jamie
05-28-2021, 06:54 PM
jamie
I CAN’T EXACTLY DESCRIBE HOW I FEEL
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
BUT IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT
How easy it would be to kill him.
(Is it bloodlust that lives in the cage of his chest or something else entirely?)
And he had meant it, Jamie, when he’d told him that he would take care of him. But he is not a merciful thing. He is a thing that feasts on death, yes, but not like this. Not when they beg for it. And Balto has always begged for it, desperate for a reprieve.
There are other ways, though, the reaper knows. There are other ways to drag oneself away from the brink of madness.
There is no reason for the old stallion to trust him. They have been here before. The shadow thing has made him promises before and broken them, left the blue stallion worse off than he’d been before. (Will Balto feel the same way this time? Will this drive him even deeper into madness?)
Jamie presses his ink-black mouth to the stallion’s temple again, murmurs something unintelligible. Perhaps it has some meaning, perhaps it doesn’t. For a moment, he is still, exhaling his rattling breath across the stallion’s mottled skin. Listening, listening for the clamor of his demons. Will they be pleased?
There, in the quiet, the shadow thing closes his eyes and channels all of his focus into the blue stallion. He relaxes his magic into the space between them. He draws all of the color out of the blue stallion, lets it slide spectacularly down his throat. Lets it pool in his gut. Until there is nothing left until the same deep black that stares back at him. Is it the soul he swallows next? Or something else? The thing that dictates his hunger. He does not relieve it, he only changes it.
How diligently the shadow thing works until, finally, he draws away. And when he opens those freakish yellow eyes, he no longer recognizes the thing looking back at him.
“Oh, Balto,” he sighs.
(Is it bloodlust that lives in the cage of his chest or something else entirely?)
And he had meant it, Jamie, when he’d told him that he would take care of him. But he is not a merciful thing. He is a thing that feasts on death, yes, but not like this. Not when they beg for it. And Balto has always begged for it, desperate for a reprieve.
There are other ways, though, the reaper knows. There are other ways to drag oneself away from the brink of madness.
There is no reason for the old stallion to trust him. They have been here before. The shadow thing has made him promises before and broken them, left the blue stallion worse off than he’d been before. (Will Balto feel the same way this time? Will this drive him even deeper into madness?)
Jamie presses his ink-black mouth to the stallion’s temple again, murmurs something unintelligible. Perhaps it has some meaning, perhaps it doesn’t. For a moment, he is still, exhaling his rattling breath across the stallion’s mottled skin. Listening, listening for the clamor of his demons. Will they be pleased?
There, in the quiet, the shadow thing closes his eyes and channels all of his focus into the blue stallion. He relaxes his magic into the space between them. He draws all of the color out of the blue stallion, lets it slide spectacularly down his throat. Lets it pool in his gut. Until there is nothing left until the same deep black that stares back at him. Is it the soul he swallows next? Or something else? The thing that dictates his hunger. He does not relieve it, he only changes it.
How diligently the shadow thing works until, finally, he draws away. And when he opens those freakish yellow eyes, he no longer recognizes the thing looking back at him.
“Oh, Balto,” he sighs.
AND IT LEAVES ME COLD
@[Balto]