Andarin: The Mountains: nicodemus; --

“ We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ”

- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“I learned about hurt,” she says.

That she has; it’s written in her, the way her hair clings together in clumps, the way her skin feels charred, parched. It doesn’t seem to bother her, the dark fluid, the faint smell of burnt flesh, the gaping wounds. She doesn’t even seem to notice, other than the faint lines of pain in her smile or the glow in her eyes.

But the way she moves, every step balanced, every step calculated.

The way that nervous energy seems gone from her, the vibrant wildness lost and forgotten.

The way her voice is low, raspy; almost rough, deep in her throat…

Even so, she smiles, tilting her head to the side as usual. She has been burned alive, almost to the death; but when she moves up to him (so slow, so achingly slow, every arch and bend of her limbs like it’s nothing), she isn’t frightened. She has learned what the fire can do, the songs it can sing into her ear when it’s lapping at her knees and climbing up the arch of her neck.

Funny that she isn’t frightened in the least.

“Do you think I’m ugly?” she asks, though she knows she is; her skin sometimes flakes, clumps of fur snagging at her as she moves, growing and falling and regenarating. She knows she wouldn’t be alive, Jörmungandr, slow, inevitable death. But she is alive and she knows she’ll live a long time still.

That’s how the story goes.

***
jörmungandr
there is hope, but not for us