05-23-2021, 12:12 PM
It had been hard to leave his side that long-ago day, harder than she expected, but she knew that she would wake to empty sockets and the graveyard grin, and that she could not bear it. Pretending came with a cost, breaking the illusion meant her breaking heart. So did running, of course, but that pain she knew so well, a familiar hurt she could never stop pressing against like tonguing a sore place on the roof of her mouth. When his eyes closed, she'd wrapped herself in shadows as she had done to him, and she stepped out of them again at the other side of the stygian deepwood, breathless and glassy-eyed but not alone.
The darkness is her home, even though she had known the world around her was dying - did die, no matter what Cassian may say - Beryl had not felt fear when the sun was lost. In the darkness, she is never alone, even if her companions are not the usual sort. It's rare that she molds the shades into recognizable shapes, she likes them best as they are, the way their shapes reflect where she stole them from, and the time of day. Some are dappled and thin like leaves, some thick and obscure like the ancient darkness lurking within Nerine's granite sea-caves. In the morning they are wispy and nebulous like smoke and at night fat and luxurious as well-fed cats, but now it is noon and their edges are tight and knife-sharp, and if she concentrates on them just so they can cut through any blade or branch or bone in her way.
Everything is in her way right now. Though she cannot see it, she can feel the sweat that darkens her neck and trembling sides from sun-gold to almost chestnut, and when she swings her head moodily to bite, she can see how the children have moved within her, unwrapping from one another, prepared to escape the prison of her ribcage.
It has, to put it mildly, been a distressing pregnancy. She has seen with every passing day how they change, each blade of rib, each curled shell of their hooves, the vertebrae all in a line, like small stones pressed together to mark a path in the earth. The children baffle her, Beryl marvels at how they prove and disprove Cassian's theory of a living world - they must be alive, because they grow, and yet they are just bones. Like her. Like everyone.
In a well-protected copse, she beds down in soft moss and the shadows curl around them with their woodsmoke voices hissing soft warnings to intruders that cannot hear them but will no doubt see the unnatural way they swell together like ocean waves, the way those dark teeth and blades and strangling tendrils reach outward. Stay away. The Mother of Bones and her children do not seek company. Within the walls of darkness that she's built, shades drift tenderly over still damp bodies, over the tangled jigsaw puzzle of her children curled up against one another.
"Blackwell," she says softly to the shadows as they brush cautiously against the colt. She can feel their skepticism.
fire, they say. They like the filly better and bend fondly against her.
"And Iska."
The darkness is her home, even though she had known the world around her was dying - did die, no matter what Cassian may say - Beryl had not felt fear when the sun was lost. In the darkness, she is never alone, even if her companions are not the usual sort. It's rare that she molds the shades into recognizable shapes, she likes them best as they are, the way their shapes reflect where she stole them from, and the time of day. Some are dappled and thin like leaves, some thick and obscure like the ancient darkness lurking within Nerine's granite sea-caves. In the morning they are wispy and nebulous like smoke and at night fat and luxurious as well-fed cats, but now it is noon and their edges are tight and knife-sharp, and if she concentrates on them just so they can cut through any blade or branch or bone in her way.
Everything is in her way right now. Though she cannot see it, she can feel the sweat that darkens her neck and trembling sides from sun-gold to almost chestnut, and when she swings her head moodily to bite, she can see how the children have moved within her, unwrapping from one another, prepared to escape the prison of her ribcage.
It has, to put it mildly, been a distressing pregnancy. She has seen with every passing day how they change, each blade of rib, each curled shell of their hooves, the vertebrae all in a line, like small stones pressed together to mark a path in the earth. The children baffle her, Beryl marvels at how they prove and disprove Cassian's theory of a living world - they must be alive, because they grow, and yet they are just bones. Like her. Like everyone.
In a well-protected copse, she beds down in soft moss and the shadows curl around them with their woodsmoke voices hissing soft warnings to intruders that cannot hear them but will no doubt see the unnatural way they swell together like ocean waves, the way those dark teeth and blades and strangling tendrils reach outward. Stay away. The Mother of Bones and her children do not seek company. Within the walls of darkness that she's built, shades drift tenderly over still damp bodies, over the tangled jigsaw puzzle of her children curled up against one another.
"Blackwell," she says softly to the shadows as they brush cautiously against the colt. She can feel their skepticism.
fire, they say. They like the filly better and bend fondly against her.
"And Iska."
@[insane]