a brighter flame

DEIMOS

ache first, but then let the cuts close
spit out the blood

A march into the wind, free from the confines of the office, kept him grounded, kept him tied, kept him tethered. A restless, wild vigilance, following yesteryears and lives before, swept across thresholds, and he could only stand still for so long in their wake, before giving in to the enticement of following the breeze. The chill was familiar, crisp, and keen, abiding no other except itself, and immersed, embedded, in its eclipse, in the lantern-forged lights, in the angles of eternal darkness, his pathways threaded in and amongst the town. He lingered along its enamoring, enticing steel like a moth cast and ignited by flames, remembering a world that could never be again, and how it intersected with this one – aligned and patterned, cyclical and parallel, until it simply wasn’t.

Not one and the same. Not unlike the Reaper and the Sword. Not unlike the Aurora Basin and Halo. Drawn in familiar outlines, in hushed parameters, in the glory of power and menace and might.

Zuriel drifted behind him, breadths and breaths away, and together they meandered and wandered, taken in by the brushstrokes of time and space. His eyes, piercing, puncturing, took their moments of scrupulous images, tracing over the fabric of market stalls, of cobblestones, of reaches beyond the formidable walls – searching for anything out of the ordinary, unfamiliar. Happenstance, the incredulous unknown, or something stark and in between.

watch your body pull itself back together
then let your soul do the same