Sunspire Mountains she slipped the lock, and changed her dress
i found brimstone in my garden,
i found roses set on fire
107 Posts
Ooc —
Offline
#7
her mother arrived to her senses, quelling her daughter's agitation. the eisen's brief snarl was met with a bland countenance, until she breathed out the name of the defiled

tiercel

she flexed her claws in the soft alluvium underfoot, gooseflesh rippling across her hackles as the name she'd sloughed off with her unpetaled innocence was once again disinterred from its unmarked tumulus. the phantom charnel stench made a muscle in her jaw convulse. she pinched her eyes shut and bruxed her teeth in a self-controlled clench.

once her mother unsurely hesitated a step towards her, tier— no! no. esmé snapped her head up and drew back like a tide retreating minutes before the tsunami hit. but no tears were shed, not on her behalf. she had supped on enough tears. she'd long felt charred black from the inside-out, and any saltglim that wept from her eye would be kissed by steam on the scalding mantel of her cheek.

she was not so careless in her movements as to inform her mother of her embonpoint, aching and burning from not having ever expressed her milk. the sly uptuck of her stomach tensed and churned sourly, but with it came peace of mind upon tell of singra's safe return to her eldermother's vale. over the purl of the stream, wylla continued her tentative narrative. 

esmé huffed a laugh mid-explanation, "worried! wasted," and canted her head to stare at the minnows in the stream.

but her mother went on, and the blood-imbrued woman let her, but her expression remained an effigy of indifference. whatever tiercel had been to wylla, golden child or chopping block, that was not esmé, and could never be. the sorrow and emotional potsherd her truth might entail was a thing she could not persuade from her mother's heart, but she must know for esmé's closure on the little girl decomposing within her.

tiercel.

she couldn't bear to hear the name again. 

after some silence, she lowly said, "you're wrong," her eyes hunting up the havoc-wrought state of this ... this ... woman, who'd been her giver of life. she couldn't recall their last interaction before she and singra had gigglingly set out for what they deemed an adventure, but she was sure the wolf that stood before her was not the one she'd left behind. esmé could sit all day flicking matches at this one and she wouldn't take fire; no, something'd smothered her and left the smoking remnants of ash and black coal where embers once glowed. 

unfortunate thing. she couldn't be sure if the loss of her first child did it, or some other thing. the erosion of her conscience failed to convince her that she cared enough to question it.

"tiercel is dead." she remarked. slimline little body, crying and pleading ("mother!"), but a forcible sup of passion flower and bitter poppy sirup down her throat stole her voice and stole her choice. she could almost remember the amaroidal bite of it on her tongue now, flowing in her gizzard; so many times she'd drained it just to numb the trespasses of her body.

eventually, she welcomed it with an appetite for the darkness it gifted and the amnesia that followed. but she always knew what happened in the light, in the night, at his behest; felt where it ached, like she'd been torn in half, every-time.

she surfaced from her memories with a head reeling gasp of anger. "she's dead, do you hear me? she's dead and she's never coming back. you can't bring her home." her voice shook with hatred. not for her mother, but for tiercel and her stupidity.

she couldn't puzzle out what had chanced their convergence here, in this strange region to which esmé felt no connection. her memory of being in the mountains with singra were muzzy in her head, and for all she knew they had only wandered so far as the mountains of keokuk ... she could much less presume that a small portion of her childhood belonged to this wilderness. 

abruptly, as if they hadn't been discussing the ruination of the daughter, a heavy breath flapped from esme's lips as if stricken with boredom. the red dahlia traced her gaze up the mountain and it's rapier-tipped zeniths.

"good place to impale a man," she murmured with a thoughtful pucker of her gums. "mmm," opportunity lost,

what a fucking shame.
Messages In This Thread
RE: she slipped the lock, and changed her dress - by Tiercel - July 19, 2020, 01:33 AM