10-16-2021, 11:55 AM
selaphiel
He cannot breathe without swallowing the awful stench of death.
A new death. His mother’s death.
He cannot escape it because it lives inside him. It has sunk into the meat of his lungs. There is no breath without the reminder that she is gone and there had been no one there to save her.
And he could have gone. He could have cast himself into the forest because there is no mother here, there are no friends here. But he stays for reasons he does not understand. Perhaps because this is where his mother drew her last breath.
And everything is so murky, everything is so heavy, and he has not felt so dreadfully overwhelmed by the enormity of all of these things since he was young. Since he’d staggered to his sister’s side, curled up against her, and asked her if she thought the suffering would ever end.
It has not ended. It has only gotten worse.
It is all he can do simply to stand where he stands, practically swaying beneath the weight of it all. And then a bird descends and he shifts his focus in its direction, wondering what has brought it out of the sky. But it’s no bird at all. Mazikeen springs forth from it and he exhales a shuddering sigh.
He does not have the heart to fight. Not now. He had been someone else entirely then. He is tired, grief-stricken. He turns to leave, to avoid her, let her think him a coward. But he stops short at the sound of his name, soft and cracked clean through the middle, and he shifts his attention back to her face, her body, unmarred.
“Maze?” he asks. But he does not allow himself to hope.
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Mazikeen