the Rift


[PRIVATE] Frostmourne;
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#21
He's getting tired of his heart swinging this wildly.

It just goes from one place to another, but it doesn't go smoothly, no—it tears itself from one thing to another, hurtling itself through fire and smoke and blizzards and fucking walls, so it's no bloody wonder it's a mess. But there it is again, straining against its cage of ice and fucking whimpering in tune with her voice (no no no, but his pulse hums death, death, death) because he's causing this, isn't he? Because there's this chill seeping out the cracks in his body, and when Ginnungagap widens there's no heat—not that there ever is any heat in Nifelheim—but the darkness between them swells with the warmth of his body as he takes it away.

The moon and stars are very cold.. did you know that? They're distant and cold, silent spectators in our lives—they shimmer and twinkle but they're so impossibly cold. They've seen much.. too much.

They've seen what happens when you sleep in the dark.

There's blood everywhere, Elding.

Everywhere.


"There's blood everywhere," he said into a span of silence, the words slipping out of his mouth a little awkwardly, like a thought, or saliva, sort of dribbling out between his lips and backed up by the vacant expression in his eyes. There's blood everywhere.

He wasn't really seeing her—he saw something else. Something colder. Something.. deader. Just snow and blood and bodies going stiff and chilly as the north's razor wind howled across their corpses.

“But there wa’ somethin’ before,” and it was like she snapped his head around or something—

there was something before

I don't want to be a monster

but you know nothing of my fucking murders.

She was wobbling and he started forward (who the hell dug me up from my grave) and there was just this thing exploding in his mind (heart) but she was still talking, so he kind of just jumped forward a pace before going still again and (I pulled you out and fucked you up)—and staring, his eyes wide but for another reason. There was fear in them as he stared at her, but it was fear for her, not of her, because she was fucking tilting and she might fall any moment and it was bound to hurt

so he had to be there to catch her.

“…am I losing you?”

"...I will never leave you until death takes me."

“Cuz I don’t wanna lose you, Lee.”

"...I will never leave you..."

Her eyes closed—his mind spitting out images of her falling over; dying.

Under any normal circumstances he would've said something, or whispered, because her voice was so fucking small it made his heart stop—freeze up in some kind of panic (devotion)—but instead he yelled,

"NO!"

—and threw himself at her, all of his fear oozing from his mouth (his eyes) as he gurgled the word over and over, head tossed over her back, spine jutting into his throat as he clung to her—

I'm not going anywhere I'm not going anywhere I'm not going anywhere I just don't know where to fucking find myself but I won't leave I'm here I'm here I'm here

it hurts like hell but I'm here

—and it was true because it felt like someone had shocked his system full of some kind of shit and driven a handful of daggers through his heart, and breathing? That was a luxury he couldn't afford when his heart sat in his throat and did its best to choke him.

Because she was crying. Because she was afraid.

Because she was Elding and she looked like death and like she might fall over at any moment and it didn't matter who the hell her parents were (that was an odd thought; she was a creature with no beginning and no end) because.. because. Because somewhere, somewhere, she was his.

His heart hammered in his chest, too hot and too wild, feral with the panic seeping through him (don't go, don't disappear) because it felt like she might turn to smoke—or shadows—any moment and just disappear, slip through his fingers no matter how hard he tried to hold on

—could she feel his pulse roaring through their chests?—

—and there were these things sticking to his lashes, trickling down his cheeks, her fear made his fear and everything was such a mess he couldn't even feel it because there was just this huge, dark thing obliterating everything (Roskuld).

Don't go don't leave I—

[ @[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 . . .
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Roskuld the Sparklight Posts: 424
World's Edge General atk: 7.5 | def: 9.5 | dam: 6
Mare :: Tribrid :: 15.3 :: 6 HP: 82 | Buff: ENDURE
Zchiraxicon :: Royal Rougarou :: Electric Smithers
#22
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..

--‘m sorry I fucked up just please don’t leave me

It all happened in a span of seconds—silken moments I could easily count if my head were in the game and of course it wasn’t, it was up in a cloud somewhere that was a few ticks short from 9, a limbo that spewed its thoughts without registering the feeling packed tightly behind every word. The world was still this pulsing shadowy thing with no real detail to it, save for a piercing blue that was cracking in ways I wasn’t noticing (it’s hard seeing diamonds through the lens of a flood--)—and my head was stuck in this rut of despair because I was losing Lee, wasn’t I, and maybe it was the world that did it or maybe it was my Ma’s words that twisted him or maybe it was my teeth, my words, my fear (roaring like a lion, poised like a scorpion’s dagger) raging and pulling his hair and ripping his soul out of his body and flinging it into the ether.

(I don’t even know what was going on anymore, man. My mind was gone.)

So imagine—just imagine. Just think about how hard those crashes were in that state of mind.

So many crashes.

There was the physical one—that one that happened in a span of seconds, even as my lips trailed off of some moan I had already forgotten about (--don’t wanna lose you, Lee.) Remember how tired I was, right? How exhausting all this shit was for me (this shit called life) and how I was barely able to keep myself on my feet and apparently unable to keep myself in a straight profile (--to the left, to the left, everything you own--) and how my eyelids drooped and the world was nothing but dark velvet with some starlight that was looking at me looking at me looking at me—

--NO!--

--and just like that all my nerves jolted and I jumped a little and my eyes snapped straight the-fuck open cuz his voice was electricity in me, sparking everything, shaking it awake and alert and just in time for the—

--CRASH!!--

--right into me, right into my chest and my neck and damn-near my face if I hadn’t seen him coming—and he pretty much crushed everything out of me, my breath (“BLEGH—“) and the wind that never rose under my wing and my bones were rocked and so was my dome I guess and I was damn-near seeing stars swimming in my vision as he—

--as he clutched at me

--and I was clutching at him too, I was reaching for that place in his neck where I had held him before (he pulled away from me--) and I was scrambling back into his embrace and there was still tears and I probably would’ve been sobbing if he hadn’t knocked that shit flying out my teeth like he did—

--but there was another crash going on in the inside, too.

It was an entirely different kind of crash—his was passionate and sudden, a wrecking ball into me, a burst of ice crystals flung on all sides as he burst towards me and into me (and there was no blood this time). But this internal one was different in so many ways; it was more like a dawning, y’know, when the sun rises on the horizon and it’s a fanfare of gold ‘n shit and you can damn-near hear the orchestra playing in the background.

(Oh, wait. I guess that’s why they say it “dawned” on you.)

But it hit me just the same, with almost the same intensity. This idea that I had avoided for so long, like direct sunlight in my eyes; this notion that I never truly admitted to myself because it seemed stupid, I didn’t know the guy, I never have and at this rate I probably never would. But it had been there and I had never wanted it, I had never asked for it but he had showed up one night on a beach and we did some stupid shit and we kept doing stupid shit through the years(?!) and he wouldn’t just rub off of me and my life and I was just now acknowledging a thing that Chico (you, I know you’re still here but I forgot) knew even before he had laid eyes on the white bastard I thought about way too often.

Oh fuck, I was thinking, I love this guy.

Oh fuck,” I was saying, “I’m falling--“

And I was; I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t but I was. Cuz my legs had already been weak and my head had already been spinning and my heartbeat was a fragile thing and my mouth still tasted like blood and my eyes were bloodshot too and I wasn’t anywhere near my usual hard self when he bumrushed me like that—

--and my balance was already fucked so we were clutching at each other like idiots but I felt myself falling backward and my legs were too jittery to try and catch me—

--and I gripped him as hard as I could cuz he was there, his weight and his strength there to keep me from falling but I had a fat ass and I was tilting

"talk"

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Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#23
lay it down, pull my heart to the ground
time's getting cold, now the leaves all turn hard and blue


It's just this—you can't explain it. It's just this thing sitting in your mind, in your lungs, in your—in your chest. And it sits there, like, it's trying to choke the life out of you, but in some way, beneath all that crap, it feels good, too. It's just so intense it's like someone strangling you, and it—it has nothing to do with.. with anything, with.. with bodies. It just. It just is.

