handcrafted by confusing love; kult and kersey

[capture]

The seconds that pass in silence seem to stretch into minutes and hours and days and years, and each new moment bleeds more unease into the tremble of that perfect steel and green skin. Everything about the world seemed so quiet, like the forest had been cut away by magic and dropped into the empty black of an endless sky. She could not trace the gentle pinks across the sky, would never see those streaks of pale orange and blue like there was a fire burning just beneath the horizon. Her world would always be the same, would always be black and lonely and incomplete. But then the silence breaks and she stumbles toward the sound, too young to be scared, too new to know the fear that pressed cold fingers against her belly. Her small ears flicked quietly, taking turns to point forward and back and to disappear into the rigid tufts of her charcoal dark mane. The string of words that greeted her were entirely disorienting, incomplete sentences split with voices as slick as blades. She could not make sense of any of it. Each word seemed different, but there were sounds being repeated again and again and again, and she clung to it like a beacon. “Kuh,” she mimicked, her tongue twisting in her mouth like a worm cut in half. It felt awkward this sound, so much less crisp than how it sounded on their tongues. “Kuh.” She tried again and it sounded as though her small voice was choking on the effort. Kult. Kirin. Kersey. Kult. Come. Cove. Kirin. “Kirn.” She repeated uncertainly, the word inelegant on her unpracticed tongue. But then they are beside her and she can feel the warmth of Kersey’s skin where her nose touches the green. Her face lifts reflexively, all delicate curves and gentle hollows etched in bone and shadow. With as much caution as a bird inching along a branch, she reaches across the heavy dark in search of that warmth again, the absence of it sitting like stones in her empty belly. But the only thing she finds is a huff of breath ghosting across her face and tousling the corn-silk wisps of her black forelock. It was a smell she would come to love though, the stink of ocean and brine and sunshine and sand.   It was the ocean. I KNOW THE RULES; THE WEAKER TREE BENDS capture