DEIMOS
Glaciers slid, a gradual release, the pressure too great, too agonizing, too torturous. His sides heave with the effort, his lungs conspire to ruin, to suffocate, to smother before he can utter another word. Because that had always one of his monumental flaws: communication; no urgency to speak, not without thought, not without precision, not without the right inflection or tone. Then the world couldn’t use the discourse as weapons. Then he couldn’t be ignited, annihilated, based on serpent tongues or grasping woes. Then realms and kingdoms wouldn’t find the things he cherished the most, and obliterate them from his life.
But maybe it already had, with or without his hushed ramparts, his rooted defiance.
This was not what he wanted to do. This was not about him. These moments weren’t meant to be strangled by his pain and anguish, by the punishing claws pulling at his ribs. His heart, his chest, hurt, pulsed with feverish intensity, his mind telling him to stop, his jaw clenched, pried apart by her apologies, her leaving, her departure, from his side. Maybe this was how he would lose again too, mauled by the wake of his own brutality, by the calculated measures of his quiet, stoic barbs come back to bite and snap. Maybe she was tired of it. Most had been. Most had left. Most hadn’t bothered to try.
“I thought you were dead.” In the temple, beyond the rubble and the ruin, where a gathered amount of vigilant souls had tried to heal and couldn’t. He didn’t lift his head, left it there, on his arms, face hidden while his throat crackled, while his heart burst. His story had been written by a series of failures, brief, flickering triumphs, and then the heavy burden of loss. Fixtures, filaments, and figures decaying around him, and he’d always had to stand there, had to strive to patch and seam everything back together, even when it didn’t fit anymore. Otherwise he concaved, otherwise he fell apart, and the worlds would have no need of him any longer. What use was a rusted weapon? What good was an eroded machine? “And then you offer your life to Safrin, like it was nothing.” Do you think of me at all? laid in there, beneath fallen walls and fractured bones. And then he’d done the same, because he couldn’t picture his without her in it, the sun, the moon, and the stars. He was the darkness around them, gradually withering at the fringes, at the boundaries. Broken granules scarred inwardly, and he rasped, he swallowed, he held tight to whatever control, composure he had left.
Amidst the suffering, he found her other words, the fragments always come to torture, come to thorn, come to nettle. The Sword could agree with them; because he never said anything to anyone, preferring his suffering in kingdoms apart, where no one could reach him and maul further. “You did not need my misery too.” Then there was an absence, a weight off his shoulders, her, and his fingers reached, dared to grab at fabric, a pull for her when everything else was so off-kilter, so unbalanced, so askew.
But maybe it already had, with or without his hushed ramparts, his rooted defiance.
This was not what he wanted to do. This was not about him. These moments weren’t meant to be strangled by his pain and anguish, by the punishing claws pulling at his ribs. His heart, his chest, hurt, pulsed with feverish intensity, his mind telling him to stop, his jaw clenched, pried apart by her apologies, her leaving, her departure, from his side. Maybe this was how he would lose again too, mauled by the wake of his own brutality, by the calculated measures of his quiet, stoic barbs come back to bite and snap. Maybe she was tired of it. Most had been. Most had left. Most hadn’t bothered to try.
“I thought you were dead.” In the temple, beyond the rubble and the ruin, where a gathered amount of vigilant souls had tried to heal and couldn’t. He didn’t lift his head, left it there, on his arms, face hidden while his throat crackled, while his heart burst. His story had been written by a series of failures, brief, flickering triumphs, and then the heavy burden of loss. Fixtures, filaments, and figures decaying around him, and he’d always had to stand there, had to strive to patch and seam everything back together, even when it didn’t fit anymore. Otherwise he concaved, otherwise he fell apart, and the worlds would have no need of him any longer. What use was a rusted weapon? What good was an eroded machine? “And then you offer your life to Safrin, like it was nothing.” Do you think of me at all? laid in there, beneath fallen walls and fractured bones. And then he’d done the same, because he couldn’t picture his without her in it, the sun, the moon, and the stars. He was the darkness around them, gradually withering at the fringes, at the boundaries. Broken granules scarred inwardly, and he rasped, he swallowed, he held tight to whatever control, composure he had left.
Amidst the suffering, he found her other words, the fragments always come to torture, come to thorn, come to nettle. The Sword could agree with them; because he never said anything to anyone, preferring his suffering in kingdoms apart, where no one could reach him and maul further. “You did not need my misery too.” Then there was an absence, a weight off his shoulders, her, and his fingers reached, dared to grab at fabric, a pull for her when everything else was so off-kilter, so unbalanced, so askew.
i'm in the mood to dissolve in the sky
