DEIMOS
the resurrected sword
Unaware of any more turns, his life had become one seemingly endless segment of twists lately, the Sword had carried on as he’d done the past several weeks – surviving. With watchful and confused glances towards Hotaru, until she had other business to attend to, with hunting, with gathering, with meeting others like-minded in their pursuits (though the numbers had felt like they were dwindling), striving to forge onward instead of crumpling, crumbling, and falling to all those angled pieces. Holding himself together, bit by bit.
Freshly bathed from a nearby river, wet hair pulled back into its typical messy bun, the man crouched over his latest fire pit, the incantations drawn upwards, until the roar was adequate, and the spit from the morning’s hunt established with the blink hares upon the metal proportions, intending to rotate them once everything had settled. Enough to satisfy him and Belial, and maybe Ru when she returned.
The aforementioned peryton, quick and wily and more of a guardian than ever, picked up on the movement and motion of others while Deimos worked. With a high, shrill, piercing screech, he’d sounded his alarm – though the Sword was half-inclined towards a lecture again (because lately everything had become cause for the shriek), the words died behind his teeth, when he lifted his head and saw her.
Felt her first, perhaps, difficult to discern in the wave of emotions brimming and blinding over the surface. With no masks or pretenses, for he’d had no time to prepare them, the confusion was paramount first – widened eyes, a slackened jaw, a tilt of his head to express the bewilderment – before his vocals did the same. “Amalia?” Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the sickness was back. And all the bombardments curled without any place to go but his mind, expanding outwards into Attuned measures, wandering in the assortment of relief, despair, sorrow, regards for those beloved, unfurling wildly in the midst of these bizarre circumstances.
And like so many times before, without thinking, without the semblance of his walls, he reached out a hand to her frozen proportions. “What are you doing here?” Voice threading only to a whisper, as if she might be a mirage; not real.
Freshly bathed from a nearby river, wet hair pulled back into its typical messy bun, the man crouched over his latest fire pit, the incantations drawn upwards, until the roar was adequate, and the spit from the morning’s hunt established with the blink hares upon the metal proportions, intending to rotate them once everything had settled. Enough to satisfy him and Belial, and maybe Ru when she returned.
The aforementioned peryton, quick and wily and more of a guardian than ever, picked up on the movement and motion of others while Deimos worked. With a high, shrill, piercing screech, he’d sounded his alarm – though the Sword was half-inclined towards a lecture again (because lately everything had become cause for the shriek), the words died behind his teeth, when he lifted his head and saw her.
Felt her first, perhaps, difficult to discern in the wave of emotions brimming and blinding over the surface. With no masks or pretenses, for he’d had no time to prepare them, the confusion was paramount first – widened eyes, a slackened jaw, a tilt of his head to express the bewilderment – before his vocals did the same. “Amalia?” Maybe he was hallucinating. Maybe the sickness was back. And all the bombardments curled without any place to go but his mind, expanding outwards into Attuned measures, wandering in the assortment of relief, despair, sorrow, regards for those beloved, unfurling wildly in the midst of these bizarre circumstances.
And like so many times before, without thinking, without the semblance of his walls, he reached out a hand to her frozen proportions. “What are you doing here?” Voice threading only to a whisper, as if she might be a mirage; not real.
under the bludgeonings of chance
my head is bloody, but unbowed
my head is bloody, but unbowed
