Serenity

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts He'd never been to the Oasis – but the stones, the water were a calling refrain, an echo of things he’d lost and found – broken, whittled chinks of armor stuck to his chest, humming, crooning, in the interval of his stalwart boundaries. They were calming, instituting composure when he shouldn’t have any left, not after landslides and new bruises, scars, and wounds, not after the flickers of domination and supremacy crackling down their spines, not after, after, after everything. The hints of dusk played across the surface of the pool and made him recollect a hundred myriad things, the cast of the Moonlit Tides and their salty air, the scream and cry of gulls, the rush and hiss of the current, where he would play and invoke mischief and design rudimentary schemes, where he was free and liberated. He stared across its reflection, its watery veneer, its glassy exposure, thought about diving into its depths and remembering the zeal, the fervor, the rush of its power and prowess, clutching him in its grasp, a promise that he was nothing, but could become something. But the beast didn’t – muscles tired and spent, not quite fully healed, better than death and annihilation, but a brutal, barbaric reminder that he could’ve been lost so damned easily – and instead, chiseled his way along the embankment, a predatory, quiet, hushed inclination. His senses told him something was out there – but it could’ve been anything, and he was not Attuned, capable of taking flight after it and exploring, exploding, into the midst. The Reaper could’ve roared, could’ve howled, could’ve manifested and divulged a series of imposing dominions, a cluster of intimidating barrages; but instead he slunk, lowered down into the lengthy grass, a predator on alert. It was a savage prowl, an awakening of his senses, a broadening of his chest as he inhaled, as he exhaled, as he remembered, recalled, how to hunt. Nefarious, hushed, nearly inaudible factions and rituals, despite his bulk, despite his size, usually monolith and tower, Colossus and giant, but lingering down into the sway of jungle cats and mountain lions, carving, sculpting, a requiem for the unknown, poised, like the edge of a knife, like the fringe of a dagger, like the swing of a broadsword. the last of a line of lasts