KILLDARE  Most days he feels like a stranger, someone who intrudes on their day to day lives- a burden. Then there are times he feels like he fits, like his randomly sculpted edges lock perfectly with theirs. Its so much still, at times overwhelming, overstimulating and he must detach himself and walk away. Away but never far because she is like a magnet, tugging him from his isolation and he comes to her call even though she is silent. He comes even though she turns from him, repels their magnetism because as much as she pulls away he leaps forward- drowning in her.
Today is one of those days when he can’t quiet the voices in his head, the memories or assumptions that fight him, they are never truly still. It’s so much it causes his head to ache and why not? The sky above seems just as angry, just as restless, the heavens painted with gray and thunderheads booming from the West. Lightning answers her, snatches the spotlight from her pounding fists, racing his fingers through her because he doesn’t care if they fight. She is fury and she makes him burn, and oh how very ironic the sky is today.
The quarrel continues, the two thrashing across the sky before the clouds open up, spilling their tears to the earth. He is soaked, stretching his neck and craning his head to the heavens, eyes snapped shut as the water splatters against his skin until he shivers.
Alone he stands, shielded by a tree, one which grows away from the others. It’s trunk is thick, the bark dark and jagged, rough to the touch as he leans against it- clinging for support. Deep breaths, in, out, in, his glassy eyes take to the mud, especially that through which he has already trampled. It cakes itself into the thick feathering of his legs, he doesn’t seem to mind or care at the moment- there’s too much going on in his head for him to worry about trivial things such as vanity. The forest, bruises, scars, the smell of death, a memory antagonizes him, too blurry to make out the fine details. His giant head slams to the tree in his frustration and he can’t say it even hurts, not as much as his forgetting does.
she was the ocean, and i was just a boy who loved the waves
She doesn’t think he realizes it, but she is nearly always watching him, nearly always aware of where her bay king has hidden himself away. Occasionally their children will pull her attention away, occasionally their grandchildren will, too. But even now, even changed and not remembering her, not remembering their life together, she still loves him. It is hard though to remember the man that was, to remember his fire and his passion, the way his eyes burned when he saw her, the easy smiles he kept tucked away just for her. It is hard to remember that man and not miss him. This man is still him, still hers, but every time she catches him watching her with that quiet look, that puzzled furrowing of his dark brow, she cannot help but feel like something had been stolen from her.
How, how had he forgotten her.
Somehow though, between the rain and the thunder and the storms raging through the morning, Malis had lost track of him. She is wild in her fury, a slash of burning indigo swimming from hill to hill, meadow to volcano, until finally, finally she finds him alone beneath a tree. When she reaches him she is heaving, the ridge of each rib like a welt and the hollows between are deeper than valleys. If not for the rain to hide it, to darken her skin and rinse away the salt, she would be damp with sweat, dark across her neck and her shoulders and her haunches.
He forces his head against the thick of the trunk, frustrated, and she is quick to force herself between him, pushing him back with the sinuous blue of a body that is soft only for him. “Killdare.” She says, pushing him back further so that she can shift to face him, so that she can turn his face with the blue of her nose and check for abrasions against that dark, mahogany face. There are a few marks, scuffs where his skin is pink and angry beneath a coat that seems dull and thin, and when she touches her lips to his face, to the lines of bone and the hollows beneath, she is furrowed and wary. “Why were you doing that?” She asks, she scolds, she abandons her lips against his face so that she can duck beneath his neck and settle against a chest that has always seemed to be carved perfectly for her.
Yet –
She frowns and touches her mouth to the point of his shoulder, moves and finds that she can trace the entire bone all the way up to a back that is more hollow than she remembers. Inhaling sharply she moves further around him, finding ribs likes welts and scowling at the valleys between them. It is much the same as curls around his haunches, pressing dark, furious lips to bones that stick out where they shouldn’t – faintly, but enough that her heart is wild and erratic and worried in her chest. “Killdare,” she says, she accuses, her voice as sharp as those emerald eyes, as the points of obsidian horns in a row along her face, “what’s wrong?” She returns to his shoulder, would prefer to be against his chest, but her eyes are like arrows against his dark face. “Why aren’t you eating?”
