10-02-2020, 10:02 PM
Dark
She comes because she is so like her mother at this age, so soft and bright, so curious to discover a world that she naively hopes will delight her. She has seen her mother’s brokenness, of course, but she cannot fathom that she had ever been anyone but who she is now, so dark and quiet, so lost. There are slivers of a past she’s been able to discern, but no good story is built on the splinters of half truths. She knows her father is involved somehow, and her aunt of course, because they make Luster darker somehow. Darker than night, and space, darker than the furious pain in her eyes.
But there are times when Luster shares stories, when she doesn’t have her heart locked down so firmly in her chest, and Dark can wheedle out moments of her mother's past, and of the friends and loves she had held dear to her. She supposes the story of how her parents met should be her favorite, but any mention of dad makes mom splinter further, so she’s learned to stop asking. Maybe someday dad will tell her if she asks.
But no, her favorite story is of the first time Luster met the man in the lake. Stillwater. There is a smile on her face even now as she hurries from Taiga to find the place where the trees are large and ancient, and the leaves look like every shade of a trapped sunset, of heatless fire. It isn’t hard to find, and once she does she creeps in quietly, those delicate blue ears swiveling softly to track and capture the nearest sounds. There is a smile on her face, soft and like starlight, a matching lightness in her pale brown eyes as she discovers a worn path that leads her inland.
She isn’t sure how far she’s meant to go before the lake will be near, but she guesses from the story that it is almost exactly at the heart of the territory. Tricky, if the leader is unfriendly, but hopefully whoever they are won’t take much offence at a bright-eyed girl chasing the ghosts of her mother's memories. To be fair, she isn’t particularly intimidating anyway, what with plain blue and white skin and flickering lights dancing over her body.
When the first body of water comes into view, she nearly misses it, so concerned with sneaking by without anyone noticing. But the scent of it captures her attention, and she pauses to assess it with dark, narrowed eyes. It’s too small though to house someone like Stillwater, and there’s no nearby cave either. So she continues on until she finds a much larger body of water that seems too big to be just a plain old pond.
Her pulse quickens a little, and she tosses her head lightly to free her eyes from the tendrils of dark forelock that fall over her face. On careful, quiet feet she walks closer to the water, pausing only for a single second and then slipping into the cold lake. Her breath catches in her chest at the sudden chill, but by the time she’s waded in up to her shoulders, the cold is already forgotten. She can see a distant cave across the way, a formation of rock that is nothing like she had imagined but still somehow exactly perfectly right. She definitely wants to explore it, look for any signs that her mom had ever been there, but it definitely comes second to the lake itself.
Gently, almost shy now with cautious, hopeful longing, she drops her nose to the surface, letting the water tickle at the whiskers on her chin. She knows even in this growing dark of dusk that she is easy to see in the lake, illuminated by the light that flickers ever-present over the swirls of blue and white against her skin. Still, so softly, closing her eyes and choosing instead to rely on her ears, “Are you here?” It’s just a whisper, but she hopes that when no one comes, she can blame it on her quiet instead of his absence.
But there are times when Luster shares stories, when she doesn’t have her heart locked down so firmly in her chest, and Dark can wheedle out moments of her mother's past, and of the friends and loves she had held dear to her. She supposes the story of how her parents met should be her favorite, but any mention of dad makes mom splinter further, so she’s learned to stop asking. Maybe someday dad will tell her if she asks.
But no, her favorite story is of the first time Luster met the man in the lake. Stillwater. There is a smile on her face even now as she hurries from Taiga to find the place where the trees are large and ancient, and the leaves look like every shade of a trapped sunset, of heatless fire. It isn’t hard to find, and once she does she creeps in quietly, those delicate blue ears swiveling softly to track and capture the nearest sounds. There is a smile on her face, soft and like starlight, a matching lightness in her pale brown eyes as she discovers a worn path that leads her inland.
She isn’t sure how far she’s meant to go before the lake will be near, but she guesses from the story that it is almost exactly at the heart of the territory. Tricky, if the leader is unfriendly, but hopefully whoever they are won’t take much offence at a bright-eyed girl chasing the ghosts of her mother's memories. To be fair, she isn’t particularly intimidating anyway, what with plain blue and white skin and flickering lights dancing over her body.
When the first body of water comes into view, she nearly misses it, so concerned with sneaking by without anyone noticing. But the scent of it captures her attention, and she pauses to assess it with dark, narrowed eyes. It’s too small though to house someone like Stillwater, and there’s no nearby cave either. So she continues on until she finds a much larger body of water that seems too big to be just a plain old pond.
Her pulse quickens a little, and she tosses her head lightly to free her eyes from the tendrils of dark forelock that fall over her face. On careful, quiet feet she walks closer to the water, pausing only for a single second and then slipping into the cold lake. Her breath catches in her chest at the sudden chill, but by the time she’s waded in up to her shoulders, the cold is already forgotten. She can see a distant cave across the way, a formation of rock that is nothing like she had imagined but still somehow exactly perfectly right. She definitely wants to explore it, look for any signs that her mom had ever been there, but it definitely comes second to the lake itself.
Gently, almost shy now with cautious, hopeful longing, she drops her nose to the surface, letting the water tickle at the whiskers on her chin. She knows even in this growing dark of dusk that she is easy to see in the lake, illuminated by the light that flickers ever-present over the swirls of blue and white against her skin. Still, so softly, closing her eyes and choosing instead to rely on her ears, “Are you here?” It’s just a whisper, but she hopes that when no one comes, she can blame it on her quiet instead of his absence.
The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity.
Dovev x Luster