DEIMOS
Heave the silver hollow sliver
Deimos was afraid, terrified, clinging to shallow waters, where he was comfortable, where he could tread lightly, meander and wander along known ventures. But the paths here were growing foreign, not twisted, not gnarled, but unfamiliar, novel, experiences coiling over his senses that had been grown over, frozen, immersed in ice. He’d spent so long grieving, brooding, and brewing any number of things, occasions, events, and lost, beloved individuals, that he merely thought that was how he’d spend the rest of his days, drifting in and out of cold, acrimonious malevolence. He’d slip into vile indiscretions, he’d sink into desolation, he’d isolate himself, cruel to his own soul, to his own entity, barbed, forsaken, renounced, a relinquished pariah void of sentiments – and that would be the pattern, the ritual, until he breathed his last again, scorching over the same winding motions, the same feral decadence. All these things were before - Before Caido. Before renewals and resurrections. Before redemption.
Before Amalia – and all these other blades coming to surround him, not pointed at his chest, not directed at his existence, but there, beside him, accepting, tolerating, understanding who and what he was prior to his own comprehension. He was more than echoes and reflections of deplorable means and measures. He was more than a mountain, more than a ruin. He was more than a weapon, more than a machine, more than anarchy and knives. Maybe he’d try to believe in it too.
He’d be devastated to lose all of it again. It’d taken this long to try and piece him back together. Gone was the shell, gone was the hollowed vessel, and in its wake, something consumed life instead of distorting it, something ached and yearned and craved instead of unraveling everything he’d ever strived to do.
The beast took in the warmth of her devotion and didn’t know what to do with it except to relish, except to savor, except to cherish, hold as tightly as he could, protective and guarding, reverence and rapturing glinting and refracting off of shadows, off of moonlight, off of beams of sunlight and the stars. It wasn’t fair, really, the way she could take his breath away with a mere touch (starved; he’d once been starved of any caresses, any strokes, any sort of affection – and now it made him tremble, made him shudder). The heathen half-intended to catch her thumb in his mouth, graze the tender skin with teeth, rake them all down to oblivion; but the notion ended there, on spiraling thoughts, on a smile, on mercurial whims coiling in his mind.
The proximity wasn’t new – not since their first ventures into affection, devotion, and ardor, but the space confined, just them and the evening, not spread out into dancing wiles or entangled mischief. His arm lingered along her waist, over her hips, coiled on his side so he could tuck all her angles, all her curves, in his monolithic wake, every breath with her in it. He didn’t know what to do – lost and lost and lost, no maps, no charts, no plots – taking and giving what he could.
So maybe it was the vulnerability, the last walls coming down and him stretching out to meet her, parting through fog, mist, and labyrinths, that made his voice rumble and beckon across the top of her hair, lips crooning into gold. “Love you,” didn’t roam, didn’t saunter; piercing and stalwart, strong and enduring, promises and vows curled in gilded clarity. Then he clutched and held all the more, as if the words would cause her to disappear.
Unite and spread the heart apart