And that's why I can't explain it.

So just forget about it.

Just.. forget it.


(This is what I suspect they've never understood about me.)

So.. there was a moment when everything stopped—the world, his heart, his breath, his vision. A moment when everything in the world went black, but not silent, a low-key roar starting in the back of his ears, there were only two things he could, physically, feel (because his heart had shut up, remember?): the warmth of her body, and the warmth trickling out between his lashes.

Then the world rocked back into motion.

And he could feel the panic clutching at him—shit shit shit shit—and how it reduced his mind to a beast, unable to think, unable to.. unable to do anything but just stand there and clutch at her and she's falling through my grasp

(Why the fuck am I crying now?)

"No no no no no," he kept mumbling into her back, straining, large hooves planted in the soil as if he could somehow brace her—as if he could keep them both from falling, but horses weren't meant to stop one another from keeling over (like they aren't meant to drag three-quarter drowned ponies from the sea, either). It was an uphill struggle and a losing battle (just like everything else), but damn it, that wasn't—he fought anyway, because he had to, because the outcome didn't matter.. the reason did. Because in the white-out, in the blind panic strangling the life out of his veins, she had pointed out that he existed. That he was real.

That there was more to him than scars and snow.

That—that he cared and that was real and it had to mean something. It had to be sign of.. of something.

So that's why he clutched at her while she was tilting away from him, muttering the word over and over like a mindless prayer until—

until the balance shifted too much.

She began to fall, and he—he fell with her, awkwardly tumbled to the ground like a tower finally pulled down. He sort of pitched over one shoulder, legs going out from under him as he fell, too hard, onto his side, a sickening lurch going through his heart like what if I fell on her but—but there was just the cold ground beneath him, and the stars above, and he couldn't see her but he could feel her close by, hear the sound of her breathing (the tick of her heart).

Who are you? he wanted to ask, but he didn't know what kind of answer to expect, so he didn't.

Just stared vacantly up, now that he'd stopped mumbling because it was too late and they had fallen and laid there, pitifully cast down onto browning grass in the shadows of the trees.

I guess I finally got to lay down.

The corner of his mouth curved up in a humorless and bitter smirk as he traced the patterns of the stars. This was too familiar. It was so familiar it stung, so for a moment he forgot about himself and her and the whole bloody war and just imagined the feeling of blood freezing on his skin and snow blowing up to cover him as the stars wheeled, deathly cold and quiet. And then the first light of dawn had come.. and with it, voices.

And life had begun again, but part of him had been left to die in the snow.

Frostheart.

"Do you still want to know why?" he asks, quietly.

[ @[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 . . .
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Roskuld the Sparklight Posts: 424
World's Edge General atk: 7.5 | def: 9.5 | dam: 6
Mare :: Tribrid :: 15.3 :: 6 HP: 82 | Buff: ENDURE
Zchiraxicon :: Royal Rougarou :: Electric Smithers
#24
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..

--ow my ass--

--ow my everything--

The momentum carried me back and there was no strength in me to shift about or move some way to soften the blow—so when I hit the ground I hit the ground and horses aren’t really supposed to land on their asses so my forehooves splayed in front of me and I was falling to my side and my shoulder hit the ground too and the shock of it reverberated all throughout my body and rattled my teeth and my shredded tongue—

--and Leos was falling too—I had dragged him to the ground with me and he crashed too, a much larger, paler crash than mine—

And he…he just sorta laid there, the starlight reflected in his eyes as his mouth curved and bent in a way I wasn’t noticing. My mind had—well. It was somewhere but it wasn’t in my head; all I had clanking around up in there was static and buzzing and grey filter just sorta dilating back and forth between the noise of my body (the pain and things coursing through it) and the fading gold of a sunrise that had struck me square in the head.

The only thing penetrating the dullness of my head was that I wasn’t touching him anymore, and that was crucial for some reason, like, a super-duper important fact that I had to clutch and fix and heal (like everything else, like everything else I let myself forget about--). So he was laying there on the ground and I…I mean, I dunno how I did it, I don’t remember standing up but horses aren’t good at crawling either so I guess I…I flopped over to where he was and I wrapped my neck around him again, except not really, we’re not in the position to do that, so I was…I guess I was just basicallylaying across him, my chest on his chest and my neck sorta splayed across his body or whatever, like a slug or another unpleasant thing I could be compared to.

Goddamn I’m tired, was the first coherent thought I stumbled across.

I don’t remember if I…if I dozed off or whatever, because I wasn’t keeping track of time or the world around us or what the stars were doing up there, whether they were laughing or blinking or scowling furiously down at us and our stupidity—I dunno, I wasn’t really attuned to any of that. My eyes were open, even if they were lidded, but they didn’t see anything; they just sort of stared at whatever they happened to land on, whether it be some grass or the edge of some fine-cut marble or the little pale hairs of his body as they rustled in the air or the breeze, if there even was a breeze.

My eyes still leaked, but it wasn’t a storm wrenching out of me anymore. They were just wet and my tongue was starting to swell but the bloody taste in my mouth was receding, so maybe, even though it still hurt like all hell, it was gonna heal itself over after all. But even that was lost on me—in fact, I wasn’t even paying attention to how my chest was throbbing with his impact or how there was a veil of black velvet wrapping around my limps and my deep breathing, a veil that was stamped with the words goddamn, I’m tired.

I wasn’t paying attention to anything--until his words bubbled from his lips and they stirred me awake and aware, so much more gentle than the way he had yanked me from a creeping blackness:

Do you still want to know why?

Yes,” I breathed, and it was searing hot in my throat as I spoke, aflame with a shame I had cast away behind me when he had touched my cheek and noticed my bloody lip. I had thrown it with the tears of the children in the meadow and the croaking of a deranged woman in my face—I had thrown all of that away, all of it, whatever shitty integrity I had possession of, just because I realized this guy cared for me and it was like ice-water in hell and I drank it greedily and thought to myself oh fuck, I love this water.

But he was reeling me back, and even if I didn’t lift my head off him and my eyes didn’t open any more or look at his voice as he spoke to me, I was being faced with things that needed to be fixed, that went beyond this painful, beautiful thing I was basking in. I sighed and it was shaky and wet, my tears staining his hide (again) as the question continued to throb in me. “Can you tell me, Lee?” I mumbled with a broken tongue and a broken voice. Please, tell me. I need to know. I need to fix this.

I need to make sure you’re not actually a monster, Leos.



"talk"

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Please tag ROSKULD in every reply!
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#25
It was—well, had been—kind of comfortable on the ground. It was cool against his shame-hot skin, solid and so real to the trembling of his spirit, and.. and when his mind reeled and stormed and spun about, the dizzying blur of stars didn't threaten to make him fall to his knees. Because, y'know, he had already fallen down.

But then it got less comfortable because someone crawled halfway onto him. Her scrabbling forced a grunt out of him, knees colliding bluntly with his legs and chest and ow, suddenly there was this dead weight sprawled over him and a burly neck blanketing him.

Protecting him from the stars.

She would never be able to cover all of him—physics denied that. But her soul covered his, and in the back of his mind, he figured he'd rather wear a cloak of Roskuld to his grave, than a cloak of snow. Snow was cold and sharp and bit deep into bleeding wounds. Roskuld.. Roskuld was warm. And heavy, but nevermind that. It wasn't an important thing in that moment.

The important thing was that she was laying on him and it warmed him and it warmed his soul but he wasn't sure if he was just mentally winded or if he'd frozen up again. The world seemed so crystalline, so.. so sharp and fine-edged and.. his thoughts were too calm, too collected—there was none of the terror and the despair and the guilt (you're my ljós, my light, my compass) but.. there was none of the lethal cold either. None of the I don't give a fuck.

Because he gave fucks, apparently, though he wasn't sure when it had started happening.

