Strike A Gourd [Seasonal Event]

Deimos the Reaper You can't take back the cards you've dealt on this long and lonely road to hell the throne must be such a sad and lonely place He hadn’t seen the barb, the thorn, the nettle, coming his way. It was likely uttered in innocence, honeyed, dulcet tones drawn in his direction, causing his eyes to narrow in the slightest of suspicion, but then it stung deep in his chest, and he looked away. A juvenile Deimos, well before he’d ever known the meaning of death, damnation, and desecration, might’ve blushed or rolled his eyes, laughed, but this one flinched, drew up those iron walls. His features were rendered back to absolute nonchalance, complete reticence, the smile gone, the grin vanished, the tangible diversions and amusements smothered, down, down, down, into the reaches of purgatory and hell, where he sputtered and clawed. He shouldn’t have allowed himself the opportunity to be free - those days were long since passed, and he’d tethered the lines, the chains, the manacles to his arms, to his feet, to his soul. The beast didn’t deserve a single amount of contentment or joy, and he’d seemingly forgotten in an instant, as if lives hadn’t been torn apart because of his foibles, because of his flaws, because of his maligned existence. He should’ve been quicker. He should’ve been faster. He should’ve been guarding and protecting, instead of pillaging, plundering, and discarding; and the lesson had scorned him ever since, burned a hole straight through his ribs and lungs, deep in the denizens of his glacial heart. They’re gone because of you was a common theme in his nightmares, and he watched them all burn without his strength, without his abilities, fingers pointed at his figure, faces devoured by flame, by ash, by cinders, by smoke. Then, sometimes, it was the rain, drowning him on the spot, swallowing him whole, consuming every ounce of flesh and bone, sent down to a watery grave, a deluged catacomb. The problem with self-deprecation was that he didn’t know where to go from here: spend his entire life brooding, wallowing, and serving his sentence, spiraling deeper into oblivion, carving his way straight to Styx? What was his purpose now? He loosened a breath, took to distracting himself by lobbing a gourd back and forth between his own feet, listened to it gurgle and growl before it took its place along the goal line with a well-placed kick. The silence ate at him, tore into his skin, and he knew the rest of the world would continue drifting by, eyeing him, pondering, wondering, but eventually positioning their time elsewhere. “I am always fun,” he muttered (but never free); a form of self-ridicule with sarcasm, with bite, with malice and menace only pinpointed at himself. His gaze didn’t even lift back to Rexanna: the shame was too great, disgrace too severe, pretending to be riveted by Edrei’s cat companion instead, reaching down to toss a smaller pumpkin its way, let it delight in merriment.

_{Photo and Table by Time
Photo taken at Hero's Square in Budapest, Hungary}