[se] came back alive

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame Perhaps he’d always put on such a grand veneer – that nothing, nothing, nothing touched, tainted, or tarnished him. Unmoved, unbothered, unattainable, unreachable, a threshold of naught more than moving parts made to maim, abolish, or incinerate. Except under the surface were all the fallen pieces: lost comrades, homes, loved ones, families broken apart and gone, things he couldn’t hold in his iron grasp no matter how hard he tried because sometimes even all the strength in the world couldn’t compare to loss. To pretend that naught shook him really should’ve only been mired and rooted for enemies, for adversaries, for the ones who didn’t matter at all. Instead, it’d become a crutch for anything and everything in his life, save for the ones who still encompassed him in their wake. His eyes didn’t go to her when she finally stood – stare fixated on the movement and blur of motion along the water, in his fine little sketches and details that would eventually be erased too. The Sword’s glance only peeled away, incantations ceased, when she stepped toward him, when her voice harpooned through the silence. Whatever he expected, it hadn’t been her inquiry – brows arching one after the other in a volley of confusion. “Oh? And how are we going to do that?” And he laughed then, shaking his head, breaking apart the residual, accompanying balance of sorrows, regrets, and the marks battle left behind. “I can assure you, I was an obnoxious child.” A wrinkle to his nose fettered within, but he took her hand anyway, let himself be led towards the pool. What a wonder, what a time, when boys could stretch their limbs across the vast, seemingly endless barrage of sand, yell at the gulls, and scream tyranny into the sea-salt air without a god damned care in the world. Before everything dissipated into darkness and stupid, stupid emboldened aspirations and dreams that never quite came true. Belial followed, insatiably curious – and the monolith stood before the wake, the arch to his brow remaining. Resisting the melancholy that seemed to yearn to settle in. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace