02-28-2018, 07:06 PM
we are crooked souls trying to stay up straight
‘We all have them.’Warrick’s mind wanders momentarily, his heart racing through the stars and galaxies that hang low in the inky blackness that yawns before them, the bitterness of loss and pain throbbing in his chest.
He is quick to find a bond between himself and others - it is a need he cannot satisfy, no matter how many times he has seen it be his downfall. He is constantly searching for it and open to it, welcoming their stories and their heart into his own, holding them like little treasures and protecting them with the grandeur of his navy wings. Perhaps it had begun when he had been left alone, and he sought the need to fill the emptiness, and now he cannot control it. ‘Bring me the outcasted, the unwanted, the lonely - here, we will show them they are so much more than that’ - he had told Amorette, and she has done so. Tephra now swims with the many people that have been invited, and his chest beams with pride and warmth - despite the dark cloud that hangs over him. He cannot even remember now why he had come to the ocean in the first place, for he is lost in a place in between.
Though quick to trust, quick to see goodness and light in their eyes, Warrick is fierce. He is fierce in everything that he does - in his loyalty, in his love, in his devotion, even in his anger. There is nothing that can quell that ferocity, and it is something that has been with him since birth. Perhaps it is all too much, perhaps it is why he finds himself staring into the night sky and into the ocean’s trembling waves for answers - because his ferocity in all things brings him here.
If that is the case, he would not change it. He is fierce because time is fleeting and waning - there is no other option. His heart is on his sleeve, for in a moment, it could all vanish - just like it had on the mountain.
That is why he leans into her, that is why their first conversation is so contemplating and deep and true - what if he is never to see her again? The thought saddens him a bit, and he sighs deeply into the salt-strewn air, his breath a cloud of roiling vapor from his cobalt lips. She speaks of Tephra as if it is alive - a thought he had himself the moment he arrived on its shores. The volcano itself has its own heartbeat, pulsing and wild throughout the grasslands of the island, a silent protector looming in the distance. “I don’t think she promised me anything,” he muses aloud, his brow furrowing in thought,“but that I made a promise to her.”
“I was young and powers beyond our world took my mother and sister from me.” He doesn’t tell her they are in the stars, for part of him thinks she might already have guessed, the way his eyes continue to search the heavens. “I did not know what I was searching for here - perhaps the end of the world. I traced the lava streams until I knew them by heart, I swam in the ocean until my muscles learned to handle the current, I brought others here to learn the land as I had...and in return, she gave me a home and a family. That had been what I was looking for. I had looked to the skies, to the stars, but Tephra made me realize my family is here. A new one, not of blood, but of one heart all the same.”
His voice trails off, the sound of the ocean filling in the silence as he snorts softly, turning his brilliant blue gaze down to look at Saedis. “I still look to the skies, though. I can’t help it.”
He often flies into the higher atmosphere, searching for perhaps a sign of his mother or sister, despite his knowing that they would never be revealed to him - not in the way he wanted. They are only starlight, twinkling and winking millions of miles away - too far for even a pair of wings.
Warrick