| Dust (Narrative) |
[13 Jan 2008|11:29pm] |
She was alive.
It was impossible to have missed those ancient Welsh words Gwydyon used - the words that would command his form elsewhere. The toad in its case had vanished, too. There was no sense of her brother in the air around her. Gwydyon was gone, and she was not harmed for it. He hadn't laid his blade into her throat, he hadn't even struck her. It seemed as incredible as his brashness. She was alive, though she'd been prepared to leave the world for a time at the violent hands of her mad brother.
Alive. She should have felt relieved.
Arian slowly straightened, slowly pushed her hair back over her shoulder, and then turned toward the grand temple of Apollo. Her lover could not have missed the commotion Gwydyon caused, yet he was not returned. She passed a hand over her face and slowly began the walk back to the great structure. There was nothing of her normal slink in her movements. She felt... old. She felt used up. Too much history, so much pain... The worthlessness of it all! Her fingers clenched and opened again at her sides.
The swing was ruined. She stared at its unchained corpse on the stone between two columns, the toed the chain out of her way. Into the temple, then, she went. Statues destroyed... Apollo's clothing scattered from his bedroom out into the beautiful living hall... dust everywhere from the destruction. She went to the bedroom and found that the door was off its hinges. Ruin. Everywhere she looked. Everywhere she went. Inescapable.
Her feet were filthy. She collapsed on the corner of the bed she and the Greek god had shared not so long ago, and stared at her toes. They were covered in turf and glistening bits of marble that she'd walked through on her way up. This was never the way it should have been. Something that had grown hard and unbendable, something that had been softening, warming under the brightness of Apollo's company, finally bent under the weight it'd born for too long, too long. It filled her with its shattering, though she couldn't understand why it hurt. Liquid fell in drops onto her lap and bewildered her. When she pushed her hand against her cheek and realized she was weeping, she laughed, a horrible terrible sound.
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