"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too
i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose
He hadn’t expected it to hurt to be here.
He had expected to find some relief in coming home.
But this is not his home, not really.
It is different and so is he.
It has been days now since he swam back to the island and the exhaustion is just now beginning to dissipate. He wanders now, through the meadow and the forest and down by the river, the only parts of this world that remain largely unchanged. He doesn’t dare stray toward the places he once lived because he can tell even from a distance that they are not the same.
He carries the hurt and the grief and the longing with him as he ventures down to the edge of the river. The sun is relentless, merciless as it bores its heat into his skin. He does not hesitate before he casts himself into the water, cold and wild. He closes his eyes and tries not to think about how alone he is or how that aloneness translates into loneliness.
He stays there a long time, braced against the vicious current, until the muscles quiver and he has to drag himself from the depths. He lingers on the riverbank as the water beads and drips from his skin. He shackles his thousand-yard stare to nothing in particular as the sun continues its beating and the water does little to insulate him from it.
He is lost in his thoughts until the sound of a branch breaking arrests his attention and he casts a glance toward the forest’s edge.
10-15-2019, 03:33 PM (This post was last modified: 10-15-2019, 03:33 PM by Cyprin.)
An old soul with young eyes, a vintage heart, and a beautiful mind
She is not her father, not a hunter treading with whispered footsteps. A twig cracks underfoot that screams across the riverbanks. Her ears vibrate with startle and her gunmetal eyes swirl with a kaleidoscope of color. Her mouth opens to apologize, but there is no one bristling at her, no one scorning her misstep.
Many are too focused on the gurgling river current to pay her notice, their eyes trained on a distorted image of themselves as the sun hangs high overhead.
Cyprin considers joining them. The fluttering of her heart settles into a calm cadence when she edges toward the river, curiosity pulling her along like a tethered pet until a distraction poses greater interest.
Their eyes lock and Cyprin’s breath catches in her throat. She is in the shadow of her family, a face lost in the crowd and most often unattended when she leaves the secure confines of Loess. Yet he sees her, if only for the twig she snapped. A hum of reassurance reverberates quietly through her as she momentarily roots herself as to not flee from his scrutiny and immerse herself in familiarity. A slow, calculated breath pushes against her rib cage and a fluttering blink breaks the brief stare.
She pushes herself from the shadows of uncertainty and fear to better look at him and to search the gentle lines of his face. ”Are you always so thoughtful?” She noticed how submerged in his thoughts he was, how his body meticulously dipped into the water until the current exhausted him. There are tales in his eyes, a history that has molded – perhaps even broke – him, and she is suddenly envious of having such experiences. ”I’m Cyprin,” she offers with a voice like chords of a harp – a sweet and gentle lullaby to contrast with the river’s aggression.
i took the poison praying you'd feel it, too
i wrapped my neck and prayed that you'd feel the noose
It occurs to him that she seems startled.
That there is something in her eyes that suggests she had not anticipated being seen.
And he could dwell on it, certainly.
He could devote hours to trying to work out exactly what in her life had led her to this point, staring back at him as if surprised that he can see her just as plainly as she can see him.
Did he look like a predator? Was there something about him that led her to believe that, should she make the wrong move, he’d scurry up the bank of the river and sink his teeth into her? Lay her to waste?
Alas, he does not. She blinks and he looks away instead. It is not disinterest that averts his gaze but rather preoccupation. He is too thoroughly sunk into his thoughts to pay mind to much of anything else. He is too focused on trying to breathe beneath the terrible weight of these new things he carries to try and decipher the motivations of anyone else.
She catches him off-guard, though he does not give a start. The heart gives one single twinge as it acknowledges that he should be startled by the sound of her voice. But he has nothing at all left to fear, so he does not jump or exhale a breath of self-conscious laughter when she draws closer, armed with a question he doesn’t immediately know how to answer.
Instead, he merely swings his head around to fasten his focus to her face again. He smiles but there is no warmth in it. It does not reach his eyes, merely lingers in the corners of his dark mouth before it burns out. She offers her name before he has offered a fitting answer to her question and he stows it away, wonders if he’ll ever need to use it.
“Kensley,” he says, though he still feels as if he no longer has any claim to the name. Because the name had belonged to someone good and warm and he is neither of those things.
“I don’t know if ‘thoughtful’ and ‘lost in thought’ are the same thing,” he muses with another faint grin. There is no mirth in it, really. It comes off tired, hindered by his grief.
An old soul with young eyes, a vintage heart, and a beautiful mind
His smile is mortal, withering and dying when it had only just reached the corners of his mouth. A hiccup of time, he forced amiability – happiness? – but the instant Cyprin tries to memorize it, the gesture is gone. It does not affect the softness of her expression as she searches the murky depths of his gaze. She ravenously drinks him in, even the baritone of his voice when he offers her a name that she shuffles to memory so that she may toy with it on another day. While he wonders whether he will ever need to know her, Cyprin desperately clutches to the idea that she will need him. It can all be a play on her imagination and hopes, but she is young and naïve; she doesn’t yet know any better.
Warmth passes over her face like the tide when he answers her question, but then she steers her eyes away to look back at the gurgling river. Her mind actively gropes for a response as he observes her with a feeble grin returning. Connections wire the two statements and yet her mind scrambles with the truth behind it. ”Perhaps,” she finally says when her slit pupils dart back to him, agreeing with his sentiment. It crosses her mind to be similarly philosophical, but instead she attempts to peel back the layers to understand him.
Her pretty head angles and the sun’s reflection splashes across her, rippling before she inches away. ”Why so lost?” It may only be in his thoughts, but something – or someone - lured him there, whether by memory or recent happenings. She inches closer by only a step, too afraid to bypass what they both may find comfortable so soon in their conversation. ”Then again,” her eyes briefly fall to the soil underfoot, ”Isn’t everyone a little lost?” She herself is in some ways, as are her siblings, the kingdoms… everyone. But she wonders if that makes it better, if it’s okay to be so lost when others are just the same.
