06-04-2021, 03:12 PM
stifled the choice and the air in my lungs;
better not to breathe than to breathe a lie
Tiercel can’t deny that she’s been a comfort to him since he’s returned from the Underworld. It’s true that he lasted through those dark days purely because of her; he had gotten his energy from the memory of her face and smell, and her voice was constantly in his mind whether in wakefulness or death. Yet having her with him now, real and warm and swollen with their children — the relief of her reality doesn’t compare. And she centers him, pulling him back from the haunted edges of his mind that shimmer with white light and blood-stained walls.
With his mouth touching the slope of her withers and her neck bending closer to him, Tiercel can hear the screaming fade away. It echoes off the caverns around them, bouncing through the empty spaces where red dust blows quietly in the nighttime breeze, and then disappears where it will hide until the next nightmare shakes him awake. He tries to lean into Islas’s words, focusing his attention on the sympathy in her eyes and the firm tone of her voice. Although she tells him that he isn’t disappointing anyone, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s still guilty.
He’s spent a lot of time in his life feeling guilty. It’s a cancerous emotion, one that eats away at his insides and consumes his thoughts until there’s nothing left. Tiercel had shaken his guilt once before; it wasn’t until he’d seen Gale’s adult face, unblemished by the volcano’s flames, that he’d felt free from the criminality he felt. He still thinks it’s his fault Gale had supposedly died that day — after all, if he wasn’t caught in the brambles, then their mother could have spotted his young body flying over the volcano’s mouth and swept him away before it was too late.
And now it absorbs him again, making him blind to the ways Islas (and even Kamaria, however begrudgingly she does so) opens herself to him.
His heartbeat increases even thinking about telling her about the Underworld, and the pulsing lights up the ground below him in a soft red shade. “It’s so hard to explain.” How could Tiercel untangle the memories so they formed a cohesive explanation? Once the novelty wore off (once they realized the guardian would punish them for saying their own names or crying out to their loved ones), the pain made each period of torture blur into the others. It became one long chain of waking and feeling agony in countless ways and then dying.
He thinks it would be easy to say even this, to tell her that his memories bleed together and make it difficult to understand, but he chokes on his words. Islas’s touch soothes him like it always does, and his ears tip forward to catch her plea. “You’re doing a great job at helping me already. You bring me peace.” Tiercel can feel his pulse slow, and the glow’s rhythm decreases with it, visible evidence of the way her touch calms him. “I just need some more time. I… I experienced death so m-many times, it’s hard to really explain.” It’s the most he’s ever said about it, and it’s just about all he can get out now.
The dun shifts his weight, turning so he can glide his mouth down toward his wife’s swollen sides. “Enough about me. How are you feeling?” Tiercel knows her first pregnancy had been difficult with the stars gone and the eclipse heavy around them, so he hopes this one has been better, even if there’s double the children to grow.
With his mouth touching the slope of her withers and her neck bending closer to him, Tiercel can hear the screaming fade away. It echoes off the caverns around them, bouncing through the empty spaces where red dust blows quietly in the nighttime breeze, and then disappears where it will hide until the next nightmare shakes him awake. He tries to lean into Islas’s words, focusing his attention on the sympathy in her eyes and the firm tone of her voice. Although she tells him that he isn’t disappointing anyone, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s still guilty.
He’s spent a lot of time in his life feeling guilty. It’s a cancerous emotion, one that eats away at his insides and consumes his thoughts until there’s nothing left. Tiercel had shaken his guilt once before; it wasn’t until he’d seen Gale’s adult face, unblemished by the volcano’s flames, that he’d felt free from the criminality he felt. He still thinks it’s his fault Gale had supposedly died that day — after all, if he wasn’t caught in the brambles, then their mother could have spotted his young body flying over the volcano’s mouth and swept him away before it was too late.
And now it absorbs him again, making him blind to the ways Islas (and even Kamaria, however begrudgingly she does so) opens herself to him.
His heartbeat increases even thinking about telling her about the Underworld, and the pulsing lights up the ground below him in a soft red shade. “It’s so hard to explain.” How could Tiercel untangle the memories so they formed a cohesive explanation? Once the novelty wore off (once they realized the guardian would punish them for saying their own names or crying out to their loved ones), the pain made each period of torture blur into the others. It became one long chain of waking and feeling agony in countless ways and then dying.
He thinks it would be easy to say even this, to tell her that his memories bleed together and make it difficult to understand, but he chokes on his words. Islas’s touch soothes him like it always does, and his ears tip forward to catch her plea. “You’re doing a great job at helping me already. You bring me peace.” Tiercel can feel his pulse slow, and the glow’s rhythm decreases with it, visible evidence of the way her touch calms him. “I just need some more time. I… I experienced death so m-many times, it’s hard to really explain.” It’s the most he’s ever said about it, and it’s just about all he can get out now.
The dun shifts his weight, turning so he can glide his mouth down toward his wife’s swollen sides. “Enough about me. How are you feeling?” Tiercel knows her first pregnancy had been difficult with the stars gone and the eclipse heavy around them, so he hopes this one has been better, even if there’s double the children to grow.
tiercel.
@[Islas]