bitterness is thick like blood and cold as a wind sea breeze
if you must drink of me, take of me what you please
The years have escaped him.
He has watched them, as though behind a veil. Disinterested—disengaged. The world continued to revolve, his family (both distant and close) continued to grow. Enough to feed his power, enough to keep him alive, but those faces that he had known so well had left. They slipped into oblivion, leaving him with nothing but a world he did not recognize, a world that he did not care about. When the afterlife ripped apart, he felt it like an electric shock to the heart, the unbalance shaking him to his core.
But even that was not enough to bring him back.
Not enough to stir him into action.
No—it was only when the darkness came. When the threat of danger became too much. It brought life back into his limbs and he shook the dust that had caked onto the mulberry of his head. He shook his massive head and stepped forth from the place where he had rested, not bothering to entirely remove the dirt that circled his disarmingly green eyes, the way it makes him look so much older than he is.
His throat feels hoarse from disuse, but he doesn’t mind, and he doesn’t bother using magical means to make it feel normal again. He deserves to feel this way—the rust, the creaking sensation of his body coming back to life—and he nearly relishes it. Wonders if this is how Bright felt all those years ago.
How everyone he had ever spirited away in the name of protection felt this way.
(Did it matter? Not to him, certainly.)
Grim, he walks through the shadows—ignoring the way they press into him, the whispers and the slight movements that tell him he is not alone. He walks until he comes upon her, alone, and there is a small piece of him that remembers what it was like to worry about an innocent. “What are you doing out here by yourself,” his voice is roughened on the edges, his worry not great enough to soften it for her.
There is nearly disdain in his voice as he demands an answer. He slices his shoulder open, the blood dripping slowly down his leg to sizzle against the forest floor. Before him a glowing orb appears, bouncing lightly in the space between them—enough to let her see better, at the very least.
“You should know better,” he chastises, as if he knows her.
woolf
I am loathed to say it's the devil's taste
@[Narya]
