"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She had taken to hiding in the in-between places, the gaps between territories where few bothered to stray. They were the quiet places, the lonely places, the places she belonged to best. She loved the meadow for what it meant to her. It was the place in which she had been born, the place she first knew the love of her mother and her father and her wordless twin. But it was also the place they had each drifted from in turn, parting like stardust in a too-big night sky. She even loved the forest for its lonely trees and hungry shadows, but so did many, and it was the many she tried so desperately to avoid. So she clung to the in-between like the stars clung to the night.
But there was War on the horizon and she had not realized. It seemed strange that a mind-reader would be so out of the loop, but Isle hated falling into someone else’s thoughts. Every time she did there was something dark and sinister waiting to catch her, yearning to hold her under and drown her in the dark. So she suppressed that part of herself, the part that had also belonged to her smiling father. She couldn’t understand how he had sifted through minds which such ease, and now he was gone and there was no way to ask him. Hurt flared like raw heat in her chest and, after a moment, new loneliness joined it.
She had felt the shift of war nearly as soon as it began, she was certain everyone would. Magic crackled like static in the air each time a barrier was erected, like a weatherless storm inching from kingdom to kingdom. She should have known what would happen, should have guessed that her self-control would wither in the face of so many and with such strong emotions bleeding from so many worn, weathered faces. But she was foolish, naïve despite herself and she slipped from mind to mind like a shipwreck crashed against every shore it sought. ‘Stop.’ She begged in a whisper, holding her head low and her ears back as if that would change anything.
It didn’t.
Thoughts of sorrow and loss, of revenge and hatred, of the names of those already lost beat themselves like tattoos against the walls of her aching mind.
Again and again and again.
As if these demons were physical, she ran from them. She bled like shadow through the trees, weaving through the forest until dark gave way to light and she recognized the meadow unfurling like an ocean of green before her. There was a moment, a single heartbeat in time, where her mind acknowledged the impossibly large black stallion perched at the meadows edge. But this fact was buried beneath other thoughts that weren’t hers, dead, dead, dead like the beat of some sinister war-drum.
She brushed past him, barely avoiding a collision as some distant part of her conscious mind stuttered awake. “Oh!” She breathed in the whisper of a broken voice, and she would have kept running if not for the fact that his mind did not unfold itself readily to her. Uncertainty flickered like dying hope in her chest as she stilled beside him, her dark eyes anchored to his face, then tracing the deep lines of scars across his immense body. Even as she counted them, as she followed their curving shapes across the deeper black, she could feel her mind quiet a little. Her chest still heaved with a fear that had settled so deep in the marrow of her bones she wasn’t sure it would ever leave, but impossibly, he had managed to soothe the flayed edges of her mind. Her breath came in short, tremulous huffs as she watched him with uncertainty etched into the soft shadows across her delicate brown face.
“Please,” she says in a voice so quiet, and she isn’t even sure what she’s asking him, “it hurts.”
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
The buds were just beginning to the blossom with new life, and green threads of grassland were starting to rise up from where the soil had once been covered with a sheet of ice and snow. The sky would soon drench the land, nourishing it with its pounding rain, accompanied by its jarring thunder and startling lightning, but the lands were painted with the blood of the living and the dead. It would trickle, tainted crimson, across the blooming foliage - copper against the bright, youthful emerald of spring. A dreadful reminder of the brutality taking place.
The war had been inevitable. The tension in the air was thick, the air static with the electricity of loathing and hatred across unseen borders. The pressure had grown unbearable, finally breaking out into a battle of broken skulls, crackling bones and spilled blood. Though he had managed to maintain neutrality - he had few enemies, but the alliance between his dwelling and the Amazonians had potential to wreck havoc on the lives of himself and his brothers. He had seen rotting, bloating carcasses strewn about, their eye sockets barren and their limbs picked of their sinewy tendons and flesh by scavengers - many of their faces had been destroyed. Crush. Split. No longer recognizable.
