god lived as a devil dog — tw, day 1
Oct 13, 2024 22:30:09 GMT -5
Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Oct 13, 2024 22:30:09 GMT -5
The trees thicken overhead, thicken in the lungs. The light becomes milder as Lu walks, sun spots wavering with the breeze in the canopies.
He didn't lie.
Nothing in his bag except a disintegrating book, all the pages brittle from water damage, the seams ungluing as Lu flipped through it. Couldn't read the running scrawl of ink. Threw it back in the bag instead, and wondered if it could be shredded as tinder for a fire later.
Lu still has a fist of the rock. He climbs over the ruins of a wall, passing strange statues in the yard. Stone angels wailing at the beams of light, wings clipped, noses chipped off. Ivy hair, dirt on the hems of their carved clothes. What would earthly sensation feel like to a pure thing. The scum of it. The revulsion.
There's a colour of something at the foot of a statue of a bowed hooded woman. He walks towards it, hefting up the red striped pole of the lance.
Wood, metal-tipped.
More effective than a rock.
He gets further into the woods, rusting lance over his shoulder, and the rubble falls back into the earth, looser in structure, crumbled from form. The roots of the trees split out of the ground in such a slow-moving force, a hundred years of bidding destruction under his feet. It feels almost claustrophobic, the denseness of the trunks. The air is warm, smells vegetal, wet with the sap of leaves. Plant rot on the lungs.
Ten is all fields. Flat. Empty.
And the other thing.
Tick is following him.
The roots dip into water. Opens to a pond. Large pools between the trees. It's dim. Can't tell how deep it goes. There's a light across.
His fingers flex on the base of the lance, turning towards the shadows, turning towards Tick.
I'm useful.
Lu tips his head towards the stretch of water, staring at him placidly. “Walk in.”
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