leave the body and leave it cold — lucius v izzabel; day 7
Nov 26, 2024 20:21:01 GMT -5
Post by lucius branwen / 10 — fox on Nov 26, 2024 20:21:01 GMT -5
They lie in the small glade as the last rays of sun die over the trees, and he listens to Tick pant in the silence. The tower is casted dark blue above them in the twilight, miles away.
It's not very comfortable like this, half of Tick landed on him, limb piled on top of limb. But he's so tired. And so they stay there, in the growing darkness, laid in a heap. It's a very long time before either of them move. Lu unclenches his hand around his shirt.
The grass is soft on his skin, wet with dew. That dampness sticks to him as Lucius pushes Tick off, rolls onto his belly with a groan. His chest flares fever hot with the motion. Sheen of sweat on his forehead. It feels like a sickness. A septic burn. The blade was cold going in.
He drags himself up, the scrape of dirt on his elbows, on the heel of his palm, and flips open his discarded bag ineptly, sifting through for the square of leaf-wrapped bread.
“Here.”
Tick doesn't move.
The crumbs fall like sand in his hand as he unpeels the leaves. Lu holds it up to Tick's mouth, staring down at him on the ground, wreathed in a splattering of small, colorful flowers growing between their limbs. The petals emit a faint light.
“Eat.”
Tick lifts his head to take a bite.
The cloak gets dragged out. He lies down with his forehead pressed to Tick's chest. The glade glows with the moon.
There is a story Lu knows. Sometime after the fields were razed in the war. When the livestock was burned alive, and the men scrapped with the dogs for carrion, until there was nothing but bones left in the barns. When there was no more bread, no more wine saved for the dead. The bodies were left in the rubble, charred, unburied.
The grass grows over the dead like a soft blanket. His dad grew up collecting shrapnel pieces, like little jewels in the freshly turned soil in the spring. Sometimes a scar can be felt through generations. If he pressed his fingers into the pits and craters of the landscape back home. The shape of the war. The blood feels cursed. That blood flowing inside him. The way they were shunned, the way his mother so very much lost her mind towards the end of it, a very long sickness after his sister was born. The scar is still there.
He remembers some of it. When he wakes up from the strange and aqueous dreams. The sun diffuses through the fog, and Lucius pushes himself off from the ground. The cool dampness drips in his lungs.
Tick is gone.
He touches his chest because the breathing feels different. It's warm.
Underneath the bandages, the skin is new. Tender to the touch, the deep fissure knitted back together neatly, scarless. He shifts to look at his leg, fingers running along his calf. The stone flakes off. The ache is dull.
And Tick is gone.
Nowhere to be seen in the glade. Lu rises unsteadily in the quiet.
Behind him, the thicket rustles softly, closer and closer, and he thinks it might be Tick, wandering back on the path with his book in hand. Until she emerges into the clearing, through the mist.
There's the hum of a song in the canopies. The forest breathes. Very faint now. It goes on and on with the birds. The fog doesn't quite lift all the way, clinging to his hair in condensation. Lucius picks up the pike.
Where is Tick.
Maybe she was there in the tremendous hall. Maybe, in the wash of blood. There, before he drove the metal through a soft eye. The gore still tints the tip of his pike. He's very tired, and he steadies himself, pike over his shoulder, before lunging towards her.
ELEGANT
lu lights up the pike with the beans, firewood, flint
lu attacks izzabel ; silver pike (spear)
yXHvPB7wLhspear
beans roll
1-50
spear·1-50
