11-05-2025, 07:24 AM
sirin;
The burn under her cheek sparks her rebellion anew.
She had been so close to giving up, to allowing whatever happened next to drag her along to its final end. Why try when all has been revealed? Why buck against ropes that have an eternal knot? Why should she keep pretending to save herself when she is merely a plaything at the end of that rope?
But that burn changes everything.
A last indignation when she is already at literal rock-bottom (or beneath it, even). Sirin snorts as a wild gleam finds her eyes once again. Survival is all she has ever had. The walls around her are not as solid as they had seemed at first in her despair. Surely, a well-placed kick or two will topple her prison? She sets her jaw and gets to work.
It is not as easy as her newly-won determination would make it seem, of course. The space is tight and becomes more so when the rubble begins to pile up slowly. Sirin hurls every curse she can think of at the pocked walls as she kicks and bucks against them. She becomes so frenzied in her task that she doesn’t realize the missing pair of wings on her back. She only notices the absence of her spiraling horn when she tries to carve at the walls with it, and headbutts the stone instead. Pain crashes through her then, and she is forced to take a break, panting with spent effort.
But the walls are so ready to come down now. And Sirin is so ready to be done with this. To go home, wherever that may be.
She blinks away the flashing pain and rushes towards the most decimated part of her prison. She will either push through or she will collapse at the impact - she has little strength left to give for any further excavations.
THREE.
TWO.
ONE.
She closes her eyes as her shoulders breach the softened wall and the rest of her follows.
Into another stony expanse stretching into the distance before her.
There is a fork in the path that she barely makes out in the dim lighting. With a long-winded sigh and still-trembling legs, Sirin moves onward. She has no choice, but having resigned herself to her fate before and overcoming, the woman now knows that all of that is behind her. Whatever happens, she will no longer be a passive pawn. Whatever choices she makes ahead of her will be her own, even if it leads to her own demise.
The stone underfoot echoes eerily as she reaches her first choice: a rocky wall or another pathway. Sirin rolls her eyes and turns down the hall. The walls here are not so penetrable as the enclosure of before. No, the only way through will be to find the hallways between, she realizes as she goes further. And it is okay, at first. Just like a jaunt through the forest at night: dark, harrowing, and seemingly impassable at times. Then she hears things. Whispers snakes through the passages as if on a phantom breeze, curling around her ears and telling her awful, terrible things. One is so convincing that she feels her feet pulled at their suggestion down a different passage than she intended. She follows, shivering, convinced there will be violence if she does not, to the darkest corner she has seen. Even the dim light is absent completely here. Sirin makes to turn away from the inky patch of infinite black (it swirls and expands and shrinks, almost like it is a breathing thing), but finds herself very stuck.
Reality becomes distorted. She feels like she is being sucked in while her feet are still firmly planted on the stone. Somehow, it looms larger in front of her, like it is sucking out her soul, her awareness, from deep behind her eyes. Sirin scrambles within herself at the predation that she is suddenly sure she cannot stop. She wants to fight for her life, but how? It holds her frozen in place - this bit-of-the-universe vortex - and she is powerless against such an entity.
You are pathetic, it tells her, you have no home, no family. Sirin feels it move past her eyes as it takes her tongue and travels down her throat like hot lava and burning cold ice at the same time. No one will miss you once you are mine. Stop resisting and give yourself over to me.
She can’t disagree, even if she were able to. There is no one waiting for her, worried for her - no one to mourn her if she doesn’t make it back. Maybe it will be easier to assimilate into the void before her, to leave not a trace of her existence back in Beqanna. She had never even tried to make a mark for anyone to find, anyway.
Yes, let me in and the pain will be gone, it croons, the sound reverberating in her bones. Give yourself to me, let me feast on you, and you will have no future to worry over. A vampire, she thinks, a cosmic vampire come to drain me for what little I have to offer. And then she realizes how little she does have - and then she shows it.
She is a vampire too, sucking all the life around her. Living only for herself and her selfish desires when the world can be so much more. She takes and drains any who find her for her own pleasures - why would this void be any different? Why wouldn’t she pull from the very stars themselves when they come knocking?
Sirin bares her teeth and laughs at the irony, delights in it, even, though it is a soundless victory while still in the monster’s clutches. Truly, it couldn’t have found a worse victim. The sucking void starts to withdraw, realizing its prey is emaciated in all the ways it would otherwise feast on. Sirin laughs still endlessly the entire time, giddy on barely surviving and the reason why. But as it withdraws, the depthless creature burns her throat in retaliation for its failed meal. Her eyes widen, but it is still several minutes before the world settles and straightens before her, several minutes before she sees it in front of her on the stone, winding and spinning itself into oblivion.
The mare staggers back a few paces and breathes. The dim light finally reaches the corner she has been entrapped in and glows even brighter now. She swallows her resolve, and it is a painful thing, but she moves towards that light back on the stony path.
