Serenity

DEIMOS Delivered from the blasts The Merciless clearly didn’t have much respect for any of those who lived here, or their actions. But perhaps she hadn’t seen them: down in the caves, when they struggled to find the source of outcries, why pain and anguish lingered in the dirge and din; when the flinthopper hastened its fire and flames across forests and harkened to ignite fields, when LongNight pressed and they were offered sanctuary. There were hundreds of notions and perils, of trials and tribulations, yet, they’d managed to survive each and every one without blistering wars or drum beats from afar; gallivanting them to raise their pitchforks or munitions, cluster together and assault some neighboring force. “It depends,” he proffered in the exchange, still not looking at her, waiting for the ground to swallow him whole; diffident, reserved, and callously irreverent. A common thread, kindred spirits incited and scathed against his bones; he didn’t want to be entangled in the same niche: yearning to not be in similar realms. But the past loomed and haunted, scratched and clawed, and there had been days stretched under glacial mountains and voracious summits, where he’d clutched at a throne, at a crown, someone else discarded – taken, taken, taken, scepter in hand while others dispatched and fled; when he’d merely been a soldier, a General, suddenly hastened and thrust into politics. They failed him now too – as  she asked if he was opposed to her rule, and he bit back the retort, the snort, the rising growl in his throat, smothering them down, down, down into his chest. His gaze, a foreboding, ominous wake in its own right (ghosts, phantoms, and wraiths, tucked there, a restless animosity threatening to escape), was unattainable, unreachable, unobtainable, cloaked and hidden, a dagger in the dark. The only thing to crack in his impenetrable stance was a lift of his brow, arched at her blunt accord. “That will be contingent upon your actions.” Ambivalent, inconclusive, reticent, a blackguard along the threshold, his judgment just as reserved as his frame. the last of a line of lasts