Deimos
The way death clung to the ramparts wasn’t unnoticed either – a warning to Belial centered solely as the peryton sought to sniff at the bear – but it caused his jaw to clench almost mulishly, before his eyes went downward, casting his stare towards the snow.
If he was surprised that she opened up, he didn’t show it. Her words were echoes in a way; frameworks of alternating times and places, faces that hadn’t been seen in seasons and cycles, but eternally tucked away. Dreams of Sam. Of times and places before – warped and addled, contorted and coiled, of moments that couldn’t be taken back, replaced, or discarded. The plague of ‘what ifs’, of decrees that could be mustered in the addled angst and melancholy of their lives moving onward while others didn’t – cut short and fallen apart and broken sometimes for no real reason. Or hate. Or disgust. Or bending, unyielding ways in which the earth and land seemed to simply take.
Of not being enough.
A shared condition; he could’ve filled an entire void with the regrets, with the rue, with the agony of being incapable of saving friends, allies, loved ones, of multiple lifetimes upon multiple battlefields, of running and rampaging and it not mattering in the slightest. Too late. Too weak. Too inept.
And he didn’t have the right words for this time either. “I am not certain if those wounds ever close.” His eyes narrowed, going back to her, another few steps forward, quiet, hesitant, never quite knowing what to do or what to say. Others would have pushed him away, and so he stayed in his guarded space, doubtful of his own abilities in this happenstance. “But we move onward, because the ones we cared about, that cared for us, would not want us to suffer in their stead.” Words he’d heard before, that had pressed into the notch of his spine, that gave him some breadth and breath when everything else churned and burned. “You have grown far stronger. You know what you are capable of.”
If he was surprised that she opened up, he didn’t show it. Her words were echoes in a way; frameworks of alternating times and places, faces that hadn’t been seen in seasons and cycles, but eternally tucked away. Dreams of Sam. Of times and places before – warped and addled, contorted and coiled, of moments that couldn’t be taken back, replaced, or discarded. The plague of ‘what ifs’, of decrees that could be mustered in the addled angst and melancholy of their lives moving onward while others didn’t – cut short and fallen apart and broken sometimes for no real reason. Or hate. Or disgust. Or bending, unyielding ways in which the earth and land seemed to simply take.
Of not being enough.
A shared condition; he could’ve filled an entire void with the regrets, with the rue, with the agony of being incapable of saving friends, allies, loved ones, of multiple lifetimes upon multiple battlefields, of running and rampaging and it not mattering in the slightest. Too late. Too weak. Too inept.
And he didn’t have the right words for this time either. “I am not certain if those wounds ever close.” His eyes narrowed, going back to her, another few steps forward, quiet, hesitant, never quite knowing what to do or what to say. Others would have pushed him away, and so he stayed in his guarded space, doubtful of his own abilities in this happenstance. “But we move onward, because the ones we cared about, that cared for us, would not want us to suffer in their stead.” Words he’d heard before, that had pressed into the notch of his spine, that gave him some breadth and breath when everything else churned and burned. “You have grown far stronger. You know what you are capable of.”
you're all bronze and bite
all venom and fistfight
all venom and fistfight
