luke caraway / d4 / (wip)

luke caraway / d4 / (wip) Sept 18, 2019 2:12:25 GMT -5

Post by gunner, d9 ₊⊹ 👹 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ. on Sept 18, 2019 2:12:25 GMT -5

and it's peaceful
in the deep
cathedral where you
cannot breathe

There was an ancient routine to every Caraway’s morning—

a hereditary thing passed on from one son to a daughter to Luke, like the freckles that painted their red cheeks or the intolerance to age-worn cheeses and fresh pasteurized milk that he simply thought was unjust. His father had taught it to Luke, who was taught by his father, and from there onward, the sequence unfolded with an apparent endlessness.

He started from his bed, arduously so, the snaking lines of the soft duvets calling back the curve of his shoulders and the stretch of his backbone a second after he parted from it.

A fat, indulgent gasp of air, and all he smelt was the sea,

a scent that’d turned from sharp and repugnant to a tender comfort in the turning years.Almost everything in Luke’s room was perfumed with salt and brine, the blue curtains, the ceramic cup precariously near his bedside table’s edge, the wallpaper that been reduced from a bright ivory to a mutter of white, books he’d sloppily stacked near the windowsill.

Stepping closer to the ajar window, he stared out and drank up the blue sea. The moment he narrowed in on the tides and the in-betweens, everything became stained with the color for a second, including him, the world as blue as a sprig of forget-me-nots. If Luke were to ever consider something as a lucky charm, it would be the color blue.

A quick stretch relieved him of the tiredness in his bones but the salty coffee made sure it stayed gone throughout the day. Everything tasted of salt in the Caraway lighthouse too, the entire structure doused in it. Most that stumbled upon the stalwart pillar that arrowed towards the sky would think of it as an abandoned lighthouse, covered in moss and vines, until they saw its bright beacon answering the foghorns with its shaft of yellow light, piercing through the sea itself.

The first time his father switched it on in front of him, Luke had brought his pink fingers up to shield his eyes.

But, he’d seen the beacon's light countless times before that moment, probing at the waves carefully in the dark, casting a spotlight upon lost ships, guiding those who longed to come home from the sea. On days sleep didn’t come to him, he often climbed on the windowsill and let his eyes follow it until they grew tired and then eventually closed.