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i am and always will be the optimist; any - Elektrum - 11-11-2015
He exists in their shadows. He even looks like them, like the perfect alchemy of gold and silver – like the best of everything they had to offer once. It’s a lie, though, and he knows it. He has never meant anything to either of them. He was eclipsed by the tragedy of their love. He was dwarfed by the gigantism of all that they once were. He exists, but no one remembers. He exists, but no one thinks twice. They were earthquakes, and he was only a shockwave. They were earthquakes, and the shore was quiet by the time his tide rolled over the sand. He doesn’t mind. He never has. He’s found ways of escaping that others cannot, impossible ways. The reality of life left them broken, but it cannot break him. He doesn’t need reality. He doesn’t need the truth of living. In him exists a magic that cradles his body and erases his history. He is gold. He is silver. He is a perfect alchemy. He is their son, but they’ve never remembered. He exists in their shadows, flitting between the gaps in time and space. ‘Are you real?’ His mother asked his mother, and he was there. He saw the mix of pain and fury and regret that looked like constellations in their eyes, but only for a second. He flitted into existence in half the time it took each of them to catch their breath before he was gone. He exists in their shadows. He is rarely whole, but today he is. Today he flickers into existence on the edge of the meadow that harbors his history. Today he stands among the tall grass, between the hazel brush that his mothers once came to know one another in. Today he is the perfect alchemy of the both of them. Today he is whole.
elektrum
i am and always will be the optimist
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Topsail - 11-11-2015
Whereas her parents had the steadiness and roots on an oak tree, she was more like the wild flower. She grew carelessly and with reckless abandon, her roots having not yet taken to any one piece of earth. The Gates were home, certainly, but she knew there was much to see beyond those borders. Her gypsy soul had a yearning for wanderlust, and who was she to deny it such a thing?
Her feet were prone to pulling her out from under the watchful gaze of her mama, and today was no different. With the sun hanging high in the sky she slipped off, careful to avoid making too much noise in the forest. She thought maybe her mama had just given up trying to keep her contained- one could only hold water in their hands for so long before it slipped between the fingers. The meadow had slowly become a favorite haunt of hers. There were so many faces with stories written on them. Her mama and father probably wouldn’t approve, but thus far she hadn’t been one to hold to strictly to rules.
She slipped into the meadow quietly, with the air of a much older soul trapped in the gangly body of a filly. Her grulla coat pulled in the sunshine, and she smiled to feel its warmth. Given the opportunity she would visit the sun or so she thought. But today she lacked wings, so her eyes swept over those bound to earth instead. A glimmer of gold and silver caught her eye and she was drawn to it as a moth to a flame. Perhaps she should have been cautious, but those prone to wandering aren’t often the most sensible. Instead she approached with a smile, her tiny tail wringing over her hocks. “I’m Topsail.” she said, looking directly in the young stallions eyes. Of course her voice wasn’t out loud, but rather directed into his mind. As she always did she paused, waiting to see if her message would come across as she had intended. Mind voice was a tricky thing, but having never had a real voice, she didn’t know much different.
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Elektrum - 11-12-2015
It doesn’t matter that they come from separate worlds.
He can make them the same. He can find them equal footing, even if he has to carve that ground through the rocky canvas of time and space himself. He will not mean to, of course, it only comes naturally. He warps the structure of circumstance until it suits him, because that is what he’s grown up believing. He believes in lies. He believes in deception. He believes in magic. He believes in the world his mothers bore him into.
He believes in cancers. He believes in fate.
He believes in twisting truths until they suit him.
So she finds him on the spindly legs of a child, and she tells him her name. He can make them the same. He touches his nose to her cheek, and he exhales, and suddenly they exist in a world made up of only stars. The starlight is everywhere. The starlight is everything. The world is bright and beautiful, and it’s silent and lonely, and he blinks softly and says, “I am Elektrum.”
And when he opens his eyes he sees her there among the starshine, but as she would be years from now, with the ogee curve to her hips of someone so much more worldly, with a fire in her eyes that could only exist in the eyes of someone who had known the feel of a lover’s lips along the ridge of her spine.
