Whoa, you let your feet run wild
Time has come as we all go down
A muffled laugh made its way through his throat, not choked down, not swallowed, but quiet, a rumble of tenacity. “No, they do not.” He’d tried his hand, after all, between drunken melodies with Amalia and only small, paltry glimpses with Samuel, airs of war strains not feeding into the deer’s livelihoods and whims either. “Hence why I do not assist in gathering them.” Too much darkness, too much lethality, in his bones and his marrow, either by magic or simple actions for so many years. A system of the inevitable, capable of honoring the irreverent, the damned, the broken, the carnage, but rarely encompassing the lighter edges. It was others who’d brought that to him, figments of suns and stars and sagacity beyond hatred, rage, and vehemence. Besides, he did his part for LongNight in other ways; providing provisions, making plans, establishing grounds they could wall themselves within. They’d just have to be better this year.
He wound the cinders around and around, watching as sparks flew but ceased to catch, controlled and contorted back to their brethren, heightening on inhales, dimming and lowering on exhales. His head tilted again, listening all the more while enchantments wrapped and goaded, provoked and amplified, then fizzled, wanting the rise and fall within his lungs. The sigh only encouraged an arch to his brow, waiting for the inevitable too. Dead siblings, nearly-demised sisters, wakes of buried things that no one wanted to repeat, were understandable, guarded circumstances. The Sword’s gaze pressed in along the fire, and then to the outer reaches of canopies, of stark outlines that could’ve once been walls, comprehending both angles. “I have felt the same about my loved ones.” Wanting to shelter, wanting to protect, wanting to be the shield, the dagger, the maiming, ripping, clawing monster before them so no one else could touch, could damage, could destroy. To take every nuance of danger and treachery, to leech and lance it into his bones, and never into theirs, to protect until his final breath – as he’d done in prior worlds and lives. He thought of Amalia, wandering constantly into the midst of drama and upheaval, of Kiada, who wanted to save Ru’in’s soul, how neither of them wanted him to be a hovering, harpooning mass around them. “But I cannot hold them back either.” There for them in every failure, in every triumph, when they circumvented the globe and the galaxies, when they roamed together and fought, fought, fought. “You learn to choose your moments carefully.”
He wound the cinders around and around, watching as sparks flew but ceased to catch, controlled and contorted back to their brethren, heightening on inhales, dimming and lowering on exhales. His head tilted again, listening all the more while enchantments wrapped and goaded, provoked and amplified, then fizzled, wanting the rise and fall within his lungs. The sigh only encouraged an arch to his brow, waiting for the inevitable too. Dead siblings, nearly-demised sisters, wakes of buried things that no one wanted to repeat, were understandable, guarded circumstances. The Sword’s gaze pressed in along the fire, and then to the outer reaches of canopies, of stark outlines that could’ve once been walls, comprehending both angles. “I have felt the same about my loved ones.” Wanting to shelter, wanting to protect, wanting to be the shield, the dagger, the maiming, ripping, clawing monster before them so no one else could touch, could damage, could destroy. To take every nuance of danger and treachery, to leech and lance it into his bones, and never into theirs, to protect until his final breath – as he’d done in prior worlds and lives. He thought of Amalia, wandering constantly into the midst of drama and upheaval, of Kiada, who wanted to save Ru’in’s soul, how neither of them wanted him to be a hovering, harpooning mass around them. “But I cannot hold them back either.” There for them in every failure, in every triumph, when they circumvented the globe and the galaxies, when they roamed together and fought, fought, fought. “You learn to choose your moments carefully.”
Yeah but for the fall—oh, my—
Do you dare to look them right in the eyes?
DEIMOS
