runaway

KIADA you love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy; it's not enough. There is much to think about – her absence, her reappearance, her friends (family), and the new crown. It’s almost too much that she wants to shift into a vulture and vanish from this world, to return to her old one and reunite with Khairi – maybe in another world, she could reunite with Ru’in too. But there’s no portals here, and she can’t leave Amalia and Deimos (certainly not Deimos again) and so instead of leaving, the Harpy takes to the streets aimlessly. Her feet originally bring her to the army listings, and she sees familiar names there yet none of them hurt as much as seeing Deimos’ handwriting. She sighs, and continues to move, her feet now bring her toward a place she’s never been, the Bone Bridge, and she looks out over the foggy side of the bridge into the depthless white to mull over everything. She isn’t alone, though, Auni has accompanied her again as though the Luxere would never let her leave his sight again. Part of her is thankful for it, and she sinks to the side of the bridge onto the stone (or is it bone?) and sits there as Auni presses himself into her lap and consoles her with his fuzzy head – he is careful of his antlers, and they glow a small amount with the happiness he’s experiencing with the love and attention. He’s aiming to calm her down, yet all Kiada can think of is Deimos being shipped off to fight the Fae. She remembers Delah and the nets, the magic and the creatures, and grits her teeth and stares with her sharpened, icy gaze down to Auni – absolutely terrified to lose someone else she loved again. {set before the KQ!!} you are allowed; to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together. to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. but you are not allowed to save him...

DEIMOS

His sedition, insurrections, and revolutions had always been quiet, subversive ones; collected and drawn on hushed platitudes and long, winding trails: pathways to conviction and demise. They were measured, calculated, adhered to stoic prosperities, so when others glanced into his eyes, they saw absolutely nothing but the ocean, but the sky, but the damned; unreachable in his blistering factions and fathoms. It was how he wanted it, everything rooted, locked, and secured, away, away, away, so they didn’t look too closely, so they couldn’t see within, so they couldn’t pry open corded and roped denizens, so they couldn’t view or witness the sanction of his cloaks, of his daggers, of his rapacious, destructive vehemence. Only when he’d toppled walls and proclaimed his predilections was it too little, too late, a strike, an assault, a siege, a barrage upon their palisades and castles: his seething ramparts hardly distorted along the plain of sedition and riots, his breath a cool, collected phantom, his presence a means to an end.

There were only a scarce few who he’d even permit to stare back into his void, his soul, and not tear them apart, limb by limb.

He found one on the outskirts of the Bone Bridge – he’d never ventured too deep into these contortions, where the stones were bleached like the dead and decrepit, vulture picked and scavenger searched. The Reaper had half an inclination to peek over the edges of the mist, unhinge and liberate himself on the ghosts of the past, where the unknown buffeted against rocks like a rocky coast, but with another’s presence there, familiar and accustomed, he backed away from the fringe. “Kiada,” he called, nefarious depths lingering on hers, uncertain of how or where they stood now – the rush of the past events an encroaching, pressing weight on the stretch and brawn of his shoulders. Perhaps she was simply dissatisfied, caught because he’d been snared and snagged with the rest of them, forced and forged into an army with no end in sight, with no measures or upheaval to understand. Perhaps she was disappointed in him (likely not the first, not the last), if all her frozen, glacial stares had been counted, pinpointed on his soul like a target on his back. Maybe that would hurt worst of all. Then he didn’t know what else to say – so he left it in the wake of silence, until she told him to leave or inquired or did said anything at all; coming into her presence, her existence, hand reaching to scratch Auni, before settling at the harpy’s side, elbows settled on the bridge.

