fight with tools ; cinder, lalia, south

There's something about being back in camp that lulls you down, beckoning you to that honey-sweet ground of your consciousness like a deadweight, and you can't get up. Colors blossom like plumes of peacock feathers, shifting one in front of the one another until you're seeing doubles, flowers, weeds in the forms of dandelions, meant to infect and distract, lighted lanterns dripping wax into the shimmering glacier that slowly scratches everything away, out of the corners, thoughts mushrooming into heavy gray smoke before they whisper their goodbyes and go out behind your eyes as soon as you blink, gone, done, disintegrated. Sometimes, you can't help but wonder why your senses are always dull these days, as if someone took a knife and cut off the ends of everything they disliked, left you with stubs to pluck at, and filled in the blanks with whatever they had lying around so that you wouldn't notice missing clauses, the empty vacuoles, the decreased scrutiny, judgement, introspection. Emotions melt together into the mixing pot (a black cauldron as wide as the earth's perimeter, mounted on a stack of whale bones), and as hard as you try to separate the flavours and bring the wooden spoon shakily up to your lips, tip in the liquid and let it burn a path down your esophagus, you still can't discern one taste from another (and it's as if you've been stirring the whole time).

You've learned to like it this way (it gives you a second to detach, get away, take a look, feel refreshed and let things go, your worries like jabberjays, loud but so distant that you can't help ignoring them), so much so that you fear it's an addiction. It keeps you in check and gives you something stable to hold onto, albeit metaphysical (it almost makes up for the lack of physicality you've had for the past several months) and you feel good. You haven't thrown a punch in a long time.

This hits dangerously close to the target, déjà vu, and brings you back to the only other time you've ever been this vulnerable, this at-ease, this content, (when you had somehow reasoned that Ella would rule the world and you'd protect her from the enemy fleet, that you'd both build your empire, find food, money, necessities, that you'd have a father to go home to everyday, someone to give you advice, a happily ever after conquered by reality) and that vague dread in the depths of your stomach bubbles into a long whining note, shivering it's way up through your spinal cord and pushing the door open to your cerebrum... But the ghouls scare it off with bright party hats and hand-made pipes treading smoke, bundling the anxiety with tight ropes and hiding it under the bed of dandelions, stuffing it between the barbs of the peacock feathers, throwing it into the smoke and watching disappear behind the fog. The concern isn't gone, but you can pretend it is, keep your hands busy with golden-wheat threads, outline circles, run fingers over cheekbones and trace down her jaw, because Lydia's there, and this time you're determined to be there too, relish the moment (because for too many time before, you had let your mind wander under the touch of her hands, had let solicitude take you over and convert you into an unseeing, unresponsive ghost. You refuse to be absent this time.)

Your feet and clothing are slick with a mixture of mud and leaves, walking on a picnic blanket of ice so cold, and it lowers your body temperature a few notches, and the mist hangs off twigs and branches like silk, the mosquito net covering your world. You tug it, watch water bead on your hands, slip between your fingers, feel the dripping on your head from the canopy above (your hair is soaked, each droplet a chilling contrast to the familiar warmth that's consumed the iced-over bridges, the split coils, the heat pads, the short-circuits, and maybe you've managed to become a better person -maybe this is what it feels like-, that you've played up and played out the fantasy enough times that it's become true).

Finally, you manage to brush the shrubs away, residue filmy on your hand, and the bright wagon comes into view immediately, it's marigold spokes foreign against the ink of approaching night, the blues, oranges, reds, and pinks slaughtering the corneas of your eyes for a split second before you blink, and turn back towards the figure behind you, tighten your arm slightly and curl in, hovering above her ear. "Welcome home."





THIS IS ALL A WIP, DON'T JUDGE ME.




Deep in the meadow, hidden far away . . . The lullaby plays itself over and over, (another trick of the mind magician, the melodies constantly thrumming in your ears like bees all day). You don't feel like clearing it out... A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray, forget your woes and let your troubles lay, and when again it's morning, they'll wash away.

Flowers bloom in the month of may, ride the snow in an air-born sleigh, tendons hang soft beneath the fray, there's nothing wrong with being a stray.