i feel hope deep in my bones; tomorrow will be beautiful
Lumos knows he cannot be the only one to find solace in this strange new evernight, there must be others who, like him, know loss in the face of the sunlight. He is not so remarkable to be entirely unique. But there are others still who suffer now in this dark, others who are his opposite, his contrast, and when he finds them withering away he is reminded of the quiet guilt that sits like cold stone in the pit of his stomach. He does not want to thrive at the cost of others suffering, but he cannot help but like the way his sight never leaves him anymore.
He feels changed by it, feels brand new beneath a sky that never wakes, in a world that never brightens. He had been made by shadow for shadow, made so perfectly for it that without it he suffered. The dark touches his skin and he pulls it in closer, wearing it like a cloak over a patchwork of black and white and pale wintery blue, like armor in this world where light has died and monsters thrive.
What must it mean that he, like the beasts now roaming freely, thrives in this new world order?
Not that he is anything like his father, he hopes.
He keeps his wings tucked in close to his body, letting them protect his sides as he wanders through a forest that seems like a maze of rotting desecration. The bare branches pull at him, made sharp by their brittleness, sharp without leaves to soften what feels like skeletal fingers trailing over his skin. He can hear sounds in the distance, unearthly cries that remind him that this new world is not good despite what it has restored in him, that for him to have his sight then others must suffer and die. It leaves him feeling frustrated, leaves him guilt-ridden and drifting ever-closer to the self loathing his father knows so intimately, because no matter how hard he tries to temper it, he loves this new world.
There is another sound, this one closer, but it is something soft and at such a contrast to the crash of hunting beasts that he stops and turns to face it. His eye searches the dark, and his vision in it is sharper than average, perhaps made to discern shadow from shape because he is born from it. He shifts his head slightly and the heavy weight of his dark forelock falls to hide the scarred tissue of what used to be his right eye. It is a sense of caution that draws the shadow in against him, and it creeps like black fog over the surface of his frost covered skin.
“I assume you aren’t one of those creatures because I don’t think you’d have given me a chance to speak if you were,” he says, and his voice is something quiet and almost rough with disuse, “but if it’s all the same to you, would you mind telling me if you are friend or foe?” His eye sharpens suddenly on a silhouette in the dark, and there is a hint of a smile in one corner of his mouth as he silently traces the shape of someone delicate. At least he hadn’t been startled by and talking to a rabbit. “Friend is preferred, if i’m allowed to have a say in it.” Something like wary amusement dances in that glacial blue of his watching eye.
Lumos
@[rosemary]