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

KIADA you love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy; it's not enough. If Deimos thinks she is upset with him, he is mistaken. She doesn’t miss the movement within all the fog, nor the large man that approaches on quiet feet. The rumble of his voice with her name takes her back – a time when he had called her before everyone else. Had praised her for her good work. Had made her wish he had been her father instead of the Elephant King. But then he died, and like many confusing terrible things in this world, he breathes and stands, is younger and stronger – with the weight of the many different worlds and memories on his shoulders. She, too, feels the weight. And the Harpy tightens her arms around her companion as her pale head lifts and iceberg gaze slips to meet Deimos’. She says nothing, she will not tell him to leave. If anything, she’s happy he’s found her before Zariah ends up tossing him somewhere she can’t reach him. She contemplates signing up for the army as well, but has refrained. (The girl hasn’t seen Amalia’s name on the sheet yet). He approaches, stretching down to scratch Auni – his antlers glowing a small amount more as he contemplates disregarding his companion to soothe Deimos, too. Yet they both are in a state of disarray, distraught with the way things have so suddenly turned, and she turns her head to Deimos as she sits along the bleached bridge – eyes lingering on him as he rests his elbows on the bridge. “I’m not mad at you.” She says quietly, as though it were something he worried about. “I just don’t want you to go.” Her voice grows quieter – an admittance and a vulnerability that only few would see. you are allowed; to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together. to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. but you are not allowed to save him...

DEIMOS

The Reaper caught Auni’s light in his hands before he gazed upwards at the Harpy’s; he didn’t deserve it, more aware now than ever, little pockets of soothing, assuaging undulations still spiraling across his fingertips. The Luxere received more scratches, a small indulgent smile, before he leaned away, pressed into the bridge as if it would support him and the overwhelming, cumbersome pressure and burden racing across his existence. He wasn’t falling apart, not with all the gnarls and knots roped and corded along his presence: too many convictions, too many assurances, too many particles, too many revolutions, to sizzle and flay him alive now; but some contortions smothered and tightened, wrapped their nooses around his neck and made him remember tempests rising in the east and never bothering to set in the west. He could feel her eyes on him, and he waited for some subsequent blow, another turning point with his feet stuck on the path, sinking deeper and deeper still until he truly had no other way out. The proclamation, however quiet, stuck into his mind though, and he released a solid breath, a liberation of tension, mottled along his brow; not as reticent, not as callous, not as shackled. The warrior’s gaze, piercing and lost, roamed up to hers, and the echoes of ice once in their grasp, the mountains rising up to the sky, obliterating the heavens, resounded: too many withered and fettered sanctions in their lives, in their turmoils, in the endless destruction and mayhem. Some were of their own making, others catapulted and collided back upon them with ferocity, with deceit, with tenors of oblivion, and he’d battered against them because that was what he always did.

Her next words reverberated too, down in the filaments of his bones and skeleton, because he didn’t want to go either, but there are so many things shifting and churning on those signed names, on the promises of sedition, on the building, brewing hostilities. Of course he’d be there, tarnished and barbaric, one more brutal awakening for the world to savor, to have, to hold once more: their breathing weapon, vicious and vehement, spiraling back into the void. “I have survived worse.” They shared their vulnerabilities, a chosen, select few who had ever seen him break into fragments, who had ever seen him shaken: he did the same for her, never revealing any depths of hers to another soul: they were a pair from the summits, from the glaciers, from the haunted hills of refugees and scathing, contemptuous fools. He managed the smallest of smiles for her grim, downcast features, meant to be a joke, a way to soothe instead of rattle, but it might’ve been too late for that. “What have you been up to?”

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

KIADA you love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy; it's not enough. His attempt at a joke falls flat for her. She knows he has survived worse, she knows that whatever war this will be is nothing compared to other lands and other times. And yet, she’s terrified that she’ll lose him to it, even if he believes he can outlast it all. She stares down at Auni, gnawing on her cheek as her icy gaze shadows further. She’s lost so much, so many, and she hates having them be put into these situations time and time again. If it’s not one world, it’s another, full of struggles and rife and destruction. But she doesn’t get to say anything as he questions her as to what she’s been up to. And she has to think about it for a moment. She doesn’t know what she’s been up to – he’s been there for it all aside from the Pit. And well, she hasn’t told anyone about the pit either. It was common knowledge (at least she thought it was) that Amalia and her had visited the gentle creature in the woods. The sacrifice she had given, though her memories were of nothing kind. Amalia, at least Kiada imagined, had given the creature wonderful memories. In the Harpy’s memories sit blood and violence, destruction, the fall of worlds and kings and gods. She tilts her head up to look at Deimos with a small shrug. “Nothing really. Mostly at the Bakery if I’m not out scouting.” She pauses, eyes distant yet remaining on him. “The Pit was… an experience I think I’m still trying to understand. And to return here with all the rules now put in place and a ruler, I’m not sure where that leaves me in the middle of trying to adjust to it all.” She sighs quietly, head shifting to look back down at Auni who’s head rests easily in her lap. She almost wants to tell him of all the things she misses, that the sacrifice she had given made her realize just how lonely she was now. you are allowed; to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together. to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. but you are not allowed to save him...

DEIMOS

Deimos was not a being of absolute power: the scars on his frame told any number of stories of his failures, of his faults, of his near-misses. He wasn’t immortal either: he’d died before, cast aside by his own magic, cauterized and brutalized on the inward lines, stanzas, tissues that could no longer repair themselves; betrayal for betrayal, weapons exchanged, used, then fettered away, fallen apart. He understood her fear, that perhaps this would be the final nail in the coffin for him, and on his last breath, his soul could no longer come back. As his joke flattened, and she gave no other response, he opted out of telling her his near-death experience in the cave, where he’d been stupid, where he’d rushed in, where he hadn’t predicted, machinated, or calculated a single thing, ran heedlessly, recklessly, into screams because somewhere along the line he’d changed into some indulgent, emboldened fool. Or the flinthopper and its burning, raging fire. Or wandering to the Fae Village, without map, compass, or aid, indebted to the wilderness and a sprite who occasionally blinded others. The patterns always managed to repeat, no matter how often he thought he’d veered off the path, circling back around to inept, ineffectual magnitudes, staring him straight in the face as he faced onslaught after onslaught, terror after terror – and for what? For what?

For friends. For allies. For comrades. Maybe they’d be the death of him after all; when he’d finally managed to find some in between dreary outsets and haunting, poignant hours, spent adrift, spent ashore, spent consigned to some measure and means of his own damned oblivion. How many times had he rushed amidst his kingdom, pulled stolen armaments and children out of the clutches of an enemy and lived to tell the tale? How many times had he invaded other lands, stormed other castles, and remained, just as indifferent, just as composed, just as cruel? Perhaps this was his comeuppance.

Here’s what you could have the world whispered. Here’s what you can lose the earth chiseled.

But, in the end, he would probably always fight for them.

The Harpy, at least, had other things he could focus upon, construct in his mind, besides the bewitching, enticing angles of his eventual demise at the hands of his own follies. The piercing fringes of his gaze settled back upon as she shrugged, mostly at the bakery (meaning Amalia; so he didn’t even bother hiding the small smile), and then the pit, the dungeon, the holding cell, too dark and too deep for him to contemplate. “What happened in the Pit?” He didn’t have any other experiences to amount with the hole in the ground, except peering down and dragging Adam out of it, silent as she sighed, another mass, another figure, meant to be a bulwark and a rampart. “Where do you want to be? What do you want to do?” He asked, brow arched, head tilted, muscles bunched and coiled as he leaned further along the bridge. Perhaps that was how they could start over, muddling and pulling their way through the mass of events and drawn conclusions, striving to piece together the here and now. Truth be told, he was stuck too, enlisted but seditious, replicating movements and motions, basking and clawing amidst the same mistakes.

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

KIADA you love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy; it's not enough. “What happened in the Pit?” He asks, and well… That’s the question isn’t it? What did happen in the Pit? So much and yet nothing at all. She doesn’t know where to begin, but she inhales deeply, preparing to tell the story. “I was dropped into the Pit and saw Amalia and Adam, and it was wonderful to have her back. She assured us she’d find a way for us to get out, and suddenly she disappeared with the Chief of the Fae.” She recalls, eyes far away and distant despite looking up at Deimos. “There was storm coming, so I went into the place we slept. Adam and I talked for a bit.” She pauses, eyes drifting down. “Slept in the same bed that night, and I woke the next morning to be sacrificed.” She doesn’t say that it was nice to have another’s touch (not in the way of sleeping with someone often does, but the comfort of another breathing soul beside her), someone just as alive and well as she. The conversation, the no strings attached. It’s part of what makes her realize how lonely she is here, now. She had Ru’in once upon a time, her brother, Erebos, so many in Helovia. In the Rift, she had Rixen and their small budding romance that took over a year before she confided the feelings within him. And then she was ripped away, lost her companion and part of her soul before being dumped here. And with the cracked piece of her soul left behind, she found Ru’in again. But the cracks grew bigger when he died for a second time. And whatever broken, crumbling pieces are left, she doesn’t know how to hold them, how to show them to anyone except Deimos and Amalia. And now, now with Deimos and Amalia signed up for the army it feels as though a wind has blown through and is taking the rest of the pieces with them. She feels hollow and empty, void of light and happiness. He asks her what she wants to be, what she wants to do, and she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know what she can do anymore. “Once I wanted to be a healer, because it was different from the warrior of my father and the thief of my mother.” She pauses, eyes staring sightlessly at the ground. “Then I became a fighter for the Rift, a protector.” She remembers saving a small child from the Magnus Metus, a creature of darkness without eyes, ready to swallow the world whole. She also remembers the brief moment of thinking she’s in love with the god that destroyed Helovia, and she scrunches her brows together. “I think I just become what people need me to be.” She concludes, lacing her fingers together uncertainly. “But does anyone here really need me like they did before?” you are allowed; to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together. to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. but you are not allowed to save him...

