RORY
Things had been good:good, good, good—
—good.
Things were good. There was the soft, warm warmth of Talys's muzzle against his cheek, her breaths smelling like hay and animal and the frost upon every tree and the stars glimmering in the dark nights. There was the soft, warm warmth of Jigano's golden skin, his hair a halo of snow upon the pillows, the glimmer of his blue eyes—half open—in the sunlight spilling through a window.
There were the goats, and the dogs, and the crops, and the slow, constant, unchanging toil of life. There was the animal, caged and sedated again, except on the stormy nights when it howled and howled and howled—
It was in the darkness yawning wide inside of him. It was in the moments of shadow and silence, when his jaw was clenched and his eyes were hard and faraway, when Jigano wasn't there to blow it all away with a gentle breath.
It was the fear: the pounding of his heart, the rancid taste in his mouth, the flickering lantern in the darkness as he tore through the woods, watching the blight. Tracking it. Tracing it. Looking, always looking, but never finding, and oh so afraid of what it would be like when he finally did—
(Black weeping eyes—)
The snarls. Fangs. The snick of those sharp, sharp teeth closing on air.
It built in him when no one was looking. It tore his mind to pieces when no one was there to witness it. It was the little lies he told himself, because the truth was too hard to bear.
It was standing in his doorway as that long, fateful night approached, holding Jigano tight once more and whispering please come back in his ear and never once saying the thought that curled up on the back of his tongue:
what if I will be the one who doesn't come back?
What if I will be the one who won't be here?
Everything was prepared to perfection: food, snow moss, locks, window blinds, dogs, animals. Everything was quiet. Everything was empty. For the first time in his life he would spend the long night utterly alone.
He thought of her as he sat by the banked embers, a piece of wood in one hand, a sharp knife in the other, teasing little shapes out of it: he thought of her thick blond hair even as his idle mind and idle hands pulled demons out of the wood. He, who always made little charms for good luck to please children only found chaos in the grains, and his mind strayed.
He still didn't know if she was dead.
He didn't know if she was lost.
But he felt tired and so utterly lost and alone and—
snap
The fragile neck of wood gave under the pressure of the still knife, clattering across the floorboards in the otherwise silent night.
Red glowed along the knife's sharp edge.
Red glowed along his shaking hands.
Surely it hadn't been loud enough to carry outside...
His tired eyes drifted to the door. He wondered what he would find if he opened it, what would happen if he invited them, those who had already been here once before.
(I should sleep) was what he wanted to think, but what sat in his mind was this: perhaps the compact dark of the long night would be what swallowed both of Merla's radiant children in the end.
as if you were on fire from within,
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
the moon lives in the lining of your skin.
