DEIMOS
The inspection was quiet, and he awaited the verdict, if it was too much or not enough or a combination of both – only entreating the bronze with painstakingly, meticulous efforts, careful, heedful, attentive, as vigilant as he’d been in all other circumstances. Her eyes were glassy, and he said naught, standing along their bound threshold, along the glow and glimmer of lantern light and embers for the dead. She took it upon her left hand, silent, hushed marriage vows that would never take place or never be uttered in the open, beneath banners or launching over braziers. It was a chilling and depressing sort of anguish, a series of notes lodged in his chest as he thought of all the others lost along the way – things he had no part in because he’d already been buried and entombed, last breaths taken well before the Rift, well before Kaos, well before eruptions of greed, avarice, and torment.
He proffered and said naught as she pressed herself into him again – a wall, a foundation, a shield, a sword, a shelter, a sanctum for those he cherished, arms coming around to hold as she tucked into his tunic and hid away from the rest of the void. The night was ink and the scenery was gilded, but neither of them were well enough to quantify brushing strokes across canvases. He was alive and whole, chest maneuvering with each breath, listening to undulations and sobs, a mixture of grief and relief, permitting her to stay in his sanctuary for as long as she required – a constant, a monolith, less stone and more warrior. They were bereft and void and it was fine, plunged into their fires and coming out less whole, but stronger, fiercer, mightier, knowing what it was like to lose, the feeling of something being ripped away from their soul. It’s perfect when perhaps it was not; it would’ve been better coming from the lad and not the Reaper, but he nodded anyway, his gaze sweeping over the lands when she granted thanks, when she obliged, when there was naught else to say. “You are welcome,” was in his finality, in the crush and rush of the festival, somber celebrations, not the reel of spring’s blooming, but the notion of winter’s arrival, death and death and death.
He proffered and said naught as she pressed herself into him again – a wall, a foundation, a shield, a sword, a shelter, a sanctum for those he cherished, arms coming around to hold as she tucked into his tunic and hid away from the rest of the void. The night was ink and the scenery was gilded, but neither of them were well enough to quantify brushing strokes across canvases. He was alive and whole, chest maneuvering with each breath, listening to undulations and sobs, a mixture of grief and relief, permitting her to stay in his sanctuary for as long as she required – a constant, a monolith, less stone and more warrior. They were bereft and void and it was fine, plunged into their fires and coming out less whole, but stronger, fiercer, mightier, knowing what it was like to lose, the feeling of something being ripped away from their soul. It’s perfect when perhaps it was not; it would’ve been better coming from the lad and not the Reaper, but he nodded anyway, his gaze sweeping over the lands when she granted thanks, when she obliged, when there was naught else to say. “You are welcome,” was in his finality, in the crush and rush of the festival, somber celebrations, not the reel of spring’s blooming, but the notion of winter’s arrival, death and death and death.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
