icarian carrion — vrm, day 5 / d7
Dec 14, 2023 14:56:37 GMT -5
Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Dec 14, 2023 14:56:37 GMT -5
❦
dew falls off the leafy tongues, the dark flurry of carrion birds, sunlight in green and gold. smell of ferrous ash.
home, where i learned the funerary rites.
for people like him.
i'd pray to the Valfǫðr, to Hel of the long roads. in the old language, words wrung on the tongue for a year. funny, i know a hundred ways to pray, a thousand words for it. now, there is nothing to be said.
Roe lies him down.
Mateo breathes, shallow and stiff.
in his hand, his axe. his other, the stone knives from the pond. against the sky itself, treading blood-red roads, he would glow. yes, i touch his face, and birds sing, the smell of blisters, soaked in fire on their bodies, feathers tinged in decay.
the ashes would be cast into water. or buried beneath monument.
for people like him. born to fight, to die and die again. his blood ran rife with the history of it. limbs used in life like something too heavy to keep longer than the turn of two decades. i am thinking how it should not be like this. how the weightlessness feels not like smoke, but bones and blood and still a body, half-burned. in memory.
small renunciations.
there is a pit inside of me.
seeping, there is the wetdark pain.
on my knees, and there is nothing good to be said.
"Mateo."
the birds named him, the path knew him.
tangled, dripping. and i am thinking it should not be like this. all the heroes in the hall of slain, in battle forever.
by the pond, i wash his face.
there does not need to be consecrated fire. there does not need to be poetry carved with a knife.
someone great, the omens laid at his feet.
someone good.
"it is over," i tell him. the cool water, towel hewing the lines of his features. the sun goes high, dappled through the trees. i hold his hands.
"no more fighting."
dew falls off the leafy tongues, the dark flurry of carrion birds, sunlight in green and gold. smell of ferrous ash.
home, where i learned the funerary rites.
for people like him.
i'd pray to the Valfǫðr, to Hel of the long roads. in the old language, words wrung on the tongue for a year. funny, i know a hundred ways to pray, a thousand words for it. now, there is nothing to be said.
Roe lies him down.
Mateo breathes, shallow and stiff.
in his hand, his axe. his other, the stone knives from the pond. against the sky itself, treading blood-red roads, he would glow. yes, i touch his face, and birds sing, the smell of blisters, soaked in fire on their bodies, feathers tinged in decay.
the ashes would be cast into water. or buried beneath monument.
for people like him. born to fight, to die and die again. his blood ran rife with the history of it. limbs used in life like something too heavy to keep longer than the turn of two decades. i am thinking how it should not be like this. how the weightlessness feels not like smoke, but bones and blood and still a body, half-burned. in memory.
small renunciations.
there is a pit inside of me.
seeping, there is the wetdark pain.
on my knees, and there is nothing good to be said.
"Mateo."
the birds named him, the path knew him.
tangled, dripping. and i am thinking it should not be like this. all the heroes in the hall of slain, in battle forever.
by the pond, i wash his face.
there does not need to be consecrated fire. there does not need to be poetry carved with a knife.
someone great, the omens laid at his feet.
someone good.
"it is over," i tell him. the cool water, towel hewing the lines of his features. the sun goes high, dappled through the trees. i hold his hands.
"no more fighting."
vin picks up bundle of poisonous plant
