"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
He has slept on the ocean floor for what must have been days. Weeks? He can’t remember how he left the world, only the cradle of the black depths that crushed the breath from his lungs until it felt close enough to death for him to sleep. Ophanim wanted to stay until the world forgot his face and even his name. But one day when he awoke, he was on the sand with the autumn sun warming his golden skin and Starsin’s name was on his tongue as he rose from his fever dream. He cried out for her until it bruised his mouth. It felt like the only word he knew or cared to know.
But no one answered back.
The ocean, indifferent, continued its steady waves and lapped across his legs.
Now the sad-eyed angel finds himself at the base of the mountain with a heart like lead. He could just fly to its peak, he knows, but the wind beneath his wings feels too much like being in love. Being so weightless reminds him of waking up next to her and he’d rather leave those things at the bottom of the ocean where they can’t claw at him anymore. But the molten core of him has broken and healed so crooked that he wonders what good is a heart anyway? Why let the weeping thing stay here when his prodigal son could take it and find that which eluded Ophanim?
And so he climbs, one step after another with that slow burning halo orbiting his tired head the whole way. The gold splashes across his body fade to a red roan, the color he was born – the color of the boy he wishes he could be again. Starsin had loved him wholly and faithfully back then, he reminds himself. He had been true to her and it had come as naturally as breathing. Ophanim forces a smile across his face as he nears the peak as though it might serve as armor against the tirade of old memories.
After this, there will be nothing left of him to hurt and ache and burn for the love he wasted. After this, he will be untouchable and forget all warmth. He draws a deep breath before raising his head.
“I know I’ve squandered every good thing I’ve been given. I want to start repaying my debts, I suppose,” he says with a laugh, embarrassed with himself for not knowing the right words to say. “My son needs a heart so he can find love. I’d like to give him mine, if you can. And make Starsin forget all the hurt I’ve brought her… if it’s not too much trouble, that is.”
And then he waits, wings tucked tight to his sides as his chin drops and he finds himself staring at the little rocks between his hooves.
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
She was a selfish, jealous thing, but of all the things that she had been sure to harbor close to her, he has always been paramount.
She was terrible at showing it, and always has been. From the moment they had met she had been vicious with the control she knew she had over him, even if she hadn’t consciously been doing it. He had been like anyone else in the beginning; and she had been careless, as she always was. She had left, over and over, and she hurt him, over and over.
And it wasn’t until she realized one day, with such startling clarity, that he never left her, that her view began to change. He was always there when she came back. Always waiting, always hopeful, and never angry with her. And that was when her heart first began to beat. That was when her guard began to drop, and like the tide he slowly crept in; so subtle that she never noticed, until she was drowning in him.
But the universe saw it fit to give her a taste of her own medicine, and the tides changed. Their hearts, though fiercely intertwined, couldn’t seem to stop warring against each other. Every time she thought they had reached an armistice, one of them raised their weapons again, and now they were left with the aftermath. Broken and damaged, bleeding and breathless, until, finally, he disappeared.
She wanted to be angry at him. She wanted to hate him, she wanted to tell him this was exactly what she had known he would do, and this was why he deserved every blow she delivered. And she had been angry, at first. The first few nights spent alone she had been livid, pacing and restless. Had he not promised her that what he wanted was to wake up with her every day? She turned that thought over in her mind – over and over and over again – until the anger slowly melted into sorrow. There was no one there to see the way the tears fell, and even though every part of her was screaming to just go to Loess and find him, her hard-headed pride wouldn’t let her.
When she finally seeks out Malone, when she finally discovers the truth – that Ophanim was gone and none of the children knew where he had went, that is when the panic sets in.
It starts as just a small bubble in her chest, but the image in Malone’s mind – of Ophie flying in the direction of the mountain – is enough to transform the small bubble into a fully enveloping thing that chokes all the air from her lungs.
The last time she fled Loess like this, it was to meet him in Tephra during the war. The last time she felt as though she was racing against some imaginary clock she had arrived just in time to shatter the dragon before it could deliver its killing blow, but she isn’t so sure she has what it takes to save him – them – this time.
