how much heartache can we take?

The shadows are much darker here, colder. The way they wrap themselves like enticing tendrils, wanton against me, like gnarled fingers hooking into all my cracks and crevasses, whispering promises to take my broken parts and make them whole, the darkness always finds a way to seep into the gaps, filling my core with a coldness, a doubt that seems to stretch over my bones, close like skin. My hazel eyes, they find Mast, a reassurance I seem to need right now. The dancing shadows, they pull and they tear at me, once a gentle caress, now a harsher touch. Force. There had always been force, I feel it now, knitting into my bones, my flesh. the scars that tremble with the breeze, against the cold, damp of the forests. It aches right down, bone deep. Aches so much so, I find myself pressing against the pallid King. As if in some strange way the closeness, I could merge with him and the shadows might not see me, not pick out the weaker, broken girl against the grey King.

Oh, but it is not the shadows that I need worry. For I pick out the red eyes from a distance, they burrow into the furrows of my soul, my mind. Searching for whatever he might find. A treasure hunter that buries deep and deeper, only to find nothing. A broken treasure trove, once spilling gold and jewels, now broken, as weary as my own mind. shattered open to reveal nothing but the cobwebs and dust. Gryffen's eyes are ever-predatory, and it is the crimson glint, reminiscent of blood, twinkling wet agains the moon, that chills me further. His ghoulish proscenia, pulling far more than the Chamber's shadows, deeper than my flesh, deeper than my bone. The wispy wraith of my existence, the galloping throes of my heart.

'Gryffen.' his name tastes like the faded autumn grass, bittersweet, against my tongue. I roll his name against the damp air, and shiver ever more. My hazel eyes find him, the ghoul of the Chamber, the shadow of my nightmares, and I watch him, like a torn leaf against the autumn backdrop, I tremble, I shake. Chocolate skin peppered with the ash and dust. 'Friend. Mast. Mast is my friend.' I pause, deciding to shift ever so slightly, as to give the pale king some room. He was burning sunlight through the shadows, and somehow, somehow I need to have him near. Chocolate butter eyes melt then, like the ink of the shadows into the mist of the trees, glazing with both memory and fear, widening more and more. But I remain silent, as the sentinel trees, bend and whisper in the wind, so that I am, trying to attempt the remain sturdy, resolute in my standing. I watch as another approaches, earthy, as though he has been animated from an earthen grave. I watch him, intensely, he did not tread the same path as Gyrffen, he did not tempt to haunt my dreams and weave my nightmares so expertly.

The painted lady, I recall. She spins upon her fingertips the shadows, the feathery trail that drapes her like an ebony cloak. She barks, a beast, a predator. I sink onto my hocks, my knees buckling a little but I remain upright, as close to Mast as it is even possible, as close as it would be. If I had hands, they would be wringing into his, body pressed, skin against skin. She speaks of fools, and my mind darkens, my eyes drawing up to meet her. I feel a pulse in my tongue, a want for words, a want for something. Yet I find my tone cool, crisp, like the breeze that pulls at the pines. 'No time for fools. Yet Mast is no fool. The Queen, she makes time for worthy, worthy ones.' a flinty hoof lifts and paws at the moist earth, tentatively declaring some sort of point. 'Make time for Mast, for Mast is worthy. Queen to King, King to Queen.' But I then retreat back, sidling backwards a little, only to be wrapped around Gryffen, like some weary doll, all limbless and unconscious. With one so weary, he could do much.

His sweet whispers sends a chill over me, pulling and tearing at sinew and bone, chilling me down to my core. 'Ghosts have a funny way of reappearing.' I pause, the mental images of corpses, of wraiths that descend across the fiery loam, they fill my eyes, my mind. 'Reuen is no ghost hunter. Reuen hunts safe. Reuen hunts safety.' Hazel eyes find his crimson orbs, keeping them there, a stare that binds me with some sort of thread, fine and piercing. the longer I stare, the more I feel the throes of my heart, my soul, turn to ice, turn to crystalline glass, one unsightly stare, one daring word and I am sure I shall crumble. 'They are just shadows. Shadows chasing ghosts.' I mumble, words unspoken, but eyes filled with the memory, the memory that strokes at me, with tentative fingers. I take a step away from the protection of Mast, daring, audacious even, head drawing up, I shake it, resolutely, Meaningfully. 'You haunt me. Wraith, Ghost. Ghoul. You haunt me, you haunt Reuen. Why. Why would Reuen want to stay with the demon, the ghost?' The voices within, they are memories, at least I think. Cruel little digs, ice-cold whispers that chill me further than Gryffen's crimson stare. I shake my head, silvery tresses falling over my glass-like eyes. Hiding, concealing the truth. 'The Gates are safe. Mast is safe. Safe.' because that is all I need. That is all Reuen needs. Safety, safety from the shadows, the dark, the ice, the fire.

And yet, yet my safety seems to be crumbling right before my eyes. What is safe anymore?

R E U E N