When she rounds that last corner, the light shining more fully than ever, Sirin is sure it has never felt more bleak.
She had been so close to giving up, to allowing whatever happened next to drag her along to its final end. Why try when all has been revealed? Why buck against ropes that have an eternal knot? Why should she keep pretending to save herself when she is merely a plaything at the end of that rope?
But that burn changes everything.
A last indignation when she is already at literal rock-bottom (or beneath it, even). Sirin snorts as a wild gleam finds her eyes once again. Survival is all she has ever had. The walls around her are not as solid as they had seemed at first in her despair. Surely, a well-placed kick or two will topple her prison? She sets her jaw and gets to work.
It is not as easy as her newly-won determination would make it seem, of course. The space is tight and becomes more so when the rubble begins to pile up slowly. Sirin hurls every curse she can think of at the pocked walls as she kicks and bucks against them. She becomes so frenzied in her task that she doesn’t realize the missing pair of wings on her back. She only notices the absence of her spiraling horn when she tries to carve at the walls with it, and headbutts the stone instead. Pain crashes through her then, and she is forced to take a break, panting with spent effort.
But the walls are so ready to come down now. And Sirin is so ready to be done with this. To go home, wherever that may be.
She blinks away the flashing pain and rushes towards the most decimated part of her prison. She will either push through or she will collapse at the impact - she has little strength left to give for any further excavations.
THREE.
TWO.
ONE.
She closes her eyes as her shoulders breach the softened wall and the rest of her follows.
Into another stony expanse stretching into the distance before her.
There is a fork in the path that she barely makes out in the dim lighting. With a long-winded sigh and still-trembling legs, Sirin moves onward. She has no choice, but having resigned herself to her fate before and overcoming, the woman now knows that all of that is behind her. Whatever happens, she will no longer be a passive pawn. Whatever choices she makes ahead of her will be her own, even if it leads to her own demise.
The stone underfoot echoes eerily as she reaches her first choice: a rocky wall or another pathway. Sirin rolls her eyes and turns down the hall. The walls here are not so penetrable as the enclosure of before. No, the only way through will be to find the hallways between, she realizes as she goes further. And it is okay, at first. Just like a jaunt through the forest at night: dark, harrowing, and seemingly impassable at times. Then she hears things. Whispers snakes through the passages as if on a phantom breeze, curling around her ears and telling her awful, terrible things. One is so convincing that she feels her feet pulled at their suggestion down a different passage than she intended. She follows, shivering, convinced there will be violence if she does not, to the darkest corner she has seen. Even the dim light is absent completely here. Sirin makes to turn away from the inky patch of infinite black (it swirls and expands and shrinks, almost like it is a breathing thing), but finds herself very stuck.
Reality becomes distorted. She feels like she is being sucked in while her feet are still firmly planted on the stone. Somehow, it looms larger in front of her, like it is sucking out her soul, her awareness, from deep behind her eyes. Sirin scrambles within herself at the predation that she is suddenly sure she cannot stop. She wants to fight for her life, but how? It holds her frozen in place - this bit-of-the-universe vortex - and she is powerless against such an entity.
You are pathetic, it tells her, you have no home, no family. Sirin feels it move past her eyes as it takes her tongue and travels down her throat like hot lava and burning cold ice at the same time. No one will miss you once you are mine. Stop resisting and give yourself over to me.
She can’t disagree, even if she were able to. There is no one waiting for her, worried for her - no one to mourn her if she doesn’t make it back. Maybe it will be easier to assimilate into the void before her, to leave not a trace of her existence back in Beqanna. She had never even tried to make a mark for anyone to find, anyway.
Yes, let me in and the pain will be gone, it croons, the sound reverberating in her bones. Give yourself to me, let me feast on you, and you will have no future to worry over. A vampire, she thinks, a cosmic vampire come to drain me for what little I have to offer. And then she realizes how little she does have - and then she shows it.
She is a vampire too, sucking all the life around her. Living only for herself and her selfish desires when the world can be so much more. She takes and drains any who find her for her own pleasures - why would this void be any different? Why wouldn’t she pull from the very stars themselves when they come knocking?
Sirin bares her teeth and laughs at the irony, delights in it, even, though it is a soundless victory while still in the monster’s clutches. Truly, it couldn’t have found a worse victim. The sucking void starts to withdraw, realizing its prey is emaciated in all the ways it would otherwise feast on. Sirin laughs still endlessly the entire time, giddy on barely surviving and the reason why. But as it withdraws, the depthless creature burns her throat in retaliation for its failed meal. Her eyes widen, but it is still several minutes before the world settles and straightens before her, several minutes before she sees it in front of her on the stone, winding and spinning itself into oblivion.
The mare staggers back a few paces and breathes. The dim light finally reaches the corner she has been entrapped in and glows even brighter now. She swallows her resolve, and it is a painful thing, but she moves towards that light back on the stony path.
When she rounds that last corner, the light shining more fully than ever, Sirin is sure it has never felt more bleak.