DEIMOS

To a degree, most of their worlds have been the dipped in the same brushstrokes as all the others: vibrant streaks of hope, and endless blurs and blends of disastrous hues. The Reaper had no idea of what had occurred to the little fire child after he’d died, perished and forsaken, dispatched just as quickly as he’d devastated others; but here, the stakes seemed to be parallel, equal, demonstrative qualities of prosperity, then ruin. He listened, quiet, a bastion, a port in the storm, while she shared, and he took it all in, the details, the tragedies, the slender triumphs between the trials and tribulations, wondering what they’d all done to get this far, to be so mired and riddled by havoc. Perhaps they were too bold, too brazen, too inept, too ineffectual, marching along the intervals and lines that they should’ve blatantly ignored, read more into warnings and disaster, thought better than to trip upon the scattered thorns and nettles. But they kept doing it, over and over and over again, and though he was stoic, thought he was reticent, somewhere along his ribs and lungs, his heart and soul, were tiny slivers of jagged edges, wishing they could’ve been more, could’ve done more, could’ve been faster, could’ve been stronger, could’ve done something else to alleviate the pit occupants’ pain. To be sacrificed was such a horrific connotation, even if he understood its wit and measures now, culminating in proffering memories, neither forsaken or gone, but recited, collected, as if they were little anthems and tattoos spread amidst turtles and infernos. “I am sorry we were not there sooner,” was all he could muster, his jaw clenched, hands tightening into fists, before breathing, inhaling, exhaling, in the shape of someone not so damned disastrous and molten. Those moments were already gone: he couldn’t acquire them back, only to rip them apart, piece by piece, shard by shard – escaped and liberated, to what means, to what measures, to what ends had yet to be quantified or revealed. She didn’t offer or say which recollections she’d picked out of the hordes, and he didn’t ask: not certain where contentment would’ve started, or if they would’ve all been brutal and dark, treacherous and sinuous, with the deity wishing he’d never asked for anything of the warrior.

He could feel her crumbling beside him though, no longer a particle of stone or fire, the embers doused, the flares seething, weary, and the depths of his ferocious gaze settled upon her with naught but his faith and determination. Kiada was always more than bits of hollow veils and empty shrouds; it was how he’d remembered her, beatific and wild, untamed and savage, eternally willing to command her movements and motions into anything she wanted, craved, desired. A fighter for the Rift, a world he’d never known, deceased and then reborn, resurrected back into opposing sides and the singular storyline: stupid, stupid, stupid, incapable of being there for anyone or anything that ever actually required him (did they? the earth asked and rumbled. Did they want you at all?).

Useless and vacant – that was how he’d come to be.

But his hands reached for her, intended to pluck her straight off the bone bridge’s adornments and eerie, enigmatic, bleached décor, and straight into his chest – a warm, protective embrace, safe and tucked away from the darkness, from the unholy divisions colliding into them. “We need you,” he rumbled, dignified and certain, a nod as he hid her from the knives and daggers, as he strived to incite and kindle the fire. “But it is not for us to dictate your life.” He stepped back, hands on her shoulders, intending for her to look up at him, to see the ferocity and veracity tucked in the fathoms of his eyes. “You are strong. You have always been strong.” The beast’s head tilted, surveyed her again, the particles of Kiada that had frozen in his memory, alive now, caught in the tumultuous, tempestuous gale of her life – too burdened by sorrow, etched and sketched and scarred like the rest of them. “So how can you utilize that strength?”

