01-25-2021, 06:27 PM
Dark
Unlike before, she did not mean to be driven from the safety of Taiga and into the depths of Sylva, where, though beautiful, the forests are like a maze of deep red and gold to her in this unending dark. But she had gotten herself cornered by a few of the beasts that rove together in slavering packs, like dogs touched by wickedness and mangled by death, and when they pursued her she had no choice but to run.
She recognized the trees as soon as they changed from towering green pine to a red so dark it might be congealed blood, to a gold so dirty it might be bronze. But she does not know the paths that spiral away from her like cracks in the surface of a frozen pond, does not even know if she’s skirting the perimeter of Sylva or plunging like a knife into the heart of the land. She only knows that home is somewhere behind her, and that if she doesn’t run then the trees will be splashed with new shades of red entirely less beautiful than the leaves that trap so much dark beneath them.
Her delicate chest heaves, and she alternates between complete invisibility in this almost total darkness to flickering with the light that settles like armor over her blue and white skin. The beasts seem drawn to her light, like it is something they want to destroy, something they feel they must consume - but when she casts it from herself she is plunged into total darkness, and already she has stumbled twice over snaking roots.
There are welts on her skin, too. Shapes like mountain ranges raised over the mottled blue roan of her shoulders and hips where branches left signatures in swooping cursive. She can feel a gash on her cheek, feel the warm dampness of her own blood as it pools in that strange new valley of flesh torn a few inches across that impossibly delicate face. Adrenaline keeps it from hurting yet, but she knows tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow, as though such things are guaranteed in this new world.
A howl rises up behind her, and it’s so close she imagines she can feel the hellfire heat of their breath on her spine as fear tears from her like a million scattered embers. Light ignites along her skin, solid and bright - though less bright than it had been before all this - and so it is that she nearly collides with the thin blue stallion, falling into him like a burning star. “Why aren’t you running?” She asks, breathless and spinning to face him, the fear in her chest lending her eyes a new kind of wild shine. “They’re coming, can’t you hear them?”
Despite everything, despite the wounds like constellations across her skin, despite the blood smeared on her cheek and the way her pulse refuses to steady, she’s already moving to position herself defensively between the man with the sad glacial eyes and the creatures howling promises of death.
She recognized the trees as soon as they changed from towering green pine to a red so dark it might be congealed blood, to a gold so dirty it might be bronze. But she does not know the paths that spiral away from her like cracks in the surface of a frozen pond, does not even know if she’s skirting the perimeter of Sylva or plunging like a knife into the heart of the land. She only knows that home is somewhere behind her, and that if she doesn’t run then the trees will be splashed with new shades of red entirely less beautiful than the leaves that trap so much dark beneath them.
Her delicate chest heaves, and she alternates between complete invisibility in this almost total darkness to flickering with the light that settles like armor over her blue and white skin. The beasts seem drawn to her light, like it is something they want to destroy, something they feel they must consume - but when she casts it from herself she is plunged into total darkness, and already she has stumbled twice over snaking roots.
There are welts on her skin, too. Shapes like mountain ranges raised over the mottled blue roan of her shoulders and hips where branches left signatures in swooping cursive. She can feel a gash on her cheek, feel the warm dampness of her own blood as it pools in that strange new valley of flesh torn a few inches across that impossibly delicate face. Adrenaline keeps it from hurting yet, but she knows tomorrow will be different.
Tomorrow, as though such things are guaranteed in this new world.
A howl rises up behind her, and it’s so close she imagines she can feel the hellfire heat of their breath on her spine as fear tears from her like a million scattered embers. Light ignites along her skin, solid and bright - though less bright than it had been before all this - and so it is that she nearly collides with the thin blue stallion, falling into him like a burning star. “Why aren’t you running?” She asks, breathless and spinning to face him, the fear in her chest lending her eyes a new kind of wild shine. “They’re coming, can’t you hear them?”
Despite everything, despite the wounds like constellations across her skin, despite the blood smeared on her cheek and the way her pulse refuses to steady, she’s already moving to position herself defensively between the man with the sad glacial eyes and the creatures howling promises of death.
The heaviness that I hold in my heart belongs to gravity.
Dovev x Luster
@[Balto]