ten years in these waters. {Charlie Garnet}
Apr 19, 2019 8:09:23 GMT -5
Post by shrimp on Apr 19, 2019 8:09:23 GMT -5
Boots clack against the floor, her pace measured - but pointed. The Sheepish wool coat, an impulse buy when she first realized she had money of her own to spend, billows behind her in waves, undulating with the currents.
Her mind is as tempestuous, lightning flashing amid the churning sea. She feels seasick - the scent of Aubergine and Lyons' burning flesh still hasn't quite left her, but that's not what causes her stomach to turn.
Slowly, surely, her hand had grown into something she didn't want to play:
The King of Spades - a scrapbook of a man sitting in an ode to justice, stitching himself back together with spite and tears. She had sipped tea with shaking fingers and a pounding headache.
The Jack of Hearts - living memories amid relics gone sour, volumed anger behind whispered words. Be careful, she had said.
They're collected without her consent. The deck piles high, a tower looming. And with the click of a loudspeaker, twenty four more cards are placed on top. There's nothing to do now but look at the mess she's made.
It had a point, once. As the war ended and the high tide subsided there was meaning in each slice of the scythe, each shearing of a lamb. You do not sew the fur back on.
There is no more meaning, only circumstance. The purpose is twisted - perhaps -
No. She knows. It sits deep in her stomach with the sweet breeze of rose, the dance of a girl lost in the throes of her theatrics. The ocean threatens to swallow her whole, but she cannot do this here; there is a danger in swiftness.
Instead, her hand grazing the top of her polished desk, she takes a small shadow box from the wall. It hangs next to framed pictures: The Cornumutt, gears whirring as it stands in all its splendor. The Serpentine, the light glinting off its jeweled form. Steam, rising from a doppelgänger's armor. Promotional photos of herself and Warren, of herself with Amethyst and Callienta. A small one, of herself and Janice, two toddlers clad in ice skates. She removes the vial and exhales.
It was just a strawman's argument to begin with. All that remains is a circus, grotesque and circular.
She will not be its ringmaster.
{ graphic by Azalea }