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

KIADA you love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy; it's not enough. He apologizes that they weren’t there sooner, but she doesn’t accept it. It’s not his fault, it’s not any of their faults. It just is. She shrugs her shoulders as though it doesn’t matter, uncertain of how Deimos might respond to such a gesture, but she doesn’t know how to respond. She can tell him time and time again that it’s not his fault, yet she knows him too well to where despite the assurances, he’ll bury it deep within him. Another failure, another way to be better. And yet the fact remains it isn’t his fault. But she offers him more, the breaking and bending, the pieces and dust billowing away in the wind – a hollow shell of a person, fractured and splintered. She doesn’t expect his touch, and for a moment she twitches where his hands reach for her – not a flinch, but a reaction to not being touched in so long. He’s strong, too, as he lifts her from the bridge into his arms, the warmth, her face burying into his chest. She shuts her eyes tight as the rumble of his voice reverberates in the air around them and echoes in the chasm of his chest. She knows he’s right, but it doesn’t make it any easier. Inhaling a shuddering breath, she hugs him back (wondering if maybe in another time, a different life, if her own father would’ve hugged her as such, or simply expected her to be the warrior she was meant to), and then he pulls away – rough, calloused hands on her shoulders as she looks up to him, to meet his so similar icy gaze with her own, except now her own are swimming beneath the weakness of tears. He tells her she’s strong, and she believes him even if she doesn’t feel like it. “I miss them.” She tells him through hazard breaths, a tear sliding down her pale cheek. “I miss my brother. I miss Ru’in. I miss Rixen. I miss Erebos and the Basin.” She names them off like tallies on a wall – lost, dead, almost forgotten, if not for her. She almost misses how he asks her how she can utilize the strength, she doesn’t know. Before it had been a whetstone, to edge and sharpen her blade to fight back against the injustices of the world, of the shit that constantly got thrown at her. Perhaps she needs to become a blade once more. “I can make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else.” She replies quietly, hushed, reddened eyes that scan the panes of his face. you are allowed; to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together. to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. but you are not allowed to save him...

DEIMOS

They were settled, they were rooted, they were strong, and it was so easy to forget the notions after all the demons they’d faced. The burdens sometimes felt just as mighty, just as weighty, just as extreme and cumbersome, blades in the back, cutlasses in the chest, nooses tied, gnarled, and knotted around their necks. But it had always been her perseverance, her audacity, the spitfire reflections he’d admired, and they were merely dampened now, requiring air, oxygen, a spark, coals incited and incensed, kindled and set aflame. His chilling, barbaric intricacies took her woven coals and ignored the ashes, the soot, the dust, there to remind her who she really was, a small smile tucked along his lips, a soft sigh billowing and escaping from his lungs. The names and faces battering against his form chisel and sculpt, etch and sketch, detail the figments of another time, another place, mountains he yearned for, thrones he’d escaped, wars and barbarities that had sculpted him. “You do not need to forget them. They stay with you. They have shaped you.” All of them were buried in the chambers of his nefarious heart; their faces in his dreams or nightmares, bright against snowy outlines or twisted conditions. He had more beasts to fill the void: Mauja. D’art. Psyche. Huyana. Loth. Erebos. Ulrik. Blue upon blue upon blue, white upon white upon white; summits rising into the heavens, glaciers sprung between cataclysms and walls, the rise and fall of tempestuous beings and their descendants, the vitriol, the hate, the anarchy contorting upon their own masses because they were all too numb, too spiteful, too chaotic. He shook his head, left his hands on her shoulders, tossed her back and forth in his hold as if to shake her out of the doldrums, out of the catacombs, a chuckle on his tongue, but sagacity in his voice. “But we cannot forget the present either.”

Because that’s what he’d done – for a lifetime, sinking and sinking and sinking into the muck and mire of his own creation, forgetting how to live, how to dream, and waiting to die, to be with them again. There’d been no purpose. There’d been no motivation – merely disaster and ruin, the same annihilations and desecrations as before, as if he’d learned absolutely nothing from either life: doomed to repeat the same arcane refrains.