“Topsail,” he says, with a curl along the edge of his lips.
“What brings you to the edge of the universe?”
elektrum
i am and always will be the optimist
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Topsail - 11-12-2015
She had often dreamed about the stars.
When others were sleeping she watched them, entranced by the way they flickered and faded into nothingness. She was envious of them, envious of their careless existence. The stars had nothing to fear, not even death. A stars death was a beautiful thing, not like the slow decent into it that she would eventually succumb to. Beneath the night sky she felt insignificant and small, but it did not stop her from watching them. She would visit them to if given the chance.
She feels his nose meet her cheek, and in that moment the earth is gone. It was as if he had scooped it up from beneath her feet. There is a sense of weightlessness, and for a moment she is afraid to open her eyes. Fear was such a foreign thing to her though that it does not take her long to hide it beneath amazement. Their surroundings have taken on a velveteen quality, and she is surprised she can’t reach out and feel the blackness. It seems to heavy and full that she pushes her nose forward just in case. But above all are stars; she is so close that they warm her skin just as the sun had earlier. The starlight seems to caress her, moving along the shapely curves of a woman where once had been the sharp angles of a foal. She turns to him, and she is sure her eyes are aglow.
“Elektrum.” she says, and even within her head her voice seems breathless. Who wouldn’t be, after being scattered amongst the stars? She moves closer to him, though she has no clear reason for doing so. This was everything she had ever wanted- to go beyond the borders of her home, to reach out and touch the sky. “This was as far as I could go. And you? Do you call the stars your home?” she asks, her eyes meeting his with a fierceness she‘d never known. Every part of her is on fire, ablaze with the impossible possibilities before her.
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Elektrum - 11-12-2015
He dreamed once, too.
He dreamed about perfection. He saw them standing along the shores of a lazy river, cheek to cheek. He saw the glint of silver dancing in the sunlight and knew it was his sister. He heard the coo of a gentle summer breeze curling it’s fingers through his hair, and he leaned his chin against it’s warm embrace. He dreamed once, too, until he woke with a start. He dreamed until his golden flesh was slick with sweat, and his silver hair was matted tight against his skin with knots and burrs.
He dreamed until it was impossible.
And when it became impossible, he ran.
He ran with magic in his veins. He ran with time instead of marrow in his bones. He ran until the world was not about them, until the world was no longer sunsets and rivers and hazels. He ran until the world bled away like a watercolour, gave way into the realms that they had never existed in. He ran until giant, scaled beasts conquered the earth. He ran until the horizons melted into stars. He ran until nothing existed but the colour black.
So, when she asks him if he calls the stars his home he sits for a moment in quiet contemplation. But only a moment. It doesn’t take long to remember the way they left him. It doesn’t take long to remember how the tragedy of their love consumed them until there was room for nothing else.
…
‘I can’t. I can’t.’ They both said, once.
He’d been there alongside them. He’d seen every second of every syllable they spoke. He knew that there was no belonging in a world that they crafted into existence. He knew before the two of them ever did.
‘I can’t. I can’t.’ They both said once.
‘Don’t. Don’t’ He’d said, unheard.
…
“I don’t call anywhere home,” he says, simply, without hurt in his voice. He has enough in life to distract him from pouring salt into his wounds. There is enough magic here to blind him of the truth. There is enough in these moments, with her hips, with the stars. There is enough.
“I can take you anywhere,” he says then, and he means it. He can feel the truth bleeding in. He can feel the need to run.
elektrum
i am and always will be the optimist
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Topsail - 11-14-2015
steady as a preacher, free as a weed… --couldn‘t wait to get goin‘ but wasn‘t quite ready to leave
She has been pulled into his orbit, helpless to the effects of it. True, she had longed for something more than what the Gates were, but was this too much? Was she dancing in the flames even now? And most importantly, did she care to get burned?
It didn’t take her long to realize she did not care. She would soak herself in gasoline and tend to the fire if he would ask it of her.
