06-13-2021, 05:40 PM
The freckled girl doesn't recoil when he bares his teeth at her, when the forest fire of Sickness rages inside him until the fuel is spent, and when it's finally passed and he asks what she's said she only shakes her head because it doesn't matter.
"You shouldn't have done that," she says, ruefully, brushing her lips against his sweaty cheek, "but thank you."
Shipka's earnest voice belies the worry in her heart that this has all been too simple, though why she feels any misgivings at all, she isn't sure. Maybe it's the way the beach has changed in the time that they've been Elsewhere. The dismal saltgrass wilted and brown, the bones strewn violently, as if the bodies here were ravaged. Looking at the strange destruction wrought on this already ghastly stretch of shore makes her uneasy.
The only relief is that when she calls for the stars, they sing back, even though the cold fire of their light is far away behind the sun, she feels their sparks in her soul. She sighs, turning her attention to the sky, bright and blue with clouds slipping through like smoke, and ponders aloud.
"Were we really gone all night? It doesn't seem like it," she could have lost hours in the darkness of that fever and longing, though, "Oh, look!"
Silver eyes widen and look to the golden stallion, then back to the horizon where the crack that was there no longer shatters the sky.
"It's gone!" her voice is too bright for the deadened land around them, the mutilated bones and the white sand turned rusty with blood, "The crack is gone! That's... We didn't do that, did we?"
Doubt creeps into her voice as she turns to him again. Surely nothing they did was enough to heal the awful grinning wound that had stretched across it, yet what else could explain its disappearance?
"You shouldn't have done that," she says, ruefully, brushing her lips against his sweaty cheek, "but thank you."
Shipka's earnest voice belies the worry in her heart that this has all been too simple, though why she feels any misgivings at all, she isn't sure. Maybe it's the way the beach has changed in the time that they've been Elsewhere. The dismal saltgrass wilted and brown, the bones strewn violently, as if the bodies here were ravaged. Looking at the strange destruction wrought on this already ghastly stretch of shore makes her uneasy.
The only relief is that when she calls for the stars, they sing back, even though the cold fire of their light is far away behind the sun, she feels their sparks in her soul. She sighs, turning her attention to the sky, bright and blue with clouds slipping through like smoke, and ponders aloud.
"Were we really gone all night? It doesn't seem like it," she could have lost hours in the darkness of that fever and longing, though, "Oh, look!"
Silver eyes widen and look to the golden stallion, then back to the horizon where the crack that was there no longer shatters the sky.
"It's gone!" her voice is too bright for the deadened land around them, the mutilated bones and the white sand turned rusty with blood, "The crack is gone! That's... We didn't do that, did we?"
Doubt creeps into her voice as she turns to him again. Surely nothing they did was enough to heal the awful grinning wound that had stretched across it, yet what else could explain its disappearance?
@[Ten]