11-10-2021, 11:25 PM
ILLUM
He wonders, sometimes, what would happen if his teleportation ever left him inside a shadow - what would happen if he stepped in and never stepped out again. Caught in the core of a moment, in the impossibility of the in between, in the dark between worlds. Would it be a place? Would it be a dimension like this one and not like this one, a mirror image but in entire darkness. A world without color, without light, without definition.
He thinks it sounds like hell.
He thinks it must be where he belongs.
The night is a swirling chaotic thing as it churns against his skin, spilling from him in waves of black and indigo and twinkling, roiling stardust. It feels like the product of a fury that sits inside his chest, and yet he cannot name where that feeling comes from, what woke it inside him in the first place. Unease, unbelonging. Or maybe it is just him, maybe fury and stardust are the things that bind him inside this nocturnal body.
He finds himself at the Hyaline border without ever making the conscious decision to go, but even as his eyes find the silhouettes of dark mountain shapes he knows he will not turn away. At once his mind becomes a drifting, traitorous thing, and no matter how hard he tries to force the thought away, there is still a girl that haunts him like a ghost. Rose gold and wide eyes, as bright as he is dark, as good as he is wrong. She is not for him, not for the dark or the ruin, and yet she is a tether inside his chest, holding him close without ever even realizing it.
He makes his way inwards, and it is arrogance that has him searching the mountains first, teleporting through shadow like he is moving in broken, irregular glimpses through someone’s fractured memories. He had thought, had wanted, to find her with her face lifted to the sky, searching for stars, thinking about him. To know that the memory of him haunts her as much as she does him. But when he does finally find her it is along the shores of the lake that lay in the heart of the kingdom, watching the water instead.
“Este.” And it’s strange, because now that he’s here he is unsure why, unsure of the purpose in this except to see her face again, to feel the tug and tangle of her light against the dark of his night. To know more of her or to take more of her, to protect her light or corrupt it? He isn’t certain. He had asked Este once who would save him from her, and by the gentle earnest light in those dark eyes, that furrow in her brow as she had asked why he would ever need saving from her, he knew she did not understand. That if she is the light, then he is the shadow bound (willingly?) in her wake.
He watches her more guardedly now as he closes the distance between them with strides that are soundless and flow like the movement of dark water, predator and not, a soldier with no alliance but to himself, no war but that which rages inside his own chest. “I had thought you might come see me again.” There is no accusation in the quiet of his voice when he stops beside her to look out over the lake - he knows he cannot linger on her face lest he not have the strength to tear his gaze away again, and she cannot be allowed to see these marks she left on him. “You didn’t forget about me, did you?” And there in the indistinct haze of his mouth is something like amusement, something like a smile as he still does not turn to see soft gray and rose gold or those dark, beautiful eyes.
He thinks it sounds like hell.
He thinks it must be where he belongs.
The night is a swirling chaotic thing as it churns against his skin, spilling from him in waves of black and indigo and twinkling, roiling stardust. It feels like the product of a fury that sits inside his chest, and yet he cannot name where that feeling comes from, what woke it inside him in the first place. Unease, unbelonging. Or maybe it is just him, maybe fury and stardust are the things that bind him inside this nocturnal body.
He finds himself at the Hyaline border without ever making the conscious decision to go, but even as his eyes find the silhouettes of dark mountain shapes he knows he will not turn away. At once his mind becomes a drifting, traitorous thing, and no matter how hard he tries to force the thought away, there is still a girl that haunts him like a ghost. Rose gold and wide eyes, as bright as he is dark, as good as he is wrong. She is not for him, not for the dark or the ruin, and yet she is a tether inside his chest, holding him close without ever even realizing it.
He makes his way inwards, and it is arrogance that has him searching the mountains first, teleporting through shadow like he is moving in broken, irregular glimpses through someone’s fractured memories. He had thought, had wanted, to find her with her face lifted to the sky, searching for stars, thinking about him. To know that the memory of him haunts her as much as she does him. But when he does finally find her it is along the shores of the lake that lay in the heart of the kingdom, watching the water instead.
“Este.” And it’s strange, because now that he’s here he is unsure why, unsure of the purpose in this except to see her face again, to feel the tug and tangle of her light against the dark of his night. To know more of her or to take more of her, to protect her light or corrupt it? He isn’t certain. He had asked Este once who would save him from her, and by the gentle earnest light in those dark eyes, that furrow in her brow as she had asked why he would ever need saving from her, he knew she did not understand. That if she is the light, then he is the shadow bound (willingly?) in her wake.
He watches her more guardedly now as he closes the distance between them with strides that are soundless and flow like the movement of dark water, predator and not, a soldier with no alliance but to himself, no war but that which rages inside his own chest. “I had thought you might come see me again.” There is no accusation in the quiet of his voice when he stops beside her to look out over the lake - he knows he cannot linger on her face lest he not have the strength to tear his gaze away again, and she cannot be allowed to see these marks she left on him. “You didn’t forget about me, did you?” And there in the indistinct haze of his mouth is something like amusement, something like a smile as he still does not turn to see soft gray and rose gold or those dark, beautiful eyes.
@Este