[ Respond | Andarin: The Mountains ]
Posted by alkonost on January 29, 2009, 3:54 pm, in reply to "thread -- i feel like i'm being eaten" Alkonost should have been happy. Her sister was alive, she was alive, and the forest would come back eventually (it lingered in her peripheral vision, a great black scab like a battlefield all bristling with charred bodies and lonely spears). They were all very lucky – not that Alkonost believes very strongly in luck. Thus, she should have been happy. She wasn’t. While her sister smiled, the white filly merely blinked sightlessly out at the world in front of her, face blank, eyes as cold and expressionless as the metals they emulated. Every so often her skin would ripple where she clenched her jaw or twitched a fly away from the angry red welt on her side (she, too, had suffered injuries in the fire, but few – so very few). Her sister could smile because she – they – were alive. But she could not, because Jörmungandr was still suffering. Burns inside, outside, everywhere – it was like she’d never gotten out at all, and Alkonost felt that pain as acutely as she felt her own. And she knew it was her fault. If she had gotten there sooner, if she had called more water, then Jörmungandr would not have to suffer so greatly now. She didn’t care that, were that the case, Alkonost herself would be dead. That’s how she – they – are. Thus it was that Alkonost could not fully appreciate Orestes’ appearance or the slight in his words. She could only flinch at the harshness of her sister’s voice and lean into her touch (as though melting, she thought, but didn’t know why – it was not something she could ever hope to understand). Ah, melting. Such irony there is in its mention with the three of them standing there. “Of course not,” she said at length, eying Dauphine dubiously, “it’s him, or a very near likeness.” To her it made sense, all literary allusions aside. It was both insult and compliment at once, for as the rancid fawn became uglier and uglier with his soul’s decay, so should he become more beautiful. He was rather appealing already, as much as it irritated her to admit it. But his good health only made her more aware of Jörmungandr’s pain, of the open and weeping burns on her flesh and of the soot embedded in her lungs. The pale filly looked away from them both and closed her eyes, visibly tense. There wasn’t much else for her to say. She didn’t know what she looked like (she had never cared enough to really look) and to her Joh was perfect because she was Joh, because they were twins and had known every inch of one another since long before they could breathe. At that, Alkonost leaned tentatively in toward the darker filly’s shoulder, bleeding water for fear of chafing open wounds but needing that familiar contact because she was young and upset and alone in her distress. She stared pointedly at Orestes, her expression vaguely sardonic. “I would do the same for you, if only you would make yourself useful.”
129.110.241.19
“ It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety. ”
- Isaac Asimov
these are the clouds about the fallen sun,
the majesty that shuts his burning eye.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread