, she gave him nothing.
Demands and her sharp teeth and what the fuck had she meant to say when she shut up around his rugged mane? (It hurts, let go.) Was it because he had let her down? Was it because she was disappointed that he was flawed? Why the fuck couldn't—?
"SHUT UP!" he yelled hoarsely and propelled himself to his feet, forcefully shoving his neck into her mouth, shoulder coming up like a battering ram and he hoped it fucking hurt, that he could shove her aside.
Dry-eyed he spat, "Do you think I'm—?", but nothing more came out, his voice abruptly dying off, sides heaving and veins still running on empty panic.
I don't exist.
What do you think I'm doing?
Why do you think I fell to the fucking ground? For shits and giggles?
Do you think I'm fucking alright?
Your world broke.
My world broke.
Why is yours worth more?
Black nostrils were wide, his eyes rimmed red with something he couldn't get off his tongue.
Because I am evil.
Who's that evil, Roskuld?
"Angel," he whispered, so broken, so bitter, wondering why he still stood up, why he still talked, why he still fucking cared.
Where the hell did he find the energy to go on? Why the fuck did he still feel like he owed her anything, least of all the secrets of his black fucking empty heart?
Frostheart.
A name as empty as his future. "Angel," he said again, still fractured, standing lopsided and defeated—rugged.
"I see it in their eyes—I hear it in their words—angel," and his voice was a whisper, but he thought she didn't care—why would she?
Why would she care about him?
"But then that light goes out. And they realize that it was just a trick of the light."
So cold. His voice bit the chilly air, heart slowly sealing itself back in its cage as the ice patched up the holes blown in his armor.
The porcelain mask slid back in place.
Ice offered his body the rigidity he lacked; head coming up high, the weight falling off his shoulders, grace settling back in his posture.
You wanted your monster.
Have it.
"Why what?" he asked of her, so cold, so cold,
—and something in his heart whispered 'you know nothing of my murders', because he had tried to be a monster for Kahlua, too.
But he couldn't.
And he couldn't be a monster for Elding, either.
He couldn't be a monster for anyone.
He didn't want to be a monster (but he was one all the same).
He didn't wait for an answer—it happened too fast, he shattered again, fell apart, took a step backwards with hesitancy and fear written all over his fucking body, in every single way it could be shown.
"I don't want to live like this anymore," he whispered, so quiet he wondered if she would hear it through the haze of her wrath.
Even if she did, he doubted she would care.
He had fallen too low, and hit the ground too fast, too hard.
He had seen that light go out in her eyes, too.
Angel.
[ you get *my* 1000th Mau post too.. the first Mau post on this account was by ali. :P @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
GET UP was the challenge.
SHUT UP was the answer.
…well, that and a crash, a battering-ram into flesh, a demon unfurling his wings and charging, launching like a tower of ivory straight at me—
--into my mouth—
--and he was barging into me, his shoulder throwing itself into the center of my breast—all of his thick weight hurtling and throwing me away from him—
--and my jaw clamped down on my tongue and there was a sharp snck! and something warm was starting to gush in my mouth along with the taste of iron and salt--
--and I stumbled away from him, damn-near bustin’ my ass on the grass as the force of his shove coursed through me. I glared at him, my eyes hot irons—but I shut up, partly because of the blood that I continued to swallow and swallow and swallow so he couldn’t see—
--but mostly because he was swinging.
*"Do you think I'm—?"*
What? I challenged in my head, mute for the time being, my face and my mouth all scrunched up around a tongue that was split in agony and much, much too tender to allow to touch anything inside my mouth. My eyes had already been wet, so the tears fell easily; thick droplets spilling from my lids, even though, by all rights, they should have been evaporated under the heat of my eyes. Battle blood was pumping through me (choking me, flowing from my tongue--) and all of my exhausted nerves screamed for a fight and he was looking at me—
--furious--
--and something rose in me, powerful and grappling with this wild, searing hatred that boiled in my gut, something that soared on wings of white where the hatred gurgled and grumbled and curdled like something spoiled—
--but he caught me off guard with his words—the cracked things he was saying to
me. He shocked me so much that my ears perked forward to hear him and my mouth started pooling with unchecked bloodflow.
Angel.
I see it in their eyes—I hear it in their words—angel.
