i don't have a choice, but i'd still choose you. || magnus

[Ellyse]

your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine. i don't love you, but i always will.

    The tension lingering in the air weighs heavily upon her once barren shoulders, a burden nestled deep between the rigid bones, etched into the delicate tendons that stitch her together. Beside her, he is unyielding, hardened as if his entire being were made of stone, jagged along the edges, but smooth and level where erosion had slowly devoured the surface. Darkened with anguish, his eyes no longer seek her own as a deep and powerful storm rages beneath the surface – the once golden flecks seemingly melting into a metallic silver, as alluring and as dangerous as a rumbling hurricane. Her touch is merely a feeble anchor, desperate to steady him, to comfort him – but she is powerless and weak to the tempest stirring within him. When he withdraws from her pleading grasp, she can feel the heavy weight of its chain break away, leaving him to drift.

  Her own eyes, once lit by a fiercely burning fire, barely held an ember now – flickering faintly within the golden rim of her pupils as she watches him bury himself into his own thoughts. The moon bathes his skin in its resplendence, accentuating the darkened blemishes splayed across his golden coat and highlighting the sharp ridges of his bone that lay so squarely under finely carved muscle. A weary sigh emerges from her tired lungs – her heart aches still, but it has grown numb, pounding somewhere in her chest but she is unaware. Doubt weaves its way through her thoughts, and courses through her memories, leaving her sullen and uncertain in its wake.

  At last, her watchful gaze is met with his own once more, but there is nothing but the sound of the wind lacing itself through the dried brush and the distant sound of the rising tide to break the silence. Fatigue has already begun to consume her, just as the vigorous sea ebbs away at the shoreline, wearing away at the particles of sand and leaving hollows in their place – but she is even more drained by the way his eyes bore into hers, a deep secret kept under lock and key. Wordlessly, she pursues – her long, graceful legs carrying her to the edge of the sea, where the restless waves meet with the worn, yet seemingly endless coastline.

  There, she is left alone – seafoam encasing and enveloping her with each rise and fall of the tide, watching as he intrepidly wades through the pounding waves, engulfing himself in the dark mystery of its tireless embrace. There is nothing to hear now but the echo of the ocean pounding away at the ragged, uneven rocks that line the island; a rhythmic sound that both soothes and unnerves her – and soon, she is wading with him, immersing herself into the uneasy water.

  While breathless, her mind is now racing as the distant memory of his words begin to haunt her, and before she can form the words, his voice rises above the riptide, ragged and spent. Her heart aches from the heaviness of his confession, and her eyes close for a moment, etching the words into her memory, all the while trying not to drown in its meaning as a black hole of emotion wells up in the cavern of her breast. Gently, she brushes her lips against his cheek, but soon she withdraws her touch, staring out into the endless abyss before her.

  Death. She had lingered on it many times, admiring the way flesh rots away beneath the prying heat of the sun, fascinated with how the salty brine of the ocean can preserve lean muscle while sloughing off skin – in her youth, she had toyed with the drying bones of the deceased, manipulating them, twisting and changing them. She had never feared death – no, she revered it, even craved it, often wondering how easily boils would fester beneath her skin and how soon her eye sockets would become hollow and bare. Yet now, seeing the brewing storm of trepidation carved into his once stoic features, she cannot keep the rising quell of guilt in her throat.

  ”I cannot fathom how death must feel,” she says, and though she dares not look at him, her lips touch his shoulder again. ”but I can imagine how difficult it must be to leave it behind. You do not belong in the sea, Magnus,” and still, her eyes do not meet his, staring instead at the faint, tired scars that tarnish his skin. ”there will always be a part of it with you. But you are not meant for the sea. You are meant for more. Not all of us are.” She murmurs, knowing that one day, death will claim her too. "Fear is what makes us whole; fear is what drives us. Do not let it get in the way of your purpose."

Ellyse

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