[private] Out with the golden we sew // Rapt

[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 Of all the things he’d imagined, it wasn’t this. There was a way of things. Ways the world worked he never questioned. While Rapt’s seen unnatural things, while he’s lived in wild worlds, he’s never questioned something so mundane as childbirth. His body is biologically incapable of such a thing, and thus, he’s never thought much of it. But now – Now she’s before him, sweat on her brow, stomach taut with a child that wasn’t meant to be. Asking him something impossible. Of course he’d do this for her – he’d do anything for her – but he doesn’t have the faintest clue how. He’s stupid and useless in this body. “How?” he asks. He hates that he has to ask. That she’s shaking and tense and laboring and he’s there, useless. Tell me what to do. He touches her. As if he could absorb the pain this way. (He thinks it’s just pain. That that’s what frightens her. He doesn’t know of her curse, of her temporary immortality.) “I’ll do anything,” he says. Promises. “Just tell me what I need to do.” rapt caius x else