[private] i'm so far from my home, keyna

[Selaphiel]

( THESE DAYS I DON’T PRAY WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES
I JUST BITE MY TONGUE A BIT HARDER )

Sometimes he thought he could smell it lurking just beneath the surface of his sister’s skin, the rumor of death, though he trusted their mother would not let her die.

And he had begun to understand that he would be cast out, that he would not be allowed to stay. There was no room for the fear that had begun to grow roots around his ribcage and he had begun to wander further and further from the reach of his mother’s protection. Foolish, certainly, considering what had happened the last time he’d ventured too far from her side. But soon he will have no choice.

So he wanders, heart thumping, wings folded tight against his sides.

He wonders if Este will understand why he couldn’t stay. He wonders if he will get the opportunity to explain it to her. Or will the next time he goes back be the time they turn him away? Will he be able to say goodbye at all?

He moves slowly, carefully, toward the forest. The stench of impending death fills his nose, slides down his throat. Is it coming for him? He remembers how the ice had traveled through his veins to mend the broken skin before he even had the chance to bleed when the shadow monster had caught him with a terrible, hooked claw. Can he die?

He ducks his haloed head as he crosses into the forest, the darkness even more crushing here than it had been in Hyaline. A tremor steals down the length of his spine as he stares into the darkness, though nothing stirs here.

He ventures deeper into the darkness and then, ahead, he catches sight of a faint glow.
He stops short and calls, “hello?”

Selaphiel

@[laura]

[keyna]

Keyna

how can we wake without question when all of the world is burning?

One father is gone, and the other may as well be.

One father trapped beneath the shield of the afterlife, stolen from their family.

The other trapped beneath his grief, lost in the illusions that he paints himself.

Keyna was born into a family torn asunder, a family ripped into shreds, and she could only watch as they drifted apart, into the wind and in the endless dark. So it is any surprise that the ice begins to take over her? Is it any surprise that it slowly creeps over her? Until the color bleeds from her. Until she is left shaking, cold, and blue. Until she feels that beating heart slowly freeze over in her chest.

She fears it sometimes—that icy cold that steals through her. Were it not for the empathy that also warred in her chest, that strange and deep connection to emotion, she fears she would lose herself entirely. But instead she is trapped in the in-between. Too cold to hunt out companionship. Too warm to not be affected by the lack of it. She feels it acutely, nearly painfully, and she soothes herself with leaning into the ice.

The darkness is almost a welcome friend at this point as she makes her way through it, blinking in and out of sight as her invisibility shields her when she hears something come too close. But it has been silent for several minutes now and she lets it slip from her, her cool glow slowly filling the space around her.

When she hears a footstep, she tilts her head to the side, purple eyes peering into the darkness.

But it is not the snarl of a monster that greets her.

Just a simple hello.

She frowns for a moment, her heart thumping as she contemplates whether to answer or run.

But it is the desire for conversation that wins out and she calls back out.

“Hi."

@[Selaphiel]

[Selaphiel]

( THESE DAYS I DON’T PRAY WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES
I JUST BITE MY TONGUE A BIT HARDER )

The angel is weary.
How terribly tired he is of being alone.

He would not dare ask the mother to stray from his sister’s side, not simply to spend time with him. And he would not dare to draw any unnecessary attention to himself either, not in Hyaline. 

But this is not Hyaline and this figure in the forest smells only faintly of death, something just removed. As if she has witnessed it but it has not come for her specifically. It is not nipping at her heels and it is not nipping at his either, not presently. For the moment, they are safe. 

(Though he can smell it still, in this darkness, he can always smell it.)

He eases a little closer. In that soft glow he can see that she, too, is cast in ice as he is cast in ice. But the ice sprouts from her skin like armor while the ice cuts through him like great blue crevasses. 

The heart thumps steadily in the cavern of his chest while he studies her, the blue eyes wide, his mouth open slightly. The angel wants to ask about the death she has witnessed, why he can smell it on her skin, if she really saw it or experienced it in some other way.

“Are you frightened?” he asks instead, his own voice uncertain. There is some eternal tremble in his bones. He is frightened, Selaphiel, always frightened. “Who has died?” he asks then, before he can stop himself. There is so much death. Always so much death. 

Selaphiel

@[keyna]