Help me out before I drown
Save me now before I give up
Running into Hourglass has shaken him. To meet another girl of glass (how, how could there be more than one, so fragile, so easy to break) so soon after returning to these lands. He hadn’t been ready, not as ready as he had thought. The ghosts still haunt the darkest recesses of his mind, just waiting for a trigger. What she had provoked hadn’t been a mere tug, no, it had been a violent yanking of his entire self. The pieces that he had so carefully and painful glued back together were still so brittle, as if made out of the same glittering material that encased that aching place in his chest. It would be a lie to say that leaving that encounter hadn’t sent a few fragments loose, that the screams of a long dead (alternate reality) Adaline were still echoing in the back of his ears.
The forest had always been dark and before (in those long ago times) he would have avoided its darkness and shadows. However, with the lights turned back on and the infinite night vanquished, he finds himself feeling a little too warm, the sun a little too bright. After living in the gloom for so long (drowning in the murkiness of his own mind for too long), he’s not as frightened by what shadows hold anymore. The coolness of the greenwood is a welcome change to the summer nights in the open, the polar bear within him stretching with approval. When the sun had returned, that explosion of light that had nearly blinded his good eye and taken the last of his sight, there had been a strange warmth that had seeped into the exposed cracks of him. The brands that marked his body throbbing with an unnatural warmth, bringing him back to that moment in time when each had been made. Burning, pulsing, cauterized wounds. He hadn’t expected the eerie bluish glow that emitted from each (that ravaged X that marked the lost treasure of his true heart, the constellation on his right flank that marked the beast he had become). The glow from his chest in the expanding moonlight had first caught his attention, some awkward adjusting of his reflection near the meadow’s many creeks had satisfied his curiosity to the brand on his blind side. The pain had faded by the next morning. It was a part of him now. Just as the bear was. Just as the scars, both seen and hidden, were.
Those brands glow brightly now in the enclosing darkness of the forest but he can see that he’s not the one glowing the brightest. The golden man glows with a different sort of pulse and he pauses, uncertain for a moment. Curiosity gets the better of him, it’s the spots along his body that draws him in. He had known jaguar spots like that once. Magnus had once summarized some of his family’s history and lineage. Something to do with jungle cats that seemed to run in parts of the family. He had briefly met a niece of his father’s years ago, she had held some spots like those that speckle the grounded man before him. Before he can really say or do anything, another comes forward, an ethereal female who speaks to him with familiarity. The gold flecks in his good eye glint against the various shades and tones of glows as he familiarizes himself with her features. Thankfully she’s not made of glass despite the shimmer of her wings and body. He’s not sure he could handle another one (these glass girls might make him shatter faster then they ever will). She talks of the Mountain (god how he hates that damned forsaken place) and something that sounds like a quest. Something to do with the eliminated darkness.
His dark gaze turns back to the golden one as the other continues to pry on whatever had happened but Ledger himself is silent. He’s taking in the shadows that seem to curl around the male, the way his body seems to respond to the wind that breezes suddenly though the trees on an otherwise still and silent night. He does not flinch at the exposed predator teeth. Instead, he is thoughtful. The bear within him is also thoughtful. There is something about the golden man that he recognizes. Not by his face, no, he is absolutely a stranger and unknown to him. It’s in his body posture, it’s the glint in his eyes, the fracturing one goes through when parts of you are taken and something else is forced to take its place. It’s when like recognizes like, he knows the taste of magic now, it burns like acid on his tongue. How often it had broken his bones, tore his flesh, and devoured every secret thought, emotion, and memory he had ever had. The residue it leaves behind. ”Give him a moment.” He finally says to her, a quiet murmur but the roughness of his mostly unused voice sounds loud in this place. He knows what happens when one pushes too hard, when you come back broken and you’re still trying to sort out what parts of you belong and what parts of you have been lost. It doesn’t fix itself overnight…if it can ever be fixed at all.
Ledger
I just want to treat you better
@[Sabal] @[firion]