every morning the maple leaves; adaline - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Common Lands (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=72) +---- Forum: Meadow (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=3) +---- Thread: every morning the maple leaves; adaline (/showthread.php?tid=9773) |
every morning the maple leaves; adaline - contagion - 07-23-2016 He tries to forget. He is not his father, he cannot exist with great, ruined loves in his heart without falling to pieces. He is inherently a fragile man, and he cannot take the burden – his bones, already hollowed and creaking, cannot bear the leaden weight that has been affixed to their names, to the memories that exist of her – of them. (A true dichotomy of loves, glass and steel, and of course when they collided, something broke – he’s just glad it was him.) He tries to forget. He focusing on existing, instead, of surviving on this second-chance life he got. He still doesn’t know what happened, exactly, only that in one moment he was dying with her name on his lips and the next he was waking, alone in the meadow, pieced back together as if nothing had ever transpired there in the falls, as if it had been some fever-strewn memory. And it works, mostly. He does not delve too deep into anything. He inches along on the legs that were never meant to support his weight, translucent skin stretching thin over muscles, a walking anatomy lesson, a map of every vital piece to him made visible to all the predators in his midst. But they had shared the same dead womb of their mother, they had shared secrets, they have saved one another’s lives. So all the forgetting in the world can’t erase the fact that she is his blood, that there is a tie forged from birth, and when she enters the meadow he feels it like a hand wrapped around his heart, fingers sunk in the meat of it, forcing a heartbeat. He feels her. He gasps aloud, like a fool, and a whirlwind of terror and nerves and hope spins around his bones. He moves, frantic, looking for her, for the ghost-like form of her, and oh, there she is, there with her papery wings and body like his own, twin forms, glass and fragile, but ever so much stronger together. “Adaline.” He says her name like a prayer. contagion be careful making wishes in the dark RE: every morning the maple leaves; adaline - adaline - 07-27-2016 I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
The second that she sees him, time becomes meaningless. in the darkness, I will meet my creators RE: every morning the maple leaves; adaline - contagion - 07-29-2016 He knows, of course, that they should leave one another be. Them together can only be a weakness, glass stacked upon glass only means more pieces to pick up. Never mind the more obvious sin of it, that he loves her in ways he should not – mind that he’s died for her once and he would do it again in a heartbeat and anyone could see it, anyone could use it against them. (And what has she given up? What did she promise, to bring him back?) But the knowledge is ash in the wind when he beholds her, and reason ceases to matter as she crashes into him, a dangerous move (their bodies are made to mince and touch softly, not to collide). He feels the reverb in his thin bones but he doesn’t mind, because she is here pressed against him, her lips on his skin and his on hers, she is here and she is saying his name. A moment of joy, carved in stark relief against everything else they have endured. “What…” be begins but cannot finish, because the desire to kiss her again is there and his lips are muffled in her skin. But while his desire for her is always there, a living, raging beast inside him, his desire to know is there too, insistent. “What happened, Adaline? After…” After I died. contagion be careful making wishes in the dark RE: every morning the maple leaves; adaline - adaline - 07-30-2016 I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice crackles in her throat—splintering with desperation, choked out in the moments when her mouth is not preoccupied with the curve of his neck and the sweet saltiness of his flesh. “It doesn’t matter,” because maybe if she says it more than once, she will believe it. She will believe it did not matter when she stood there, looking down on his lifeless eyes, the blood having left his body to puddle next to him. in the darkness, I will meet my creators RE: every morning the maple leaves; adaline - contagion - 08-02-2016 For the record, he never felt dead. He remembers dying well enough, but in the same, dulled way that we have come to remember pain – there is no sharpness to the memory. He remembers the dry, almost twig-like sound of his bones breaking, remembers the air swirling with screams. But he can’t recall the pain, though it must have hurt, surely. But truth is, he went quickly, it hadn’t taken long before his mangled body had given out. Then, nothing. He almost wishes he could recall it, but there’s nothing. Like a movie with a spliced scene, he remembers falling to the ground and then he remembers waking up in the meadow, whole but alone. He feels almost guilty, that he can’t recall the pain, that he can’t at least come with some knowledge of what lies beyond. Truth is, he thinks he does matter – if not now, then someday – but it’s not an issue he needs to push with her body against his. “Okay,” he says. It will matter. Someday, it will matter. Right now, though, only she matters. Only they matter. “I love you, too.” That matters. And he says it so simply, like it hadn’t been a thing deep and treacherous within him, like it hadn’t been something he maybe died for. Instead, it’s casual, easy, as if they’re normal, as if they weren’t born with glass in their bones and doom in their hearts, as if there was a chance for them, for this. contagion be careful making wishes in the dark RE: every morning the maple leaves; adaline - adaline - 08-03-2016 I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
Would she die for him? in the darkness, I will meet my creators RE: every morning the maple leaves; adaline - contagion - 08-10-2016 He had lived so long expecting death yet it had surprised him when it came, in that terrible moment slathered in screams and bloodshed. He can still recall with dreadful accuracy the way Tyrna’s eyes had turned steely as her body changed, shifted, warped into a wolf with snarling lips and spittle frothing. (He’d die for her, did die for her, and would do it again and again should it be asked of him.) Waking up alive had been a blessing, with the rich draw of air into his lungs. Until he had looked around and realized he was along, weighted with the mystery of not-knowing: not knowing what had happened to him, not knowing where she was, not knowing if she was even alive. From that moment, anxiety had scrabbled at his chest, his heart beating out the questions, the statements: where is she? and is she alive and you should be dead. The questions are rendered moot, now, her body the answer as it fits tight against him in all the spaces he’d carved out for her. He smiles, because it’s all he can do when he looks upon her. “Me too,” he says, and though he wonders sometimes – what their parents might think seeing them like this – he knows their own foundation is shaky, and that both have made questionable choices before. (Truth is, he doesn’t know the half of it. The sins of his father are a secret he took to the grave.) “I want to keep you safe,” he says, as if he were a wall and not glass, as if he could fight, “but I don’t know where to go. Where we belong.” He’d thought the falls, once, had envisioned a life for them there (one he’d deluded himself on, to be fair). But now the thundering of water causes his heart to quicken and his mouth to sour, and he will not return there, ever. contagion be careful making wishes in the dark RE: every morning the maple leaves; adaline - adaline - 08-13-2016 I'm wasted, losing time; I'm a foolish, fragile spine
Adaline’s heart is a wicked, wicked thing. in the darkness, I will meet my creators |