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10-09-2016, 10:23 AM
like breaking diamonds with your hands
What was it Skullface had called him all those years ago—Fallen? True it had been then, true it was now; true it had always been, and likely always would. It was fascinating how strangers saw to the core of him, how they saw the fine lattice of cracks across the milk white of his skin, but how he somehow tricked them into seeing grace and strength, too, where there was none.
He was broken, but still moving.
He was fallen, but all it seemed to give him was dark beauty.
The reflection cast back at him in the eyes of others was somehow warped, layered in their fantasies and expectations, anchored in reality but ultimately nothing but their dream of him.
And the darkest, bitterest truth he had to swallow was this: he was fallen because he had pushed himself off the edge.
She smiled at him—still cryptic, still angelic, mysterious, sharp—and her response was logical, laced with a kind of amusement that went like a knife between his ribs and into his heart. It twisted, and his heart stumbled, and the cautious glance given her way drifted away again as the same sense of stupid mortality descended upon him. What was it about her that made him feel so .. worthless and pathetic, like she was perfection and he nothing but a stumbling, fumbling, dumb insect crawling on the floor beneath her holy feet..?
A low sigh was blown from black nostrils as his head arced slowly towards the earth. Dumb dumb dumb dumb rang in his mind, rattling and discordant, bouncing from one end of his skull to the other—
Who would ever need you, Mauja?
And why do you need to be needed, dear old frozen heart?
(I thought you didn't have emotions. That you didn't feel affection. That you were nothing but a glacial wasteland. Pristine. Perfect. Machinery.)
“You must have been through a lot,” she said, and he blew at the silver sands, watched them ripple like the discomfort crawling down his spine in silence. Was she mocking him? Or was she pitying him?
I don't want your pity.
He didn't deserve pity; he had done all of this to himself. There was no bigger, greater, external force which had crippled his soul and haunted him—there was no glorious fight in which he had championed things good and bright, there was just an idiot who kept stabbing himself and wishing someone would see him bleed even as he did his best to wrap it up as quick as he could.
"Perhaps," he simply said to the sand, the scent of the ocean strong in his nostrils and he wondered what it would be like to wade into its arms, and let it take him into the deep. “— In this land… You must know a lot about it, too.” It reminded him of another time, a dreary and gray day, and a white woman-child asking him for the Edge's history.
He had given it. Freely. While his thread was woven thick in the tapestry of it, he had not needed to betray old trusts and reveal the darkness of his past; he had told it with as much detachment as he could, but more and more he could not deny that the generation he had come to Helovia with was leaving him behind. They moved on. Away. Died. Few remained; few remembered the Windtossed Foothills, the wrath of the sun god, the fall of the Order of the Sun...
Was it an invitation to talk? Or was it nothing but a statement?
He chose the latter, pitiful old fool that he was; if she wanted something from him, she would have to ask.
His soft nose skimmed the sand as he ambled closer; stood next to her and stared out over the white-foam backs of the waves. "Yes," he said, quietly, hating how she had phrased it: you must have been through a lot. You broken old thing. You fragile, shattered, unfortunate soul. He breathed out, head still slung low. The worst part wasn't what she said, or how she said, or anything that had anything to do with her.
The worst part was that he was weak.
Why else would he be in the position he was in?
[ @Maren ]
He was broken, but still moving.
He was fallen, but all it seemed to give him was dark beauty.
The reflection cast back at him in the eyes of others was somehow warped, layered in their fantasies and expectations, anchored in reality but ultimately nothing but their dream of him.
And the darkest, bitterest truth he had to swallow was this: he was fallen because he had pushed himself off the edge.
She smiled at him—still cryptic, still angelic, mysterious, sharp—and her response was logical, laced with a kind of amusement that went like a knife between his ribs and into his heart. It twisted, and his heart stumbled, and the cautious glance given her way drifted away again as the same sense of stupid mortality descended upon him. What was it about her that made him feel so .. worthless and pathetic, like she was perfection and he nothing but a stumbling, fumbling, dumb insect crawling on the floor beneath her holy feet..?
A low sigh was blown from black nostrils as his head arced slowly towards the earth. Dumb dumb dumb dumb rang in his mind, rattling and discordant, bouncing from one end of his skull to the other—
Who would ever need you, Mauja?
And why do you need to be needed, dear old frozen heart?
(I thought you didn't have emotions. That you didn't feel affection. That you were nothing but a glacial wasteland. Pristine. Perfect. Machinery.)
“You must have been through a lot,” she said, and he blew at the silver sands, watched them ripple like the discomfort crawling down his spine in silence. Was she mocking him? Or was she pitying him?
I don't want your pity.
He didn't deserve pity; he had done all of this to himself. There was no bigger, greater, external force which had crippled his soul and haunted him—there was no glorious fight in which he had championed things good and bright, there was just an idiot who kept stabbing himself and wishing someone would see him bleed even as he did his best to wrap it up as quick as he could.
"Perhaps," he simply said to the sand, the scent of the ocean strong in his nostrils and he wondered what it would be like to wade into its arms, and let it take him into the deep. “— In this land… You must know a lot about it, too.” It reminded him of another time, a dreary and gray day, and a white woman-child asking him for the Edge's history.
He had given it. Freely. While his thread was woven thick in the tapestry of it, he had not needed to betray old trusts and reveal the darkness of his past; he had told it with as much detachment as he could, but more and more he could not deny that the generation he had come to Helovia with was leaving him behind. They moved on. Away. Died. Few remained; few remembered the Windtossed Foothills, the wrath of the sun god, the fall of the Order of the Sun...
Was it an invitation to talk? Or was it nothing but a statement?
He chose the latter, pitiful old fool that he was; if she wanted something from him, she would have to ask.
His soft nose skimmed the sand as he ambled closer; stood next to her and stared out over the white-foam backs of the waves. "Yes," he said, quietly, hating how she had phrased it: you must have been through a lot. You broken old thing. You fragile, shattered, unfortunate soul. He breathed out, head still slung low. The worst part wasn't what she said, or how she said, or anything that had anything to do with her.
The worst part was that he was weak.
Why else would he be in the position he was in?
[ @Maren ]