She has climbed this mountain before, but not quite like this. Rocks and dirt fling and cascade down the mountainside in the wake of her scrambled, rapid climbing, and by the time she reaches the peak her dark gray skin is nearly black with sweat, the star-dapples glowing and her cobalt blue eyes locking with his familiar face. She is startled at first to see his old coloring, and for a moment she can only stand there, breathless and gasping, her heart clenching and writhing in her chest. “Ophie,” she whispers his name, with such an ache that she is afraid just saying it will split her open. “Ophie,” she says it louder this time, closing the space between them, and she is trembling with the restraint that it takes to not curl into his chest. She hadn’t heard what he said, but she hears it in his mind, and she can feel her stitched together fragments begin to fray apart. “I don’t want to forget anything about you. Not even the hurt, not even the fights.”
She touches him, then, her silver muzzle pressing into his roan neck, her eyes fluttering closed as she pleads gently, “Don’t give away your heart, please. Don’t give away the only good thing that has ever been mine.”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
If there are parallel universes, he thinks that he would choose her in every single one of them regardless of the cost. The endless threads of fate would always weave them together and tie their heart strings in nice, decorative little bows. Maybe some would not be as strong as this life, but their bones would sing the same hymns to one another on some level. He could hunt her by heartbeat alone in the blackest night.
He knows her by the sound of her hooves, reckless up the rocks to him as she breathes his name, and he doesn’t have to turn to confirm it’s her. His masochist heart cries out for her and he wants to rip it out himself already for trying to flee into her embrace so readily. Still, he can’t deny the way his temperature rises like a wild fever burning with a need for her. Once upon a time, he had thought he could find room for Adna there between his ribs but the scorching intensity of his devotion to Starsin would have swallowed it whole. It would have licked its greedy fingers clean and asked for more offerings on its altar.
He knows this, now, and so the solution is clear.
Rip it out, root and stem. Crush every shimmering fractal piece or it will bloom like wildfire in a dry summer, delighted at the challenge.
Ophanim turns his head and he exhales in a slow sigh to steady himself. He hadn’t expected her to come seeking him out. The glowing tear trails down his cheeks fit right in with the pained smile he offers her when she says his name again. His breath shudders from his lungs when she lets her lips find his neck. In isolation so long, he’d forgotten how ravenous he could be for any morsel of her affections.
“Starsin,” he says and nearly chokes on the sound of her name on his tongue. Her name, thick like honey on his lips and twice as sweet. The angel boy hesitates but forces himself to continue. “You shouldn’t be here. You should be anywhere else but here.”
He has always coddled his heart and fed its every desire like some spoiled child. Ophanim seized every opportunity to stuff himself full with the hollow promises of others and to use their bodies like he could ever be sated. But then, it had only pounded its fists and pouted to get its way. He had yielded to simple demands. Now, as it roars and foams at the corners of its mouth for even a kiss, he clenches his jaw and refuses to return her delicate touch. His body trembles beneath the enormity of his agony.
“All my life, you’re the only one I have ever loved. I never gave anyone even a sliver of hope that that could change,” he says and his voice breaks. He forces himself to laugh at his own stupidity. “Every inch of my heart has your name carved into it but you can’t say the same.”
And still he laughs. What good is a heart that weeps at night? Who could ever want an aching soul that just sits and waits by the phone for a call that won’t come? The greatest joke ever told and he’s the punchline of it all, he thinks. He laughs until it hurts (except it always hurts) and steps back from her, as the sounds turn to silent tears running down his red and white face.
and let me crawl inside your veins. I'll build a wall, give you a ball and chain.
No one can tear through her the way that he does. No one can rip straight to her core the way he can with a single look, a single thought. The first time she realized she was capable of remorse had been with him; when she could hear his crushed thoughts at her careless ways, or the sorrow that sometimes followed the flippant way she would respond to his affections. He was the reason she tried to change. Why she tried to be kinder, at least to him, why she had even discovered there was a part of her heart that was capable of genuine affection.
And she wondered why she tried, because getting attached had never gotten her anywhere. She destroyed anything that was hers, she pushed away anyone that started to see all the real sides of her. She was reminded, over and over again, why her strings were tied with slipknots – one pull, and she could be gone.
