[ Respond | Andarin: The Mountains ]
Posted by stormcrow on February 2, 2009, 2:53 pm It was an ugly little thing. Coagulating blood welled up around its eyes, collected on and spilled over around its beak, pooling under its head like a halo – ironic, but so fitting – and matted its unkempt feathers. Alkonost regarded the carcass thoughtfully, encircling it with her body using uncharacteristic tenderness. She brushed its broken breast with a lip; newly cold flesh yielded to her touch, but nothing else happened. She drew away. It was an ugly little thing. It is difficult to guess what might have passed behind those blank, half-lidded eyes. Mortality? Motherhood? She understood neither. In that she was still infinitely naïve, experiencing loss only in brief, poignant stabs and knowing nothing of love beyond her sister’s adoration and her mother’s silent praise. No – at the end of the day, she cared as much about mortality and motherhood as she did about the mangled corpse lying mere inches from her knee. Alkonost stared at it – it stared back, round eyes vacant and mouth agape in what might have been an avian expression of fear. She wasn’t sure. She didn’t care. The carcass caught fire as the white filly stood up, and for a moment she watched as flesh and feather alike shriveled into little more than carbon and fell from tiny blackened bones. Alkonost blinked and left it there to smolder. An eyeless skull, mouth agape in fear, watched her walk away. “Mother,” Alkonost said quietly, relatively at ease in the heart of Fenrisulfr’s artificial winter. It wasn’t often that she sought her mother out. It was never necessary. She had Jörmungandr and vice versa – there was nothing they couldn’t overcome together; a parent would only have gotten in the way. Perhaps that was why she didn’t care that she didn’t have a father (and that is how she saw it, for Severus meant very little to her). Regardless, she sought her mother out now because her shoulder was cold and vacant, yawning like a cavernous wound with the ache of her sister’s absence. The gray wolf-queen was the only one left to whom she could turn. Alkonost had done her share of thinking about what had transpired between her parents in the forests of Desreál. There were holes in her reasoning, holes that only knowledge could fill. ”Mother,” she said again, her voice laden with something very near morbid curiosity, “tell me about Severus.” She tilted her head expectantly, like a child sitting down cross-legged to listen to a most-anticipated story. There was something dark about that innocent expression, that inquisitiveness that transcended the childish question of ‘Why?’ to become something completely different. “Please don’t leave anything out. I want to know.”
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“ 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.
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