to make something beautiful should be enough; pollock

[rapt]

there is a dream in the space between the hammer and the nail ------ the dream of about-to-be-hit, which is a bad dream ------------ but the nail will take the hit if it gets to sleep inside the wood forever The monster is unchanged, which he had expected – such trite powers on the mountain cannot undo things spat out by hell itself. (Rapt himself had nothing to give, nothing to be taken. He’s plain.) He takes him in, awed still, because memory warps things, sometimes – makes them bolder or more beautiful, tinted rosy by nostalgia. (That he’s nostalgic for such horror is something we shall ignore.) But no – no - instead, the monster in the flesh is as fantastic as the monster that walks his memory (and dreams, and nightmares, and fantasies; the image that consumes him whole). His breath catches, a little gasp caught in his throat. My boy. His eyes flutter closed at the praise, letting the words sit like warm honey in his marrow. My boy. His. His. “There was nothing for the land to take from me,” he says, a bit sheepishly. Though his father could whisper with ghosts, it had been a thing granted later, magic does not reside in his blood the way it does so many others. “I’ve missed you,” he says then, a bit suddenly, in a rush of breath. It feels dangerous, to say this, because what he feels surely does not matter to such a glorious monster. But it must be said, the words have demanded themselves upon his tongue before he has a chance to reconsider. “It’s not right without you.” rapt caius x else

works for me <3