"I don't," he began, then frowned; actually.. he had no idea why things had happened as they had, at all. "Uh..." And if it's something that is to be said about trying to think when you feel like you're gonna fall apart again at any moment, and your brain has run a mental marathon, and someone is lying on you so it's a bit hard to breathe properly and ouch because it's pushing your shoulder in a kinda uncomfortable way—

—well, it's just not easy and somehow he kept distracting himself by thinking of her tears.

"Actually.. I don't know why it happened in the first place..." And he gazed up at the stars—did they know?

He was beginning to see his own breath as a cloud rising in front of his face. Winter wasn't far off, now. "They didn't do it to conquer and gain more land—they moved, almost all of the herd. I.. well, I dunno. Maybe the grass in the Falls was greener, or they still had their marbles and gave a fuck about deities and figured the Moon wasn't all that peachy." And his calm voice dripped with subtle things—bitterness and anger and the hurt of loss and.. things, things he had no name for. Just things. "The Basin.. the Basin was going to make Midas 'pay for his ignorance'—she said it was justice, some kind of vengeance, for the 'crimes committed against' .. well, myself, and the rest of the herd. That's.. that's the big why."

Theoretically, this was laying his head beneath the axe, right? If she decided he was an idiot—no you didn't, shut up you didn't—would.. there wouldn't be any more Leos, would there? She would.. well, damn, he didn't know what she would do but he figured that laying on top of him was among the last of it. Unless he was dead, of course.

"She said my skill would be welcome, if I wanted to avenge my former herd."

And how the fuck do you say no to that.

You don't. You don't, when you've got a twisted sense of morals and honor—who's that evil?—and when you don't stop to consider violence or.. or the guilt of those involved.

Who said the Edge had more of a right to the throne? Who said Midas wouldn't have shared? Who said the Falls, as a herd, had to be put through that kind of trauma because of Midas's stupidity? Didn't this mean that Kaj and Archibald, clinging to their power as Kings, were in the wrong here?

They did to the Falls what Helovia once did to me.

In hindsight, it was so easy to see, when his world wasn't reeling with one, single, non-violent encounter with Ophelia, and when it wasn't reeling with the revelation that (this slug lying on me is her daughter) Elding's name was Roskuld and she was more than likely half a god (you can fly, bastard) and—and when Kahlua wasn't here to be protected and.. he was restless and.. when someone lifted the blade with his name carved into it, he didn't ask questions. Swords don't ask questions. Swords just cut through flesh, obedient and silent. They do not pass judgment.

They just go into murder mode and think it's pretty damn neat to not have to take responsibility for yourself, because someone else said it was a-okay to go do bad shit.

"I—my life—I'm desensitized to violence." And his ears flipped back as his voice slipped out again. "I'm.. I don't stop to think. I—" He drew a breath. Was what it he had told Kahlua? I am a sword drenched in the blood of those my wielder calls enemies.

It was the confession that would reduce him to nothing. The confession that would prove that the hollows in his heart were filled up with stone and ice. The confession that hammered the nails back in into the coffin with his name on it.

I don't exist.

Fuck your honesty, Sarazheha.

"I'm.. a tool. A sword. Someone grasps the hilt—my loyalty—and I answer the call. I don't think, I don't question, because.. because I'm just a thing, meant to be used." And it was back—the quiver in his quiet voice, the wide-eyed terror. "Because I'm soulless and empty unless given purpose and that always ends in violence."

And there you have it—you're lying on a husk stamped with the name 'Mauja' but there's nothing underneath the skin.

Just a restless void.

Look how far I've fallen.

[ @[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 . . .
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Roskuld the Sparklight Posts: 424
World's Edge General atk: 7.5 | def: 9.5 | dam: 6
Mare :: Tribrid :: 15.3 :: 6 HP: 82 | Buff: ENDURE
Zchiraxicon :: Royal Rougarou :: Electric Smithers
#26
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..

If I were paying attention I probably could’ve been clued in that he was kinda uncomfortable underneath me—I mean, I didn’t blame him, I had just sorta flopped my ass on top of him as soon as I was able, as fast as I was able with the least amount of muscle function necessary to move myself. But I still wasn’t even trying to pay attention to my surroundings; the warmth of his skin and the steady beating of his heart right against my ear and my neck and the whole piece of my body touching his was lulling me, pulling me back into that sinking sand of sleep while tucking me in with that velvety darkness the world pulsed with, studded with stars and other things.

But he was speaking; the cadence of his voice drew me out of the cocoon of drowsiness that I was so willing to fall into. Gradually something shifted in my mind, insistent that I should be awake for this—awake for him--and for the answers he was offering me, the answers I had needed so badly not too long ago (before I had fallen--).

Actually.. I don't know why it happened in the first place...

He spoke and his words meant more than just the timbre of his voice washing over me; little by little I was pulled farther from sleep as I digested his words and they forced my brain into processing them. It was more than I anticipated—so much more that I became aware of a buzzing sensation in my leg that told me I was laying on it wrong—and that I was laying on him wrong and since I wasn’t so sleepy anymore (or at least, drenched in sleepiness like I had been—) it was beginning to be uncomfortable (oh oops, sorry sorry sorry) so I kind of wiggled off his chest a bit so my shoulder wasn’t stabbing him in the side like it was, so that it was just my head leaning against him instead, propped by the defined lines of his shoulder blade.

But my mind was still reeling with his words. The Basin was going to make Midas 'pay for his ignorance--but how had he been ignorant? It was justice, some kind of vengeance, for the 'crimes committed against’.. well, myself, and the rest of the herd--but what kind of crimes had he committed? How long ago had he committed them? Were they real crimes or things my Ma had just sorta spewed from her mouth? (But Lee could remember them to, or maybe not, maybe he was just as taken is as the rest of them--)

She said my skill would be welcome, if I wanted to avenge my former herd.

Which herd had been his before?

He had been King before, hadn’t he?

More and more with every word he spoke, a totally new thing was being chipped away into being, a whole sculpture of bullshit that was presenting itself me.

It was ignorance--because I was suddenly aware of how little I actually knew about these types of things. All I had known was the Moon Goddess doing some weird shit and that, all of a sudden, we were at each other’s throats for who the hell knew what?

But there was deeper things to be considered; memories, past hurts, past wrongs, past—past, the past, the keyword here was the past and I knew nothing about it. I didn’t know anything about the history of the herds or who had held power or who was allied with who or who had previously fucked with who or who or who or what or when or where or why why why. I didn’t know jack shit and as I mulled over Lee’s words I was going cross-eyed because I was understanding that I hadn’t even known what I hadn’t known.

I still didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Was it even my place to call them “evil”? Was it my place to pass judgment on anyone if I didn’t even know them? (this motherfucker used to be a king—) And here I was trying to keep balance in a world I didn’t even know.

It was impossible.

His tone shifted though—I was brought out of the growing whirlwind of my thoughts by the darkness that had entered Lee’s voice, how his words fell from him like ice cycles falling from the ceiling, cleaving your eyes in their sockets.

I—my life—I'm desensitized to violence.

The bitterness was growing in him; I could feel it churn in his mouth, listen to him chewing on it even as he spat out a confession he had held stuck in his throat and mind for all this time. I moved like clockwork—it was automatic. He spoke and I sat up, my neck curling over his from where I sat on the ground—my muzzle buried in the muscle there, where I breathed him in, where I breathed into him--

I'm.. a tool. A sword. Someone grasps the hilt—my loyalty—and I answer the call.

“Lee—“

I don't think, I don't question, because.. because I'm just a thing, meant to be used.

”Lee—“

Because I'm soulless and empty unless given purpose and that always ends in violence—

“—Leos.

