11-29-2021, 05:55 PM
T U M U L T
He is falling, and somehow through the chaos he thinks how odd that he has now fallen twice in the span of hours—he, with his wings, who rarely falls at all.
The falling is different this time, though. He cannot see the ground rushing at him, and he feels more than just the force of plunging through the air. He feels trapped in the dark, with no sense of which direction his body is moving or if it is even moving at all. There is the feeling of being pulled apart and put back together, of cells splitting and reforming, and they shape themselves back into something that is both him and not him.
He does not remember hitting the ground.
When his eyes open he is disoriented, but the way he is resting against the damp carpet of needles on the forest floor suggests he had not fallen to the earth but instead had only fallen asleep. He remembers the mountain and the gray stallion, but it feels like a dream, or a memory long since watered down by time. When the fog of sleep fully dissipates he does not find his mind to be any clearer, but he is afraid to look too closely at the events that have transpired — the mountain, the digging, the falling, and the awakening.
It was either reality or he was going mad, and he is not sure which is worse.
Lifting his head he can see that he is beneath the boughs of a tall evergreen tree, its branches heavy and saturated with rain. The clouds above him are a bruised storm-purple, and all around him thunder rumbles and booms. He stands, his own storm-cloud wings humming with a lightning-like electricity, and without a second thought he takes flight, heading straight into the storm.
It is like this everyday.
Every morning the sun struggles to shine through the reckless gray of the clouds, outlining them in a molten silver until they manage to devour any light it manages to shed.
Every afternoon the skies become a chorus of thunder and rain, brightened by the occasional streaks of lightning.
The nights are starless, but the lightning itself is made of stardust—electric and glittering, sending showers of star-sparks to the ground, clinging to the grass and the leaves of the trees like dew.
He learned that he could control them now, the storms. He could amplify the thunder and lessen the rain, he could conjure a tornado and never lose control. Once he had requested gale-force winds simply to test the strength of the trees and see how far they might bend until they broke, but he found that doing this once was enough. His storms were not meant to be destructive. They were chaos but they were beautiful, and it was never his intention to bring damage to this seemingly perfect world he had been dropped into.
He is not the only one here, but mostly he keeps to himself. Perhaps that is why he was never able to discern if this was a dream or reality—he had never had anyone to begin with.
And so on the day that he dies, he is alone. It is not an eventful death—nothing like being struck by lightning and sent through a dark vortex. It is peaceful, or at least as peaceful as dying can be. He thinks many years have passed, feels as though he has lived a long life, and so he welcomes it.
Before the last breath shudders from his lungs he sends a bolt of lightning up to the clouds one last time, and he is gone before its light has faded from the sky.
Just as before, he does not remember falling.
He does not remember the sensation of dying.
He does not remember waking up.
He stands there on the mountain as if he had never left, storm-cloud wings dripping at his sides, and the only sign of change is the lightning-effect that flickers periodically across his skin.
The falling is different this time, though. He cannot see the ground rushing at him, and he feels more than just the force of plunging through the air. He feels trapped in the dark, with no sense of which direction his body is moving or if it is even moving at all. There is the feeling of being pulled apart and put back together, of cells splitting and reforming, and they shape themselves back into something that is both him and not him.
He does not remember hitting the ground.
When his eyes open he is disoriented, but the way he is resting against the damp carpet of needles on the forest floor suggests he had not fallen to the earth but instead had only fallen asleep. He remembers the mountain and the gray stallion, but it feels like a dream, or a memory long since watered down by time. When the fog of sleep fully dissipates he does not find his mind to be any clearer, but he is afraid to look too closely at the events that have transpired — the mountain, the digging, the falling, and the awakening.
It was either reality or he was going mad, and he is not sure which is worse.
Lifting his head he can see that he is beneath the boughs of a tall evergreen tree, its branches heavy and saturated with rain. The clouds above him are a bruised storm-purple, and all around him thunder rumbles and booms. He stands, his own storm-cloud wings humming with a lightning-like electricity, and without a second thought he takes flight, heading straight into the storm.
It is like this everyday.
Every morning the sun struggles to shine through the reckless gray of the clouds, outlining them in a molten silver until they manage to devour any light it manages to shed.
Every afternoon the skies become a chorus of thunder and rain, brightened by the occasional streaks of lightning.
The nights are starless, but the lightning itself is made of stardust—electric and glittering, sending showers of star-sparks to the ground, clinging to the grass and the leaves of the trees like dew.
He learned that he could control them now, the storms. He could amplify the thunder and lessen the rain, he could conjure a tornado and never lose control. Once he had requested gale-force winds simply to test the strength of the trees and see how far they might bend until they broke, but he found that doing this once was enough. His storms were not meant to be destructive. They were chaos but they were beautiful, and it was never his intention to bring damage to this seemingly perfect world he had been dropped into.
He is not the only one here, but mostly he keeps to himself. Perhaps that is why he was never able to discern if this was a dream or reality—he had never had anyone to begin with.
And so on the day that he dies, he is alone. It is not an eventful death—nothing like being struck by lightning and sent through a dark vortex. It is peaceful, or at least as peaceful as dying can be. He thinks many years have passed, feels as though he has lived a long life, and so he welcomes it.
Before the last breath shudders from his lungs he sends a bolt of lightning up to the clouds one last time, and he is gone before its light has faded from the sky.
Just as before, he does not remember falling.
He does not remember the sensation of dying.
He does not remember waking up.
He stands there on the mountain as if he had never left, storm-cloud wings dripping at his sides, and the only sign of change is the lightning-effect that flickers periodically across his skin.
CAN YOU TELL ME, WILL I BREAK OR WILL I BEND?
- please mess with his storm creation
- he would like to claim lightning as his 0-space appearance trait (according to the definition it's limited to flashing across the skin so im assuming it counts as appearance lmao)