04-25-2021, 06:51 PM
There's a peace in the forest that she doesn't try too hard to question. The trees rise like pieces of ribcage, but they have always done that, and the jubilant insects that turn the air to fairy dust where the sun's rays filter golden through hungry, joyful, branches don't look any different to her eyes. They've never hidden their skeletons and the normalcy of them and of the forest's quiet shadows pull her in ever deeper, deeper, to where she doesn't need to be reminded of things changed in the darkness. Only the shyest animals live in the places she frequents, grey fox, woodthrush and occasionally, white deer that freeze as soon as they catch sight of her. These are her least favorite moments, her coffee-dark eyes as stuck to them as a tongue to a lake-ice, lost in the delicate curls of their bone and the hollow, dark spaces where their liquid eyes should be.
She doesn't know they're white; you can't tell by a skeleton.
The deer are rare, though, and the rest never leave the skulking shadows, hunting beetles and berries in the understory. She has left the lion behind, chewing bitterly at bark and the tender shoots springing up in the sunlight, taking advantage of this brief space between the long night and the leafing out of the branches above. She has pressed the lion deep into the darkest recesses of her heart because even though food grew dull and scarce, she could not bring herself to gnaw at invisible meat. She can still smell the accusing blood of the doe she left to rot at the river's edge months ago, blood that poured hot and copper across her tongue while the creature died, a pile of bones gasping and desperate and doomed. A pile of bones for everyone to see, now, not just a monster for Beryl as the snow melts away around it, but for the world.
But with every second that ticks by, Beryl loses herself a little more, cares a little less, and it's almost a relief. It's a relief to feel the concern falling away from her heart, to feel the freedom of apathy. They are all already bones and she can't care about bones drying in the sun. She can't care about Brennan or Lilliana's girl, she can't care about Leilan or Eurwen, and if something in her chest twinges oddly when she thinks those thoughts, she knows it is only her imagination because there's nothing between the bars of her ribs to twinge or break, just light as golden as the skin she forgets she had.
She presses on - there's a clearing nearby, though the path is difficult to pick out - and she imagines that branches pluck at her mane, and how - if she still had it - it would be knotted and wild from the feral existence she leads among the tulip poplars. It's almost funny, and she barks a sharp, strange, laugh out to patchwork trees to think how she would look if the whole world hadn't been turned to a graveyard. It's a laugh hard as a crow's and it ricochets off the humorless trees like a stone until it finds a wandering ear, and Beryl might be angry that he, particularly, is there to overhear her except that she doesn't recognize the haloed skull peering at her from among the bushes. The sharp edge of her sinuses draws in breath with a great rush of sound in the silence of the deepwood and for a moment, she wonders why she bothers to keep breathing - the habit, like eating, is too hard to break - then she clicks her teeth together, embarrassed and angry, at the way the skull tilts, at the way it has the audacity to seem amusued. The lion claws at the back of her throat but she swallows it down.
We are bones. What can you do to someone that is already dead?
She doesn't know they're white; you can't tell by a skeleton.
The deer are rare, though, and the rest never leave the skulking shadows, hunting beetles and berries in the understory. She has left the lion behind, chewing bitterly at bark and the tender shoots springing up in the sunlight, taking advantage of this brief space between the long night and the leafing out of the branches above. She has pressed the lion deep into the darkest recesses of her heart because even though food grew dull and scarce, she could not bring herself to gnaw at invisible meat. She can still smell the accusing blood of the doe she left to rot at the river's edge months ago, blood that poured hot and copper across her tongue while the creature died, a pile of bones gasping and desperate and doomed. A pile of bones for everyone to see, now, not just a monster for Beryl as the snow melts away around it, but for the world.
But with every second that ticks by, Beryl loses herself a little more, cares a little less, and it's almost a relief. It's a relief to feel the concern falling away from her heart, to feel the freedom of apathy. They are all already bones and she can't care about bones drying in the sun. She can't care about Brennan or Lilliana's girl, she can't care about Leilan or Eurwen, and if something in her chest twinges oddly when she thinks those thoughts, she knows it is only her imagination because there's nothing between the bars of her ribs to twinge or break, just light as golden as the skin she forgets she had.
She presses on - there's a clearing nearby, though the path is difficult to pick out - and she imagines that branches pluck at her mane, and how - if she still had it - it would be knotted and wild from the feral existence she leads among the tulip poplars. It's almost funny, and she barks a sharp, strange, laugh out to patchwork trees to think how she would look if the whole world hadn't been turned to a graveyard. It's a laugh hard as a crow's and it ricochets off the humorless trees like a stone until it finds a wandering ear, and Beryl might be angry that he, particularly, is there to overhear her except that she doesn't recognize the haloed skull peering at her from among the bushes. The sharp edge of her sinuses draws in breath with a great rush of sound in the silence of the deepwood and for a moment, she wonders why she bothers to keep breathing - the habit, like eating, is too hard to break - then she clicks her teeth together, embarrassed and angry, at the way the skull tilts, at the way it has the audacity to seem amusued. The lion claws at the back of her throat but she swallows it down.
We are bones. What can you do to someone that is already dead?
@[Cassian] hot mess girl delivering hot mess words