09-06-2021, 06:18 PM
Iska always seems to find her – it is Blackwell that the shadows ignore, shunning his flames, but his sister has only to ask and they guide her to their golden mother. Not that Beryl, often brooding, much minds her daughter’s quiet, serious, company, but today she does not want to be found.
Do not bring her to me tonight, the golden mare commands the yellow-eyed wisps, pressing on them with her magic, drawing their leaf-smoke promises, their loyalty. Tonight she wants to be lost.
She doesn’t know how to be content. No matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard Cassian tries to reassure her, to comfort her, and, occasionally, make her laugh when her guard is lowered, that sense of well-being is forever outside her grasp. So she runs, and she returns – sometimes alone, sometimes with Iska – and she runs again.
Will she always be this way, unable to clutch at happiness? Will she always be left standing just outside it, just next to it, too cracked to hold its glow inside her?
Her haloed head falls to wither height as Beryl ducks beneath the flame-bright tendrils of an autumn-struck creeping vine, dropping into the tannin-dark waters of the creek there. Downstream is the hidden meadow where Cassian and Blackwell are probably trading jokes, brightening the dimming light with their halos and their laughter. Upstream, the creek’s source is deep in the murk of the Forest where the shadows are wildest and speak strange tongues when she draws them out. It is deeper than her family is wont to go – at least together, she does not ask where Iska goes when the girl disappears.
Run, her anxious brain screams, deafening her.
Yes, go, her traitorous heart agrees, dreading the way it knows it doesn’t deserve peace waiting for her at home.
She turns upstream, seeking that unfathomable darkness.
Do not bring her to me tonight, the golden mare commands the yellow-eyed wisps, pressing on them with her magic, drawing their leaf-smoke promises, their loyalty. Tonight she wants to be lost.
She doesn’t know how to be content. No matter how hard she tries, no matter how hard Cassian tries to reassure her, to comfort her, and, occasionally, make her laugh when her guard is lowered, that sense of well-being is forever outside her grasp. So she runs, and she returns – sometimes alone, sometimes with Iska – and she runs again.
Will she always be this way, unable to clutch at happiness? Will she always be left standing just outside it, just next to it, too cracked to hold its glow inside her?
Her haloed head falls to wither height as Beryl ducks beneath the flame-bright tendrils of an autumn-struck creeping vine, dropping into the tannin-dark waters of the creek there. Downstream is the hidden meadow where Cassian and Blackwell are probably trading jokes, brightening the dimming light with their halos and their laughter. Upstream, the creek’s source is deep in the murk of the Forest where the shadows are wildest and speak strange tongues when she draws them out. It is deeper than her family is wont to go – at least together, she does not ask where Iska goes when the girl disappears.
Run, her anxious brain screams, deafening her.
Yes, go, her traitorous heart agrees, dreading the way it knows it doesn’t deserve peace waiting for her at home.
She turns upstream, seeking that unfathomable darkness.
@Torryn