02-11-2018, 06:11 PM
Ramiel exists in the grey spaces.
It is what he always feared in life, to lose the vibrancy and saturation of the earth and all its heady pleasures. To extinguish the spark that ignites first in the marrow and then sets the heart to beating. To make one incurious to what is around them, if only because everything is the same. Everything is fuzzy and not quite formed at the edges. Everything is dulled, hushed; even the sea that meets the land where he walks whispers when it laps the shore. When the sun rises, it is pale and sickly. He never looks forward to the sunrise, now. The world has greyed.
He has greyed.
Not quite alive anymore, but not quite dead, he simply is. His body (or the afterimage that looks like his body) has silvered, too. Pepper grey fills in spots of his once inky black coat, giving him a patchwork, morphing look. The silver at the end of his muzzle is the most pronounced, white hairs appearing and ticking off the time spent here. He looks older, though he is not. The Afterlife enveloped him in his prime, when immortality still possessed years of his life. It is only the exhaustion that weighs him down now. It shows in the anchors he wears around his feet, in the invisible foe that sits heavily on his back, pushing him down into the grey sand. He thinks maybe one day he’ll sink so far into it that he’ll disappear entirely. Maybe there will be another broken timeline for him to travel. Maybe he will be alone, forever, in a place he’s not meant to be.
Maybe it will be black next time.
He stares across the quiet water until the silence is deafening.
Sometimes, he yells at the horizon. Always, it is the names of his family and friends. He wonders if they can hear him back on the Other Side, or if almost-death doesn’t allow it, if it is so cruel. He never yells to hear himself or because he isn’t sure what is real or not anymore. Ramiel retains his sanity and surety – the Afterlife won’t take everything from him.
He’s doing it now. “Ea!” She is always the last name on his list because she is his ending. He hurls her name at the blurry horizon with all the weight he can muster. It is hard here; everything is like moving through mud. He even steps forward into the ocean this time, the water slipping over his skin like mercury. It feels as fake as everything else in this place. And then, because it is so silent that he is certain he can hear a muscle twitch, someone is behind him. He knows without turning that it will be her.
He hates that it is her.
Ramiel closes his molten eyes, still facing the sea. All he wanted was for her to live, to be his anchor to life that he so desperately remembered and longed for. When he screamed her name into the static air, he imagined her hearing him on the Other Side. Looking around the Dale, in the home they kept, surrounded by the family they built – she’d think of him. Now, she is here and it is unbearable. It is like finally being devoured by the mollusk he’d fought to save Gail. The jaws close around him and he is terribly trapped in this moment. He can’t move. He can’t look at her (and God, how many times has he traced her every line here, wanting to negate every possible space between them?)
“Ea,” he croaks, as loud as thunder.
It is what he always feared in life, to lose the vibrancy and saturation of the earth and all its heady pleasures. To extinguish the spark that ignites first in the marrow and then sets the heart to beating. To make one incurious to what is around them, if only because everything is the same. Everything is fuzzy and not quite formed at the edges. Everything is dulled, hushed; even the sea that meets the land where he walks whispers when it laps the shore. When the sun rises, it is pale and sickly. He never looks forward to the sunrise, now. The world has greyed.
He has greyed.
Not quite alive anymore, but not quite dead, he simply is. His body (or the afterimage that looks like his body) has silvered, too. Pepper grey fills in spots of his once inky black coat, giving him a patchwork, morphing look. The silver at the end of his muzzle is the most pronounced, white hairs appearing and ticking off the time spent here. He looks older, though he is not. The Afterlife enveloped him in his prime, when immortality still possessed years of his life. It is only the exhaustion that weighs him down now. It shows in the anchors he wears around his feet, in the invisible foe that sits heavily on his back, pushing him down into the grey sand. He thinks maybe one day he’ll sink so far into it that he’ll disappear entirely. Maybe there will be another broken timeline for him to travel. Maybe he will be alone, forever, in a place he’s not meant to be.
Maybe it will be black next time.
He stares across the quiet water until the silence is deafening.
Sometimes, he yells at the horizon. Always, it is the names of his family and friends. He wonders if they can hear him back on the Other Side, or if almost-death doesn’t allow it, if it is so cruel. He never yells to hear himself or because he isn’t sure what is real or not anymore. Ramiel retains his sanity and surety – the Afterlife won’t take everything from him.
He’s doing it now. “Ea!” She is always the last name on his list because she is his ending. He hurls her name at the blurry horizon with all the weight he can muster. It is hard here; everything is like moving through mud. He even steps forward into the ocean this time, the water slipping over his skin like mercury. It feels as fake as everything else in this place. And then, because it is so silent that he is certain he can hear a muscle twitch, someone is behind him. He knows without turning that it will be her.
He hates that it is her.
Ramiel closes his molten eyes, still facing the sea. All he wanted was for her to live, to be his anchor to life that he so desperately remembered and longed for. When he screamed her name into the static air, he imagined her hearing him on the Other Side. Looking around the Dale, in the home they kept, surrounded by the family they built – she’d think of him. Now, she is here and it is unbearable. It is like finally being devoured by the mollusk he’d fought to save Gail. The jaws close around him and he is terribly trapped in this moment. He can’t move. He can’t look at her (and God, how many times has he traced her every line here, wanting to negate every possible space between them?)
“Ea,” he croaks, as loud as thunder.
R A M I E L
this is the light that shines
@[Ea] <33