inherited beliefs [fenrir & nicoli]

inherited beliefs [fenrir & nicoli] Oct 10, 2022 20:41:24 GMT -5

Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Oct 10, 2022 20:41:24 GMT -5

F E N R I R

Slipped between bones, there's the cold winters and the beasts and the bronze-tipped trees. Like all those before you in your world, you raked your hands in the dirt and sunk your teeth into night and followed the sun in its razor sharp heat.

Something feels lost about living between all the concrete and metal and the smoothness of every surface.

It feels like a murmur at first. And then you're recoiling. Then you're disturbed by something you don't know, waking up in the middle of night to the quiet that's different from the quiet of the forest. It's an even tone, it's a long dead cry. It grows in you, until you think you could vomit up.

You hate this place.

You spend a long time in the training center's forest simulation. You watch the gold-winged butterflies catch the sun. Then, the dial turns in your hands and day becomes night, silver moon splashed over the dark surface of a running river. You think of Hela, with her bow drawn, you think of Hela, singing hymns.

On the fifth day, you catch a cottontail in the ferns. You tied a slip knot noose with wire to fallen branches. It gets caught. But it doesn't bleed. The light splinters and it disappears from the place your knife sinks into it.

The forest made of light, you grow to hate it too.

On the sixth day, you wake up to a soft thump against your window.

The sky is the blue of a robin's egg. You unlatch the sliding door. There's a speck of blood on the glass pane.

A swallow lies stunned on the balcony. It's limp, beak half-open. You cup it in your hands, staring at the dying bird with the wind blowing through its feathers, your limbs, your hair. Below you, the motors roar, like the sound of giants shaking awake over the hills.

Sunlight comes into the room with you. You shut the sliding glass door and it's quiet again. There's a moment where you stand there. There's a beat before you snap its neck.

You slip the body in a tissue box.

And after morning, as all the others depart, you take your satchel of things, a knife in hand as you change the simulation room to the forest made of light. The keypad blinks at you. Your neck prickles as the brightness shifts and someone approaches from behind.

There's a shadow on the wall.

"Why are you not going with the others?"

A matchstick of a feeling, something small lit, something imperceptibly annoying, a fly that hums in your head. You grip the hilt tighter, muscles tensing to the sudden interruption. The sparrow sits in its box of paper and softness. You think about slicing it open, flesh, heart and liver. You look at the shadow on the wall, flesh, heart and liver too.

He'll be dead soon enough.

You move your hand from the keypad. The door slides open. You smile, turning over your shoulder to look at him, the boy from eight. A chain dangles from his hands, making prisms on the floor. His eyes meet yours.

"You want to find out?"

BOTH YOUR CROSS AND YOUR HAMMER