outside a doll, inside a plague

RIP Hemitheia · (This post was last modified: February 05, 2018, 03:50 PM by RIP Hemitheia.)

Don't feel the need to match, I kind of just... Word vomited.

The woman had woken on the shores bedraggled but not bloody, soaked to the bone with familiar brine yet not broken. She had roused herself out of a stupor within hours of her return to the mainland and, bereft of any sense of appreciation for her state of living, began to roam. She had picked her way carelessly along the shore — even cast her eyes from atop a grand citadel of stones along the cliff side — so the woman knew she was no longer trapped alone upon the isle. So sorrowful was she that, when given a glimpse of the setting sun burning fiercely from the bluffs, she contemplated how long it would take for her body to drop upon the battered stones below. Too long, had been the verdict; the woman veered away after that, dragging heel in the manner of a walking corpse.

At this point she had made landfall precisely four days ago. It had been four days of mindless hell; a sore body accompanied by an empty mind insisting on survival, although her plummet from the island had been for anything but. She had not eaten. The only water to pass her lips had been salt-ridden and so cold that her body had refused it. The silvered woman had wasted away upon the isle and now continued to do so — she was desperate, but also at war with herself in that desperation. The end was all that she wanted and yet life, or whichever energy persisted within her and kept her from it, life found a way.

The woman was delirious by the time she entered the forest upon the bluff; the stench of the sea had not left the area nor had she managed to cleanse herself of it, fur hung loosely from a concave belly and tangled across her exposed spine in the manner of dried seaweed.

"Adelfí! Adelfí eímai -"

—- edó! Ti káneis apó to nisí sou?" voiced the stern-faced and pale Antiope, scowling from the crux of the dark grove as if her sister's survival was truly a curse upon them all. Behind her was a shadow; Parthenos wished to look beyond the figment of her sister but could not find it possible. The silver girl flashed her teeth at the darkness and insisted, Móno, ímoun mónos - írthan, pígan, mónoi tous akóma!

Epistréfete anepithýmita. Epistréfete éna fántasma! Pós tolmás, ótan eínai aftós pou eínai nekrós! Antiope's icy glare became white-hot and she seemed to shimmer on approach, sliding in to the intermittent light; the sea air was ripe around her, blustering, and her figure seemed to bluster with it — but when Parthenos looked upon her, those eyes were a flashing gold that did not match her sister's. As if dreaming, she overlooked this detail.

lest the sea wish it]Poios eínai nekrós? Eínai mitéra? Den boreí na eínai — gia na min to thélei i thálassa, The silvered girl wasn't sure if she had spoken or if she had thought it, but perhaps they were the same. Perhaps sometimes her voice did sound and in others, when her tired tongue failed her, she merely imagined. Antiope began to laugh at her — it was like coins scattering upon stones more than true laughter — and soon Parthenos found herself weeping with the trees swaying around her. Akóma kai tóra arneítai! Theorísate ton eaftó sas periorisméno apó atýchima, adelfí? To énklimá sas ítan ypérocho! I Mitéra epélexe timoría - óti epiplíttetai san paidí, óchi ligótero.

No. No. Enklima? To ékana - den to ékana - but the world around her continued to shift with the saline wind, her sister continued to laugh, and that shadow behind her only grew and grew. Parthenos did not understand and soon enough she was faltering against the trees, trying to hold on to her sensibilities and pressing up against them like a bear might; the feeling of the bark upon her skin was solid, it wrought blood quickly, but she did not feel — and upon seeing the red as it was blotted by her salt-crusted pelt, she felt further lightheaded.

The world kept on spinning, and she murmured things to the growing dark that made little sense; her mother-tongue of Greek did not seem to agree with her any more than the events unfolding within her mind. She resisted. She fought and spasmed, but Parthenos would not die — not yet, not unless the Fates had another trial in store for her first — and soon she was staggering beneath her own meager weight (or perhaps the weight of her sister's admonishment) until she is faltering against the trees, awake but only just, and hardly in a rightful mind.