scorch - Printable Version

you can't get struck by lightning
if you're not dancing in the rain

As tormented as he might be (like a deep, unsettled sea roaring against the cavities of his body), Hestoni will come to realize that this silence between them will allow him to be the most peaceful he will be for quite a while. There is only the crackling of the flames that dance across her body, a warm noise amid the sharpness of Nerine. While she hears the music of the Jungle in his powerful respirations, he hears the melody of their marriage in the chatter of the fire. It had been the flames that had drawn him to her in the first place — and then it had been the fierceness of her tongue that had kept him there. The noise is a stark reminder of the nights spent sleepless in their marriage bed, of the days they would chase each other along trails and beneath waterfalls, of the seasons that ebbed and flowed with the pregnancy and labor of each child they created as a symptom of their love.

And so he swells with love in the moments before she breaks his heart.

He hadn’t meant for her name to drag tears from her eyes and force her to lean down as if the entirety of the sky had fallen upon her shoulders. Perhaps the sky had fallen on her shoulders when they sealed their matrimony — at least his sky had, colors of a romantic sunset sky dotted with wispy clouds settling across her spine. It leaves Scorch as the one to keep that pretty atmosphere from sharpening like a knife and slicing his throat, spilling all that lovesick blood into the bitter Nerine snow. Perhaps she had lost the reminder of her purpose in his absence. He had been there to offer her kisses and words of encouragement, softly massaging away the pieces of her that ached from the weight of that sunset sky. He had been there to nestle against her when the sky turned dark and heavy from the thunderstorm clouds and he had been there to cherish the moments when the sky was as light and dainty as a butterfly’s wing. Yet his disappearance had made the kisses and encouragement and touching and joy grow dusty and cold. And perhaps she had forgotten.

Perhaps the broadness and the strength of his red shoulders had made it easier for Hestoni to carry her sky — to lift it high enough where she could watch the birds swoop and cry above her head. He keeps her sky with him now, cradling the weight of it against his back like a precious babe. And yet she has dropped the weight of his own sunset atmosphere; it has shattered into a million pieces and formed itself into a weapon that will strike his tender heart and the ache of that pain will force him to consider her own sky (yet he will merely consider it, never dropping it).

Regardless of skies and marriages and the metaphors that bind the two together, Scorch’s tears form a dragon’s mist against her cheeks and he takes a step forward. Even as the heat of her flame threatens to eradicate the protection of his skin and muscle, he takes a single step forward. It is the action of a man longing to comfort the one whom he adores, even without knowing what is causing her sorrow. And then she is erratic; a shifting mosaic of emotions and behaviors and responses that Hestoni almost can’t tell the difference from one stained glass piece from another.

Her laughter scares him. It is frothy with tears and laced with irony. There are hints of insanity in that laugh, so raw and jagged-edged that his heart grows cold and nervous amid the warmth of his chest. When she stops — as cold and stony as the granite cliffs that line Nerine — he almost knows what she is going to say. There are no specifics, but their hearts and souls and minds are so tightly wound that he can feel the wrongness of it. He can feel the pressure of the pain already beginning to snip at the strings of his heart, unwinding that instrumental muscle to drain the blood from the vessels of his body. She is a shell of herself, still wrapped in that protective fire, and that fact drags a shaky breath from his nervous lungs.

The bullets are not weak. They are true to their course, having plotted their angles and lines in the moments between her inhale and their deployment. And they hit him with such a force that he staggers physically, kneeling in the snow at her feet. The stone he had tripped over moments before pierces into the skin of his right knee. Although blood spurts forth from the gash (staining that once-pure snow into shades of deep maroon; as though it were a symbolism of the streaks of pain she leaves on their once-holy marriage) he feels no pain from it.

Hestoni’s heart is a mess and he cannot breathe. Those damned bullets have found the meat of his very being — the power of his heart and the swell of his lungs and the tenderness of his brain — and decidedly shredded them all until they are meager pieces of what had once been. The world is hazy; Scorch is hazy. The smoke from her shotgun’s muzzle has shrouded his once-rosy world in colors of gray and black and torture.

Not only once did she betray him, but twice.
Not only once did she seek to find another’s love, but twice.
Not only once will she bring forth a bastard child, but twice.
Not only once she has broken his heart, but twofold.

Finally, he can breathe. It’s a long rattling breath at the end of her begging; a statement of an exclamation point to her sobbing sea of apologies. It’s a breath that is slippery and crackling with the tears Hestoni hadn’t noticed sliding down his face. They fall into the bloodsoaked snow, mixing together to create a wintery concoction of pain and grief and the sharpness of betrayal. When his head finally rises from its craned position close to the ground (nose almost touching the bitterness of the snow), he doesn’t see the absence of her fire.

And how entirely ironic and symbolic is that: their romance began with the warmth of those flames and their romance shall break with the disappearance of those flames.

“I…” He aims to say more, but the sky she had vowed to hold is crushing him now. Tender, lovesick clouds of pale pink and rose gold dance around his head like mocking cherubs. He is lost in the brilliant colors of that sunset sky that crashes against his windpipe now, and the air lacks the oxygen he needs to survive. She has let it slip from her shoulders in favor of Brennen and Brunhild and the children they have produced and now it is crushing, crushing, crushing. “You…”

His face twists as he rises from his position bent at his knees by the weight of her sins. The heat of his blood streams down his legs now, soaking into the feathers of his legs and exposing the slick edges the stone has created. “You will stay here.” It’s the coldest his voice has ever been and even then it is warm: a deep rumble reminiscent of the Jungle and its humidity, the sound of a waterfall eroding away the minerals of rocks, the grumble of an unsettled jaguar among the shade and the bramble. “This is your home.” As much as the Jungle is their forever home, lost to the time and wrath of Beqanna, he knows she has found something akin to security in Nerine. “You have…” He pauses, face twisting into an expression of heartbreak that he has never made before. “You have family here.” Family that is not his. Children that are not his.

He wonders what they look like.
Are they like her?
Are they like their parents?

A moan is dredged from the remains of his shattered heart. The noise of it would bring tears to the eyes of even an outsider; it is the sound of raw grief and terrible pain. “I need time,” he says after a moment. Although he has been away for years, the time was as fleeting as a midday nap and her betrayal will scar him beyond the edges of time. Perhaps eventually he will be able to kiss her sides again, but the thought of it now only reminds Hestoni of how they will swell with the growth of an outsider’s child.

He steps closer, despite his last comment, but the consequences of his knee make him limp with the movement and grit his teeth at the sudden pain. It burns in a simplistic, perfect way: in a way that correctly infuses such pain throughout his entire body. Yet Hestoni steps again, coming close enough to press the sweetest of kisses against the roughened plane of her cheek. His eyes close with the heartfelt motion (although the heart that is felt is one that is shredded and destroyed by her actions) and he pulls away after a rabbit’s breath. “I will still love you, il mio fuoco.”

Hestoni turns rapidly, but the action of walking away from her is painstaking. He limps slowly through the snow, shouldering aside the snowdrifts while leaving a trail of body-warmed blood, but he doesn’t look back until he is past the edges of Nerine.

Hestoni

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

And as the full weight of her once-husband slammed inelegantly into the unforgiving earth of Nerine, Scorch watched through tear-filled eyes as the last streaks of light abandoned the once eternal sunset which she bore atop her shoulders. Even through death and rebirth, through trial and error, through trauma and joy, his sunset had remained an unequivocal part of her, as present as the expansion and contraction of her powerful lungs. To see his light fading from her life so vividly, to be cast into darkness with nary a clue as the her surroundings, to be so utterly alone with the bedfellows of grief, anger, and pain that she had accrued for herself - to be so without, Scorch was left ragged.

Blood flowed unendingly from her lover's knee, a testament to the great scar that would be left there; but even such a scar held no candle to the forest fire of pain that Scorch had set upon Hestoni's shoulders. Where her world went dark without him, his ignited into white fire; gazing dejectedly towards her husband with quaking shoulders, she wondered which felt worse.

The coolness of her darkness answered that question immediately, and immediately made her sick once more.

In the bloodily silent wake of Scorch's begging, a sound like dying rattled through Hestoni's chest. The breath of the dying, Scorch thought dislocatedly to herself, tasting the ashes of their marriage like snowflakes upon her tongue which refused to melt. When the other lifted his gaze, Scorch recognized that same dissociation deep within the other's gaze, at once familiar with the defensive mechanism which held her feeble consciousness together, too. She wanted to smile at the thought, and perhaps she did - truth be told, she had no control over her facial expression as her husband rose, muttering incoherently, the words left unspoken hitting Scorch far harder than the handful that he cast out into the air between them.

In answer to his silent accusations, realizations, and sufferings, Scorch could only stare. Tears mirrored Hestoni's as they slid down her mutilated face, getting stuck in the intricate lacework of scars, wetting her face in many places instead of sliding cleanly to her jaw. Her tears were nothing in comparison to the pooling of blood around Hestoni's hoof, however, the cascading maroon liquid gleaming in the pale light around them. Scorch's eyes became caught upon the sight, making love to the pain she found there, knowing that it would be the last time she could feel so intimate with her husband; knowing that whatever came next, would still be worse than this.

