I found myself lost within his stare; as though I was bit some suspended star upon a nightsky and he were looking at me with such a stare that was only kept for those starlit nights. I felt as small as such an astral, lost against the dark swathe, my hollow grey eyes as crystal clear as the running waters in the creek. I watched him with the same intensity, as though he was the only one reaching out in my deepest, blackest darkness. He was a kindling of fire on a cold winter's eve and he was the spires of sun that broadened the horizon after a dark, ebony night. he was also not of shadow and bone, of blood and mauled flesh.
I listened, as one could when her eyes trailed just beyond, to watch the shadows that darted against the pitch night. I felt the cold gnawing feeling grind at my stomach, rise to clutch at my throat. Mast gestures with a smile, his words some sort of a blanket of sanity, of comfort. 'Beautiful? The sky, when the light touches it at dawn. That is beautiful. the night when it is peppered with stars and the fullest of moons. That, is beautiful. Reuen? What is Reuen. What is Reuen?' My words trailed off in clouds of hazy breath. the very though chilled me. chilled me like the winter's wind as it touched my frame with unrelenting hands. My empty eyes drew back up to Mast, noting his grey frame, his kind eyes and his gentle soul -- he too had felt something not as nice as this. He too had felt pain, pain of something, pain of someone, perhaps. I was watchful, I could articulate things that not many could, for my eyes were observant as a wolf, but as bleak as the grey skies.
I often wondered why it was Reuen. I wondered why, what, my mother had been intending. For when a child is born, the name is given for life, for an eternity, even as it lived on in precious memories. I shook my head, the silver tendrils falling in knotted ringlets over my eye. 'Darling, the gates are safe. the gates are safe as long as the shadows do not consume.' I mimic him, a gentle, soothing voice. As he outreaches a kind, caring hand (hoof, muzzle) I coil slightly inside. Expecting pain, expecting far more than a gentle gesture. Pain. Harshness. Blood. Flesh. I shiver, whether the wind or the memory, but it propels me forward and I stumble a few steps, wayward hooves as uncoordinated as my mind.
'Saved from pain, saved from the darkness that eats away at you, that hurts.' my haunting voice slips from tilted lips, to resemble some sort of a smile. I push my muzzle forward and meet his. Warmth. Tender. I feel his flesh, not the cold, corpse-like steel of the dead, but the warm, heart-beating flesh of the living. It spurs me on, blocking the memories that come like searing flashes. And I stumble forward again and press my muzzle against his shoulder, so close, perhaps bordering upon security breaking, but I wanted the warmth, the sunshine in his eyes. It fought off the shadows in the distance, and the blackness in my mind. 'The sun lights the darkness. Mast. The sun, it lights the shadows.'
Reuen
the little ruined girl
resident of the gates |