A slow breath is drawn in and exhaled when her gaze rises to him again, tracing his dapples with fascination. ”I suppose it depends on how lost you allow yourself to become,” she thinks aloud with an idle flick of her tail, surfacing from the corners of her mind, covered in cobwebs and the like. Offering another grin, she cannot help to ask, ”What do you find joyful? Where does your happiness lie?” She doesn’t yet provide an answer for herself. That would be too quick and easy of a turnover.
( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
------------------------------------------i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
Why so lost?
His useless heart lurches and his gaze lingers on her face for only a beat before he looks away.
As if she might see in his eyes all of the things he’s carrying.
All of these things that cripple him beneath their unbearable weight.
Why so lost?
He has never known himself to be a failure. He had been reliable once. An unmovable force. He had been the shore that others slammed their storms against and he had weathered them all. He had been patient and kind and steadfast. He had never given himself the opportunity to fail and one had never been presented to him.
Why so lost?
She had smiled at him and he had been so tired from his travels and he’d wanted nothing more then than to be with his sister, his family. He had failed her first by failing to notice the dark thing that had stalked him for miles.
Why so lost?
He doesn’t want to think about it, not right now. She lends him a mercy he does not deserve in speaking again before he’s had a chance to offer up an answer. He can not speak for how lost anyone else is, he knows, but he nods anyway. He nods because it saves him from having to compare how lost he is to anyone else. The last thing he wants is to dissect it.
The furthest corner of his mouth quirks then and he drags his gaze back to her face. “I guess so,” he says, quiet.
Her second question is perhaps harder to answer than the first. It is innocent enough, he can see that in the grin that accompanies it. But it puts an impenetrable ache in his chest and he swallows thickly in an effort to loosen the vise tightened around his throat. He’d found joy in loving fiercely once, he’d found joy in raising his daughter, he’d found joy in his family. His happiness lies buried now, he knows. His happiness had undoubtedly died with the collapse of the Chamber.
But he rolls his shoulders in a kind of shrug now, shackles his gaze to hers and admits without a shred of shame, “I don’t know anymore.” He draws in a measured breath and, without looking away, asks, “where do you find yours?”
( but you had a halo made of diamonds resting on your head---------------------------- i should be dealing with my demons but i'm dodging them instead )
An old soul with young eyes, a vintage heart, and a beautiful mind
Regret sinks its claws into her as she watches storm clouds brew in his eyes before he looks away, hiding himself, hiding the stories that brim beneath his sullen surface. Cyprin wants to know more and yet she cannot stop the remorse that thickens her tongue when she realizes the heaviness of her question. I’m sorry. The words are there, flirting with the edges of her lips, but it never strays beyond. Her voice never breaks the silence for the apology to come to fruition. It chokes her, and the small quirk of his mouth paralyzes her.
How is it that underneath his stare, Cyprin feels so small? All the tales and pains and joys that he has experienced make him grander in her eyes, a tired hero standing on a pedestal. There is a want in her to touch him, a heated desire to press reassuringly into him as though she can melt away his sorrows. But that is her naivety arising from the mist of her thoughts. When he looks at her, he probably sees a child, even though it has been years since her childhood. Unable to fathom the weight of his reply, Cyprin looks away, hesitating in the grip of her ignorance.
There’s only a few seconds in which she breaks away from his gaze, but when she lifts her head again, it is with an answer that isn’t shackled by grief. ”Someone to talk to,” the answer is almost childish and dreamy, almost like she is forcing this onto him, but her nonchalant shrug and darting eyes add an embarrassing truth behind her words. ”Not being alone,” there is family in the caves, parents and siblings that dote on her and admire her, but it isn’t the same. Even when their words lift her, there’s a lingering emptiness that desperately gropes for company and conversation outside of what is familiar. For someone to truly see her and not see the baby of the family.
A sigh passes through her when she finally can look at him again, this time with a sheepish grin. ”Perhaps a bit juvenile,” she comments as an afterthought, her voice soft and barely above a whisper.
( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
He had been like her, once.
He had delighted in the company of others, feasted on conversation and let it fill him up.
And these things were enough.
He had been happy to forfeit himself to others without asking for anything in return. He had been selfless and kind and bright-eyed. But he has nothing left to give. The useless heart still beats around the shape of a name he has not spoken out loud in years. And he has wandered so long now that he lost his warmth somewhere along the way. He wouldn’t know where to look for it even if he wanted to.
He carries this heavy thing, the fact that he’d watched his sister die and had fought as hard as he could and it hadn’t been enough to save her. It has eroded the marrow in his bones and made its home there. It lives in the tired, aching joints and in each hemisphere of his brain, every chamber of that useless heart. Perhaps he’d lost his warmth there in that great stretch of desert, maybe he’d left it in the sand beside his sister.
He smiles but it still does not reach his eyes. It slants and lists and he nods because he understands. Or he did once. She averts her gaze long enough to make him wonder why but he doesn’t ask, knows better than to throw it into sharp relief. He has no desire to embarrass her by making her aware that he’s noticed. So, he merely watches for a moment before he looks away, too.
He hears her sigh but goes on studying the way the river thrashes itself against the shore. “I don’t think it’s juvenile,” he says. She is younger than he is, he knows, significantly so but he knows better than to believe that automatically makes her juvenile. He rolls his shoulders. “The truth is the truth,” he adds and shifts his focus back to her face.
“I’m sorry that I’m not better at making conversation.” There, that same sad smile, tinted slightly in the shade of his apology. “It’s been a long time since I last had someone to talk to.”