It wasn’t even his name; I was realizing that now, this horrible epiphany that he was included in the shroud of shit I didn’t know. God but it felt like a bubble had been burst, like a veil I didn’t even know I had had been shredded by all this shit flinging around me, in the world, between the herds and the ribcage of this bastard I had my neck around. I don’t know what I don’t know but I’m still supposed to fix a world that’s fucked by default, at any rate, cuz that’s why I was born--

--a tool--

(As for why you are, you are one of the fortunate ones. Your purpose is written plainly--)

(--even though your mother was raped by a god--)

(-- I would not have created you out of folly or vanity.)

--and maybe he was just better at being a tool than I was--

I swallowed the shudder that coursed through me because there was still something icy in Lee’s eyes and that was a thing I knew, a thing I could grasp, something solid I could try and--

“I can tell you one thing right now,” I said in a low voice—speaking into his skin, where my lips rested, ”there ain’t a damn soul on this planet that told you to pull me away from the darkness.”

I spoke slowly—cautiously—my tone a deep, guttural thing, straight from the middle of me, cuz that’s what I was speaking with. “No one told you to follow me after Hototo’s death,” my words trailed in his fur, “No one told you to ask me what’s wrong tonight, when your eyes first laid on me.” Cuz that’s what he did, wasn’t it? But I had been crazed by despair to remember that, beside myself with the off chance that I might be losing him--

“…that all came from you, didn’t it?” I asked softly, treating him gentle, “So don’t call yourself soulless. It ain’t right. You can’t be empty either, cuz I’m feeling something right now. Right there, under your skin.” I nudged his neck a little. “Your heart’s still beating.”



"talk"

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Please tag ROSKULD in every reply!
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#27
we are the heroes of our time
but we're dancing with the demons in our minds


—and I don't even know how to start this, how to.. how to eventually get up again. Get off this cold, sodden ground, and out of the shadows the stars cast—these prison bars of leafless branches and the deathly pale glow of marble—how to get up again, when there's more than just memory tying my heart to the ground. When.. when all I want to do is to just.. wake up in the warm wash of early morning sunlight, and.. just all of this shit—

Because it's where his mind fled to—some old memory, one he couldn't place, but it was.. it was perfect. The memory of that feeling of having had a good, long sleep, and just slowly being teased back into consciousness, waking up lying down in grass—dew-laden, glistening grass—with pleasantly cool sunlight lighting up the thin rim between his eyelids, and.. and just that feeling of oh so slowly slipping back into the waking world, a light feeling of weightlessness, of.. of peace.. with no anxiety chasing his heart to up its pace, no start of black, throttling despair to cast him into wakefulness.

Just.. peace.

But this wasn't that—this was lying on a cold autumn night's ground, all shadows and distant, stark starlight, with.. with a pony sort of toppled on top of him. She had moved, though, somehow wriggled off his chest to just lie nestled against him as his voice cut through the air and I have damned myself—

It had been true then. It was true still. Maybe he hadn't been born damned but he had well and truly fixed that over the course of his life, jagged lines drawn like criss-cross scars over the covers of his history book.

Out where the dreams all hide,
Out where the wind don't blow,
Out here the good girls die.
And the sky won't snow
Out here the bird don't sing
Out here the field don't grow
Out here the bell don't ring...

He wasn't sure if she was still listening, or if she'd fallen asleep—she was so quiet, just breathing sort of awkwardly in the vicinity of his neck, her dead weight propped up against his chest in a way that was both comforting and a bit.. alarming, almost, like what if the reason she fell off was because she died but there was that slow, subtle ticking of the bomb in her chest and the rhythmic way her ribs swelled with breath so she wasn't dead but she was so quiet until he started speaking those quiet, bitter words that fell like poison from his lips (but it was too late to spit it out now)—

And somehow she was sitting up, planted on her arse next to him and sort of towering over him, and it would've been terrifying (because of the things coming out of my mouth), some kind of otherworldly judge peering down on him (and he had this moment's mad urge to just bite her long forelock tendrils and yank them to pull her back down to the ground) and listening as he spoke The Only Truth That Mattered, the truth that explained everything and made him forget everything else—all the things that he had decided, all the good things in life, and how natural it felt to be wrapped up in Kahlua's embrace—

All these little things, swallowed by the cold infinity of stars and drowned in the shadow of long-dried tarry blood, and his ears were slick against his neck as he forced it out between blood-stained teeth and her repeated attempts to make him stop by saying that name

There were more traces of diluted blood drawn over his neck, just faint ones, silver in the monochromatic night-light—but they were there, little things that would remind him of this if he could just see them, but he couldn't, and something in the back of his mind fell to the ground when he was done, defying the fact that he was already on it.

Because he had finally said.

He had finally spat it out, into the ruined perfection of a late autumn night.

Into the fucking void between his cold precision and her raw-hot passion.

His head laid flat against the ground, and his heart too, and he waited—he waited for her to rise, and to disappear, like smoke or snow blown about, because.. because now she knew the truth.

(It was truth, right?)


It felt like truth. It smelled like truth. It tasted like truth, when he said it—and it looked like truth, reflected in his pale, wide eyes.

But she still just sat there, her breath washing against his neck, anchoring him in his fear with her touch because any moment—any moment that spot of warmth would turn infinitely cold as she would let the night swim back in to claim him (and I want to let it).

Haven't we been over this? a voice whispered in the back of his mind—in the back of his soul—every word spoken with a kind of razor delicacy and dripping snow and blood. It was Irma's soul-voice, always slow, always careful, sentences crafted with such precision and care, the edges and burrs in it smoothed over with even more cold things

You not alone, came Diego's darker echo, something in the depths of his tone accusing

"I'm sorry," he whispered, in the midst of something—Elding's looming shape a blur in the veil of his hot tears, her voice a broken mess in his ears because he couldn't understand what she was saying—it was far-off and distant, trying to make its way through his ears to his brain but the brain wasn't listening because maybe they had been trying to help but it was just another thing poking guilt at him and

“…that all came from you, didn’t it?”

“You can’t be empty either, cuz I’m feeling something right now.”

“Your heart’s still beating.”

And it was, a painful ticking in his chest, a violent shudder through his veins with each beat it took—her words hot and knife-like, shearing through the sludge and the darkness and—and baring a truth that was more painful than the other truth.

You still have a heart.

You always had a heart.


Because it was there, in the fucking glacier, first entombed by armor and shields and duty, loyalty, and then left out in the snow to be covered by blizzards and ice and blood frozen in delicate patterns all around it—

—and then just sort of forgotten there as bit by bit his fragile mind took over and eradicated the connections to it.. one by one.. until the only thing existing outside the sanctum on his thoughts was this confused, raging blizzard.

"I have a heart," he croaked through the haze, not quite sure whether it was a statement or a question—the most pathetic, sorry question he had ever asked in his whole, damned life. And it just slipped out of him, like a little piece of hope, like it was suddenly the most important thing he had ever asked—because he decided it had been a question—and the look in his tear-veiled eyes as he stared up at her was.. it was desperate. It was helpless. It was begging.

[ @[Roskuld] -- auditions are over, time to post again <3 it could've been longer/better end, but I got a phone call just before the last paragraph it messed me up a little :x ]
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 . . .
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Roskuld the Sparklight Posts: 424
World's Edge General atk: 7.5 | def: 9.5 | dam: 6
Mare :: Tribrid :: 15.3 :: 6 HP: 82 | Buff: ENDURE
Zchiraxicon :: Royal Rougarou :: Electric Smithers
#28
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..

It was an idea I had already hashed in my head once, when I had stumbled across that weird, smarmy, sexual guy who Pa had sent to give me Chico’s egg—back when I was realizing why time scared me even though I was born from it, even though a whole quarter of me was sprung from its depths.

I was a child of spark, and spark is violent. It’s reactive and compulsive, bursting when certain conditions are met, when certain things rub against each other, abrasive and vicious and wild all over the sky and in your retinas. It’s destructive too, and it’s ferocious about it. It can eat trees and rip apart entire fields with fires it sparks from its fingertips; it can shock you, burn a hole in your skin or set your nerves into overdrive; it can pull your hair and rage in your system, a short-circuit leaving you breathless or getting the blood pumping again if you were dead enough.