The scent was overwhelming, enveloping the otherwise fresh, invigorating air in a sickly sweetness that only comes from death's salty embrace. Though he had once turned away from its grotesque reality, breathing in short gasps to avoid the invasion of his every sense, he had since grown numb. He breathed deeply, now unaware of the stench that had lingered for days - for months. He had never flinched at the sight itself; in a century of life he had seen much. Much carnage, much death, and this was not unlike those times. Though his body was still youthful, albeit scarred (grievously so), his heart and soul ached with a weariness that could only come from living far beyond what he should have.
The deteriorating masses only reminded him of what he could not have, and he tried often to forget that his existence was eternal. He did not want to remember, and so he pressed it to the very dark recesses of his mind, not allowing the gloom of winter nor the bloody, vile slaughter that surrounded him to draw out those morbid thoughts to the forefront. And so remained. Stoic, staring out onto the rather empty land. No one mingled now. They were too afraid; the shadows were the only remaining place of solace. He does not shy away, however, now standing as a towering presence of marred obsidian, stark against the flourishing meadow.
Suddenly, his flesh felt alight with fire - it was not often that he felt someone else pressed against him, and her abrupt presence stuns him momentarily. He had not heard her approach, nor had he seen her, but here she was. Her dark eyes spoke of pain, of suffering, and he remained still, his own crimson gaze boring deeply into hers. Searching. Though he could not read minds, he could empathize, and he could see beyond the mask placed by others. His many years taught him to trace the very details of a face; to listen to the breathlessness and pitch of spoken word.
He can feel her frantic puffs of warm air against his chest plate as she pleads him, but for what, he does not know. Her doe eyes search his, and in return, he swings his thick neck, peering around for the presence of another. Had she been chased? Attacked? Her brilliant mottled bay pelt was not stained with blood, and she did not appear harmed.
Finally he speaks, his deep baritone rumbling from deep within his chest.
"What is it? What hurts? What can I do?"
It was not often he felt helpless, but standing before her in all of his might and stature, he was not sure he had ever felt more so.
OFFSPRING
@[jenger] - sorry for the wait, he needed new HTML. :| <3 hahah.
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She remains tucked close to his side, but her eyes are closed and her head is bowed beneath the intensity of the thoughts that rush in to replace her own. Dead, murdered. She takes a shaky breath and hardly notices when the edge of her narrow shoulder presses against the black of his side as she leans into him. Oh God, I’m alone. A sound like a mangled whimper escapes the crumble of her chest to fall like ash from her trembling lips. I’ll kill him, I’ll kill them all. She can feel stones piling up in her chest, crushing her bones, her ribs, her heart beneath their cold, impossible weight. The thoughts feel dirty in her mind, like snow so grey it could be ash, and all because they aren’t hers but somehow they fit perfectly within her head. Her jaw clenched tightly, drawing lines along her cheek and beneath her eyes as she pressed her face into the nearest thing. His warm, thick shoulder. The warmth gave her pause and she remembered suddenly where she stood, and with whom, and she pulled away from him reflexively with uncertainty etched into the brilliant dark of her worried eyes.
But when he speaks his voice is not cold and cruel, it is not like the voices of the thoughts swimming in her mind. She stills a little and her face is still uncertain, but it is softer now and she does not continue to drift further from him. We’re burning. She flinches and turns her delicate face from him so he cannot see the way her eyes unfocus and swim with the headache burgeoning inside her skull. When she does look back to him her face is full of shadow and she tucks her chin timidly towards her narrow brown chest. She did not want to tell him anything for fear that if she started she would tell him everything. But she knew it wasn’t fair to have crashed against him in the pit of her fears, to have taken his warmth for her own and expect him to let her stay with no explanation. She floundered a little and new distress blossomed like bruises in the bottoms of her wide, dark eyes. “I-” her voice trembles a little, just a quiet thrum of sound to match the racing thrum of her heart, “the war. I can hear them.” She winces and flinches when she hears herself and the way this confession must make no sense. She exhales sharply and her chest feels like it might cave in beneath the weight of the uncertainty blossoming there. “In my head,” she tries again and she doesn’t meet his eyes this time, “they’re trapped inside my head.” She is already so impossibly small beside him, all delicate bones and narrow angles against his weight and bulk, but she shrinks further still. “I promise I’m not crazy.” She breathes, pulling her lip between the flat of her teeth.
