[private] let it burn; pollock

[Lilitha]

God, I just want to be warm. Just for a few minutes, even a few heartbeats, just burn the ice out of my bones and my chest, even for just one breath. Even the melting of the snow hasn’t chased it away, and I’m starting to get a little scared nothing ever will. That I’ll never be warm again. I’ve tried wrapping myself up in my wings, tried bathing in the midday sunlight, but it only warms the surface, and that only a little. Curling up all nestled against a friend, or even better yet between two friends, that’s helped the most, but even that doesn’t reach deep enough the way the fire always did.

It would be better, at least a little bit if I could be home and cuddled up to my dad, or maybe even by now I’d feel enough like family with his lady and their other kids that I could be in a big snuggly pile of baby fluff and winter coats. But Beqanna took that choice away from me just like she took the fire.

Well hello.

That thought starts a different kind of fire in my chest, one that isn’t my fire friend but it sure makes heat build and burn and threaten to boil over, a feeling I think I might love almost as much as I hate the cold. It kind of feels like the indignation and the righteous anger that flared through me while I watched my dad grovel at the proverbial feet of our vindictive god, but it’s darker somehow and deeper, and it burns hotter than that lovely anger, spreading from my chest into my belly and my limbs.

I’m not quite sure what this feeling is, but it’s glorious even if it’s a dim echo of the fire I love so much. It’s fleeting, there for an instant before it vanishes, but for just a moment I didn’t feel like I was freezing all the way down to my core. And just that little moment is enough to put me in a better mood, so I’m smiling as I wander through the meadow, my wings spread to catch the sunlight. My eyes drift closed as I let the sun sink into my feathers, into my skin, as the breeze ruffles the red of my mane and dances across the surface of my flared wings.

And I don’t even trip over a damn rock or a branch or my feet. Maybe today isn’t such a bad day after all.

Will you fight when it all burns down?

@[Berber] idek

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray

Cold.
Cold.

He knows cold.

He knows cold, whose claws stick deep into bones; whose lips clench tight around spines. The cold from northernmost winds, scraping cheeks ruddy and raw. Cold that comes howling off the endless expanse of the Greenland and Norwegian Seas.
Cold that is seismic, like the friction of tectonic plates; cold that is still and gripping. The sort of thing that comes from hunkering down in mud, alone and newborn (the feeling like slipping into ice water – invisibility – and coming out the other side, untouchable; this feeling he had harnessed – this cold he had twisted and weaponized). The cold that comes from staring into those eyes, like bright, green headlights, and feeling bones crack under his hairy fingertip.

Fear
Fear.

He knows it too well.

Neither have purchase over him, now. It is not that he does not shiver when winter comes. And nightmares… they are not few. But he knows them too intimately. It has been like splitting the darkness open and realizing there really is nothing there. He has taken them both – cold and fear – and buried them deep in his chest, made them part of him – arterial and venous; meat and spirit. He could wield one like a blade (could – will, one day again) and the other, he could steel himself against, because he has known it in it’s purest form

( howling off the endless expanse of the Greenland and Norwegian Seas)

and nothing this bitch can send him can match it. 
The gods of that most human and horrid place had her outmatched.

He watches the girl, and his wild mind is full of wild thoughts. She does not look cold, she looks like a dimly lit ember, burning holes in his old kingdom. It is an interior heat. A thing in the gut or brain. Incendiary, like the anger and purpose that he keeps well fed within himself. He recognizes it, like he might cold and fear, and he wonders how it would look in canvas and paint. 

Black, split open by bright red and orange, like an alien sunrise rending it’s world in two.
Violence then ash.
And then cold.

The lifecycle of a fire.

“What are you so pleased about?” his voice is gravelly and tired, like a grumpy mountain turning over. Sleep fights him constantly. He moves toward her, blocking her path through these well-known woods. His black eyes search her, black and bright red, with a stern and flat glare, his overlarge, glossy wings tucked tight against his golden body.

POLLOCK
the gift giver

I forgot how we said I should play this timeline jumping so I read her recent posts with Spear and Spark and she has her fire back so no wings. So just to try and keep it on your timeline (because I'm still too lazy to figure out how I should petition for Pollock even thouhg I have the points, so noting new with him), I left it vague (no wings no visible fire).