12-09-2020, 04:14 PM
Illuminae takes flight over a landscape as fractured as she is, over scenery that is rich and green and heavily forested, with patches lit by sunshine and others dark beneath drifting clouds. At this height it makes everything look odd, like pieces of different worlds shattered and forced back together to make something new and whole but entirely jarring. Something that looks like it doesn’t quite belong, isn’t quite right.
She is like that too, she thinks. Where her sister is a perfect melding of both their parents, gold and white and etched with the same inky dark of their father, Illuminae is her utter contrast. She is their fractured pieces, individually perfect, yet somehow on her they are thrown together in a jagged kaleidoscope like the light and dark of the landscape beneath her. Over her withers and a fraction of her face she is a white as pale as bone and glittering with the hint of Ryatah’s angelic gold, beautiful just like her mother. But there are larger areas consumed with black, sharp at the edges and in complete contrast to the white, all the darkness of her father.
She cannot help but wonder why in Radiance those pieces had come together, but in her they remain separate.
She cannot help but wonder if this is why her father had always kept his distance from her. But he’d loved Ryatah too wrong and too much, like a cat and its bird, and it’s no wonder she hadn’t stayed. Illuminae knows nothing about love, but she does know that anything so desperate could only ever be made to break.
She pulls her wings in close against her body, and for one weightless moment she can feel gravity wrap a hand around her ribs and pull her downwards until she is plummeting like a dark comet. Her eyes close, one so dark it might be black, the other an almost molten gold, and for a few seconds she thinks of nothing but the thrill of falling. She ignores the ache in her chest and the fear that these fractures run deeper than her skin, that she is on the inside just exactly as she is on the outside. Too many pieces put together all wrong, born fractured and imperfect.
The ache finds her again like a punch to the chest and with a groan she throws open her eyes, throws open her wings, and lets the wind carry her gently the rest of the way to the ground. When she lands she is in a small meadow at the heart of a deep, tangled forest. She is alone, she knows this (guesses) because she is always alone, because loneliness loves her as much as it loves her father. She did not inherit any of her mothers quiet allure, she is made entirely of her fathers dark and wretchedness. Made entirely of a regret that has no place or purpose, no reason, but has carved itself a beautiful home in the curve of her chest.
She sighs, and with a blink she pulls the dark over her until the white and gold are hidden, buries shadow in each individual fiber of her hair. She wears it like a cloak, wears it so well that the only remaining spot of color is the single gold iris like sunsets made molten.
She is like that too, she thinks. Where her sister is a perfect melding of both their parents, gold and white and etched with the same inky dark of their father, Illuminae is her utter contrast. She is their fractured pieces, individually perfect, yet somehow on her they are thrown together in a jagged kaleidoscope like the light and dark of the landscape beneath her. Over her withers and a fraction of her face she is a white as pale as bone and glittering with the hint of Ryatah’s angelic gold, beautiful just like her mother. But there are larger areas consumed with black, sharp at the edges and in complete contrast to the white, all the darkness of her father.
She cannot help but wonder why in Radiance those pieces had come together, but in her they remain separate.
She cannot help but wonder if this is why her father had always kept his distance from her. But he’d loved Ryatah too wrong and too much, like a cat and its bird, and it’s no wonder she hadn’t stayed. Illuminae knows nothing about love, but she does know that anything so desperate could only ever be made to break.
She pulls her wings in close against her body, and for one weightless moment she can feel gravity wrap a hand around her ribs and pull her downwards until she is plummeting like a dark comet. Her eyes close, one so dark it might be black, the other an almost molten gold, and for a few seconds she thinks of nothing but the thrill of falling. She ignores the ache in her chest and the fear that these fractures run deeper than her skin, that she is on the inside just exactly as she is on the outside. Too many pieces put together all wrong, born fractured and imperfect.
The ache finds her again like a punch to the chest and with a groan she throws open her eyes, throws open her wings, and lets the wind carry her gently the rest of the way to the ground. When she lands she is in a small meadow at the heart of a deep, tangled forest. She is alone, she knows this (guesses) because she is always alone, because loneliness loves her as much as it loves her father. She did not inherit any of her mothers quiet allure, she is made entirely of her fathers dark and wretchedness. Made entirely of a regret that has no place or purpose, no reason, but has carved itself a beautiful home in the curve of her chest.
She sighs, and with a blink she pulls the dark over her until the white and gold are hidden, buries shadow in each individual fiber of her hair. She wears it like a cloak, wears it so well that the only remaining spot of color is the single gold iris like sunsets made molten.
ILLUMINAE
we can't dream when we're awake,
or fall in love with a heart too strong to break