You will stay here. The words caused a reignition of the mare's tears, the flames momentarily bursting into existence once more as she picked up on the warmth which yet remained in her husband's stone-cold voice. She did not deserve such kindness as he chose to bestow upon her. She did not. But the coolness of Hestoni's composure quickly overcame the mare's need to express the severity of the pain she felt. After all, it was she who hurt him, and not the other way around. If anyone deserved to be crying and screaming, it was him - and not even remotely her.

Silence fell from her lips as the stallion continued speaking.

This is your home. You have... You have family here.

The mare wanted to spit on this accusation, the grind her family into the dust: to show, somehow, anyhow, that the only person who mattered to her already stood before her. But the attempt would be in vain, she knew; she knew from the way his voice changed from hurt to resigned, from confused to completely understanding. Whatever tactics remained her in this conversation would never prove wieldy enough to bring him back to the place in her heart that belonged solely to him. She had already used the arsenal of weapons belonging to her heart against him, though she had pulled the trigger so long ago that she had grown lazy in her worry, convinced that if they had not found their mark by now, that they never would.

How wrong she had been.

A pained moan split Hestoni's lips, bringing tears to Scorch's eyes once more. Their depths glowed a pure emerald green, a reimagined version of her original eyes - eyes that she knew Hestoni once loved, though perhaps never again. I need time. The mare stiffened, staying the overwhelming urge to give into sobs again, instead staring at her titan with a pained, straining expression. The effort of remaining calm nearly caused the mare to stumble, but in the end, she stayed upright; whatever time Hestoni needed, she would allow him it. Whatever space he needed, she would find it in herself to give it to him. He could ask anything of her, and she would comply.

The life in her womb wriggled again, and she thought darkly upon how sincerely she meant it: that she would do anything to regain the love of her husband.

Trembling but quiet, Scorch only watched in agony as the wounded stallion limped closer. His knee begged sympathy and the sweet, feminine touch of a woman's kiss; but Scorch no longer laid claim to any such right, not even to the right of encouraging his affection. Her eyes swam with tears, looking blearily towards the blood-ridden snow such that Hestoni would know that she did not expect him to be kind or sweet to her in these moments; she deserved to be yelled at, to be chastised and divorced, with a harsh immediacy that she knew would break her spirit.

And so, when the most tender of kisses was placed upon the ugly and wet curve of her cheek, she felt the breakage of her soul all the same. The gesture was a divorce in its own right, a goodbye to all that they had shared for so many years - not a permanent one, perhaps, but one whose weight she had never felt the likeness of before. Her eyes screwed shut along with her mouth, the expression one of pain and unbridled self-hatred, the sob she refused to let loose causing pressure to build and to build and to build in her skull until she felt as though she might explode.

In the end, she only gasped, leaning her head pitifully and needily into his, not able to stop herself from silently begging for more. But of course, she deserved less than nothing, and before her heart could beat once more Hestoni had removed himself from her vicinity. The emptiness stung her cheek, and left her biting her lips to keep from crying for his return. At the words he next spoke, her jaw tightened enough to draw blood from her own flesh; but she thought naught of this, trying only to retain the poor excuse of composure which yet remained her.

"I do not deserve it," she muttered, the words garbled and pitiful - but before he could turn away, she inhaled sharply and reached, stopping the turn of his head with the briefest touch of her muzzle to his. "And for what little it's worth, I never stopped loving you, il mio titano." She tried to smile with the words, but her lips trembled to greatly and she ended up looking like a leaf being thrown roughly around in a gale, her edges dissolving beneath its great force.

Knowing that she had no right to stop his retreat, Scorch extricated her head from his pathway, clutching the wide breadth of her head to the curve of her throat, not trusting herself to stand any less held with him so close yet so far. A thousand words stormed through her mind as Hestoni took the first steps away from her, towards an infinite gulf that the mare feared neither of them would ever come to cross again; but she kept them to herself, refusing to deepen the fatal wound she had already inflicted.

She would not stay in Nerine, as he advised; but she knew, as she finally allowed her sobs to come keening and screaming from her lips, that he would find her when he needed to.

He always had, after all; now, the only question was whether he would ever need her again.

And, without warning, Scorch dissolved into pure twilight, her disembodied self flashing towards the border and away, scaring birds from the treetops as her wailing continued, even in this form. She went until she could no longer think; and when she stopped, a sleep blacker than her blind existence overtook her, the single black sleep one has after a night of trauma, one whose peacefulness would not be felt again for months to come.

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle