who we are and all that we're trying to be
He’d lived with ghosts for as long as he could remember or recall – and it’d always taken him time to shake off the feelings of their souls, of their presence, in the corner of his eyes or the pinnacle of his memories. By the time he eroded, by the time he surfaced, by the time he breathed again, there was always something else. He’d moved forward, only to be flanked and slammed by another event, another cataclysm – this one too fresh, too new, just days before. The beast was allowed to mourn and sink for as long as it took – usually too long – trauma billowing and etching its way into his skin time after time after time, and once he thought himself numb to it all. Sometimes he wished he still was – the embittered, the rancorous, but also the indifferent, apathetic, and nonchalant. No one could touch him, no one could reach him, no one could damage the inner workings of his malicious, unrelenting soul. Except here they could, because he cherished and devoted instead of shirking away into the shadows, and lords the darkness was all the more tempting now, something to bite down upon, something to relish in, something he understood and comprehended when the world started its storms.
So it would take more hours, more days, more seasons, until the holes were filled in. Until new ones took their place.
The uncertainty of Grounder versus Outlander status caused the slightest of shrugs, as if it didn’t matter. The status was persistent, the notions of nothingness consistent. “More than a year.” There were once stings of those percussions and hated, hissing, grating growls over fields while they watched those fighting Spire Demons die and fall apart. They hadn’t held those in some time, not after they’d upheld and cherished traditions, not after they’d melded and molded. But the everlasting notions were still there, still present, in the back of minds.
“Yes,” he answered thereafter at the implications of disasters, half-tempted not to say anything more on them, not relishing in reliving them. Maybe he’d opened that up on his own though, skimming over the surface in hopes it wouldn’t be scorched or touched upon. “We endured LongNight, where monsters reign and we hide.” Or opened doors, waiting for the demons to come in and feast while they struggled to save. “We had a festival to celebrate our survival, and to represent Rae and Frey: Fiat Lux. It did not go well.” Maybe an understatement – considering the amount of death and destruction it exhibited, how many lives had been scorched, maimed, and mauled. Everything else had seemed fine, up until the end.
The Sword fell silent then, listening to fairy stories and of mothers who exhibited tales to their children. He’d only been told the capturing the sun story once, by Ianto, and truth be told he hadn’t been in the grandest mood for it – ultimately distracted by pending rescue attempts, reeling back into his memories. “The days grow longer because the Fae capture the sun. They weave or acquire baskets to catch the sun’s rays. Meanwhile, respect is paid to Safrin, with gifts and song.” He didn’t say, didn’t look too deeply and wonder if they were supposed to dread the upcoming festival for this one either, if something was damned and doomed to go wrong. “In the middle of LongHeat there is a midnight festival, and everyone brings their baskets and a gift to put in another’s. Like releasing the sun.”
Then there was the skirmish and duel upheld, the shift of her scythe blocking his swing, testing her defenses. Her blade rose again, clearly intending for a brush across his chest, and on instinct, on practiced maneuvers, on primeval things lodged in his mind, his sword met her blade, raised to meet across and out, another hindering, deflecting, muscles upholding and taking the accord in stride. Instead of swinging it either way, he simply tried to push against the scythe’s wares – a conflagration of strength rippling through, intending to send her backwards and away.
Information though was still a tracing thing, and he took what he could: Warden of Halo, opened portals likely causing tribulations. “They do that,” he proffered in a sort of twisted humor. For all the freedom and liberation, for all the new things unfurling before them, there’d always been hardships too.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