Spark ruled me, in an out, and more and more I was seeing that. Maybe not consciously but my head was starting to shift with thoughts and ideas that didn’t fit the sparkish mold I had lived with. And maybe that was a good thing, but it was scary, but the world is full of even scarier shit so this one slipped under the radar for the time being. These lessons I was learning were wrapped pretty impressively for me to notice them for what they were.

What I’m saying is that spark doesn’t think, but I was doing a lot of that. Spark doesn’t stop to consider the fight and whether you should fight it, or whether it was a lost battle and stand down back in the clouds—but I had done that, haven’t I, when Flameking soundly wrecked my ass? Spark doesn’t consider its words or its questions before its spews them from its mouth, and that lesson was pounded, pounded, pounded into my skull, forever and ever and ever.

( I wanna know why you go cold at the whisper of Pa’s name--)

Nightmares and nightmares and nightmares on top of each other--

Spark isn’t patient. Spark erupts into life, brilliant and blinding and harsh—and it’s gone so quickly, lying dormant in the peaceful silver lining of a cloud until something rubs it the wrong way again. It’s a paradox for any sort of spark to be patient, cuz patience takes time, and that’s a thing that spark can never, ever have.

But I was born with it.

And I laid there with Leos in the chilly night, on the ground where cold was starting to creep upward into our limbs and it tousled our hair from the slightest breeze, my neck laid across his, holding him, my eyes closed and my muzzle breathing warmth into a coat that was getting painted with frost—and I was patient.

Or, at least, I was trying to be. It was a new thing and, again, I wasn’t conscious of it, I wasn’t making the mindful decision to lay there patiently with him, that I should stay and hold him and breath warm things into him and speak and try and smooth the bitter wrinkles in his voice—

I just knew that yanking his hair didn’t work. I just knew that making him fight a shadow he’d been fighting for years was redundant and wrong cuz I was starting to pay attention now. I had seen that shadow climbing on his back for a while, watching it nibble his withers and scratch and bite his tail when he got too comfortable—but I had just started to recognize that it was a beast that had long since defeated him. A beast that whispered things (--I'm soulless and empty—) over and over again in his sleep and his awake hours (--It is when awake that I am haunted—)—

--and there comes a point in every fight where you have to give it up. I guess win or lose.

I’m sorry I pulled your hair, I whispered in my head.

But I didn’t say it—mostly cuz I was terrified and making a wrong move, saying something that was too harsh or cold, cuz he didn’t need any more cold in his life or on his skin.

I have a heart.

My eyes opened and my gaze turned toward him—and there he was, looking up at me with tear-stained eyes, something wild but not so wild as before swimming in those blues and crystals as his voice (so tiny) slipped from his lips.

….I have a heart?

My mouth pulled, and maybe it was something like a smirk, but it was too sad and too hesitant to be anything that celebrated. “Yeah,” I breathed back at him, just as quiet, “You do.”

It was written all over his face and the contours of his body; it had been written by the way he had broken at my crazy, unhinged fear at his monsterhood; it was written smack dab in the middle of his forehead and the center of his chest, that point of his body that had charged into me, unable and unwilling to let me go, to let me lose him—

It was written so plainly that it was a wonder he couldn’t see it himself; ice reflects things and his whole body screamed heart, heart, heart and his voice was wavering with it now. You can’t have fear without heart. You can’t really have anything without heart.

…well. Anything worth having, anyway.

But I guess that’s what happens when you fight a losing battle, over and over again, and it’s time to call off the fight. Your vision gets scratched and burnt and blurred with all kinds of dark shit--and you can't see something sitting right in front of you, or maybe you're too afraid to see it cuz it'll blind eyes that were weakened by a monster's bite. Ulrik was starting to make sense.

(was it worth it?)

“…sorry,” I whispered as I settled back into holding him, my lips pressed against him—so I could be talking to his soul if you wanted to think of it like that. “It hurts, doesn’t it?” That’s what hearts do; they pump and they bleed and they glow and they flutter and they crash and they burn and they hurt, they always hurt for one reason or another, and I guess that’s life and it’s shitty but none of us designed it that way. We just have to live it and hope the heart hurts for a good reason…I guess.

“I-I’m sorry for pulling your hair,” I found myself saying—flying out of fucking nowhere before I could get a handle on it. It just felt so important to tell him, so right, so crucial to let him know before—“I’m…I’m rough,” I slipped weakly, like I was explaining something that he needed to know—like it was wrench in the toolbox built for fixing a fucked-up situation and I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing but I was—I was trying, at least. I’m rough all over and I do rough things and I’m starting to figure out that everything ain’t rough like that.




"talk"

image credits



Please tag ROSKULD in every reply!
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#29
[ Sorry x 10000 ]

It almost seemed cruel, to pin every hope on her—a creature not bound to him by anything other than the fragile links of light between them, a creature with no obligation to (love) him as one had to (love) one's kin—as he had time and time again bashed his heart against the rocks of Snö's heart—to pin everything on her with that question, that hesitant, trembling question. To look to her for salvation, when the dawn could only come from within.

But she was there, anyway. Unasked. Like he had happened to be there for her when she fell apart.

Except he didn't fall apart—he just became this frozen mess of pieces, hairline cracks and missing chunks. Where she had exploded in a cloud of crystal dust and shards, he grew still; where the pain had come flooding out of her eyes like a violent torrent, his tears were calm and composed.

She wavered in the wet focus of his gaze, the bright spark sitting in the middle of her eyes—

—it seemed to flash—

—and her lips turned into something, and he clung to the silence, too afraid of her answer, of.. of what it would do to him. If.. if it would be the last blindfold torn from his frost eyes, the last cover blown, there deep in the maze of his chest—if it would cast him out into that chaos raging around the temple of his wicked thoughts.

All those things.. he had forsaken. All those things, he had ignored—all those things that had been too difficult, and instead of handling them, he had denied them, and, of course

“Yeah. You do.”

—that means that you get confused, because you're putting a lid on your own compass. And of course you can't know where north is if you're not looking.

I.. do..?

He.. had a heart.

Frostheart.

Deadheart.

And suddenly, there was no going back—there would never be any returning to that pallid, ice cold armor he had fallen out of. There wouldn't be an Ice King anymore, because—because.. because he had a heart. Because Sarazheha had been right.

Just because Roskuld said it was that way. Because.. the lightning bolt, the light she had provided far in the frozen north, said that he had one. Because it was a painful truth spelled out in his veins.

He didn't say anything—because there was nothing to say.

He just laid there, but something in him compelled him to shift, just a little, so that that rock didn't dig into his shoulder quite so painfully anymore, and to stretch out his crooked hind leg so it didn't cramp the same way—

All these little things to make it more comfortable, because worth had been reinstated on his soul.

She settled back too, a warm shield against the cold darkness of the night—a flame against the desolation of the stars.

They were bright in his eyes, too bright, as he just laid there, staring up with a fairly vacant expression (because there's nothing underneath there's nothing underneath there's nothing—), too shocked and dumbfounded and confused to think anything at all. He tried, but couldn't; goaded himself by whispering I have a heart in his mind but like something that's too painful to touch he shied away, found himself thinking of other, inconsequential things—

little bits and pieces of another life

—and her soft voice pulled him, gently, from the roads his mind roamed.

"Yeah," he echoed her quietly, the word almost a sigh falling from dark lips and tired lungs—and something in those pale eyes sharpened again, swirled and spun and settled on her.

Hearts.

"It's alright."

But it isn't.

"Everything.. is going to be alright,"

because it was never about me and now I can forget, forget, forget—

Bury the knowledge beneath the surface of the snow, and wait for the wind to blow and smooth it out, until no one would know what he knew and—

It's not how I want to live, came the small, terrified voice in the back of his mind.

But it was the only way he knew how.

".. hey," he went on, still tentative, still soft, "what.. what's eating you?"