Until here. Until now.

His piercing depths glanced back to her, committing the wilderness, the untamed shards, into his memories. “You could.” His lips pressed together, brow furrowing, suggestions lingering in his hold. “You could fight alongside us.” And she must’ve known he didn’t mean the army, he didn’t mean that stupid parchment with their names splashed across it – but the sedition, the upheaval, the intonations lacquered between nuances and enlistments. He'd be protection, a shield, a guiding beacon of barbarity and revolution - a promise, a conviction, a vow he'd always been trying to keep.

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

KIADA you love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy; it's not enough. It’s easy to forget the triumphs when everything you encounter is a battle. And Kiada has faced so many battles, that the idea of her being some sort of pillar of strength is laughable. She’s been through so much, and deep down she believes that if she were better, stronger, more powerful, that maybe she wouldn’t have to face all the hard times. She just wants to know when it ends, when the feeling of being worried about everyone she cares for will disappear and she could simply be. But what does that even feel like? What would she do? She can’t answer the questions, and instead numbingly nods to Deimos, not even wiping the rogue tears that streak down her pale cheeks to drip from her chin. “I don’t want to be alone.” She whispers back. She knows they’re with her, but they’re gone. Khairi, too, taking a piece of her soul wherever he’s gone. She has a piece of him left every time she shifts into the pale bird and takes to the sky, but it’s not the same. It’s not his usual banter, his pride and arrogance. It’s just her and Auni, and no one else. Even Deimos and Amalia have each other, and despite the fact Kiada has them too, it’s different. She loves them so very much, she always has. From the minute Amalia embraced her when Ru’in passed, from when Deimos had rewarded her for her hard work back home. She wants to live in the past, with Ru’in there and her brother, her companions and family, when things were simpler and less painful. Would she have even continued if she knew how hard it would get? She chews on her lips, red tinged eyes glancing toward Deimos’ face as he mentions they can’t forget the present. But what was there to do in the present? Constantly worry, fight, worry and fight again? The Harpy inhales a shaky breath and nods in response to him. “I am a fighter.” She insists, despite the defeat in her voice. It’s all she’s ever known. She’s fought and survived, cursed out a god numerous times and lived, even saved his life once upon a time. And yet… Yet all she wants is something constant, that can’t leave her like everyone else. you are allowed; to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together. to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. but you are not allowed to save him...

DEIMOS

Alone – the whispers in the dark, the shadows pressing in, the gnawing abyss, the crowning void, echoing and clawing for its king. Detachment and reticence, apathy and acrimony, had been there for most of his life, coming in waves and cycles, when the world took everything from him and tore it all apart, when he stopped trying to reach forward and grab something out of the storm. He was familiar, a part of its ominous beacon, so easily consumed by oblivion, by the haunting, poignant threads, by the gnarls and knots trapping him from within. But inch by inch, little by little, the people lingering around these Stygian pursuits plucked him out of the shell, out of the vacuity, setting him along paths where inhabitants beckoned brighter than the merciless ravines. He’d tried and they’d tolerated, accepted, his behemoth vessel and his silent, sullen, grim lines, invited him into their reaches, into their folds, until he could see more than his misery, and become more than his melancholy. He could do the same for her.

“I have tried,” (tried to push everyone away because it was easier to barely exist than watch them all perish again, to wither, to fade, to decay) he confessed, when she uttered about not wanting to be on her lonesome, caught in the ruses of her own tempestuous storm, the actions, the motives, the waves crashing down around her. The Reaper wouldn’t want her lingering in the same treads, paths, or footfalls he’d already taken – the road was traversed upon with so much contempt, so much self-loathing, and so many damned precipices, he was afraid she’d be tethered and smothered there, losing the brazenness, the boldness, that had once shaped her, that had once encouraged a damaged monarch to look her way, push and encourage her into something besides onslaughts and terrors. He’d experienced it – it wasn’t worth the weight, the price, the devouring and swallowing of one’s soul.

