10-16-2021, 12:04 PM
selaphiel
He, too, has seen strange things.
But a body resurrected has never been a strange thing. He had been so young when Mazikeen had sacrificed herself for him and his mother had brought her back.
It is peculiar, though, that he should be able to bring himself back from death. He does not allow himself to ponder it now. Not when she’s looking at him and he’s searching through the haze in his mind to find the right words to sate her worry.
(He knows worry all too well. It has plagued him his whole life.)
He draws in another shaky breath, knees trembling with their want to buckle, and shakes his head. He wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all. He wants to apologize a second time, apologize for her having to stumble across his battered body on the forest floor. He wants to shift her worry from him, he wants to eradicate it all together.
(Will he be able to smell his own death in the air around her? He reaches for her by fractions, testing the air, but can smell nothing beyond the stench in his own nostrils. The rot of his death from his own perspective.)
What happens now?
He shakes his head and tries for a smile, but it alights on his face something crooked, lacking. “I don’t know,” he admits, “this is the first time I’ve ever died.” It’s meant to come out as something comical, light with humor, but it is a heavy thing and it settles in the air between them.
He swallows thickly and tries to lift his head higher, as if this might convince her that he’s better off than he is. “I’m all right,” he says, quiet. He shifts his weight, trying to orient himself into a posture that might make his knees want to collapse less. “I’ll be all right.”
Not the same, really, but close enough.
I just bite my tongue a bit harder
@Trandafir