But she is young and impressionable, as the young often are. Life had been easy (boring, even) up until his muzzle had met her cheek. Life had been nothing noteworthy, just the mundane motions of existing as opposed to living. Life after him would be just the same, if there was even life at all. Now that she had tasted stardust, could she possibly slow down? Within her breast was a gypsies soul, and he fed that hunger perfectly. She would drink from his cup, take from him anything and everything he could possibly offer.
There is tension in the air, even here amongst the stars. She can feel it in the way her breast clenches and in the way her mind hurts. Its not enough to outweigh the stars but its something she can’t fully ignore. “No home? There’s anger in your heart…” she whispers into his mind, her head tilting to the side ever so slightly. The last part isn’t a question, but a statement made matter of factly. Her heart aches with a need to touch him, and so without hesitation she does. The black of her muzzle meets the silver of his shoulder. It is not a tentative touch, as bold as her statement only moments before. “Take me to the sun.” she breathes into his mind while her mouth is still on his skin. “Do you think it will burn?” Her question is perfunctory; she’ll still go with him even if it burns her alive.
topsail
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Elektrum - 11-14-2015
Of course it is too much.
Of course the atmosphere, the stars, oblivion is too much. And maybe it’s wrong. Maybe he is wrong to do what he does – to manipulate the world for a child naïve enough to believe in everything he has to show her – but they did this to him. He is what he is because they made him this way. They taught him to lie. They taught him to run. They taught him how to ruin, and then they gave him the tools.
“There’s anger in your heart,” she says, the child, and he cannot argue it. He will not, but it doesn’t mean he likes the idea of her unraveling his edges. There is a prickle of heat that rolls along the ridge of his spine that feels like defense, and a moment where he teeters on the edge of control and breakdown. But then she obliges him, and she says: “Take me to the sun.”
And his lips pull up ever so slightly on one side.
“Do you think it will burn?” She asks. The best things always do.
“You’re perceptive,” he says below his breath, and he wonders if she’ll catch what lingers between the syllables – the hint of doubt, the tangible fragments of mockery that exist in the spaces between his words. They exist in a place where she has the hips of a woman who has seen the world, but she is not grown. She is not worldly. She is not real.
She doesn’t know.
She doesn’t know.
There is a single flash, and the stars will melt away. The colours of the nebulas fade into oblibion, and all at once the familiar meadow grass licks at their knees and their bellies. They are home again, existing in the place where her legs are too long and her eyes are too wide. They are home again, because his ego is bruised and he held in his palms the power to take. They are home again, because he is what he is.
“There are worse things than burning,” he says to the child, because they made him this way.
elektrum
i am and always will be the optimist
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Topsail - 11-15-2015
steady as a preacher, free as a weed… --couldn‘t wait to get goin‘ but wasn‘t quite ready to leave
And just like that, the fire is out.
Where once there had been an open flame there is now only the smoldering remnants. A fire is only as good as the fuel that feeds it, and she is not enough. There is not enough of her to sustain the flames that threaten to consume him. She could see his need for it in the lines of his face, in the sharp angles of his shoulders. He needed gasoline, and she was only rain water.
As the constellations spin away from her, she reaches out for just one more taste. Perhaps just one more will be enough to sustain me, she thinks. But instead of the bitterness that she’d come to associate with stardust, comes the far more mundane tastes of her world. Lilac and jasmine, sweet clover and pear blossoms. They were beautiful in their own right, but they were not comparable. They didn’t lay heavy on her tongue, nor did they pull at her heartstrings. They were too simple, to easy…
Nothing now would ever be comparable to stardust.