He could say a thousand things about lost loved ones: about how they lingered in memories and dreams, about how they ensured that it was possible for their ridiculous, consumed essences to be cherished by another (and how remarkable; for more than one person to believe he was even worth glancing upon), about how they never truly left them, about how they carved and whittled their way into anything and everything. Maybe she already knew, had witnessed the coil of her brother’s strength wrapped in hers. Perhaps she’d savored Ru’in’s smile and tucked it within her own when the world wasn’t watching. His eyes watched her, unaware of all the other things she’d had taken from her in the crossfire, in the years where he’d simply been gone, extinguished, left into the earth, dead, dead, dead, a ghost, a phantom, a reaper reaped. “You have friends. You have family. You have us.” You have me. He arched a brow, meant to be in good humor, yearning for her to look around and rejoice in what was there, in what she had already – the past clung, hoping someone would make the same mistakes, and he didn’t want it to be the Harpy.

She could worry. He did too – but then action replaced apprehension, motions and maneuvers replaced consternation, and they became a threat instead of a thread tightening around his ribs. “And you know how to persevere. His voice was a vow, an assurance, a piece notched in the ether, in his hands, in his hold. "That is what we will do.”

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky

KIADA you love each other, you do, and here's the tragedy; it's not enough. He says he’s tried, and her eyes flicker from the pale fur of Auni and the strangeness of the bone bridge to look up at the Reaper. Her brows furrow slightly, but she understands. She remembers the pillar of strength in the Basin, the only one that held them up. She remembers seeing him standing alone, despite him having multiple people around him to support him. He never let them close. She recalls her own mother, having made it close to the man before her only to leave him too. And she wonders if that’s why he watches from a distance, afraid to get close. And she understands. Sucking in a deep breath, she tells him she’s a fighter and her eyes shift over his face to meet his own blue gaze as he responds. He tells her how much she does have, and yet all she can see are them leaving. One after another, a light snuffed out again and again. But the Harpy has become a perfect creature of worry and fear, and she understands why she’s like that but it pains her so. She nods to him when he tells her she’ll persevere, that they both will, and she offers him a small smile and a nod, even if her gut still feels awful. “Yes. Yes we will.” She tells him, regardless if she believes it or not. you are allowed; to watch the sun swallow him whole and burn him up, to stain your fingers to the bone holding him together. to count the constellations in his eyes as they blink out. but you are not allowed to save him...

DEIMOS

He could’ve been a machine again – a living, breathing weapon, defiant until the last moment, reticent and indifferent, watching the world pass him by until there was an instant he could smite it. That had been his way for what felt like centuries – few getting close, because then it wouldn’t hurt, because then they’d leave him the hell alone and he could commit his atrocities, his predilections, his pursuits. The primordial sword could’ve lacerated them all and he wouldn’t have felt any pain, would have been left to his own devices, to brew and brood and collect dust on his icy throne, with his chilling scepter, with his intentions towards demise. He could’ve been a hollow crater, a vessel with no soul, nothing, nothing, nothing, until the world turned black and dark, like his heart, like his essence, and everything, everyone, massacred in his wake.

But then, people happened. Huyana. Rexanna. Kiada. Amalia. The list kept growing and growing, and they didn’t leave him to his own merciless wake, to his own reckless, unrelenting ambitions, tugging and pulling him along until the darkness didn’t seem to touch his eyes so often, until the debris settled around his feet instead of along his tethers, nooses, and threads. Was that better? He bled just as much: but for them, and not for himself. Was that better?

The question spiraled through his mind as he continued to gaze upon the firebrand, as he thought, mulled, and inquired over the broken barbs and thorns clustered and contorted in his abyss. Did his heart ache any less, because it moved for others instead? Were they all foretold to leave one another, piece by piece, shard by shard, string by string, until eventually, they all returned to where they’d began? Or was his pride, his convictions, his thousands of oaths, vows, and assurances, going to be able to save them all, time and time again?

He was a shield. He was a sword. And he’d do his damn best for any one of them. The Reaper couldn’t do anything to terminate the consternation except gain strength and prowess, and make the whole world realize that he, they, were a force to be reckoned with. “So we train,” he nodded, arching his brow again with the barest hint of a grin. “And we scheme.” Then he raised his hand so it lingered in front of her forehead, before a finger flicked her, intentionally, right between her eyes. “And we work together.” It wouldn’t stop her from worrying; it didn’t cease him from the apprehension either – but preparation meant they might be ready for the long road ahead, instead of fussing over which damned thing was going to get them next.

i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky