who we are and all that we're trying to be
Deimos had been born into a world with gods of hatred and condemnation, a spread of their vitriol, avarice, and abhorrence an everyday occurrence, normal to consider them nothing or everything, normal to be ignored, detached, from the wreckage and ruin. Even when he’d pleaded, begged, for their expanse, for their abilities, for the rain to become whole, he was left within stark fields, talking to nothingness, never an ear inclined in his direction. The same could’ve been said for Helovia, with its fickle deities and demanding heavens, with their manipulative wiles, with their specious jurisdictions, with their blatant favoritism. No matter if he’d bent a knee in their direction, no matter if he’d proffered any words of reverence. The Reaper had been his own weapon, a blade for the Basin, sharpened and honed on the chilling fringes, on the glacial boundaries, on the nonchalant suffering. Guarded, trying not to give too much of his entity into their wiles here and now; knowing that it might’ve been too late, placing faith in himself, in his companions, in the ways of human intertwining. Maybe it was foolish. Maybe he was already far gone, slipped into their ethereal ethers the moment he requested the prowess, the potential, of more strength and dominion.
Her name was only an echo, and he pondered what else there was to define, to scrape away, if this Chulane, new and foreign, had merely wandered into the sanction without a herald’s guidance; automatically emboldened and embedded with fur and claws. Much like the Sword had been anointed with incantations, with enchantments, the moment he took his first breath, his first heartbeat, no choice, no looking back.
Instead of any other queries, it was the length of time he’d been amidst the shifts, the animal contortions. In a vaguely predator sway, a tilt of his head, a rumbling scrutiny in carnivore collections and coils, the beast considered. Had it been so long since he’d gone to Safrin, and she’d lifted him into the sky, released his frame from the horizon and let him descend amongst and amidst ghosts, to find his wings? A year, if not a little more here and there, the season’s change nearly upon them now, the passing of time swift when they journeyed from one chaotic emblem to the next. Survival, somehow, someway, after every notion and nuance, after every trial and tribulation. I was Abandoned first he added, eternally thrust into the inferno. Would Chulane even understand the weight of the word? How it’d been scorned and reviled (and how he hadn’t cared, his head raised and powers controlled, ensuring some level of prowess and distinction amidst a time where discontent simmered and seethed)?
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
