01-11-2021, 12:37 PM
We were too weak. That's why he'd failed, returned to my side as less than a victor. That's what I'm told, by the cruel night whisperers. More blood, more bodies, to feed them and to earn their good graces.
I sigh into the dark, and let my skin flicker as the trees melt away from the landscape. Sound no longer muffles on their trunks, instead it flows freely as I hum a lilting melody.
It's a song, only half-remembered from my childhood. A desert song that I once knew the words to, but now only the fractured refrain remains in my memory. Was this a lullaby my mother had sung to me? It must be. Before she withdrew into the beautiful, empty shell of a creature that I most remembered. These are different ghosts than I've grown used to. Older, more faint. But just as violent.
My tongue darts out to wetten my paper-dry lips. The song stops, and for a moment I can't figure out why. My mouth twists when I realize it is because I stopped singing it. Isn't that always the way? You want something done right, you have to do it yourself. To my dismay, though, once I go searching for the notes to take up the song again, they have vanished. Gone again into the faulty labyrinth that is my memory.
Lightning forks again on my shoulders, my face, my hips. Scars turned electric, and now my only light in the dark. How sick is that? I stomp my hooves, breaking through crusted snow in my pique. "Fine!" I shrill at the near-silent shadows. They are listening. They are always listening. "Take my memories again. They do not serve me anyway." I am snarling, feral, and I beat my wings in a fit of directionless wrath. Thunder fills the air as I do, and I wonder if the chest-quaking noise will scare them.
Like a summer storm, my temper quickly spends itself. It is difficult to fight an enemy that exists only in my mind. It's a task I've been railing against many years now, and it does not get any more fulfilling. Laughter, quiet and insidious, chitters from the edges of this meadow. My maw widens into a vicious grin, my own broken cackle joining in.
I sigh into the dark, and let my skin flicker as the trees melt away from the landscape. Sound no longer muffles on their trunks, instead it flows freely as I hum a lilting melody.
It's a song, only half-remembered from my childhood. A desert song that I once knew the words to, but now only the fractured refrain remains in my memory. Was this a lullaby my mother had sung to me? It must be. Before she withdrew into the beautiful, empty shell of a creature that I most remembered. These are different ghosts than I've grown used to. Older, more faint. But just as violent.
My tongue darts out to wetten my paper-dry lips. The song stops, and for a moment I can't figure out why. My mouth twists when I realize it is because I stopped singing it. Isn't that always the way? You want something done right, you have to do it yourself. To my dismay, though, once I go searching for the notes to take up the song again, they have vanished. Gone again into the faulty labyrinth that is my memory.
Lightning forks again on my shoulders, my face, my hips. Scars turned electric, and now my only light in the dark. How sick is that? I stomp my hooves, breaking through crusted snow in my pique. "Fine!" I shrill at the near-silent shadows. They are listening. They are always listening. "Take my memories again. They do not serve me anyway." I am snarling, feral, and I beat my wings in a fit of directionless wrath. Thunder fills the air as I do, and I wonder if the chest-quaking noise will scare them.
Like a summer storm, my temper quickly spends itself. It is difficult to fight an enemy that exists only in my mind. It's a task I've been railing against many years now, and it does not get any more fulfilling. Laughter, quiet and insidious, chitters from the edges of this meadow. My maw widens into a vicious grin, my own broken cackle joining in.