MALIS makai x oksana
KILLDARE He doesn’t realize the dedication in her watchful eyes, nor does he see that she is not quite as absent from him as he feels. Everything is black in white in his world, nothing greys, nothing makes sense anymore. Real, not real, past, present what was and would be seem like elaborate fantasies. It is so very hard to focus on much more than the shadows that linger far too often in his mind, they seem to wash away his very life force and his thoughts grow darker and dimmer with each passing moon. They are the very shadows that blind him now, seem to steal his senses because he does not hear her approach- not until she is heaving in front of him. The heart in her chest hammers a tune of worry and yet he is so very still in response.
Droplets of rain stream in beads down her bruised coat, for seconds some glitter like diamonds before they fall like tears to the ground. She is beauty incarnate and his chest catches one shallow breath when his glassy green eyes find her. The storm bellows at the unnatural way in which he interacts with her but they can not mend his pieces, they are too many now, most poisoned beyond recognition. They would not lock in the precise ways which were needed, gaps would disrupt the harmony of the acrylic masterpiece and yet not even that had kept him from trying.
His face feels so very light held up by her twilight colored nose, lifting away from the rough bark like a handful of soft snow. Perhaps she is just unordinarily strong, he feels so weak these days, has he always been? There was a time when he would have known that he was never such a broken creature but that time seems to have slipped away, finding the end of a river and tumbling down the waterfall from which it would not return. The superficial wounds to his scarred face are irrelevant to the damage he suffers from within but not even he is sure of its extent- sometimes it is hard to come to terms with the inevitable. “I just want to remember,” he breathes and while his voice still holds the same deep baritone it is hollow where once the words would have been rich, smooth like a shot of whiskey.
The words are not only empty they are angry, they are searching, his lips grasp at straws the same as his mind and his brow curves while his lips grimace. “It doesn’t matter what I do, nothing works!”
It is not at her that he yells, he berates himself, sickened at his lack of progress. She curls towards his chest and he is butter, melting across her indigo skin and tucking his bony nose into the wet raven tresses that cover her neck. This lasts for moments as she brushes his skin, moving forward against him and tracing the outlines of his body where once there had been thick muscle. “I have been eating,” the words are whispers now, pain radiated from speaking them because that made it truth, that made it real.
she was the ocean, and i was just a boy who loved the waves
Im sorry this isnt terribly poetic
For one brief instant, he looks at her like he used to – sharp and surprised and she expects him to smile, to reach out and touch his lips to her face, press a kiss to her cheek. But it never comes. Instead his eyes grow thin and glassy, a little lost in her face, and she damns herself for allowing that small flicker of hope to catch and burn in her chest. Still, his breath catches and she doesn’t miss that, doesn’t miss the chance to let that sharp smile slip across her lips when she presses her mouth affectionately to his face again. He may be changed and new, a different half of who he was before, but he is still hers, and she will be forever his.
I just want to remember. He says, he breathes, and his voice is as hollow as the old trees in the Chamber had been. Her face is forced smooth and expressionless, flat, but inside she is turmoil, riotous enough to make the storm booming around them ache with jealousy. Had she done this to him? Had she made him feel wrong or less, had she pushed him away with those wary shadows in her emerald eyes. “Killdare.” She breathes, she aches, and she knows she is coming undone. “You don’t need to remember.” Her mouth is against is face again, hungry and aching and desperate, tracing deep hollows and sharp bone and it feels as though perhaps someone has wedged a knife in her chest.
It doesn’t matter what I do, nothing works. He is furious now, his voice a hollow boom, and she smiles. It comes unbidden, coaxed to her mouth by the fire in his veins and the fury in his words. It is like watching the echo of a memory, of a man who had once been all fire and brimstone and tempered heat. “You’re closer than you think.” She says and she slips against him again, silencing the ache beneath her skin that could only be appeased by him, by this man at her side. When she folds against him, soft and sinuous, he responds in kind, pressing his nose to her neck and she makes no attempt to hide the sharp inhalation of pleasure that fills her chest.
