DEIMOS
She didn’t need to thank him. He hadn’t done it out of a requirement of acknowledgment; it’d been a sacrificial art born and consecrated in the Basin, for those who mattered and meant the most. How many times had he wandered straight into danger, into melees, into wars, for all of them? How many times had he pledged his heart, his body, his soul, to the mountains and its inhabitants? What had happened to have altered or changed that? Nothing. He was snow and ice and fire and vehemence, and his searing shield, his stalwart guard, his simmering sword, wouldn’t be stopped until his breath ceased and his bones were crushed beneath the weight of the world. Perhaps one day the rest of the earth would understand it – how he spread his devotion and convictions, not by words, not by meaningless discourse, not by flighty or witty dialogue, but through action, through motions, through silent oaths and pledges, vows of assurance and allegiance to people, to places, to things. When they sunk, so did he, his arms grasping and reaching, striving to ensure they all made it to the surface again. But he couldn’t make these moments any better; no control over the end result, over the Stygian existence curling through her veins; an avid frustration contorted in the rivers of his ichor, in the paths of his blood. An inaudible sigh flickered through him, billowed into the wintry air, naught left to salvage but their broken, whittled pieces, his eyes on thorns, on nettles, on how this had all come to be. But the Harpy said could only have time, and he had no way to varnish or bestow or gift that either, helpless and ineffectual once the storm had momentarily receded. The sorrow rattled between bonds, and he shifted warily, the despondency, the misery, enough to shatter, enough to break and fissure something apart. The last notes stab into his chest, because he already had, knew she could probably feel it coursing through his veins – failure, failure, failure – nodding his avian skull. ”We love you too,” was all he could manage, the truth, beatific veracity in places of warped pinnacles and sedition.
"who's gonna let you?"
they asked. i said
"who's gonna stop me?"
