jamie
02-13-2024, 05:06 PM
jamie
It is an exceptionally strange thing for her to say, the shadow-thing thinks. There is nothing about this place that suits him and especially not this stretch of beach. He is a thing made for lurking in darkness, the shadow magician had seen fit to craft him as such. But he feels no particular impulse to argue, only study.
There is a shift in her, he can feel it. (And we may never know if it is simply that tangible or if it is because there is magic that rises to meet magic.) He can see it, too, in the curve of her mouth and the way she drifts closer.
He blinks those strange yellow eyes, tilts that strange, featureless head. He is only half-aware of what she’s doing. Or trying to do. And only half-aware because Jamie has never crossed a creature that has tried to seduce him. He is an ugly thing, see. Hideous in the unnatural size of his eyes, the death rattle in his lungs, the rasping quality of his voice. Even the power he possesses is ugly.
“Your pool?” he echoes, thinking then of the nymphs in their own pools. One banished to the pond at the heart of the forest, another two the river, and the third lost someplace out at sea. How thrilling it had been to tether them to those pools! How thrilling to replace their lifeblood with that water. They had not even cried out when he’d left them.
He shakes his head, though, because her pool is quite obviously not the same. She had been allowed to leave it. She is standing here in front of him, breathing.
“I’m afraid that I’ve lost the opportunity to visit,” he tells her, “we both have.” A pause then as he calls the fog to crowd in around them. He glances at it, pulls shapes from it. The world as they had known it then. “Ischia fell some time ago.” He shows her in this strange, dull map. Ischia fading, plunging into the sea.
There is a shift in her, he can feel it. (And we may never know if it is simply that tangible or if it is because there is magic that rises to meet magic.) He can see it, too, in the curve of her mouth and the way she drifts closer.
He blinks those strange yellow eyes, tilts that strange, featureless head. He is only half-aware of what she’s doing. Or trying to do. And only half-aware because Jamie has never crossed a creature that has tried to seduce him. He is an ugly thing, see. Hideous in the unnatural size of his eyes, the death rattle in his lungs, the rasping quality of his voice. Even the power he possesses is ugly.
“Your pool?” he echoes, thinking then of the nymphs in their own pools. One banished to the pond at the heart of the forest, another two the river, and the third lost someplace out at sea. How thrilling it had been to tether them to those pools! How thrilling to replace their lifeblood with that water. They had not even cried out when he’d left them.
He shakes his head, though, because her pool is quite obviously not the same. She had been allowed to leave it. She is standing here in front of him, breathing.
“I’m afraid that I’ve lost the opportunity to visit,” he tells her, “we both have.” A pause then as he calls the fog to crowd in around them. He glances at it, pulls shapes from it. The world as they had known it then. “Ischia fell some time ago.” He shows her in this strange, dull map. Ischia fading, plunging into the sea.
so darkness i became
