lamb and knight [cash x stella]
Sept 29, 2022 15:33:23 GMT -5
Post by pogue on Sept 29, 2022 15:33:23 GMT -5
C A S H
Knife to hand and knife to throat, the former sits physical in between his fingertips with a blade cutting through wooden veins, pile of scraps falling lifelessly to his lap. To throat, he feels that blade pressed into the soft flesh of his neck with every sin and shadow that carves itself on the walls, every glare from beings laced in white and loaded guns their anchor, metaphorical blade doused and rusting with the blood of every tribute that's come before him.
There's a half carved horse that he's been whittling out of a piece of firewood for the past hour, mindlessly pressing thumb to metal to wood as the sun sets across the horizon before him, bleeding waves of orange and red seeping through the glass and splattered against the walls of his own coffin. If he were more youthful he'd consider it beautiful, to watch a metallic city light up in purples and pinks with the coming night, to experience a place like nothing else.
But reality is just as much a prankster as it is cruel, claws resting heavy on his shoulders and reminding him that the last place he will see will be foreign, the last faces he will remember are the ones he will have to kill, that a crown is just as much a curse as it is a savior. He gets it now, why the ones who made it back drown in their own glory and why they make themselves myths to the world, only existing when the spotlight is singing their flesh.
Victors are just ghosts with no tombstone, martyrs without cause.
How cruel, that his only option left is to join them or settle into the shadows they cast, a ghost only seen on camera or a spirit only heard within the dead spaces that sit in their wake. It's why when Stella Blakesley wordlessly claims the chair next to him he only feels his stomach sink with pity, stolen glances when he thinks she isn't looking confirming that there is a rusted crown melted into her head and the mark of a dead man carved into his own, a deal he never had the choice in making.
Finger to blade and blade to wood. It feels treacherous to be sitting here, so normal in the wake of what he knows is coming.
"Back to back second placers.." His voice hits the dead air with gravel in the words, he wonders if Stella thinks there will be salt poured into fresh wound- "I'm truly sorry." It's genuine, at least it sounds it. Blue eyes glance at the victor and then back to the knife in his hand. "My pops always said third time was the charm, though."
From across the street he watches as shadowy figures dance underneath the setting sun, drinks in one hand and life worth living in the other. Jealousy twinges in his gut, reality settles back into his veins. "I'd say I'm a big fan, miss, but I don't know if you'd call that a compliment anymore."
They follow the note of the sun greeting the night and bleed out slowly into their own coffins. One open, one shut.