But not with Ophanim. They were bound together in a knot like a constrictor; so tight that nothing was severing them. The harder she pulled, the tighter the knot became, and she had fought it at first. She had left him every chance she could, she had made sure to make him think nothing with them was concrete. The joke was on her when she finally fell for him – hard. She had pushed him away and straight into other’s arms, and she had thought that feeling of betrayal gave her every right to justify her actions. He cheated – so she did, too.
It was just like her, though, to take it too far.
And now they were here, standing face to face, standing so close they could feel each other’s heartbeats. Now they were here, at the top of a mountain, where she was trying to convince him to not throw away the heart she had stolen and broken and handled so carelessly. His words cut her, but for him, she is entirely transparent. She doesn’t try to hide herself, doesn’t try to put up the walls she usually keeps erected.
She flinches as his words land their mark, and tears glitter along the rim of her eyes. “I know,” her voice trembles, and she recoils away from him slightly, her nose tucking towards her chest. “We have both hurt each other so much, but I wouldn’t trade you for anything, or anyone.” Her jaw clenches, her eyes closing tightly as the tears finally cascade down her smooth cheeks. “If I could show you my heart, I would. If there was a way that you could feel everything that is inside of it then you would understand, and you would see that there has never been room for anyone else except you.” She can’t help herself when she reaches for him again, when she brushes her lips against a damp track on his cheek, “Just you. I promise.”
starsin
it’s not like me to be so mean. you’re all I wanted. ( just let me hold you Like a hostage. )
08-27-2019, 07:17 PM (This post was last modified: 08-27-2019, 07:19 PM by Cassi.)
lord, I fashion dark gods too;
He is not one for love stories.
He has too often seen promising creatures felled by their desires, made soft in their wanting. It is a thing best excised, cut from the self like a cancer.
(And that he, the dark god, made a world for a woman to inhabit rather than let her stay dead; that he’s taken another one to the stars to see how she might take to it – this is irrelevant.)
He is in the dregs of his stardust, the season ending, when he manifests before them. He had been on the mountain, but invisible, preferring not to be bothered. Yet these two didn’t need to behold him to be bothersome, their whining permeating through the peace of the mountaintop.
He could have muted them, or soundproofed the world around himself. But the dark god does not accommodate others – they accommodate him.
So he makes himself known in a blast of smoke, a star-drenched god rather than the fairy Ophanim had originally implored. He sighs, audibly, and shakes his head at the paltriness of their pain.
“You’re both fools,” he says, “and could do with a lesson.”
He pauses, there. He doesn’t introduce himself – he always assumes he needs no such thing, and besides, they don’t need his name to know his wrath, his cruelty. He has them frozen, unable to fight, unable to try to save one another.
He looks at the woman, first.
“You want to show him your heart, hm? So precious.”
He reaches into her, an invisible hand, finds the heart in question. Pulls. She falls to her knees, her chest exploding open, the heart on the dirt before them, managing a few limp beats before falling still. He keeps Starsin alive, though – killing is much too easy. He prefers theatrics.
“Look, Ophanim,” he says, and that same invisible hand turns the man’s face toward the heart, “there’s her precious heart that’s all yours! Doesn’t look like much to me…maybe yours is better?”
He repeats the process, the same graphic pull, the same muscle beating and dying on the ground while its owner, impossibly, lives on, kept alive by magic. The dark god doesn’t bother with killing the pain, though – he lets them suffer.
“All this whining,” he sighs, “all for some stupid piece of muscle. But you two, you’re in love--”
The word is said in mockery, derision.
“So who gets what shouldn’t matter then, should it?”
Starsin’s heart into Ophanim’s chest, and vice versa. He closes the wounds, though is not precise in doing so – they may be scarred, but what of it? Perhaps such scars will be a useful reminder of their foolishness.
He takes a moment and admires his own handiwork. The earth is faintly bloodstained, and the two horses before him scarred, with new, strange hearts in their chest, cursed to feel one another’s pain.
He unfreezes them before another blast of smoke, and then he is gone, leaving them and their foolish hearts.
(y'all please holler if you want anything changed)
