oh, this my weapon, this my loam. this my blood, this my bone.
He doesn’t know what draws him here except the faint echo of loneliness that continues to beat against his chest. He still has yet to untangle everything that wars within him—the fear and the rage and the crushing feeling of self-defeat. Perhaps he can lose himself within the party. Perhaps he can find some sort of peace—some inch to himself—within the bodies and the noise and the peeling away of self.
He walks boldly through the curtains and then the archway of flowers.
It is a relief to feel himself dissolving, to feel everything that makes him, well, him just fall away. When he blinks his eyes open, he is next to the lake. His body is heavier than usual, draftier, and the deep red of his coat has been replaced with the color of eyes: storm and steel. But he hasn’t lost the red completely. His mane ropes down his thick, dappled neck in the shade of bloodshed and falls haphazardly across his broad face where a swath of black paints across his eyes in a rudimentary sort of play at a mask.
He blinks into the light before his eyes focus on the woman before him. She is white and black and a play of colors and he finds it is a welcome distraction from everything else within him. His face remains locked into a stony expression—even the magic cannot bleed away the serious, studious intensity of him—but he feels a slight loosening in his chest as he watches her moving to some internal music.
When she is near enough, he exhales a little, a soft snort the only kind of greeting he can give.
There are other words within him—words that want to climb up his throat and reveal themselves—but he feels as if there is a cork, some sort of physical barrier that keeps them at bay so instead he remains silent.
