Andarin: The Mountains: interlude; --

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.”
- Blade Runner

The formidable wolves; that is how they used to call us.

My wolves. Were they formidable when Requiem stood before them, proud and gold, seemingly centuries before I was born? Were they formidable when Kale loved them, so much and so little, with the Stone branded across his heart?

Were they formidable for you, Stelios?

Are they for me?

Nah.

They hate me as they loved you, pet. I think you’d have found it amusing. I’d like to see your smile when I told you about our lovely neighbours (though you’d probably frown from the top of your righteousness – how boringly predictable). Once upon a time I have missed you and wanted you oh so much; you wouldn’t know.

(Good; I would rather kill myself in mortification and I am pretty fond of life as-is. Though, figures you’d ignore the obvious. You were like that; blind is as blind does.)

But I was not born to be loved, was I? Mother and father saw to that. I wasn’t born to be loved any more than you were born to be happy.

Yet, sometimes, I return to this place – ‘our’ place, if I was that sentimental. Sometimes I am. Sometimes, I just want to scream and laugh and perhaps, fly; and other times…

Other times…

I walk in shadows.

There’s something exquisite about shadows, love, something you wouldn’t guess, because you are disgustingly light. The way they hold, the way they fold, there and not. there is so much we don’t even know exists, so much lurking between the stars and the pit of the oceans…

They always hate the dark, or love it for all the wrong reasons.

I’ve learned better.

The dark isn’t as simple as they make it be. Darkness is wild, it is primal and selfish and I love it. The light is tame in comparison, stilted… bound. But you were all light, Stelios (bound and gagged by your own light) – though you’d deny it; you were always in denial, weren’t you? – and yet, I was born of shadows.

Just a little more literally than I thought.

Titles, ranks, pfaw.

I sometimess miss your light, though. There were nights when I would dream of you – but now…

Now your voice fades from my memory much as mine did.

Ah well. There are other voices, aren’t there?

fenrisulfr;
the world is not out to get you;
except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone