11-07-2019, 07:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-07-2019, 11:30 PM by Frostreaver.)
<style type="text/css">.template1_container {background: #fff; width: 500px;border: 8px solid #000; color: #000; font: 10px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding: 15px;text-align: justify;box-shadow: inset 0 0 2px 2px #000;}.template1_name {text-align: center;color: #000; font: 26px 'Times New Roman', serif; padding-top: 10px;padding-right: 10px;}.template1_quote {text-align: center;font-style: italic;}</style><center><div class="template1_container">She lies with a cheek on the cold, packed sand, gray eyes staring out across waters that match. Today, just like every day, she lingers in the pain and the loss. <i>The curl of his mouth, the sneers of disgust.</i> It envelops her in a cruel, burning hug, one that she has felt a thousand times over … too many times but not enough, never enough, and now she is numb with the feel of it. She’s lost track of how many gray sunsets have come and gone, how many tides have ebbed and grown. The wind - always cold, always biting, skates along the bilgy ocean water, an ocean that mocks her with it’s dead-filled silence. It lifts and plucks half-heartedly at her seawater-matted mane, ragged and pitiful against a listless neck. <i>I am not your lover, dirty one.</i> She winces, a stir of “life”. Legs lying akimbo, the once pristine white socks now hopelessly streaked and stained, she sighs. It had gone all wrong, though they had told them it had not been right from the start. A shuddering sigh rattles through her gaunt frame. <i>Tatter,</i> she whispers, but no sound passes dead, cracked lips. <i>Tatter,</i> she breathes - still no sound, and the wind pays no mind.
Every dawn she lies in this quiet agony, remembering the vitriol, the hate that burned in eyes so like their father’s. <i>Though she is looking directly at him when he rises, when that smirking mouth she loves so twists into something ugly and dangerous, she does not think to evade him. Even as her body spins away instinctively she does not consciously think to escape him. Never, not once, had she considered that her beloved Tatter would strike out at her with anything more than words. Pain explodes behind her eyes, black spots dancing in her vision, threatening to go black. She has never been struck before, not even during her and Chain's training sessions. Always too agile, too lithe for her heavier grandfather to hit. But Tatter, dear Tatter, he is too fast for her, encumbered as she is by the heavy burden that stands between them. She cannot help the cry of pain; it cuts loose from a strangled throat, high and surprised. A few ribs crack beneath his weight and now every breath burns with an aching fire she'd not thought could exist. He laughs at her now, his back turned, daring her to carry out on her threats. But she cannot focus as she stands there, long legs trembling, fighting every breath even as she gasps for air. It hurts, it hurts. She tries to shuffle away, unsteady and swaying on her feet, but she catches the toe of her hoof on something, tripping and going down on her knees before she can catch herself. She is moaning, low pitiful sounds that do not register, preoccupied as she is with getting away, struggling to get back on all fours.</i>
Another stir of “life”, the memories a well-worn cascade she is helpless to stem. It is a struggle to get to her feet and she groans but there is no resistance in her, not anymore. Day in and day out, this is her existence, here on this side of the veil. One foot in front of the other, leaving no trace as she moves north along the beach; head bowed and eyes closed, as if by doing so she could hope to stave off death’s punishments. <i>Fey, Fey, Fey,</i> she gathers the name on soundless lips, repeated in staccato, but even the ire it stirs is not enough to warm her. So she walks, and her life - wasted in the end - walks with her.
<i>I can’t breathe without you. I can’t live without you.</i> And so, she hadn’t.
She moves with the steady motion of one who has done this a thousand times. She has, in fact, and death will never grow weary of making her relive the worst moments of her life. This gray scale one seems to be its favorite. Her strides are steady even though her emaciated frame should betray her. Dirty and bedraggled, a queen no more, she reaches the end of the beach and slowly turns out toward the lifeless waters. A pause here, another skeletal breath. She had walked into the ocean then, so many years ago, and with the same sort of brokenhearted mindlessness, she walks into it now. It was the same icy cold that day, gripping at her ankles, tickling her underside, swirling about her shoulders before slipping over her back. It had robbed her of her breath, stirred a primal sense of survival in her belly, but she had been determined not to live a moment longer without him. So she went on. Now, here on the other side of death, the cold still aches in bones long dead; the insensate waters still close over her head, dragging her beneath the surface, flooding her lungs and her mind …
It is always the same, day in and day out, but suddenly - violently - it’s not.<div class="template1_name">frostreaver</div><div class="template1_quote">_________________</div></div></center>
Every dawn she lies in this quiet agony, remembering the vitriol, the hate that burned in eyes so like their father’s. <i>Though she is looking directly at him when he rises, when that smirking mouth she loves so twists into something ugly and dangerous, she does not think to evade him. Even as her body spins away instinctively she does not consciously think to escape him. Never, not once, had she considered that her beloved Tatter would strike out at her with anything more than words. Pain explodes behind her eyes, black spots dancing in her vision, threatening to go black. She has never been struck before, not even during her and Chain's training sessions. Always too agile, too lithe for her heavier grandfather to hit. But Tatter, dear Tatter, he is too fast for her, encumbered as she is by the heavy burden that stands between them. She cannot help the cry of pain; it cuts loose from a strangled throat, high and surprised. A few ribs crack beneath his weight and now every breath burns with an aching fire she'd not thought could exist. He laughs at her now, his back turned, daring her to carry out on her threats. But she cannot focus as she stands there, long legs trembling, fighting every breath even as she gasps for air. It hurts, it hurts. She tries to shuffle away, unsteady and swaying on her feet, but she catches the toe of her hoof on something, tripping and going down on her knees before she can catch herself. She is moaning, low pitiful sounds that do not register, preoccupied as she is with getting away, struggling to get back on all fours.</i>
Another stir of “life”, the memories a well-worn cascade she is helpless to stem. It is a struggle to get to her feet and she groans but there is no resistance in her, not anymore. Day in and day out, this is her existence, here on this side of the veil. One foot in front of the other, leaving no trace as she moves north along the beach; head bowed and eyes closed, as if by doing so she could hope to stave off death’s punishments. <i>Fey, Fey, Fey,</i> she gathers the name on soundless lips, repeated in staccato, but even the ire it stirs is not enough to warm her. So she walks, and her life - wasted in the end - walks with her.
<i>I can’t breathe without you. I can’t live without you.</i> And so, she hadn’t.
She moves with the steady motion of one who has done this a thousand times. She has, in fact, and death will never grow weary of making her relive the worst moments of her life. This gray scale one seems to be its favorite. Her strides are steady even though her emaciated frame should betray her. Dirty and bedraggled, a queen no more, she reaches the end of the beach and slowly turns out toward the lifeless waters. A pause here, another skeletal breath. She had walked into the ocean then, so many years ago, and with the same sort of brokenhearted mindlessness, she walks into it now. It was the same icy cold that day, gripping at her ankles, tickling her underside, swirling about her shoulders before slipping over her back. It had robbed her of her breath, stirred a primal sense of survival in her belly, but she had been determined not to live a moment longer without him. So she went on. Now, here on the other side of death, the cold still aches in bones long dead; the insensate waters still close over her head, dragging her beneath the surface, flooding her lungs and her mind …
It is always the same, day in and day out, but suddenly - violently - it’s not.<div class="template1_name">frostreaver</div><div class="template1_quote">_________________</div></div></center>