She feels the breath being pulled from her lungs and inwardly she gasps. It takes only moments and she is standing in the swaying grass, frowning at the way it lovingly caressed the soft fur of her underbelly. Here she was awkward and young again. Here her eyes couldn’t catch the starlight. “You lied…” she hissed into his mind, her eyes meeting his with defiance. Her own mind was humming with static and her frown deepened. Though she couldn’t read his mind, she was susceptible to the anger that poured through his veins like poison. “Why do you run?” she asked, her childish face softening ever so softly. She fought the urge to taste the silver of his skin again- she was only a child here in her own world. Children did not taste the silver skin of magic men, nor should they even have the notion to do so. But she does because she has before. “I don’t care about the burning; I welcome it. I want to run, I want to taste the world.” she said, forcing her voice into every corner of his mind. It is much a challenge as it is anything. He can’t possibly ignore her this time. There could be repercussions, but she didn’t care. She had given up caring for worldly things when she’d seen the stars up close.
topsail
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Elektrum - 11-29-2015
The meadow is not beautiful for him.
He’s seen what time has hidden – the gore, the shoreline stained red. He’s heard what time has buried – the sound of flesh torn, the crack of bone, the highest pitch there is to a scream, and the guttural cries of mourning. He prefers the emptiness of space to this, but bitterness will come to him at a cost.
There is just enough cruelty spun into his flesh that he will enjoy plucking the stars from her eyes. He could choose kindness, but it’s the more difficult choice when there is some resemblance of solace that he can find in control, in taking. It fills a piece of him that they left empty when they’d made him. It sits between the magic and the mystery, nestled between ribs, and close to his chest. It flickers in and out just like the backgrounds he creates.
And now, the meadow won’t be beautiful for her.
“You lied,” she says, wordlessly, and he will only smile – her eyes are ancient, and they hold hurricanes in their fractures, but she is only a child. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know, but one day she will. One day she’ll know that the world is made of lies much bigger than his own. He will not answer her, but he is silently pleased to have stripped her of the star-shine on her back.
The next set of words will find him then through the gentle quiet of the meadow: “Why do you run?”And there is just enough cruelty spun into his flesh that he harbors no regret leaving her loitering on the edge of an answer. He parts his lips to speak. He takes a breath. He does not intend to answer, but he does intend for her to cling to the hope that he might.
Because they made him this way.
And someone made her a child. Someone gave her the world, and took it back. Someone made her thirst for stars she cannot reach. “I don’t care about the burning; I welcome it,” she says, and he will laugh a laugh that’s strained somehow in his throat while remembering all the times he thought those same words.
“You’ll change your mind when all that’s left is ashes.” He says, but he touches his nose to her cheek, and he shows her the sun anyways.
elektrum
i am and always will be the optimist
RE: i am and always will be the optimist; any - Topsail - 12-14-2015
steady as a preacher, free as a weed… --couldn‘t wait to get goin‘ but wasn‘t quite ready to leave
His laughter crushes her soul.
It snuffs out the light of stars that had risen there, replacing it with the dankness of wet ash. Before him (how long ago had that been? Days? Years? Time is lost in his presence) she hasn’t known cruelty. But now? Now her eyes were wide open. He has robbed her of the world and left her to pick at the remains. There is nothing she can do though; she is only a child, a child cloaked beneath the hips of the woman she will grow up to be. He is everything; he is the stars, the moon, and everything forbidden.
She is dancing in the flames, she knows this. And yet she craves more; more danger, more friction. He doesn’t know it, but beneath the large doe eyes on a filly, she has grown light years. How could she not, having seen the stars?
His words hang, unspoken, in the air between them. She cannot hear them, but she can feel them. They linger just out of reach and she finds herself holding her breath. It is all for naught though, because he closes his mouth and smiles while she frowns. But then his muzzle is on her cheek and her anger at him is forgotten. How strange, she has only known his touch but more a minute and already she finds herself craving it. She leans into him like a cat to its keepers hand, her eyelids fluttering. But they fly open and all there is, is heat. It dances around her, robbing her of breath. A sweat immediately breaks out on her slender neck but that is the only show of her discomfort. She meets his gaze with a fierce determination ill-befitting of someone so young. “Ashes, you say? How many things have you burned before? How many times have you been burnt? There’s a reason you run through the galaxies like the deer run through the meadow.” Her voice is wild, swirling with a fire to rival those flames licking at her delicate ankles. And still she holds his gaze, unwilling to let him avoid her again.
