thanks for getting the thread up^^
her voice is modulated by the pain. it fuzzes around the edges like felt slowly coming apart and urias knows when to wince at the right times. i'm urias,
he obliges, studying his own feet with his hands deep in his pockets as he walks. you?
over time her gait only grows more and more awkward. watching the strain on her face grow closer to an unidentified tipping point is like looking at a trembling suspension cord about to snap and rear. even he is uncomfortable despite his spectacular failures concerning empathy. there is something about walking with a wounded girl that makes him cagey.
don't be so goddamn stubborn.
exasperated at her crumbling attempts to hide her discomfort, he moves to her side to provide shoulderly support. he fully expects to be stabbed at.
gonna roll in discord to see if hes successful w/ finding the marigolds :0
what her name calls to mind are sea serpents and sinister shadows muscling their way through an ocean floor. he wants to ask then where's your charybdis but he bites his tongue.
her teeth graze his shoulder but what she doesn't know is that he can be as stubborn as her. they hobble together towards the lake as the trees thin out. its visible now, a pale grey disk in the fields mirroring the overcast sky. just beyond it like a wolf's lower jaw, the jagged horizon of a forest. it is dense and stout and dark, despite the slight fog that wreathes the branches.
once they are close enough to clearly see the reeds and flowers framing the lake, urias pushes forwards, walking just ahead of her. he noses through the plants efficiently and carefully, eyes narrowed.
the frilly yellow faces of marigolds open up to him in the grass. they are sallow and more jaundiced than gold, but he trots back to scylla with a handful, expectant and more than a little pleased with himself.
she's already started soaking her foot in the cold lakeshore. with the grime and blood off, the true extent of the damage is visible— half of the foot isn't even there. duly impressed, he sets down the marigolds within her reach and whistles out of whatever counterfeit empathy chugging along in his brain. scylla the two-toed. scylla the club-footed.
truth be told, he isn't sure why he is helping her either. survivalists did not indulge in morals too often and neither did he, but he was a different case entirely. do you reckon,
he starts, after a thoughtful pause, there are packs nearby?
there was a clear difference between war medics and doctors. one studied for 6 months and the other studied for a decade. he briefly thinks back to the steel-toed elks, remembers the graze on his side— i could be dying. i could have had my ribs sticking through the skin— and shudders.
at her mention of a pack, he leans forwards, intrigued. but one not many would want to pledge their allegiance to.
why? would be the obvious question, and he waits for elaboration— frustrated when he doesn't get one. he turns his head towards that moribund forest, but the shadows between the trees are stubborn and opaque, and he sees no sign of wolf.
that's the second thing i'm looking for,
he sits, the tips of his fingers touching the water. the weak wind ruffles his hair. the first thing is my sister.
tzila. beloved tzila. the memory of hair nails raking through his cheek, the pressure on his eye, it's enough to make him sick. he slides into a certain intensity, a darkness that suggests he has harmed and will harm. made a real work of my face and abandoned the family right after. who knows what other bastard she's got in her goddamn spider web.
someone oughta put her in her place.
both sibling-searchers. scylla had her sister, he had his own. he lets out a rueful sigh.
i never loved her. she never loved me. but a betrayal is a betrayal, i guess.
he'd never understood the resentment that poisoned the family tree like lead, only that it was there and had always been there, only that he had got all the praise and she hadn't. what a sullen little thing. he'd always explain to her, survival of the fittest, and look at where he'd ended up now.
he curls a fist and presses to the ground, firmly but gently, though the fist itself shakes with the effort of clenching it. how is your sister like?
at her question, he pauses before flashing a bitter smile. the paleness of his teeth on his dark face is disconcerting. charming, if you looked hard enough. she left me to bleed out...
he offers in lieu of a proper explanation. the implication flows heavy and black into his mouth like tar. so i will too.
scylla's sister did not much remind him of his own. in his memory, tzila was petulant and prone to brooding, sensitive like a bruised peach. she had never literally bit back until the day that she'd left— he couldn't begin to fathom why that was so. what pushed her past that tipping point? so immature. so vulnerable to emotion, that poor thing.
that was why she could never be his equal.
squinting thoughtfully, he says what she is thinking: jealousy, i'm sure. she was always weak in that way.
that was why he'd transformed into diamond while she'd crumbled under the pressure.
a childhood of tough love like me,
he exclaims, throwing his hands up, look at me. i turned out fine. what the hell happened in her head.
the fact of the matter was that urias had not turned out fine, but that was a different story altogether. what mattered was that she had let her emotions control her. he would never allow that to happen to him.
clinical, uncaring, intense. to me, being cowardly and illogical are close enough to being weak.
he pauses. but i understand where you are coming from.
he prided himself on acting logically. on examining any situation and bleaching the untruths out of it. it was easy to mock people who acted with passion and unasked for emotion because there were so goddamn many of them. since when had the world been so full of bleeding hearts?
perhaps i will,
he says, although the vision that has been replaying in his head over and over again is not of him asking her anything. it is of him muscling her face into water until she stops struggling. it will be a quiet fight. if he were human and had a gun he would use it. urias did not mince anything. what do you think you will say to her, when you find your sister?
he watches his scarred reflection in the water, wavering.
that's true,
he says, impressed yet again by the girl's bluntness. he wonders what had made her that way— a wasteland upbringing, unfortunate circumstance, a beheaded childhood.
scarcely the age for heading out alone without your family, and even scarcer to be so militant and focused. when he was young, he hadn't been so razor sharp. so laser minded. his parents had struggled with teaching him to nuture some sort of empathy for others (an endeavour they had quickly given up on) before they'd realised it was better off this way for him. maybe not so much for others.
the grey man hums, contemplative. about the pack you mentioned earlier,
he circles back, if they're still standing. were they that bad?
in his mind he envisions a sort of dictatorship, a slave farm, a bottom-heavy society swarming with threadbare labourers. high above them, corporate gods. his mind flashes back to scylla's lonesomeness too, briefly lingering on what could've happen to her family for them to be so split apart.
we can fade after next round?
it's easy to listen— he had mastered the art of it, of appearing interested. he didn't think it would work so well on scylla, as bulletproof and unpickable as she was, but it was a good habit: leaning your head forwards just so, maybe tilting it too, so that the light catches on the inner corners of your eyes, a wry smile or a thoughtful purse of the lips... a lot of the times, facial expressions were something to pick out and wear. yes, i'd like a size seven. yes, i'd like it bagged.
he shifts his weight, loosens his posture. what dystopia had this dark girl come up out of? in all honesty, that sounds like an excuse from him.
he says noncomittally while steepling his fingers, saying i don't believe in curses. i barely believe in ghosts. i'll avoid those woods then.
scylla didn't seem like the child of some madman or a product of cursed depravity. she just seemed like a girl who'd grown up too fast. a part of him almost, almost pities her. but reality was he wasn't good at pity and he doubted that she'd take anything of the sort.
sure! thanks for tha threadss
if there was something off about urias -- scylla did not take it into account. the girl had lived with off all her life. as soon as the idea would have slithered into that calculating mind of hers, immediately would it have been cast aside. ignoring aspects of another she could not control was second nature. in any case, he had done nothing to hurt her. therefore nothing of his character caused her to become apprehensive or alarmed.
his retort about her father causes a brief, airy laugh to escape her throat. and he would have killed you for saying so. perhaps you're right.
well, he was more than perhaps right, but that wasn't something either of them would know. at urias' decision to avoid the dark woods, scylla shrugs, do what you wish
even she had no desire to immerse herself among their ranks again, but that was more on account of her belief that they lied in her past. if vacant, however, the territory was prime real estate. it served as very advantageous if one was looking for somewhere to escape to, for navigating it blindly was near deadly.
but scylla had a feeling their encounter was coming to an end soon enough, and she wonders aloud, where will you go now?
and what will you do if you don't find what you're looking for? but she does not add that on, not wanting to sound doubtful. perhaps they would cross paths again. perhaps not.
a pleased smile floods his face, but like with all expressions on him, it is magnified and pushed in all the wrong places. he's careful not to bare his teeth.
sounds like a pleasant man.
not that he was much of a saint either. a real bully in a china shop, he was. or so others said. he runs a hand through his hair, pensive, before another question cuts the thought train short. not very far,
he allows. maybe i'll see you again.
urias isn't sure if he means that. she wasn't bad company at all, and he'd learned a few things: cursed bloodlines, cursed forests, what it meant to be weak in scylla's world.
well, then. good luck with your sister. and with your foot.
he stands up and dusts off his hands, strolling towards the creek that trickled into the lake, to those distance tooth-like mountains. it crosses his mind that this might be the last time he saw this girl again, ever. how thought-provoking.