01-09-2017, 05:03 PM
Kilte
R
Mind Over Matter
D
eath speaks - and in His voice, Kilter hears all the horrors of the world. His voice scrapes across Kilter’s heart, and his breath carries the stench of both rot and, strangely, life. “Not today.” he says to the grulla child - and Kilter sways on his feet. Today was subjective - what day was it, even? In the murk of Kilter’s months, there had been nothing but dark and light - storms and quells - hunger and thirst. There was no concept of time, or moments slipping past, of sunrise and sunset. Did Death mean that right now, Kilter would be spared? Would he come crawling back again, with his black cloud of filth and flies to take the child?
Death comes closer, and each step resonates like a heavy heartbeat in the still woods. There is no other sound, no other movement - just Death and the Telekinetic. His steps are like cyanide - closer and closer to the silver boy and closer and closer life slips away.
Kilter had thought Death would be painful - a heavy grip across his heart, a choking of blood in his throat, a leaking of air through his lungs. And yet Kilter felt nothing - he almost felt at ease, an equilibrium of this was just where he needed to be. His eyes lowered once more, his soul seeming to trail away from the pain of his body. It seemed that it was Death who owned him, the waves of life ebbing away from his body and Death crashing over him - the lull of the ocean.
Death speaks again, and Kilter’s eyes flicker upward, hefted from his reverie. It was almost upsetting - how Death’s words wracked him from the gentle rocking of giving up and letting go. But Death, it seemed, did not want him - which took the boy aback. His father, he knew, never cared for him (or anyone). But Death? Death, he thought, was wrapped around him, lulling him to sleep as He stepped closer and closer.
A snarl tears through the air - and Kilter is snapped entirely from his drift towards Hell. Before him, Death upheaves the snow drift as if it were feathers - and beneath it is Life. Just barely - but it is there, the thick smell of dirt and flora mixed with the sharp ache of cold and Death.
And then, Death gives Kilter something he had never had - a choice. To live, or die? The greatest choice of all, when the young lupine had never chosen a crossroads before.
“Death.. The choice should not be mine.” Kilter deferred, as he had learned to in the wake of his father. As he learned to as he tumbled through the forests with the wolves - roll to your back, raise your belly, let your muzzle be wrapped in the mouth of another - you start as nothing, until proven otherwise.
“Death. I do not know what life I have to live. I have nothing. No one.” And the wolfpup did not - he had no home, his family was gone, and the wolves he had once called family were primitive beasts once again. He belonged to Death, and Death alone.