black ocean, cold and dark, any

[kensley]

i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose Perhaps he should be unnerved by how intently she studies him. But he feels no overwhelming urge to cast his own gaze away. He does not duck his head in shame. Even if she can smell the blood on him. Even if she can taste the sadness in him. No, he goes on watching her watch him. She comes closer and his muscles quiver. He has not been able to shake the sensation that he’s being watched. And if only he’d had the feeling weeks earlier, when he’d ventured across the desert to his sister, oblivious to what followed him along the way. If only he’d cast a glance over his shoulder, perhaps death would have come for him instead. Perhaps it would have been him laid to waste. He swallows thickly when she speaks again. She offers her name, though he hadn’t asked. But he is nothing if not his mother’s son and he nods. There, again, the faint stirring of a smile in the furthest corner of his mouth as he files her name away. It is the first name he’s learned in years, he thinks. “Romy,” he says and the smile is gone before it ever came to fruition. “My name is Kensley,” he volunteers. It doesn’t matter that the name feels like it belonged to someone else and that he has no right to call it his own anymore. Kensley had been good and kind and decent. And what is he? None of those things anymore. Not with all of the darkness swallowing him whole. Not with a life that does not belong to him swimming in his veins. He is not oblivious to her trepidation or her inherent uncertainty. He wonders why she’s come here, if there’s something she wants from him or if she is somehow under the impression that his company might somehow be preferable to being alone. shattered son of jarris and plumeria