Something occurs to her then, it tickles the back of her mind impatiently until she finally pays it any attention. But as soon as she did, worry painted itself in dark shadow across her delicate brown face. “I can’t-” she stumbles inelegantly over her words, those eyes wider still when they fell against the burning red of his own, “not yours.” Her face softens imploringly as she wills him to understand, to believe her, to not cast her back out into the savage chaos of her unraveling mind. But then her jaw clenches tightly again in a way that shatters any softness that had appeared there in the moments before. “You’re different. I don’t know why.”
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
Her breath was warm against his skin, and her words are broken whispers that he strains and struggles to hear. He can feel her crumbling against him, tucked against the crook of his neck. His jawline brushes against her tangled tendrils of obsidian, which hang across the slender curve of her neck - the static in the air encases him with stray hairs as she remains close to him. Though his sinewy muscle tenses at her touch, he does not draw away. He is intrigued, albeit uncomfortable with her closeness, but his mind urges him to press her for answers. Her soft pleas are not unheard as she loses herself in her own mind, plagued by something much more sinister and devious than his own mind could possibly comprehend.
His own breath brushes softly against her forelock as she remains tucked against his mass, his heart hammering within his chest. He had not expected to find himself in such a predicament, and he was still deeply startled by her abrupt appearance next to (or rather, against) him. She was stunning, but he tried to swiftly push the thought from his mind. His eyes darken as she weakly murmurs beneath her breath, her voice soft and sweet, though tainted with anguish and distress. It is only when his words reverberate against her skin that she seems to recognize and understand that she in the presence of a stranger, and for a moment he holds his breath. His ears pin tightly against his skull, attempting to anticipate her next movement.
She then turns away from him, but he is too far enraptured with her discontent to allow her too far. He sweeps his long, thick neck down, his crimson gaze peering from behind the tightly woven locks of charcoal that hang above his eyes, attempting to catch her vision once more. He is searching, though he is as uncertain as she is. Her words come out in fragments, which he struggles to capture and piece together, tenderly weaving an intricate view into her mind - trying to paint her painful visions and fractured thoughts within his own, trying to understand.
When she finally manages to grasp a solid string of words, he is taken aback. In her head? It is then that he catches her gaze again, the same deep, pleading doe eyes staring straight into his own of fiery red, and his breath catches as he listens closely to her pained words. You're different. I don't know why.
He seizes, watching as her momentarily softened features harden again, willing him to understand yet still trying desperately to understand herself. He leans his muzzle back, nostrils flaring as he inhales deeply, speechless for the first time in such a long time. How to respond to such a statement? There were many unorthodox things about him, and different was one of many ways to describe him. Emotionally. Physically. She was emphasizing mentally.
He hesitates, though his voice rumbles again, breaking the stagnant silence that had settled for a moment between them. "I don't think that you are crazy," He muses, deliberating his words carefully. He can still feel her pressed against him, and it stirs an uneasiness within him that had been dormant for many years. "but I'm not sure that I understand .. how do you mean? Different from what ..?"
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
The silence seems to stretch on and on and it suddenly feels impossible to hold his red gaze for any longer. Her dark eyes part from his, blinking once, twice, and she turns her face instead to trace the brown trees that were no longer bare, no longer stiff and skeletal for the way green life budded along those spindled branches. The branches split the blue of an honest, aching sky and they remind her of the pink, puckered scars etched into the black of this strangers skin. She would’ve turned to look back at him, to trace those marks with the soft of her whiskered lips but something held her back, something uncertain smothered that quiet curiosity. New thoughts, not hers - or maybe they were just old ones trapped by her own toxic fear – echoed inside her mind and she flinched again but said nothing. She imagined she could taste their tears and smell that copper stink of spilled blood, and she couldn’t, not really, but these thoughts made her heart ache all the same. She was a brittle thing, a delicate creature not designed for war or chaos, easily cowed by wrath and cruelty. A shiver races along her spine and she abruptly turns her face back to his, her dark eyes uncertainly soft where they settled against him.
“You’re quiet,” she says, she whispers, and then, “I make you uncomfortable.” It seems a preposterous notion but she feels certain she is right, and if only he knew, if only he knew. But she hates so much to say it aloud, to announce herself because it is always in the way thunder precedes a storm and everyone disappears to take cover. No one liked to know that she was a pit-pocket of thoughts, no one ever believed that she didn’t want their shame and their secrets bleeding into her own. So she doesn’t say it, not yet.
Instead she edges closer with a look of wounded curiosity etched into shadow of her angular dark brown face. With the soft of her white and pink nose she stretches to push aside the tangled ropes of forelock that slip over to conceal the burning red of his eyes. Whatever it is she is searching for in his face she must find, because her expression softens and when she pulls away again there is a not-quite smile ghosting at the corners of her delicate lips. “Different from others.” She says quietly when he finally finds words for her, and that subtle smile sinks a little deeper into the curve of her mouth. Her brow furrows beneath the windswept curls of her black forelock and she cocks her head slightly at him considering. “Some minds leak, or maybe mine does. Maybe I’m what doesn’t work right.” She pauses to chew at her lower lip, turning her face from him so that he might not notice the unwilling, unshared secrets floating in the bottoms of her dark eyes. “But not yours. Yours is different.”
Somehow it feels like she has shared so much with him and the feeling makes her skin crawl with discomfort, but she knows that even now she keeps the most important piece of secret for herself. It seems silly because he has probably already guessed it, but somehow it feels like pulling a knife from her own chest and placing it in his hand when she finally says in a shattered voice, “I am a mindreader.”
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
"You don't make me uncomfortable." He insists, though his usually steady baritone cracks at the end, revealing the fissures he was trying to sew together before she could notice. He studies her closely as she gazes to the once barren branches of now blossoming trees, to the brilliant, bare blue sky, momentarily lost in its allure and soon he is lost in her. The way her lashes shield away her telling doe eyes and the quiver of her lip when she is deep in thought draws him in deeper; pulls him in tighter. She is not unlike the ebb and flow of the ocean tide, wavering between clarity and momentary obscurity, entrapping him in the embrace of his own unsated curiosity.
He was not usually so easily drawn in, like a moth to a flame, drunken by the inner light that seems to radiate from her flesh, but she too was different - and it this that leaves him most uneasy. His attention is not often ensnared so completely by another, but there is something in the way she looks through him (and yet doesn't, as she would surely have had added a tint of red to her softly lined cheeks if she could see what he was thinking). He does not have long to linger on the thought, suddenly aware and present within the moment as she begins to close in on the space between them. He can taste her warm breath and feel the warmth exuding from her gentle, sloping curves, and again his heart begins to pound. It rattles against his rib cage, thumping distantly deep within his ears. A slow bass to a rhythm he was not certain he could keep up with.
Her nose, painted the perfect shade of rose and alabaster, brushes across his forelock, pushing it out of the way of his searing eyes. He cannot look away from her, and when she begins to soften, he does too. The tension seems to slide away from his limbs; his sinewy muscle shifting and rippling beneath the taut, scarred obsidian pelt. He closes his eyes for a moment, savoring the sensation as the warm breeze begins to trickle and lace between their bodies, enveloping them in the heat of the vernal equinox and the soothing rays of sun that bathe the flourishing land in its light.
When he opens them again, his crimson eyes searching for her own, he finds she has looked away from him, her gaze cast downward with a looming shame that delved deeper than the surface. It is his turn to reach out now, his own cheek brushing against hers as he pushes her own black forelock away from her eyes. Different, she utters, and he begins to understand. She has been soothed by his presence alone, and though he finds himself to unravel to her touch and her spoken word, there is something about him she cannot penetrate. His many fragmented memories of heartbreak and longing remain under tight lock and key, bound so tightly within the recesses of his mind that even he has struggled to retrieve them.
