D E I M O S
He could feel the tension visibly dissipate, as if the uncertainty and anticipation had been tangible, substantial, corporeal, and real; he might’ve been capable of reaching out and touching it, just to watch it sizzle, hiss, and crack. His eyes caught, heard, the slow, lingering sigh, and he followed suit, though his ended on a chuckle, on a popped bubble somewhere in the midst. The beast didn’t really understand or comprehend what they were – what any of them were – under these parables and quandaries, beneath the shades of misguided hatred and ill-timed infernos. Perhaps, in his desperation, in his isolation, in his detached, reticent fortifications, he’d instantly thought of Rory as a friend because the man didn’t seem to care about who or what he was, there’d been acceptance and tolerance, a mutual understanding. Then there wasn’t – lost in the warren and tangle of blistering hatred and animosity. But Deimos hadn’t detested the farmer. Deimos hadn’t wished him ill will. He’d stared and tried to convey, tried to understand what everyone craved on that damned knoll, while the world went on without them, spiraling into madness, into rebellion, into something that amounted to naught; dashed with the fall of the spire, with the opening of forests. Maybe Rory didn’t care for him at all, and it'd been one of those hopeless little regards the Reaper sometimes found himself trapped in, building tombs and sepulchers for the things he’d lost along the way. Maybe this was where it ended before it began. Maybe he didn’t have comrades or companions. Maybe he was far more alone than he’d ever realized. Maybe he was stupid and blind. Maybe he was foolish and naïve.
But the responses kept coming, not numbed or sealed, and he chuckled as Rory suddenly hemmed and hawed on the logistics of riots. A haphazard shrug gave way from his shoulders, breaking over the rigidity, the tautness, the bound muscles and coiled ramparts always ready for violence, for vehemence, for destruction, mayhem, and defense. It was a guard. It was a force. It was a blistering, scathing reach so no one could hurt him again. “Perhaps. There was at least an attempt.” The ghost of a grin prospered itself again, though he didn’t look directly at the farmer, gaze brimming on roaming people instead, memories flickering back over incitements and provocations, the way rabble-rousers drummed a crowd, made them pawns and tools for missions and coups. “Would you rather be known as an agitator?” This was hung on a laugh, a chuckle, not so brooding, not so calculated, not so forlorn and dashed away. Now what balanced in the air too, twisting and turning on the sides - he didn’t know where to go from here – because too many times he’d gnashed his teeth, hissed, and told them to never come back. You broke me so I will break you a clamoring knife, a dagger, a sword he’d swung far more than once. But nothing was splintered or fractured here, minor cracks and fissures, the wraiths disappearing, obliviated.