Don't lie sleepless over the evil I've done,

and it felt like it had to be more than that.

Or maybe he had just forgotten that he'd asked her before, that night—lost the answers in the haze.

[ @[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 . . .
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Roskuld the Sparklight Posts: 424
World's Edge General atk: 7.5 | def: 9.5 | dam: 6
Mare :: Tribrid :: 15.3 :: 6 HP: 82 | Buff: ENDURE
Zchiraxicon :: Royal Rougarou :: Electric Smithers
#30
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..

He…he didn’t really shatter when I answered his question—well, okay, maybe he did, but it wasn’t the shatter I had been prepping myself for. But that’s the theme, isn’t it? Me, figuring out everything isn’t ass-backwards like I am; that, sometimes, some things don’t have to make a lot of noise and break a lot of stuff in the path of their bleeding, beating heart. And he laid there and there were still tears in his eyes—but he shifted underneath me, just a little, and he looked at me and he forgave me for pulling his hair so—

--I mean—

--I’m not sure what it meant, let’s be honest. I’m not sure what sort of a sign it was, exactly, but he was still here and his heart was beating steadily beneath me, under his skin, and he looked at me with piercing blue and the shadows in those irises seemed to...well. I dunno about lessen. But they weren’t leaking from his eyes anymore either, suffusing his sight with that panicked terror that I had hated to see settled in his face.

A tension I didn’t even know I had had began to ease from my shoulders and my back—because Leos was relaxing a little underneath me and—and I dunno, maybe I had said something right, maybe not, but the ice was melting from eyes that were already so blue and my own sense of urgency started to melt, too. Leos was gonna be alright--at least, that’s what I hoped, and I hoped I was doing it right by holding onto him, keeping his head pegged to earth so he would fling himself into orbit—

--and my eyes got heavy again, cuz I was still tired, remember? My body still sagged and my bones still ached and I just wanted to sprawl and nap for hours but I couldn’t let myself do that, not while Leos needed…something.

So he started speaking and I was listening and everything was going to be alright, that’s what he said, wasn’t it—and part of my mouth was still buried in his side and I was still breathing into him and sagging way, way too low to be fully awake, and he asked me what was eating me and my eyes were lidded and my brain was slowing down and I almost answered that damn question without realizing what he was asking.

“My Ma—“ I started, impulsive and uncontrollable—until something shocked me into full wakefulness and my eyes opened and they stared out in front of me, at the pale canvas that was Leos’ pelt, and realized what I was about to tell him.

And at first it wasn’t so bad; at first it seemed possible I could tell him, so easy to just …let it slip out from under me, those things I had shoved in the back of my mind out of my crazy fear of losing Lee. I opened my mouth, groping for a voice to speak with—but it wasn’t there, it ran from my grasp with every moment that passed, cuz every moment reminded me of everything that I had tried to shove all the way in the back—

(--even though your mother was raped by a god--)

--and every moment it became that much closer to being impossible to tell Leos these things, because they threatened to shatter everything we had built back up again on this night.

I froze against him, those things swirling in my head like they were, my breath hitched and my voice so dead in my throat, even though he asked me what was eating me. Hadn’t he asked that question before?, my brain spat quietly. And hadn’t I answered it already?

Yes. With half an answer.

Cuz the invasion was only half the nightmare, wasn’t it? And he—well, I guess he picked up on it somehow, I dunno, or maybe he was—he was just trying to make sure I was alright and make sure everything else was square in my life—

--and it wasn’t, oh god it wasn’t, and even sitting there the tension was mounting and the pressure was building and I sat up away from him cuz it felt wrong to be touching him like that, for me to be anywhere in his vicinity, cuz the god-awful disgust was stacking up, ripping me from a dream and plunging me into darkness, just like—like every night before then.

But he asked hadn’t he? He asked twice, and that was the part that scared me. Cuz I had pulled his hair and shouted at him and been so rough with him and he was still here, he could’ve left, he could’ve said “fuck this dumb shit” and walked the fuck out but he didn’t. He was still here, almost as fucked up as I was—maybe more-so, I dunno, I dunno where all this guy has walked.

And I wanted him to know, too. I wanted to…to let this shit go. I was done hiding it in the same place and covering it all up and collecting dust and blood blisters.

I wanted to tell him, finally, what I was.

And the terror was that it might be the last straw that finally made him-- go.

I sighed—well. Not really a sigh, cuz something urgent was falling on my breath and my chest had started to heave thinking about—the Stuff. I was really trying to steady my breathing, to bring some rhythm to it, because at that moment it felt like it could fray apart at any time. “….Lee,” I said, small and…and eerie, haunted by shit I wasn’t really seeing, but seemed to dance among the spots of his body, “Do…you don’t know who I am, do you?”


"talk"

image credits



Please tag ROSKULD in every reply!
Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#31
It was just, she was the single fixated point in his world at that moment—the owls had never been strong enough to ground him when the storm came rolling in; their hearts were snatched up along his, pressed to his, but they twisted and turned with him because he was supposed to be their stability—their.. shield. (Just another thing he had never been good enough at.)

But with the torrent of his wild-edged, unrefined emotions howling just around the corner, just outside his skull in the thin lining between bone and skin.. she was there, and he didn't know if that bright electric light was outside in the tempest, or if it was somewhere inside his head—he just knew that it was something to focus on, something to drown in, blue swimming before his eyes and worry devouring his heart like a black beast.

Something in the back of his mind told him he had already asked—that he'd already tried to figure it out—that he had no reason to pry and that if that had been the only reason she wouldn't look better fifteen minutes later because she still hadn't eaten or slept.

It was just one of those moments when logic fails because you backtrack desperately, looking for something to hold on to, and her pain was the most tangible thing around.

“My Ma—“

Pristine, holy Ophelia.


He was beginning to have the incredibly uncomfortable notion that she wasn't at all who he had thought she was.

That he had been utterly, unforgivably wrong about her.

Or maybe that was just what time did. Maybe once she had been all that.. gentle and kind and steeped in a marble kind of perfection, something nearly religious about that pearly white coat of hers and the impeccable bloodstains in her hair—

He had come back after years, expecting to find her the same. A fool's hope. A fool's notion.

It lay like thick, black sludge in his mouth, in his throat, despair crawling through his veins in choking ranks, in time with the slowly increasing breath he heard rattling out of Roskuld's lungs—

Who is really the monster here?

Beneath the pristine white of her mask.. what lay beneath? What lay beneath the bone white of her skull? What lay in her heart? She had so many ghosts, so much bitterness, and with the fleet-footed fear running through his system he began to suspect another thing: that she had done something unforgiving to Roskuld.

(The name suited her better than Elding, he thought.)

“I thought my Ma left me the first time ‘cuz she hated the daughter she had...”

“…and every time I see her, it feels like I was right.”

“—but then I am myself and my Ma ended up leaving and I barely even know my Pa, and even after I found Ma—It’s like-- sometimes, Ma just gives me this look—and her eyes go dark and she’s not even looking at me anymore, it’s like I’ve got Pa’s face and I’m like, what do you want?! How can I fix that?!”

Her voice was a verdict echoing across the fragile links of time.

Was that what Snö saw in his eyes, every time they met? His own failure reflected there, the bitter and terrified poison—? Was that why her own eyes grew flat and hard, and her heart turned to such sharp and cruel words?

Cold laid thick across his skin, like a blanket in the reverse; it nibbled at him, stole into the cracks between him and her, until suddenly she was sitting upright and it stormed in, threatening to tear him from the moment and throw him out into that thing that raged just beyond the border of his consciousness.

Come back down, he wanted to say, it's cold, come back down, but he didn't say anything.

It felt like the moment would be startled away if he did.

As if this.. whatever, this pressure building like friction-static between them, would flee, and he would never know what sat upon her tongue, between her teeth, lodged itself somewhere in her throat and ran in circles but never came out.

It ends up that way, the cold, patient voice in his mind murmured into the silence, when you let the skin heal when the wound beneath is still infected.

There's no way to get the damned shit out of it without tearing it up again, and maybe that was what he had accidentally done—torn open her scars.

She said his name—funny, how it had become that to him—in the smallest voice he had ever heard coming out of her mouth, the tiniest sound he could imagine lightning capable of—

No, scratch that. He hadn't believed her capable of speaking with such soft terror, not when even her grief blasted shit to pieces.

And he knew what she was asking, because he knew that Ophelia was her Ma and that her Pa was some frightening asshole and even though his memory of it was fuzzy, he was pretty sure he'd asked Ophelia if it was Spark who was her father—

—and not to forget the wings.

Not to forget anything about this outlandish, loveable creature.

"You're Elding," he said instead, ears and eyes and voice pointed, fixed on her with some kind of intense focus—

"Ljós og hjarta..." And his lips curved into a small smile, it felt so weird but also right, but—but there was something in his voice and eyes that said,

I know exactly who and what you are.

And I don't give a damn about it.

[ @[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 . . .
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Roskuld the Sparklight Posts: 424
World's Edge General atk: 7.5 | def: 9.5 | dam: 6
Mare :: Tribrid :: 15.3 :: 6 HP: 82 | Buff: ENDURE
Zchiraxicon :: Royal Rougarou :: Electric Smithers
#32
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..

You're Elding.

Elding, he calls me. I’ve always wondered what that even meant.

And the way he said it, the way he was looking at me, ice blue gaze burning stars in my eyes—well it—like, shit twisted in the back of my throat and my whole body did this thing and I felt like shriveling up and hiding somewhere far, far away—

--cuz he was smiling at me and saying some other shit, saying shit that sounded familiar and wrong all at the same time, spitting leos and hyarta at me, words I’ve never heard before in a voice that caressed them easily with a trained tongue. And he was smiling too, his lips pulling slightly into a thing that was slaying me soundly. You’re Leos, though,” I breathed like an idiot, feeling…way too weird about what was happening, cuz he was breaking my heart but he was pulling a smile from me anyway, a smile that was fractured and weak and so stupid but he had me smiling it anyway.

And it crumbled easily, too; it slid off my face like sludge as I bit my lip, because he was being so…so…I don’t even know, he was just being it, and all at once he was showing me with a perfect, blue-eyed display exactly what I was risking losing. These stupid things he pulled from me. “Leos”. “Hyarta”.

I really wanted to know those words, one day.

I shifted where I sat, feeling gross, all kinds of nasty, cuz everything about him—not even his words, just his tone and the way he was looking at me—was something I didn’t deserve to…didn’t…deserve. The truth in my breast sloshed around like some hot, melted tar sticking to my insides and crushing them steadily under the weight. Because I forgot I slipped that Ophelia was my Ma while I was shattering and her image in my head froze my thoughts into confusion, too timid and too afraid to swing any which way—

My breath trembled; my head inched lower towards his neck again, the impossible urge to just lay against him creeping on me—an urge that was blasted apart as the Stuff echoed in my head again and I groaned in the back of my throat, jerking away from him, unable to touch him--

--and I tried, I tried to steady my breath, but as I sucked it in it rattled all the way down anyway. “Do you—do you remember…” I started, my voice a ruined whisper as I hovered over him, desperately wishing I could just collapse, “…what I said, about my Ma? A-About how she…how I…” I swallowed and tried to salvage my words, “How I…how I thought she….” Something bitter emerged from my throat—a harsh bark of laughter for the things I had thought were true, shit I had suspected.

I swear I had tried stitching it together—my thoughts, my feelings, everything, and it was a damn disaster and it lay tangled in my head like a jumbled mess, a knot of words too large to ever cram through my mouth. There were tears again in my eyes, perched on the edges of my lids as I realized I couldn’t ever explain this…this bitter sludge that blocked my heartbeat, my veins and arteries. He had asked me what was eating me, though—and somewhere I decided that the best answer would be…

…the nightmare itself.

’You…act like a…a self-absorbed, foul-mouthed, entitled little child’, I said, and my voice was changed because the words I was speaking weren’t my own; they were echoes forever etched in my memory, a cadence I couldn’t escape no matter how fast I tried to run, no matter how hard I tried to sleep, ’Are you…are you happy to hear now that even though y-your mother was…your mother was… I swallowed hard and the tears fell and they were heavy and sick and scared,…your mother was...raped by a god, she…she s-still wants you?

I took another breath and more tears followed the first ones, starting to slide down my face in a steady stream—but I fought my voice and pounded it hard, wringing it in control, to spew these words I had kept tucked so tightly inside, ’Your…your mother isn't sure what to do with you? That's…your fault. Y-You're awful. You're more than old enough to s-stop acting this way, but you spew piss and shit out of your m-mouth like you were still a b…baby too helpless to do anything but lay in her own shit." Another steadying, shuddering breath; my voice was getting thick. ’Y-You need to learn your fucking place in this world.’

I gasped—well, it was a sob now, cuz the crying was getting harder even though I still wrestled with my voice to make it clear. “She…Ma….” I said, and I didn’t even know what I was trying to say but some floodgate had opened and I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to at that point, “She…she didn’t say that b-but….it was that…that huge rat bastard she calls her….”

My voice was breaking and so was my face, so were my eyes and everything, everything was breaking under the fresh wave of pain that kept me up and wandering, “He…he said all that and then she…s-she called him her p-protector.” My words were shrinking now, under the weight of this knife carving into me, “S-she called him a f-friend, she called him—s-she told me—“ And since my own words were failing, I pulled even more from memory—the barbed ones, the ones stuck in my side. 'You heard now. The…the truth. I c- cannot make you believe me, but I…I do love you in a way that I know. If this… is not enough for you, I understand.’

Even now, under the stars laying with Lee’s warmth so close, I couldn’t stop the reaction in my head at those words: what bullshit.

Which pulled even more tears from me.

I laid there, breathless and gasping and feeling so tender, like my skin had been flayed from my sides. Because I was telling Leos the truth of it--that Elding was a name he had given me and nothing more and I was something so much worse, something revolting that had the nerve to even think of touching him.

I’m a rape, I finally whispered—and it could’ve been the stars talking, the nonexistent breeze, the stones creaking around us from where they sat perfect and stationary, I’m my mother’s rape.

And how in the world could you eve love your rape?


"talk"

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Ascended Helovian

Mauja the Frozen Light Posts: 1,392
Outcast atk: 6.5 | def: 10.5 | dam: 7.5
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 17.2 :: 14 HP: 79.5 | Buff: HUNTER
Irma :: Snowy Owl :: Terrorize & Diego :: Eurasian Eagle-Owl :: Rage Neo
#33
“You’re Leos, though,” she shot back—though, it was more like a whisper, the echo of her heartbeat, and he knew in his bones what it was—the calm before the storm—a moment of reprieve before the shatter

And something in his heart ached as she returned his enigmatic smile, because it was still a smile, so fragile, so honest. It.. well—everything she did came from the heart, didn't it?

A golden heart in a cage of lightning.

Sparks running along the metal wiring.

And he couldn't for the life of him label the emotion running like a shock through his system, couldn't even begin to understand what the fuck it meant, or tried to mean, but—

Yeah. I guess I have a heart.

But what kind of heart.. that remained to be seen. He didn't want to think about it, because it made him uncomfortable, like there was some kind of truth beneath it all that he couldn't—didn't dare to—face yet.

It could be anything, though. It could be nothing.

It could be everything.

And he knew that it wasn't this easy, that just because some shit had frozen over in his skull again and he threw it all to the wind because she was still in some kind of pain—that just because of all that, this wasn't over. It would never be over. This would come back, and it would haunt him, one wolf with its heart still in its chest, and one wolf with its heart ripped out.

Her smile faded, chased away, lost—it fell to pieces and disappeared, and took his with it. No, he wanted to say, don't go, because something had felt so right, so good, when he'd teased that hesitant smile from her.

As if.. something had been alright. Mended. Like his previous words had become at least partially true,

despite the inherent lie nestled in its nature,

—but what came after was so much more terrifying.

It was something cold and harsh and merciless that snatched up that thing, his frozen heart, and held it in a way that threatened to make his vision blur, go dark; to tear up the trees and tear all the stars from the night sky and raze the mountains and raise the waves, and he was breathing that shadow.

He was breathing her rank fear. He was breathing whatever—

Shit, it was what he'd told her, right? It's when awake that I am haunted. And he could practically see the nightmare slipping out between her lips, a cloud of something dark and wicked that got sucked back with each inhalation, only to peek out again mingled with air and words as slowly, slowly, she spelled out some horrible story he wasn't sure he wanted to hear.

It was like that realization from earlier—except now it was the hands of her child grabbing the porcelain statue and throwing it to the floor, and he was lying next to where it fell. There was nothing to save him from the explosion and the shards, and with a sinking feeling in his chest—he had only two names for that fucking thing, "terror" and "despair"—he listened.

Drank in every word. Every pause. Every nuance of her small voice, every trickle of starlight in her tears.

(Did you ever cry over me, Snö?)

And somewhere, in the midst of the revelations hailing down upon him like sharp fragments, he pitied her—Ophelia. He pitied her, and the perfection of her memory, and.. well. It was just that, wasn't it? He pitied her because no one ought to be put through what she had been put through—

—it was an old hate of his, old old old, older than his bones—

—and a new flicker of flame, a new disease to scorch the backside of his breastbone, sprang to life—

but the rest of the situation was what was fucked up.

(So let me get this straight: if the Moon, by murdering Psyche, had made it past Time and onto the first place of his 'gods I hate the most' list, Time certainly took that place back. Fucking rapist of a God.)

He just lay there, again, neck cramping from being held up to watch her (collapse against him), mouth closed out of habit but in his mind his jaw had dropped through the floor.

The.. incredulity ... like holy fuck, was this even real? Was he dreaming this fucked-up story? Was—was.........

Was Elding—Roskuld—whatever lying next to him, having spewed out something that tore her heart asunder, crying with the soft kind of terror that made him want to set the entire world on fire and laugh as it burned—was she the product of rape, of a fucking God forcing himself upon a mare, and—get it, this is the best part.

Torleik had, of course, put his big fucking dick in the middle of the shitfest that was Roskuld's life, like he thought he had a right to dictate shit around her

FILTH.

Yeah.

Bastard.

The stick in his ass was up deep, and suddenly Mauja found himself disinclined to do anything about it. In fact, he would rather punch it in further and hope it hit his fucking heart.

And then, as if to make impossibly bad matters somehow impossible much worse, Roskuld whispered the most heart-breaking and untrue things he had ever heard:

“I’m a rape, I'm my mother's rape.”

"Bullshit," tore itself out of his throat at that, head crashing down to the ground because he thought he might accidentally incinerate her with the fire springing up in his eyes, (if Tamlin had ever known...). But—he wanted to say something, to.. make things fucking right, because she was lying on or next to or whatever him, crying so softly, because, because, because of all the things, Torleik (my fucking consort) had pinned it all on Roskuld.

Like it was her fault the Time God was an ass. Like it was her fault she was born.

Like it was her fault everyone had the communication skills of a limp dead fish.

Mauja included, of course. He had ruined plenty of kids in his own time.

"You are not responsible for anything your parents did," he finally said, still shell-shocked, trying to juggle what she'd said—

—what she had revealed about Torleik, about.. about Ophelia.

Had she even stood up for her child? Had she even told Torleik to shut it and get the hell out of there?

She was in the Edge now. So probably not.

Or she had but they had made it up, or whatever, but if anyone had yelled abuse at Snö—

—fuck, had Torleik yelled at Snö when Psyche died, when he'd been out of his mind and unable to understand what the fuck was going on

—there were so many dead dogs buried in his backyard and he had no idea where they even were.

"You—" he began, and something in his voice broke—hell, something in his heart broke, because he could just keep hearing what Roskuld had said that time in the caverns, that Phi's eyes went dark and more than he wondered what ghosts Snö saw in his eyes, he wondered if he'd ever looked at Tamlin that way—

But Tamlin had always adored him.. right? So he couldn't.. couldn't have...

Of course, he had told d'Artagnan, or something along the lines of it, it included me, after all.

His mouth worked soundlessly, jaws opening and closing, the thing nearly bursting in his throat but he couldn't get it out

He couldn't say it—

He couldn't phrase it—

So he just curled up around her, best as she could, trying to drape his thick neck over her, and hold her—as if everything depended on it.

Because he had the wild, terrifying notion that it did.

[ @[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 . . .
angels, they fell first, but I'm still here

Roskuld the Sparklight Posts: 424
World's Edge General atk: 7.5 | def: 9.5 | dam: 6
Mare :: Tribrid :: 15.3 :: 6 HP: 82 | Buff: ENDURE
Zchiraxicon :: Royal Rougarou :: Electric Smithers
#34
Roskuld & Zchiraxicon
Where there's no Law tying my heart from the start..

*"You are not responsible for anything your parents did.”*

My face, my eyes and everything were drenched in tears and it was so fucking stupid to sit there, sniveling in his wake as something furious started kindling in his eyes, bursting out of his mouth—

--and I remembered, back when we did some stupid shit for a god or a boat or something, I dunno, the details were kinda hazy—but I remember how he had shouted with me then, our voices raging and entwining themselves in a furious echo that bounced off the gods’ shrines—and I remember how shocked I had been that something so rough could ever escape such a smooth, flawless exterior, a perfect crystal golem with ice-shards for eyes—

It was his passion that was catching me off guard, I guess. Like…I should know better by now, that it was only a face and that there were things underneath that churned and bubbled and boiled just like me, just like anyone else with a bleeding, pumping heart. But that…that shock never left me, that feeling of…of stupid, childish delight at the kindling of his fury, a feeling I couldn’t help and hated feeling cuz I didn’t want him angry, I didn’t want him so worked up—over me of all things.

I shook my head; droplets fell from my chin as I waved it from side to side. “No, Lee—“ I started, just as he was shocking me again--moving suddenly, and he was there all in my face, all in my space and he was gripping me and it was kinda awkward how he was doing it and I was shoved all the way against him, his weight and his muscle preventing me from wrenching myself away—

--even if I wanted to—

--and I bit back the wail that was rising in my throat, cuz it was wrong, all wrong, he shouldn’t be doing this, he should be—he shouldn’t be teasing me with this and making that thing burst in me even more, softer blasts in my brain but blasts nonetheless (Oh fuck I love this guy--)—

“B-but I w-was such an asshole, Lee,” I moaned, and he was everywhere so there’s where my words went, into his skin, his mane and his shoulderblade and everything that held me, “I w-was…I treated her s-so…” The memories of my screaming, my hurt and my stupid, stupid anger rolled in behind my eyes—and the shame was building like hot oil in my gut and if I had the strength I would be pushing myself away from Lee even then—

“I just—I was s-so angry and I just wanted to…to know…” I tried explaining myself and that bitterness that had gripped me in that moment, but crying is exhausting and it shatters everything and there was no direction to my words, “I j-just wanted to know, I didn’t know, I j-just wanted her to…I just wanted…I d-didn’t mean…”

My sobs started growing and I clutched at him despite everything in my bones hating me for it. “N-n-now she h-h-hates me for sure, s-she has to, s-she—“ And the knots in me were getting tighter and I was losing it again, losing it all over his fur like last time, like last time--

--Why are you touching me?! I finally cried into him, the confusion bursting out of me before I could grasp it by its coattails, “You s-should’ve been g-gone by now, w-why are you—why—“ And even though I was questioning his presence and everything he was showing me, I gripped him tighter, I held him so tight, cuz that madness in me hadn’t died yet—that crazy in me at the thought that he just might leave.



"talk"

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