waiting on the world to change, Pollock

[Emmerly]

This place is different, but everywhere is these days.

Nothing is like the virgin splendor of the Gates, the stretching of emerald meadows mated to the sapphire sky at the horizon.  Nothing is like the Mother Tree before the raid, when her limbs had still stretched up into that same sky, welcoming all to the plains of Heaven.  Nothing is like the babbling, laughing creeks that her adopted son had splashed in before they had run red with the blood of the injured.  Nothing is like the everlasting silence of failure, of losing their queen and their dignity all in one fell swoop.  

She embraces nothing, now, and runs from everything she once knew.

This forest is simply the latest place to hold her, to hide her in its shadows.  She thinks it is fitting as far as hiding places go.  Emmerly, the once-proud defender of Heaven, left to rot amongst the fungi springing up from the loamy forest floor.  She is not comfortable here, but she deserves that, too.  The sunlight that she’s lived under her whole life (that she’s bent towards like a starving plant, hungry for its warmth and nourishment) is fragmented here.  It dapples her already patchy back in diluted pools of gold.  Like a tracer, it beams over her as she walks underneath the canopy.  As if the world will see her, judge her, find her, despite her attempt to disappear.

The light hits her nose.  We’ve found you.
 
Sweeps across her neck.  You can’t run forever.
 
Races along her back.  

Fear clenches her heart like an iron fist.  Not fear for herself, though.  Whatever doubts and hesitations she’d had about herself before had gone up in flames alongside the great tree.  She was a runner; every step she took further away from the gates had proved as much.  She was a failure; she left her home burning and her people alone amongst the ashes.  What she fears for is not herself but her son. His face is like ashes in her mind, and Emmerly flinches before remembering that it is only the storm-grey coloring he’d grown into.  

Relief comes with the cool breeze that prickles her skin.  She leans into it and closes her eyes.  It can’t hold her up.  It can’t sustain against the hot fever of her disappointment, but it is enough to temper the flames.  Until she can will herself back home.  Until she pulls her weary feet from the soft ground of the forest she’s cloaked herself in and marches them back to Heaven.  It will be the hardest thing she’s ever done.  A battle, not of sinew and blood, but of her mind and intent.  She resists, briefly (just stay here, just let the mushrooms digest and disintegrate you, it’s what you deserve – hide from the light), but she is still a fighter.  Deep within the folds of her brain, Em prepares for battle.
   
She opens her eyes and takes a step forward.  

Emmerly

walter x valien

[Pollock]

I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin
I called you to wish you well, to glory in self like a new monster
And now I call you to pray


He doesn't hide here. He leaves his things scattered.
The gift giver reaps bones and last breaths and strews them like litter at the feet of trees.

He feeds this place. Nurtures it. He watches over it, a quiet and malcontent vigil, as it covers his things in dust and shade and rays of light in between rib bones. In recompense, it holds audience to his feverish dreams and sweaty haunts eagerly. Its skin takes his abuse of scars, strips of husked wood, like a lion marks his territory. This place wraps itself around him (it always has, from bitter boyhood to demi-godliness) – it takes his violence, their screams and the cracks of their skulls on his headgear and weaves that into into bark, stone and lichen.

Into those beams of light that touch dead and live things so softly and exposes her, dancing over her shoulders and hips.

This is his home. This is, if anywhere is, it must be here. It cannot be surprising that it is in the murk of green shade and damp soil that the stallion finds his hold. Long ago, he had dug himself into peat and needles and against the cold, rough trunk of a jack pine, and there he had waited, invisible, until light came back. It is as soothing as it is disturbing – familiarity, but it mirrors a time and horse he abhors and wishes nothing more than to burn to ash and scorched ground. He likes the damp but from time to time he thinks he sees her pale form slipping by, wings dragging as useless as his from neglect (playing the same eerie music as his but louder and mightier). 
He wakes up shaken and in those hazy moments he thinks he can feel his body much younger and longer than it is.

Then he twists his head and carves bark from a tree and he is reminded of his gifts.
He is reminded of his remade self and of his place above fear.

He watches her. The sound of her passing by draws him from the green and black-brown flesh, provoked by the blood under her plump and smooth skin and by the temptation of her more pleasant scent. He likes his jewels (black and green and gold) nestled here and there. But they smell. They are beautiful and his and then they spoil.

He steps out in front of her, his black-brown eyes searching her resolved face. He wants to see it razed to the dirt. He can do battle. His lip quirks upwards.
“Hello,” his voice is gravelly and tight through his throat. He still smells rot, but as he steps towards her, he can smell honey and flowers, acrid smells of smoke and defeat somewhere to sour it all. “Hope I’m not disturbing you?”


POLLOCK
Lone Artist and Phina’s

[Emmerly]

Her resolve is suddenly much stronger than she is.

All the times she’s thought about returning home now coagulates her runner’s blood. It is a surety now that she will once again walk the endless plains of the Gates. She will not go without her burdens (abandonment, dishonor, disgrace – all weights pressing her further into the soil, anchoring her from leaving again), but she will go. Isn’t that all that matters in the end? Looking back, isn’t the result held in a higher regard than all the steps it took to get there? Yes, she had run away from the spiraling, smoking mess that heaven had become. But she will also run back.

It is not a matter of will she return, but how quickly.

Emmerly hasn’t made it more than a couple dozen steps through the murky woods when he comes to stand in front of her. He is as different as the places she has surrounded herself with. Something tugs at the edges of the instincts buried deep within her, though. Tells her that his company should never be a choice as the forests and fields had been before. It isn’t fear – not yet, anyway – but a sharp wariness that protests against him. It is a soldier’s intuition that readies her limbs and steadies her breath, just in case.

“Not disturbing, perhaps.” Her own voice is heavy and rough, disuse compounding its naturally dark timbre. Her tone doesn’t betray the fact that he disturbs her. And at first, she doesn’t know why. It isn’t the cleaving of his hooves nor the ratty, tattered wing that leaves a rivet in the soft ground behind him. It isn’t the hard set in his searching eyes nor the smallest of smirks making his face its own contrasting battleground. It’s not even the deadly horns that curve up and between his ears, strange in and of themselves but seemingly perfectly placed atop his skull.
She is disturbed by the radiation he emits.

But because she’s always been fool-hardy and reckless, she takes a step closer and lets it wash over her.

“You are blocking me, however.” Emmerly is near enough to the stallion to see each delicate curl of the lashes ringing his eyes. Unlike his horns, she thinks they do not belong on such a face. She also thinks that she will rip each and every one out if he tries to prevent her from returning home. Proximity has never bothered her in the slightest (in fact, the buckskin paint usually seeks it out), but she is relying on the hope that the stallion will be less inclined to her closeness. They are so near that she can feel the heat building between their bodies. Em welcomes it, lets it simmer until the pressure is too much for the palomino to take.

She refuses to move backwards; the Gates lies ahead.

And despite her instincts telling her to dive to either side and continue on (not backwards, but any other way – not this one), she does not budge. Fear is what drove her away the first time. Fear is what stayed on her back long after she tried to shake it, spurring her far from her rightful place in the world. Fear is the enemy, and if this stallion is the last hurdle to overcome it, she will face it head on.

“You might want to consider a detour, stranger.” This last bit is softer, even kinder than her words before. Em gives him an out if he wants to take it. Because if he doesn’t, if he lets the offer melt into the heated space between them, she will believe her instincts. Somewhere high above the pair, a leaf breaks from its branch at the stem. Detached and deadened, the leaf spirals down, down, down to the ground below. The first sign of autumn, and the mare newly minted in resolve and remorse does not notice.

Emmerly

walter x valien