[SE] sky full of song

DEIMOS And in your darkest hour, I hold secrets flame A sword didn’t have high expectations. A shield never reveled and revered. A weapon failed to move, breathe, or commit to anything but maintain its iron and steel precision, awaiting an idle moment to catch another unaware – sharpened and honed by the wielder. He didn’t know what he was anymore, poignant and haunted in those moments, giving himself over to another (again). Selfless has never been a word to describe him – not etched on his tomb, not shuddered on a breath, not whistled in the night, but he proffered his soul and his heart and his strength to the sunlight as if it were easy, feasible, effortless. Perhaps this would break him down further, whittle and sculpt him away to nothing, or maybe it’ll be something new altogether: a different manifestation. He didn’t know what to do with that notion either. The beast looked it in the eye and snorted in disbelief. Deimos had lived his life notched between spaces of frozen worlds and torturous eaves. The Reaper reaped in the first one – swung his scythe around and around, for kingdom, country, and citizen, heaved hollowed slivers, punctured lungs, desecrated morality because it was justified, because they were means to an end, because it benefitted him and his realm. Then he died, and life moved on. The Reaper fought and buried in the second – carved his way through body after body to try and reach his friends, to watch them fall and stifle on their last breath, to bury them in the dirt, to watch a sovereignty collapse on its pursuit of might and glory. Now, he didn’t have a name, a calling, to place beside himself; the stories felt raw, foreign, but nonetheless real, tangible, corporeal, a stitch of sun in his gaze instead of ghosts, a beam of light in his essence instead of eternal shadow. He was wholly inept and ineffectual along these boundaries, when emotions he couldn’t even consider cast and ignited in his chest, when he kept being granted chance after chance, opportunity after opportunity. But he’d always tried, and that seemed to be the bastion, the rampart, the fortification he could hold onto – persistence, endurance, the raptorial predilections searing towards perseverance. It was not the end – as it’d been so many times before – but the beginning. Hope was an odd sensation, brewing in his mind; he’d rarely acquainted himself with the notion, because a warrior does not wish or dream, but remained firmly committed to seeing their aspirations come to fruition. Is that what this was now? Should he even dare? Was his audacity built for this? Was his emboldened nature capable of accustoming to these moments and desires? Was he worthy? Did it matter? You’re stuck with me now collected against his ears, and he snorted in response, felt her intertwine herself amidst arms and hands, fingers tucked along her lips, a brush, a caress, a stroke of promise and not persecution. The beast allowed her, watched and scalded, thought more of patience and perplexities, swallowed down a response, checked it, held it aloft for another day, another collection of moments. He sighed and laughed again, lost in all these paradigms and shifts in reality, too damned fortunate when he should’ve been struck down eons ago, but taking and grasping when he can. They had time, and that was enough. His silence continued, action over any foundation of eloquence again – his triumphs were never in discourse, but in mentioning the things that needed, were required, to proffer into the schemes, and then movement to follow. His neck bent and his lips pressed along her scalp, along her forehead, over her brows, golden still in the fading daylight, and his blossoms flickered into the tassels, the strands. “Of course,” he agreed, a nod, palms squeezing lightly over her outstretched fingers, not entirely certain who was leading now, not even bothering to hear the music play, spinning her back towards the path of the festival, of her stall. master of nothing place; of recoil and grace