But then that light goes out. And they realize that it was just a trick of the light.
I watched him crystallize—a deep-freeze settling on his features. My hairs stood on end and my mane became a jagged beehive as I watched something perfect and glacial settle on his features—I watched as his eyes turned blue, so blue, and dark with a thing that angered me and scared me so much more. I wondered—I dreaded--if I was finally looking at the stallion who stood before me. I wondered if I was seeing the real chronicle I had dubbed “Leos”, the true legacy that hid beneath layers and layers of frost and falsely warm blood. I wondered if there was a reason O-phelia could talk to him, convince him that stealing a home and letting massacre lay at your feet was a good thing, a just thing that could be condoned.
The fear in me was real; my eyes sparked and blood-stained teeth were bared, because my heart was breaking and I was so scared that my hunch was right and Lee had never, ever existed in the first place.
….but.
…but then he—broke again.
It shattered (again), that second meticulous mask of a murderer—it fell and shattered against grass and marble stones and suddenly I was looking at a man I had met on a moonlit beach before the shadows had swooped in around us—I was looking at a man I had found on top of the world, the tears frozen to his face and his voice croaking from his chest in much the same way—
I don't want to live like this anymore.
(I'm falling apart--)
--and it was suddenly possible that I could be looking at a man I called Leos.
“Then do—“ I started—choking for a minute, because I had forgotten to swallow the blood and it had pooled in my mouth, much too disgusting to shove in the back of my throat anymore. I spat it out, and my lip was stained with it a little but I kept talking despite the torture of talking with a bitten tongue, “Then don’t,” I tried again, and I spoke just as softly, my voice destroyed with the blood and the shouting and everything bubbling behind the scenes.
I stepped toward him.
“Lee…” I began—hesitant, because this was a delicate thing and I can’t think of my words before I speak them for some reason—but I was scared of letting my mouth run this time, unsure if it knew the right words at this moment. “….Lee,” I said again, the seconds (heartbeats) ticking by and willing my mouth into action, “Please, tell me. Please.” I took a shuddering breath. “Why did they fight? Why did you fight?”
I took another step towards him.
“Tell me so I can fix it,” I said, my voice tremulous and desperate and not even really believing in itself, either, “Tell me so I can at least try. Tell me so I can start. I don’t—I don’t understand.” I gulped the blood back. “I’m so lost, Lee. I can’t let it happen again but I’m so lost and I can’t patch a thing I can’t wrap my head around.”
I took another step.
And another.
“Are you tellin’ me the stallion I knew was nothing but a hoax?” And there was something dangerous there, on the tip of my blood-soaked tongue; something silent and slithering and ready to pounce his ass. “Are you tellin’ me the guy who shoved me away from the dark was an illusion? Are you tellin’ me the man that held me against my own stupid-ass destruction was all smoke and mirrors?”
Another step.
“Are you sayin’ the only reason I’m standing here now is because of a trick of the light?”
Because fuck you if that’s what you’re saying.
I reached for him—his chest, that place I had touched him before, a deja-vu moment but I didn’t care if it—if it did what it was supposed to do. It felt like a last chance; like I was groping the bottom of a black lagoon with my hooves and I was searching for Lee’s cold limp to grasp and pull from the mire. (But he had to be there, he had to exist--)
One step closer—another inch nearer to his chest.
I had gotten him on his feet—now I just needed to keep him together.
“…Leos,” I breathed, ruined voice inching out of ruined lips and battle-scared tongue, “….what do you want?”
He was tired beyond belief, and not in the way that demands sleep. He was tired of these thoughts, of these questions—of these looks he got, the ones that whispered you used to be so much more. He was tired of thinking, of being—
—she charged at him, her gait sort of uneven, jagged, pieces of her heart bleeding out through the cracks, and her eyes were so dead as she came at him, horn pointing for his heart—
—tired of never being good enough.
There was blood on her teeth.
One ear, porcelain white rimmed with black, flicked, uncertain, hesitant, even as he took that single step backwards with all his defenses falling down again—there was blood on her teeth but he couldn't feel anything, aside from the heat of a bruise blossoming on his shoulder.. tiny pinpricks of pain at the roots of his mane. That ear flicked again, half-forward, then leaning back again; nothing he felt answered the question.
And there were tears on her cheeks.
“Then do—“ she began, pausing to spit blood out, and it stuck on her mouth in some kind of mockery he couldn't place—and he just stared at her, wary and hesitant and afraid because he knew just as little of her as she knew of him (or?).
There's nothing to know about me.
His breathing had grown quiet with the fear, the instinct to run frozen into complete stillness. It suddenly sat too deep.
And it was composed out of a million different things—I don't exist—What are you doing?—Please—I don't want to hurt you—You're crying—
—I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry.
“Then don’t,” the face of his demise said, so quiet, choking on blood that must've flowed from somewhere within, black hooves drawing her closer to the ghost she was hunting—
"I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying—" he babbled brokenly, eyes wide and shining in the first starlight—and he backed, afraid of letting her closer, of letting her in again, because when she had exploded out of his chest the mess she'd left of his heart had hurt.
And it would hurt again.
Everything would hurt, always.
And he would've kept on backing, matching her step for step, if it wasn't for those pillars—those damned, cursed, fucking marble pillars some long dead genius had put in this sorry corner of the world. His ass came up against the smooth surface again, and for a moment he tried to fold in on himself, a brittle leaf blown over by the night breeze, but he couldn't—he couldn't escape her.
He couldn't escape reason.
He couldn't escape himself.
But you don't exist—
She needed answers. She—gods, he didn't know what she needed, or what he needed, or anything, but the reason it hurt so fucking much to watch her white-hot eyes and tears was because he cared—because he wanted to.. fix this?
No—he wanted to fix her.
With each word she spoke—each step she took—he breathed, quiet and shallow, too fast, too fast, fleeing down the long, winding corridors of his mind.
It was coming apart. It was all coming apart.
Backed up against the Rotunda, he could barely understand what she was saying, what she was asking, and then her eyes changed—her voice changed—but she kept advancing, relentless and merciless and—her mouth still smeared with the red she kept swallowing, her cheeks still glistening in the autumn starlight.
She was close—she was close, and he was terrified, his heart hammering wildly in his broken chest, but it couldn't get anywhere.
“Are you sayin’ the only reason I’m standing here now is because of a trick of the light?”
"I don't know," and it just slid out of his mouth with one of his breaths, tainting the air between them, and he choked in the next inhalation—because she was there again, so close that he could practically feel the heat emanating from her bruised body, and—
Memories overlapped.
"I'm falling apart," he admitted in a small whisper.
“Hey… Hey…guy…. …Come on. It's cold as hell.”
"Ljós," he whispered to himself as he followed her, his mind unable to find the exact words it wanted to describe the situation, the feeling.
Light.
“….what do you want?”
"I don't know," he repeated, dumb, babbling, the depth blown out of his eyes—they were just wide and pale, with.. with nothing underneath. He blinked, he—he breathed, he lived, but he couldn't think because everything was just a jumbled mess—why—and each time he reached for his thoughts they slipped out of his grasp, like smoke—
—but she was there, anchoring him with her touch, leaving a bloodied little mark across his heart (where her mother's horn should've gone in) and it was what kept him from running.
"You're crying," he whispered, head moving gracelessly; the tip of his muzzle connected with her cheek (again), but without finesse—more like it collided with her, as if he wasn't quite in control of what he did anymore. "You're injured," he went on, his voice a hot whisper against her head, and he realized—he realized in the back of his mind that he ought to go lay down.
Before he fell back down.
[ @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
I had him cornered—I had him boxed in like some wounded, deranged little creature standing in the face of some great wolf licking his chops, daydreaming about the taste of rabbit flesh and red-hot blood (on his tongue). I saw how he breathed; I watched how his eyes rolled; I listened to how he stammered, how he groped for something in his head that slipped passed his grasp and out his mouth anyway (I'm trying I'm trying I'm trying—)—
--and I touched him there, where I had before—leaving a mark of blood on him, oops, didn’t mean to do that, I wasn’t trying to mark him a beast like that, like I was bathing him in the blood of a violence I had caused from him—
(--well fuck there’s an irony there that I wasn’t paying attention to--)
He was answering me; well, honestly he was answering a couple of questions all at once. I don't know, he was saying to me. I don’t know. I walk and I talk and I fight when I’m called but I don’t know why and that explains a hell of a lot more shit than one might realize.
Something was still burning in me and the hate was morphing and I wasn’t able to hold onto it—to direct it where I wanted it to go, to be useful instead of some seething mass in me just…smoldering there, toxic and dumb. I didn’t want his I don’t knows (I DIDN’T WANT HIS I DON’T KNOWS!!) because there were babies sobbing in a meadow and a woman who had thought I had come there to kill her and I wasn’t gonna stand there and allow the reason for all that to be I don’t know--
--but it…it slipped.
I slipped.
I…I, uh.
He…
He did a thing I wasn’t expecting.
He did a thing I didn’t want.
But he was looking at me, seeing the blood on my lip—and the heaviness around us suspended in a thick cloud and a thunderstorm and we were in the eye of it and everything froze because he was—
--he was touching me again, his lips knocking into my cheek and into the trail of tears there and he was speaking into my skin You’re crying and he was noticing my tears—
--(again)—
--and he was speaking against me, his breath hot against my ears as said You’re injured, noticing the red on my lip—the scars on my body—
--(again)—
--and…and everything just…
..it all fell, man.
Like, I just…I…
…I couldn’t do it.
My body was aching and it was exhausted and it was done and so hurt, so hurt with things that had been whirling inside me, slicing me from the inside while the rest of the world poked me on the outside—and there was a my Ma and there was the glacial words that were spoken in her stead, those words she didn’t have the guts to say to my face—and there had been an invasion and the tears of children at my feet and the insanity of a mare who had lost so much in my face—and there were sleepless nights tucked under my skin with hungry days latched beneath my chin and your worry spinning in my gut, spinning in a circle that danced at the heels of red, smiling eyes--
--and someone was touching me, and noticing the blood on my lip.
…and I suck.
I should’ve killed him.
(I don’t know why those babies were crying--)
I should’ve slit his throat and we’d all be happier for it.
(I don’t know why I act the way I do but I do it anyway because why the fuck
not--)
I should’ve been the strength in this equation to do what was supposed to be done.
…but I couldn’t. He cared about me.
And…fuck if I didn’t care about him, too.
And I remembered—I remembered when I hated myself in that crystal cavern, and how I blasted the place apart in my anguish (I don’t know what I’m supposed to be--) and how he had stood there and let me be a wild, aimless storm—
--and how he had been there anyway, when I was done, crumbled on the floor, to hold me in place while I smashed apart—
--and how it was after that that could tell him why I cried.
…so.
He touched me and I melted and crumbled because I guess I ain’t shit.
But he touched me there, on my cheek, his lips brushing my tears and I—I rushed at him, my head swinging over his neck to grab at him, to pull him toward me so he could shatter against me like I had shattered against him and maybe I could find a way to press those piece of him together hard enough so they’d stick—
--and my tongue was swelling and it’s probably for the best because I don’t know what I would say (we fucking suck, oh god we fucking suck) because I wanted to hate him, I almost, almost wish he had ended up being a monster that I could attack and try and demand some weird type of justice by his shed blood—
--but he wasn’t any of that. He was some guy I cared too much about—who cared about me more than an entire herd of innocents, who cared enough to see the blood on my lip instead of asking why are we fighting--
.. but you won't see me fall apart
'Cause I've got an elastic heart
What did I do—
I'm sorry I'm sorry what did I do—
But it didn't matter. It didn't matter why he had been out on that late summer's day, or why he had cared enough to seek out the tattered, tired princess from the north. It didn't matter what words she had said to make him join up with their army. It didn't matter that all he'd done had been guard Kahlua and watch the battle with the bile rising in the back of his throat because it had been a graceless slaughter—
If they had been anything but the Edge—
If it had been the Plague—
The Falls would've run red with blood.
Nothing mattered, but the tears on her face, and the blood on her lips, that blood diluted with saliva and smeared onto his chest—the tears that he had put there.
Someone had blown holes in his memory, gaps of blackness ringing with the word why (and visions of empty stone vaults), but he wasn't dumb—he wasn't logically stupid, even if he was an idiot. He could put two and two together (never mind that he thought it was five every once in a while). He knew, just as deeply as he had known that terrifying, fading thing about himself, that he had made her cry. That something about him had unleashed that flood again.
That knowledge roiled beneath the surface of his glassy eyes, fueled his slow, drone-like movements, and was the one thing he clung to to keep from drowning: you hurt and it's my fault.
You hurt and that matters.
It was the only thing that mattered—it mattered more than her anger, than his bitter, wounded anger, and it mattered more than whatever wrong he'd done.
It mattered because it was her. It mattered because it was here, and now.
It mattered because the slow trickle of salty water tickled his nose (if for no other reason but please for that—).
She didn't say anything.
He didn't say anything—his words were spent. The rest of the situation was beyond his comprehension, all those little things—
—she made it seem noble—
—they did to them what was once done to me—
—I never stop to think—
—I'm sorry I yelled—
—I'm sorry—
—I'm fucking sorry—
—all those little things rolling beneath the lid of his mind, those erratic wisps of smoky thought flitting out of his grasp, tantalizing because he needed them—he needed them to fix this shit because she had asked him things and he had to answer because it mattered, because it mattered to her, because she had made him see his own evil—
—but he was just so winded, whiskers twitching, eyes vacant as he stared and he didn't know what to do because all he wanted was to fix her damn tears and the blood on her lips but how do you even do that—?
I need to lie down—
Please, just let me go lie down—
Where he had screamed before at her touch, he simply—well—whatever the fuck it was it wasn't a graceful sound, swallowing his own inhalation in surprise, it sounded like a noise something dead might try to make—
—but she was there, all of a sudden, leaving more trails of pinkish red in his violated hair, the entire width of her neck pressed against his, chin pressing down as she held him and—and—and—and I still need to lay the fuck down—but she was holding him, like he had never been held before (I've always been the strong one, I've always been the shield, I've always been the one who holds) with all the unspoken forgiveness that promised that she would still kick his ass for this—
And he couldn't help but think that she was about twenty seconds too late.
He blinked his pale, empty eyes.
They were dry.
He poked his brittle soul.
It was fractured, but hollow.
He needed—wanted—to let it all go—to find some way to just let everything out.
But she had denied him his moment—she had dragged him from the pits of his despair and forced him to stand again. And like always, he had obeyed—he had tried—he had begun to heal in the only way he could, drifting further and further from all that hurt and into a realm of pale nothingness, all in an attempt to be there and answer her and.. and.. and now, when she held him, when she wordlessly asked him to break again,
he found that he felt—
—nothing.
[ @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
My breath was hard like I had been running a marathon (and I guess I was), huffing out of me and into his mane and against him, rough and ragged and uneven like my lungs were still figuring out how to do it. It trembled, too, my breath and everything else inside me—shaking with a poised nerve, waiting, waiting for the crash to happen, bracing myself so when he exploded (like I did) the blast wouldn’t blow me away completely.
And I stood there, waiting on that crash. I stood there clutching him, my grip awkward because he was so much taller than me and the bastard has so much neck you don’t even know, man, but I was still holding him and you were somewhere behind me with bated breath, watching, watching, learning and I’m sorry Cheek—I’m sorry, I love you, I love you so much but I forgot about you in that moment. I forgot about a whole mess of shit, let’s be honest. I forgot—I forgot about anything that had nothing to do with a scent I had etched in my psyche in a painful, radiant way.
I stood there…holding him.
Standing…waiting for the crash.
Waiting….
It shouldn’t be long now…
….
…but it didn’t come.
Something cold crept into me and I gripped him harder, my chin digging into him as I pulled him closer to me, closer than he could ever get, like in my skin or whateve—
--but he felt so…still.
And my breath hitched and so did yours but you kept yourself restrained, keeping the flapping wings to yourself as my head started whirling with things that—that didn’t even make sense--
Oh god, I killed him, didn’t I?
