tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us; any - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Meadow (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=3) +---- Thread: tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us; any (/showthread.php?tid=17945) Pages:
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tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us; any - garbage - 01-12-2018
RE: tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us; any - Saedìs - 01-13-2018
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With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; She comes, quiet, and it’s by the touch of her shoulder to his that he first knows her. He isn’t sure, exactly, how long it’s been since he was last touched, only that in the fleeting moment of contact something in him stirs and cries out, a slumbering desperation, and a shiver crosses over his body. She’s too familiar, and a part of him – and old part – wants to want her of this. There are desperate creatures out there, ones who will find a sincerity in her fleeting touches and sweet tone, ones who will make too much of it and put her on a pedestal for it. He was such a creature, once. Perhaps he still is. He doesn’t entirely know what kind of creature he is now. A lonely one, for sure. And maybe that’s it. She asks a question, philosophical, one he isn’t sure how to answer. “Sometimes it feels that way and I don’t have to wonder,” he says, “but mostly, I think it’d just be lonely.” It’s why he’s here, after all – loneliness. Because maybe, this place was once home. And was he lonely, there? Perhaps. Loneliness feels familiar, a piece of well-worn clothing slipped on. “I’m Garbage,” he says. It’s a terrible name, given by a hateful mother he no longer recalls. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says, “do you live in the meadow?” Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; In another life, before he stepped into the ocean, he might have warned her. I am too old, he might have said, I am too wanting. But he isn’t old, now – not in body, which is in its prime, all slick black with no gray. She doesn’t know of the other life he lived. She’s close, still, and he can catch her scent. It’s sweet, earthy, and he savors it. She compels him, with her boldness, her dreamer’s gaze. “Me too,” he says. Loneliness is a terrible creature, and for all his familiarity with it, it never gets better. It’s why such shivers crossed his body when she brushed past. It’s why his mind reels at the scent of her. She inquires about his eyes. He doesn’t have the real story to tell her – the real story is terrible, anyway – but he has something. A notion. “I got them from my father,” he says, and at that word - father - his voice chokes for a moment. He doesn’t know his father. They never met, in this life, or the last. In this life, he doesn’t even know his father’s name. (Covet. An awful king who killed the man his mother most loved.) He fights the urge to close those same eyes, to hide the orange hue. They are a mark, a scarlet letter proclaiming his heritage. “Mostly,” he says, “I live here as much as anywhere else. I was never one for kingdoms.” What worth is he to kingdoms, anyway? He has no powers, besides a penchant for not dying when he should, he has no mind for diplomacy and no spirit for fighting. He is better as a nomad. As a nothing. Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; He is not dangerous in the way that most things are. He was dangerous in that way, once, but that was a very long time ago and that creature is long gone. No, here it is his desperation that makes him dangerous, the way he is weak and wanting, the way he does not know how to hold back, how to say no when he knows he should. It is a different kind of danger, insidious and odd. He wants to touch her again, because she is kind to him, because she looks into his eyes and does not flinch from them. He almost does just that, his head moves, a little jerk of a motion, but then he stops himself. He doesn’t know her. She isn’t his to know. Your kindness is wasted on me, he wants to tell her. But he doesn’t. Selfish, he wants her to stay. Wants this moment in the meadow to last. Her question surprises him, and he laughs, a little, a rusty sound in his throat. He isn’t used to laughing. “Well,” he says, smiling, “I’m no historian, and Beqanna herself has changed a lot. I don’t know much of the new kingdoms, but years back, there were other kingdoms. Alignments, of good and evil, though no one much aligned to such starkness. Kingdoms of solely men and solely women, as well. But then there was a reckoning, and many lost their magic, for awhile – and new kingdoms came. Some of those new kingdoms fell, but most have survived.” He pauses, considers. “The meadow, though, has mostly stayed the same. Home to nomads and others who don’t want the protection and structure of a kingdom.” He is close to her. Her eyes shine in a devastating way. He doesn’t notice this. He doesn’t. “What about you?” he asks, “were you born here? Or did you come from far away?” Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, And eyes squeezed shut ‘neath rusty mane; She is brightness and heaven’s light and he fears it as much as he reveres it, because he was reborn but not remade, the same mechanisms of his heart malfunction. It’s an old story and one he’s lived a hundred times before but he doesn’t remember those except in a distant sort of ache, the longing for a home that’s no longer home. She laughs, which is worse – which is better – and tells her story. I came from the ocean, she says, and a memory crosses his mind, a lightning strike of recollection. A gulp of water in the lungs. Following a girl down, down, down, and then nothing. Blackness. But he’d woken on the beach, had he not? Woken there with a wet coat and salt-crusted mane and no memory of what had transpired. He laughs, again, this time in a sort of disbelief. Her story mirrors his, though he doubts the circumstances are much the same. “I know the feeling,” he says, then confesses, “I woke up on the beach myself. No idea who or what I was. Things have come back, since, but not…not everything.” It’s too much, what he tells her, even though there’s handfuls of secrets beneath that, secrets like I think I might have died and I think I’ve done terrible things and I don’t entirely know who I am. And -- the way I want to look at you frightens me. “Well,” he says, the beginning of a sentence he shouldn’t finish, “I could show you my favorite part of the meadow.” Until he says that, he didn’t realize he had a favorite part, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth he realizes it’s true. There’s a place not far from here, full of wildflowers, close to the river. And why is it his favorite? He doesn’t know. But it is. In that place, once, he thinks he might have been happy. Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. |