04-25-2019, 09:27 AM
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
It was easy – perhaps too easy – to slip her away under the veil of nightfall. An obedient child, she is, even in the grasp of a stranger. Castile spares a glance over his shoulder periodically, ensuring that she still follows. In the night’s quiet, every footstep seemingly echoes. The crack of a twig is like glass shattering, but it worries him not. No one will – or can – stop him.
The muted conversation breaks once they’ve abandoned the Cove’s border. Oriash, he remembers, asks the simplest of questions, and yet the answers that spring to Castile’s mind are nothing less than complex. She wouldn’t understand the history tangled among her family and him. She wouldn’t understand if he confessed the mistake that, in turn, made her a daughter of Kagerus instead of his.
Without answering, Castile continues forging their path until Loess finally swallows them by dawn’s first light. The cacti and rocky plateaus are painted with scarlet and orange, the clouds a vibrant splash of pink high overhead. ”You’re home for the next while,” he brusquely says, practically clasping shut the shackles around her ankles. Unable to shake away her prior question – he has actually been contemplating it since the single word fell from her tongue – he turns to look at her with the sun framing her small body. It illuminates his face, glimmering across the gold band of his face and his bronze locks.
Even as his mouth opens to speak, he cannot help to hesitate. What does one tell a child?
”Unrest,” he simply states as though she only just asked when it has in fact been at least a couple hours. ”It’s time to unbalance the east, perhaps even the world. Everyone is asleep.” Oddly enough, he grins, but it isn’t amiable or paternal. There is mischief in his eyes, even an underlying fascination with the child in front of him.
The muted conversation breaks once they’ve abandoned the Cove’s border. Oriash, he remembers, asks the simplest of questions, and yet the answers that spring to Castile’s mind are nothing less than complex. She wouldn’t understand the history tangled among her family and him. She wouldn’t understand if he confessed the mistake that, in turn, made her a daughter of Kagerus instead of his.
Without answering, Castile continues forging their path until Loess finally swallows them by dawn’s first light. The cacti and rocky plateaus are painted with scarlet and orange, the clouds a vibrant splash of pink high overhead. ”You’re home for the next while,” he brusquely says, practically clasping shut the shackles around her ankles. Unable to shake away her prior question – he has actually been contemplating it since the single word fell from her tongue – he turns to look at her with the sun framing her small body. It illuminates his face, glimmering across the gold band of his face and his bronze locks.
Even as his mouth opens to speak, he cannot help to hesitate. What does one tell a child?
”Unrest,” he simply states as though she only just asked when it has in fact been at least a couple hours. ”It’s time to unbalance the east, perhaps even the world. Everyone is asleep.” Oddly enough, he grins, but it isn’t amiable or paternal. There is mischief in his eyes, even an underlying fascination with the child in front of him.
castile
@[Oriash]