This deep, impenetrable secrecy cloaks the entirety of his mind, and he realizes what she means by different. She can read the thoughts of many, but not his. He is a untouchable enigma, a undisturbed conundrum of thoughts and ideas and she seems relieved by this revelation. The voices she is plagued and haunted by are not her own, but of someone else. Someone she barely knows, or maybe does not know at all. As the pieces begin to come together, their jagged edges fitting perfectly, she finally says it aloud.
A mindreader.
"And you cannot read mine." He finishes for her, breathless at her confession. He had never known anyone with such a capability, nor had he imagined the suffering that may inevitably follow such a powerful, uncontrollable gift. He brushes his lips across her cheek, murmuring gently to her, his breath hot against the curve of her ear. "I have lived many, many years, most of which have been unpleasant. I try to keep my mind an empty slate - to not remember. To not have to relive those memories and the thoughts that always follow."
He pauses. And then, with rousing truth, "You probably don't want to know what I'm thinking right now .. and I don't even yet know your name."
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
He touches her, his lips to the curve of her cheek and all at once her heart resumes its hammering in her chest. But it’s different this time because it is not fear that courses like ice through her veins; it is fire. Searing heat like a hundred swallowed suns, and this time when her dark eyes fall on him they are changed. She inhales sharply, a quiet gasp that catches in her throat. When he pushes aside the curls of her forelock just as she had done his, her eyes settle against his like anchors and for a moment she is tethered there. Her brow furrows and hesitation lingers in the quiet of her small, dark face but still she says nothing. She is busy in this instant, this heartbeat in time, busy tracing patterns on a face she had never known before but guessed she would not soon forget. There is something unexpectedly kind waiting for her there in those shadows, something that even now seems to quiet the nerves tangling and untangling like worrying fingers in the pit of her belly.
This scares her.
There have only been a few things in her life that she had hoped to be permanent, but each one of the things had eventually drifted out of reach. Her father had disappeared, ever the wanderer, and with him her twin brother Wyck. Sometimes she wondered if they had gone together, if they were still together, but this notion equally soothed and flayed open her vulnerable heart. She was so like her father, they were both mind readers, and of course Wyck was her other half, but both had left her. Both had gone. Her mother was somewhere, always somewhere in her eternality but Isle felt like she had chosen to spend that eternality with another family. Perhaps in the deepest part of her flayed open soul, Isle blamed her mother for Wyck and Dempsey leaving.
She blamed her mother for loving someone else more.
Isle flinched imperceptibly, her dark eyes flashing with a kind of pain he would not understand if he had noticed at all. It always hurt when her thoughts slipped back to her shattered family, a family that no longer existed. It hurt to remember that her home was wherever the thoughts were quietest, the pit of a lonely forest with no sky above, a place with no family and no friends to betray when their thoughts spilled into hers as soon as she let her guard down.
You cannot read mine. He says and she is pulled instantly from the dark depths of her quiet brooding. She does not answer right away, instead slipping even closer to trace a particularly gruesome scar that sat pink and puckered like a tear in his chest. Her lips find it easily and she outlines its jagged shape, his heart rumbling somewhere below. “Maybe.” She confesses with a frown as she pulls back from his chest, from his heart. “Maybe I could read it.” She is silent again while she struggles to find an explanation for him that would make any sense at all. “It’s like this. If you were to close your eyes, you would still be able to feel the sun on your face, there is still light that bleeds through and illuminates your eyelids.” She pauses to see if he’s following, or if he does finally think she must be losing her mind. “Now imagine you’ve kept your eyes closed for years, and suddenly it’s there all around you and it is brighter than it has ever been before. And you can’t help it, you can’t stop it, you just look. But you know you’ve been tricked even before you see the sun because it is only the dark that waits for you.”
She seems to shrink and crumple and wilt before him, touching her lips to the side of his mouth greedily before pulling away even further because she knows he’ll want her to go now. “I can always feel the pressure of someone’s mind like sun on my face. I think there is an instinctive part of me that wants to look inside, a reflex because this isn’t extra for me. It is me.” Her voices drops away, severed by pain as she remembers the earliest mind she had fallen into, willing at first until she wasn’t anymore. “I try not to look anymore; I don’t want to know these things. But sometimes I can’t stop it.” Her eyes drop to her feet, to the muddied ground below them before she continues. “I think maybe your mind wants to be as alone as mine does.”
She traces the crescent imprint of someone’s hoof in the dirt for a long while before she allows his next words to pull her gaze back to his. Years and years, he says and she finds her eyes drawn back to his scars as she wonders just how many years. Her brow furrows and she aches to slip closer, and even as she wills the same from him there is a fear in her belly that begs him away. It is the fear born of knowing what it means to lose someone you care for too deeply. He speaks again and her dark eyes widen where they land on his face, uncertainty tightening the angles of her dark head. Her voice is the sound of a dozen moth wings, gentle and imploring when she asks, “Will you tell me anyway?” And then even as fear tightens in her gut, dread weeping from the marrow of her delicate bird-bones, “My name is Isle.”
lend me your hand and we'll conquer them all. but lend me your heart and i'll just let you fall.
Permanence was a figure of speech that he had long since put behind him. Nothing of value was permanent for him. The seasons would change, from illustrious and brilliant hues of emerald and gold, to dull shades of grey and cobalt, and the weather would shift with it. Bright rays of sun one day, and deep, darkening storms looming the next. The landscape itself would change, rumbling with shifting plate tectonics that would mold and reshape the earth with its every bone-shaking rattle. Even those he had loved now were lost; bones having whittled away to dust and carried away with the icy wind. He was the only fragment of permanence he still had to cling on to, and he hardly considered his own life to be of any value at all.
It was within this deeply rooted acceptance of change that he remained in limbo. He was perpetually trapped within his own mind, scolding himself for making the slightest brush of communication with anyone else with a hammering heartbeat and bated breath, constantly wary of the harsh reality that was his life sentence. Though many spent the entirety of their lives pursuing the immortality that he himself possessed, he could not possibly fathom why. It was not unlike the lonely embrace of death - with his own life's thread hanging in the balance, spread thin to allow for a sharp cut but impenetrable to the jagged, frayed scissors of Morai - but without the same release. He would never have that glorious light glow behind closed eyelids; he would never walk to the other side and breathe his first breath in the afterlife.
He would never escape the permanence of loneliness.
He was oblivious to her own pain, as he festered in his own before her. He felt her lips again brush against his skin, and the same heat washed over him, enveloping him again in a deeply buried emotion and sensation he had not been certain still existed within him. Her touch on his sensitive scars led a long, trembling shiver to course down the slope of his spine, though he tensed in an attempt to shield it from her. He did not want her to see the reaction she was so easily eliciting from him, but the faint hitch of his breath against his cheek was all telling.
Quietly, he listens as she pours out the entirety of her raw, vulnerable heart. Now imagine you’ve kept your eyes closed for years, and suddenly it’s there all around you and it is brighter than it has ever been before. He closed his eyes for a moment, dark lids covering his deep, intimidating red eyes, lashes brushing her cheek as he falls into the gentle caress and alluring comfort of her spoken word. He can feel the light of the sun, figuratively and literally, and it is she that radiates the same blinding, unyielding light she speaks of and he has never felt so in awe as he does in that moment. She describes her pain with careful words, her voice trembling against his skin as he trails his lips along her neck. His eyes remain closed as he traces the soft curve of her jaw, his own lips pressing near hers. His movements mimic her own, and he is powerless to stop himself.
Her lips now touch his, and he finds himself more vulnerable than he has been in an entire lifetime. He opens his eyes now, staring deeply into her own, willing himself to understand - and he does. He studies her in the same awed way she is tempted to view another's mind's eye; wanting to understand and to listen and to feel. He, too, struggles with her own desire of wanting to pull away and to not see. He can feel and taste her sweet breath on his own, and soon it is clear to him as to the depth of this dangerous dive he has taken. She is the sun's bright, assaulting light, insisting he open his eyes and feel her in all of the ways her own ability pleads of her to feel others. He wants to look away, to protect himself from the inevitable end that will surely come to pass, but he cannot. Like her, he cannot resist the light for long, and he remains, his lips brushing across hers. He cannot stop it, either.
Her words gently murmur against his own, her imploring voice is so soft it gently tickles his flesh and leaves his heart alight. Will you tell me anyway? My name is Isle." Isle. Isle.
He studies her with the same ferocity, his red eyes darkening with something deeper and bigger than himself, gently pulling away - if only slightly - to take in the full sight of the wonder that stands before him.
His own baritone softens considerably; a gentle rumble amidst the bright haze of midday and its soft breezy touch.
"My name is Offspring," He says, tracing the way her soft features highlight the beauty of her eyes and her shapely cheeks. "and I see. I understand - and maybe it does .. or maybe it did. I have known loneliness for so long, I have forgotten any other way."
hold my hand, it's a long way down to the bottom of the river
She had compared her small world to the sun and he had in turn compared her. Oh, if only she knew. Isle is not light and bright, she is not raw aching beauty, nor is she important in any way. But she does burn. If she is like the sun, then she is a red giant burning everything she can reach, everything that comes too close. She does not mean to, but again and again the world seemed to fracture around her. She was that creeping ghost that everyone dreads, the stranger who knows everything despite being uninvited, who knows every dark secret and ruinous truth. But they never seem to notice how she burns with them, how even she is not impervious to her own destruction. They never notice, and she never lets them.
It is so easy to be lonely, so effortless even as it breaks her.
He reacts to her touch and she does, she does notice the way he tenses when her lips brush the pink scar along his chest. She notices, too, the weight of his warm breath where it settles against her cheek. She notices because she had willed it to be, because with every aching bone in her delicate body, she wanted to believe she could mean something to someone. But even now, even as her heart thrummed in her chest like a trapped bird, something dark and feral twisted unpleasantly in the pit of her stomach.
She knew how much it would hurt when he left her, when he forgot her like most everyone else had.
But he touches her again and even though his eyes had been closed before, they are open now and she feels suddenly dirty with shame for he must be able to see her wretched soul. She had given him everything in that shaky explanation, taken a piece of her heart, of her trust, and dropped it carelessly into his open hands. She balks, starting to pull away until his lips touch the side of her mouth and she is quieted instantly. How was it possible that she had found him like this, a mountain of calm amidst her violent, turbulent storms. How, as she ran and ran with her heart breaking in her chest, had she managed to collide with him.
It was the sound of her heart shattering against her ribs, the rattle of a thousand broken pieces shifting in her flayed open chest, that let her know what had to be done. You are a broken thing, Isle. You are not meant to be loved by anyone.
She felt her heart turn to dust in her chest when he looked at her, when those burning red eyes traced every angle of her delicate brown face. Selfishly, she drew against him, her small chest pressed to his, their hearts racing together. For a moment she could do nothing more than bury her face against his large, dark shoulder, taste sweat and sun and spring on his skin. But then sluggishly she pulled away, pausing to trace that face again, to remember it always.
“Offspring.” She repeated softly, taking his name like a brand, a piece of burning metal buried deep in her chest. “Don’t stay lonely forever.” She pulls away further and further, her chest tightening as at last she turned from him. “I should go home now.” But she chokes on that word, home, because there was no such thing waiting for her anywhere. Only loneliness, and surely he would know because she had been running wild and afraid and if she’d had a home why wouldn’t she have gone there. “Goodbye Offspring.”
And then when she was far enough away that she didn’t think he could hear her she whispered again, “Please, it hurts.” Except this pain, this hurt was different.
But she wouldn't, couldn't let him burn with her. She could spare him that.