He’s just faking, he’s faking, he’s faking a heart attack--
Bastard’s thinking of a lie, I’m letting him think too much--
Nothing more than a cold corpse standing like marble--
OH GOD HE’S DEAD AND I KILLED HIM BY PULLING HIS MANE TOO HARD--
--and my knees were shaking, my weight even heavier by the dizzying whirl of my mind, a mind that was fraying with tired and the exhaustion of a heart being pulled all kinds ways, up, down, and all around—
--and I was waiting for a shatter that—that wasn’t coming; like, he just stood there in my embrace and I guess he wasn’t running and that was a start but he wasn’t—he wasn’t doing anything--
--but I stood there anyway and even though he was so tall I had to stand on my tip-toes slightly to hold him, I still held him regardless, and everywhere behind me things were cast aside, weights that had been on my mind for so long now (just for now, just for now, I promise)—
--and my neck was straining and my eyes were screwed up with pressure building behind them and I swallowed and swallowed and swallowed gross globules of blood and I coughed and I croaked, “Goddamn you got a huge neck,” and I just stood there because he—
--because he noticed the blood on my lip, didn’t he? He noticed the blood I had caused my damn-self—and he could’ve scoffed, he could’ve walked off then, he could’ve charged me for my impudence and it would’ve been gravy, there could’ve been a fight and one of us would be dead and it didn’t matter who because either of us would be better off—
--but he had cared instead. So I…I had to care too. I had to show him, at least.
white noise in my head
burning ashes on the floor
trouble in the air
I didn't sign up for this war
Crystallize.
His world was settling, rifts closing up with ice as the snow that had whirled about fell back down to the ground—and the horizon stretched endlessly all around him, unbroken in his perfect world of cold white. Things froze inside of him, some kind of stasis.. where the pain was not so vibrant, but.. nothing else was, either.
He knew this state of mind. He knew it better than he wanted to. It was a mental lock-down that was more complete than anything else, as he buried himself beneath six feet of snow and glaciers. And why?
For her. Because he needed to function. And function did not line up with feeling.
But still he was there, clutching at the fading straws of his sadness, of his confusion, of his hurt and his despair—clutching at anything, replaying vicious memories in his head and whispering you're that evil and it's all your fault, but.. but nothing happened. He just stood there, so perfect in his frigid stillness, and still she clutched at him, held him, told him that he could shatter as she had—like she waited for it or clung to him for reasons all of her own, and.. and he still just stood there, neck lowered under her pressure and pale eyes gazing vacantly down her flank.
And he hated it.
He hated the nothingness. He hated knowing that he'd scared his flighty soul off again. He hated not being strong enough to fall apart.
He hated it, because this was another ugly scar forming over his heart—another memory he would have to bear along with the rest.
There had been no purge. He hadn't been able to let it out.
He wondered if he should say something—contemplated doing it, even, felt the words damn it roll around on his tongue but what did he have to damn in her presence, really? She held him and she held him and her distorted voice complained about the size of his neck (I'm sorry) but what—what could he do? What should he do?
Her questions burned like bonfires in his mind.
And he had the calm to answer them, now that he'd lost himself, and wore his skin like a cloak over hollow bones.
Come back.
This wasn't Sarazheha's goddamned fabled honesty, this was—this was what like living soulless was. He wanted that fierce pain lancing through his heart. He wanted the sensation of his skin being on fire when she touched him, even if it forced the most inhuman screams out of his mouth.
The mystery of Mauja was a puzzle he had only recently discovered, and he only had a few pieces; they were a little worn around the edges, and some of them were bloodstained and frostbit, but there was that moment when he considered shoving her away (like he had Kahlua)—that moment when everything in him had rebelled.
That had to mean something.. right?
Right?!
He hadn't noticed, but his head had come down, cheek resting against the swell of her ribs. ".. Elding." And his voice was low, disheartened, mirroring the desolation within—and that other thing, the defeat. "You.. I..." His jaws worked soundlessly for a moment. It felt cheap to stand this close to her when he wasn't crying, when he wasn't doing what he should, and some part of him, very briefly, had the wild notion of just spilling everything to her and hoping he was reduced to a blubbering mess by the time that he was done.
But he didn't.
Why?
His entire life was founded on control—and with age, he had come to realize that he had spent so long curbing his emotions he couldn't.. do them anymore.
He would not be able to cry—to shatter—unless she brought him back to the brink of his own ruin.
And he hated himself for it.
".. it's too late," he finally went on. "You had me freezing over again. I.. I can't reverse that."The secret of my sanity, this glacier.
The deathbed of his secrets.
"It's like.. it's like there's nothing of me left in me. Just.. winter," and he was pulling back ever so slightly, just to be able to look at her—at her tears, damnit, why does that suddenly not mean anything? How can you just look at them, and not feel a goddamn thing? (Just the slightest echo of something hot and washed-out; guilt and shame.) "I—it—"
Was it improvement that he was attempting to slowly, slowly back away from her again? Did it mean the cursed wave of darkness was coming rolling back in, to devour his pristine world and send him back into the throes of his own storm?
