the metaphor — perdita v. gemstone lurker, day five
Jul 11, 2020 13:04:23 GMT -5
Post by eulalie blake 1a 🍒 tris on Jul 11, 2020 13:04:23 GMT -5
She passes out before the anthem.
Before she can see his face, before she can accept that, "He's gone." It's a whisper, a terrible thing twisting in her stomach. She left him to die, and now she has to make peace with that. She wrings out her hair, shrugs off the soaked layers of her robe.
Until she's vulnerable, and cold, and the kitten rubs its head against her thigh. She clenches her fists, rolls her shoulders and pops her neck. Nothing hurts. The blood has been washed away. "I don't have anything to eat," she tells it, and scratches beneath its chin.
But then she keeps looking at it, and she remembers watching it gnaw at Niko's fingers, and she has to close her eyes and steady her breathing. "It's just you and me." She's telling this to herself, taking the tiny terror in her hands.
"You okay with that?"
She's not. She misses him more than she should. But it mews, and she smiles, and at least they're trying. She tucks it away, gently, and gathers what is left of her supplies. The majority of it had been abandoned by the scene of the ambush. She sighs.
It's a painful thing, returning to the place that ripped something out of you. Every step feels like a glass shard, a memory, tearing into her. There's no background noise, no childhood story playing out behind her. Her fingertips tremble to the echo of his heart.
And then they go still, and she's there again, and the ground is wet and bare. She doesn't recognize the spot where Niko fell, doesn't remember which path she took when she dragged his body away. She shakes her head and pushes those thoughts to the back of her mind.
It takes twenty minutes to find her weapons, and the arrows that she misfired. Twenty minutes of silence. Twenty minutes of looking over her shoulder. Twenty minutes of betraying herself, of trying to replay in her mind if she heard his cannon or not. She thinks of Emmett, too.
"I can't carry you."
She hears the splash of his body in the water, the quietness of his breath. She could hear it over the rain, somehow, and it took everything in her to turn away from him. But she had, and she let him die, but now she's not so sure. She wonders if he's still lying out there.
Wonders if he's telling the clouds a story.
And she would like to hear it. For the first time, she wishes that he would tell her another story. That she could listen to him, and smile, and not be drunk off her ass. That he could hold her, and she'd hold him back, and there wouldn't have to be a reason for it.
Niko is hers, was hers, and for that she is sorry.
There's another splash, but this time it's closer than a memory. She turns on her heel, stares down at a creature covered in gemstones and sneaking across the graves. She tilts her head at it, looks at its claws and its fangs. She's still holding her crossbow. This time there is nothing to distract her.
She wipes the mud off, readies a bolt. And then she lifts it up, and there is no one to stop her now. There is nothing holding her back. "What did you come for?" she asks the intruder, now that there is no one to answer her. There are only monsters here, and the mist of drying rain.
"Did you come to die?"
perdita attacks gemstone lurker ; crossbow bolt #1
tBtdlCgVKObow
miss
accuracy | day five
bow
miss
tBtdlCgVKObow
accuracy | day five
bow
miss