But then the moment is shattered by a few treacherous words and she peels apart from him so quickly that he might sway in the sudden absence. I have been eating. She pins her ears, furious and afraid, snaking her head low and wild near his chest. “Why?” The words are so venomous, so thick with fear and fury and none of it is directed at him, nothing but the wild worry that is changing her face into something exquisitely beautiful, perfectly broken. Then, softer, inching closer, seeking the comfort of his chest again, of lips against her neck and in her hair, “Killdare, I don’t understand.” But she is no stranger to the fluctuations of his voice, and it is easy enough to pick out the pain from his whispered confession.
She doesn’t ask right away, is trying desperately to barb her heart against the truth that waits for her on the quiet of his dark, trembling lips. But it is useless and she so caves, soft against him, tracing her mouth across every inch of dark and dull skin until she is brave enough to face an enemy she cannot beat, a danger she has no way to protect him from. “Killdare,” she says, she whispers, she growls desperately into his mahogany skin, “what aren’t you telling me.”
Suddenly, in this moment, he is not a shadow-self, not an echo, not the wrong half of who he was before. He is the champion of her heart, the father of her children, the better half of her very broken soul.
He is everything, and if he looks down at her, if he looks at all, he will know this in an instant.
MALIS makai x oksana
02-19-2017, 10:53 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-19-2017, 07:25 PM by Killdare.)
KILLDARE It was not so strange the way the thunder rolled against the slate colored sky, fracturing what would have otherwise been a gentle, summer downpour. But it was a cruel magic, feeding off their emotions and if he would recall his memories he would have recognized the echo of fairy laughter that came with each crashing boom. They had played this game before, mischievous creatures they were and it had burned then, as it did now, igniting his very soul. This was not simply a fire of change, meant to lick him clean and replace the weaknesses of his mortal core. It hungered for him in a way he had never known, it tasted his flesh to end him, slowly leeching away at his self until eventually (and he realized this) there would be nothing left.
Painful does not begin to describe the ache that fills the cavity of his worn out chest as she races her lips upon his thin skin. Does she know it burns him, is she setting the very fire that overtakes his insides or did she mean to put out the flame? Momentarily his vision blurs, at precisely the same time the sky lights up with white light, a bar of electricity striking the earth like an angry whip. When it is back the sharp edges of her are gone, replaced with tender curves and eyes that wish to unhear the truth that her lips find with each pursed press against his flesh.
Had they always broken each other in this way?
“I’m sorry,” the word spilled like liquid from his blackened maw and it hung thick with regret. Somehow, deep down, he knew he had done this, all of this. To himself and to her and it is that knowledge of causing her anguish that pulled his heart into his throat. It was loud as he gulped it down, the pressure reaching his eyes and stinging at the corners that housed his glassy-green glare. A silent stream of tears trailed down his left cheek, and he pulled his heavy (because it felt like an anchor to him now) head away, twisting his neck in hopes that she would not see. How could she love something so fragile?
What aren’t you telling me?
Trembling legs found him then, as she pulled away he lurched, unable to steady himself with the sudden movement and he stumbled forward, knees to the mud. Normally he would have tried to immediately get up but he knew better to do so now, he had fallen like a rock and sharp pain shot up his body from the fall. He looked up at her now, lifting his black nose to the air to find her and not knowing exactly what to say. A single thought and worry formed though, and it was hard to ask but the alternative scared him and he didn’t know why. “Malis?” her name was a quiver. “Will you be with me, when it’s time?” His eyes were more glass now than ever, filling with water and taking on the frightened look of a child. They asked juvenile questions without speaking, will it hurt, where will I go?
“I don’t want to die alone,” because he felt so singular these days, unwhole and unmade in instant and something about her made him feel brave enough to face the end.
she was the ocean, and i was just a boy who loved the waves
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