"There's just this nothingness in me," he finally whispered, eyes growing a little wider with that terror again.
[ @[Roskuld] ]
lord, the demands you're making-
help the monster on two feet
walk him down the hall, repeat
and when he's strong enough to stand alone
you'll notice what big teeth . . .
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..
~.~.~.~ No no please no-- I was moaning in my head, no, please this isn’t what’s supposed to happen, this isn’t--
But he kept on pulling away from me—slowly, gently, and it was all the worse for it and I wish he were jerking himself away, a clean break even if it was messy—because this slow shit was torture and he was drawing himself away like he was extracting himself from some mud puddle and I swear I tried to hold on, I swear I did, but my neck was sore and there was a cramp and my muscles were tired and so was the rest of me and I couldn’t hold onto him (my blackest, deepest nightmare--)
--and as he drew away from me he pulled a sob from my throat—because the tears that had sprung from me before had been out of pain, but once loosed I couldn’t stop them; there were tears I had shoved in the back of my head, pummeled into place, keeping them locked away because I didn’t deserve to fucking cry at any time, for anything. But now they fell and once started I was too tired to stop it—so the pain tears fell and there was a reservoir just waiting for it and they finally got their chance to cascade from me from a deep, deep abyss –
--and I watched him back away from me; I watched him and felt the words he had spoken against me reverberating inside me, my stomach and things (Elding, Elding, Elding) and I wanted to follow him again, oh god, I wanted to grasp him again and pin him down and twist his neck so his tears would fall out too—
--but I couldn’t even think about taking a step before my body shifted to the right, then to the left, wobbling on my own feet, and I was dizzy without realizing it and the tears I was crying was really exhausting cuz they just fell like weights out of my eyes and my tongue was still bleeding and I was still swallowing it and there wasn’t as much as before but my tongue still throbbed with self-inflicted stupidity—
--and something else was happening, too. An unspoken barrier between my mind and my mouth was dissolving, or at least the guy in charge of it was AWOL at the moment—and I didn’t realize it but when I was thinking no no no I had been moaning “No, no, no—“ and I was still doing it, all bloody and under my breath as I watched him retreat with eyes that grew wider and wider and WIDER—
--like he was looking at me like there was a storm coming or he was seeing something awful bearing down on him and goddamn I hated crying and I hated seeing him like—seeing him like he was staring into his own death—but he kept backing away from me--
--and my breath rocked and my chest shook and my heart was beating uselessly because everything was going cold.
*"It's like.. it's like there's nothing of me left in me. Just.. winter.”*
I shook my head at his words—well, I’m not really sure what I was shaking my head at, or why, or whatever, because I could’ve been trying to shake my tears off my eyes or I could’ve been shaking my head at myself for letting him go—
--why was I so afraid of letting him go?--
--and he was still talking and I wobbled in place to listen to him.
*"There's just this nothingness in me."*
“But there wa’ somethin’ before,” I thought to myself, “there wa’ other things, wasn’ there, there had to be, because nothin’ asks what’s wrong and means it—“ My teeth were stained; my tongue mangled my words and I didn’t understand why my mouth was hurting so much with thoughts I was keeping to myself. “I jus’ saw you there,” I thought again, the tears attempting to strangle me along with the blood, so of course I couldn’t talk, “I jus’ saw you and you asked me what was wrong and you saw my blood and you saw my tears and I—“
I leaned dangerously to the left; my balance was doing its own thing, I guess. “—I pulled your hair,” I made that epiphany deep in the recesses of my mind and I grappled with an idea that was too big for tired, “I pulled your hair and I—oh god I pulled you out, didn’ I, I pulled you out and fucked you up--”
My eyes had wandered off, doing their own thing—slipping off topic and away from the subject because my heart was twisted and my spirit was flipped upside down and nothing in me knew what was happening anymore and my knees were still shaking and so was everything else—but I caught hold of them again and I looked at Leos, watching him back away from me, watching him terrified of—
“…am I losing you?” It came out small, so very small, because you only just barely speak of fear. “Cuz I don’t wanna lose you, Lee.” My eyelids fell low over my eyes; the world was a throbbing shadow except for Lee in front of me
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