Time To Dance {▲von Day 4}

No nonsense voice
Talking
Doing
Deep thought
Hearing
Singing

She was a cup of water in a desert.

Cain had retreated only moments earlier into her bag, hissing with some sort of premonition to her most likely imminent death. It hadn't bothered Avon. Death and life no longer made her afraid. She had a hook for a hand, and was missing three toes. She was a murderess, and consorted with the like. In all senses, Avon was not counted as a human anymore. She was a snake now, she could be a snake and no one could hate her for it. She imagined herself with a forked tongue, tasting the air every now and then, and getting the rhyme and reason of the winds around her. It was like trying to taste chocolate ice cream falling from the sky. Which would be nice, Avon thought she might like to have the chocolate ice cream rather than the peacefully falling sand.

But it was in the next moment that she tried crawling into her backpack herself. The sand suddenly whipped itself into a frenzy, mewling and cutting in outrage. It tore itself into her eyes, and crawled down her throat like a murderous little pixy. She slipped and slid in the sand, one hand over her eyes, trying to protect them as she rolled along. Looking through the slit in her fingers, she couldn't even see what was ahead of them. She knew that she had to get out of these sands, that it wasn't safe. But even as the sand battered relentlessly at her jumpsuit, and tore at the skin underneath where it could get in, she felt eerily calm. It was as if she were the eye of the storm. Even the small bits of rock cutting into her cheeks and one good hand didn't seem to bother her.

She stood motionless for a while, not because she was afraid of what to do next, but because she didn't want to move. An inkling in her brain told her that it was probably because she was disconnected. Truly, it felt as I someone had pulled out the plugs that connected her heart to her brain. As she stood silently, she realized that she couldn't hear her own heartbeat, she had lost it. In wonder she sat still, sand exploring her, she was an obstacle in it's way. She was a wall, there was no heartbeat. Someone had come along and scooped out everything but her lungs while she was sleeping. Maybe it was Cain. She didn't feel hunger, or thirst even as the sand tried to dig into her mouth. She simply felt like she was breathing.

But feeling means a heart. Softly, she lifted her fingers up to her neck, pressing softly against the skin there. And she waited for some more time, listening and feeling intently, brow furrowed in concentration. Nothing. She had nothing left in her, she was a doll with an empty, emotionless face. That was alright though. She had felt the sand sinking into her for years now. Felt the storm whipping at her shell, and she shouldn't have been resisting it. She should have done this ages ago, invited the sand in. Let herself become one with it, instead of struggling to run from it for so long. It had been the wrong choice to simply be Avon, she should have become the storm, she knew that now. Calmly, she took her fingers away from her throat, and opened her eyes, relieving them from the darkness in her head.

Sand flecked her vision, and it was oddly beautiful, the way it whipped through the air in such a hateful way. It was as if someone had picked each kernel from that dark space in her hollow legs and flung them out into the world. This sandstorm was herself, caught somewhere between a nutshell and a fork in the road. It didn't hurt her, the thought. She'd rather have her emotion be somewhere else than in her anyway. Still though, her body was weakening from her/the sand's tantrum. She should get out of it. So wistfully, she began walking again. If all that soul poetry clap trap that one of her siblings always used to whisper about were true, she'd have a red string tied around her pinky right now connected to the ground. It would lead down into the earth where the molten rock cried, and everything burned with a fever that you couldn't sweat out.

It occurred to her as she walked that if she wasn't dead yet, she was going to be dead soon. No one lived forever, so maybe this was okay, these games. No one lived forever, so why should she get a long life simply because she had been healthy before this. It wasn't fair to assume that she deserved better simply because she was herself. Maybe soon would be tomorrow, or maybe it would be in ten minutes. It could even be in fifty years. The point was, she was going to die soon, and shouldn't be scared. Because maybe she could be reborn as a tree. Maybe she could be reborn as the old Lightwood tree in the back yard that she and Alphonse made their home in. Maybe they had been sitting in her branches for all these years, not even realizing that the tree was Avon reborn, and one day, she would watch her siblings from far off.

She would see the way the bodies might be carried out as their soon came, as they passed on just as she would. But she would be a tree, so maybe she wouldn't even care as a body covered in scars and drained of blood made it's way out on a linen stretcher. Maybe the cot of wrapped fabric carrying her little brother or sister wouldn't bother her. She'd be a tree, there would only be the pain of having her bark ripped away, pulled at by soft human hands. Or maybe the occasional pain of a knife attacking her to mark the presence and passing of a life. But there wouldn't be any wound to nurse on about, because like her current position, she would not have a heart, or a brain. She would be free. She could watch them all grow older, and wiser. Because Riley had promised her, that he'd be strong. She could watch him keep that promise when her soon came, and her heart was buried in the sand.

((ooc: Avon has fled the sands))