the Rift


[OPEN] it's my party and i'll cry if i want to

Zèklè Posts: 166
Outcast atk: 8.0 | def: 10 | dam: 3.5
Colt :: Pegasus :: 14.1 :: Three HP: 67 | Buff: NOVICE
charks
#1

Of course he'd gone looking for Ma, because what else was he ever gonna do, because it was Ma and she was gone and there wasn't a single reality in which he wouldn't have gone to look for her. That was a no-brainer. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He was going to find her, and make her feel better, and bring her home, because she belonged at home with him. And that was that.

He hadn't even considered the possibility of not finding her, because that wasn't a possibility. He would find her.

Except he didn't.

He didn't find her at all.

She was just gone, and something of him had gone with her.

---------------------------------------------

Grey water carved into the grey shore. Somewhere behind him grey seagulls squabbled over a grey crab. The sun was distorted, hidden behind a film of limp grey cloud; in the distance a grey whale rose out of the sea, and from his position on the beach Zero watched it through dull grey eyes, grey snot drizzling sluggishly down his lip. Had he been crying? Probably, he thought, and shrugged. It didn't seem to matter much.

Very little mattered anymore, he'd found.

They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. They neglect to mention numb. For a boy who's life had been defined by emotion, Zero had taken to numbness like a fish to water, fully embracing the comfort of it once those hot pangs of denial wore off. She was gone and that was that. She'd left him, just left, the way he told himself she never would- she left him, and what was he supposed to do, to feel, to think?

(Do you have an answer?

Yeah. Neither do I.)

A second whale joined the first. Two seasons ago this would have been the highlight of Zero's week: standing on the beach, watching whales, trying to assemble it all into a story he could go home and tell Ma. He would have danced, carving crescents into the virgin sand, eyes lit up like the fourth of July- but his eyes didn't light up today, and his hooves didn't dance. Even his tailfeathers remained uncharacteristically still. He'd stood like this for hours, unwilling or unable to acknowledge that a world existed around him. It was a good trick, he'd learned, for when his feelings felt like they were getting so big they were filling him up on the inside, growing and growing and growing, hot and cold and sharp and dull, a monster with poisoned claws tearing at the empty space inside his chest, its voice a thunderous roar in his ears, its breath hot and stagnant in his throat, its-

He choked, a shudder passing through his body, making the metal that nearly encompassed his entire left side and foreleg glitter in the dull grey light. Zero pulled his wing in tighter, as though trying to disappear within it, to wear it as a cloak. Against the scenic backdrop he was rigid and closed, silently willing himself to become a statue. A statue, unable to move or think, think, think I wish I couldn't think because then I'd stop thinking that if only I could fly then maybe...

maybe...

maybe...


Zero the Lightning's Son closed his eyes, willing away the rising tears. In a voice too big for his small body, too old for his young face, the boy whispered to the sea, "Happy birthday to me."



Image Credits
- table by Niki -

Sikeax the Sea Soul Posts: 355
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 9 | dam: 6
Mare :: Hybrid :: 16 hh :: 5 years HP: 64.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Hobgoblin :: Common Rougarou :: Water & Seoul :: Plain White Dragon :: Toxic Breath Zuno
#2
well someday soon when the spring brings the sun
i'll sleep, i'll finally
feel better when the winter's gone
sikeax
The sea changes for no one, but when the water has warmed and the marine was more abundant, she could almost feel that it changed for those living within it. Not her, not Hobgoblin, not anyone on land, but those glued into it because their life depended on it. Waves and tides had threatened to swallow her whole and never spit her out, and while the thought is nearly calming, she can’t bring it happen. Hobgoblin’s body slips effortlessly through the currents with the occasional complaint about the warmth of the body, showing her images of whales that dwarfed his streamlined body and left them both with the feeling of being forever small.
It’s possibly comforting, but at the same time, frightening. His black eyes let her see them one more time before their massive bodies choose to swing downwards, pale blues staring out into a long palette of blue fading into the gray swells of cloud at a point she’ll never make it to. Two flippers break the silence only to welcome it back in.
Emptiness sets back in.
Sand sinks under her weight when she makes the gradual move towards the sea, watching tiredly as the foam riding the waves kisses her gray, cracked hooves and then pulls away with the fear and grace of a gentle, innocent lover who is beginning to learn the ropes of a new thing. Minutes pass before it births Hobgoblin entirely. Long wisps hang from his body and she finds no pang of terror when his body is something that is commonly unsettling, moving in lengthy, graceful steps that look as if they swallow the world when his hooves never touch the body.
Behind, she is ungraceful, swaying without a set rhythm as the beach sucks at her body and tries to draw her further in, ears caught up in the soft song of the ocean, almost slipping out of realit-
“Shiny thing.”
He’ll always be the one thing that pulls her and keeps her there, that place where she feels forced to bare her burdens and face them head on, as if he chooses to encourage her to be strong through abuse. Lazily, her skull rises from the dipped state that she had previously let it limply hang at, studying the faint glimmer of an object ahead. Hobgoblin is already bounding, leaping with curiosity that she doesn’t match, leaving her behind, forgetting that they’re a part of one another.
No emotion really rings from him when he stops his movement. It is not to say that he is completely void of it, but the usual things are blooming. Curiosity, the drive to inflict something that she isn’t sure what is yet, there’s more but listing them is useless. The bay form constructs with the glittering attached, and for a moment she finds herself mesmerized. It takes her some time before she notices who it is and the low shake of their body, watching as if she is a passerby that just wants to stare at how nice his coat is and the growth slowly covering him, like someone who doesn’t care when she is forced to by personal oath and the practice of her work.
It would be rude now to leave. It’d put a nasty feeling in her gut for days and work it’s way into a festering mess of emotions that she would try to push away only to be crushed by it later on.
Her throat clears. “Are you okay?”
An indefinite amount of time passes before she feels that maybe this isn’t her issue, or possibly it’s the rising discomfort from Hobgoblin. Tears had an unique talent of making him uncomfortable, and regardless of how well his forms hid it, the lingering in the back of her skull is trying to work it’s way into her.

OOC: casually replies c':
Hobgoblin is in his wendigo form

"Talk."
image credits


@Zèklè


you were angels,
so much more than everything

:: please tag me
:: minor force and power play allowed



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