kaliarren
"Princeling over a chasm? Somebody hates us," Law said, eyeing the young man dangling from a narrow tree growing out over the massive expanse of emptiness.
"Please, help! I'm slipping!"
With a sound something like "tch", Law unshouldered her pack and threw it at Bastion, breaking into a full-out sprint.
"Let go," Bastion advised the young man, pretending not to smile. "It'll hurt less."
"WHAT? I'M GOING TO FALL, WHY WOULD I LET GO??"
"It'll save your arms -- oh, never mind."
Law leapt the chasm, colliding bodily with the youth midway and sweeping him into her ambitious amount of speed; they tumbled to rest on the other side with a groan that belonged entirely to the princeling.
Curiosity gets the better of her, and she sets her shoulder to the double doors and pushes with all her might. They open onto a field of summer flowers and sunshine, blue skies and warm green grass, and all she can do is wonder how something like this is possible in the dead of winter in a house older than her grandfather.
He sits in the window seat and stares out at the green countryside and the impossibly blue sky above it. The train shudders and clacks beneath him, thundering along the track, carrying him away to the next dot on his marked-in-red-pen map, but he barely notices the noise; his thoughts are on the clouds.
"I don't need your help," he said bitterly, knocking aside the offered hand. The last thing he wanted was sympathy; this was his problem and no one else's. That was how it always had been, and always would be.
"I want that one," he says, and the clockmaker nods and smiles and praises his choice, wrapping the silver pocketwatch in brown paper and exchanging it for a few folded bills.
He winds it carefully, admiring the beautiful design decorating the cover before tucking the watch into his breast pocket.
It keeps perfect time.
6:00 sharp and his world stops.
The formality is part of who he is, and she would have it no other way.
"Good morning, my radiant princess," he murmurs, bowing from the waist, uncharacteristically unbound black-silk hair spilling over his shoulders and across his face. "May I escort you downstairs?"
"I would be honored," she replies, and smiles as he takes her hand.
The motel room stinks of cheap liquor and cigarette smoke, and it seems a fitting end for the man who stole his life so many years ago.
"Good night," he murmurs darkly, and twists the knife as he pulls it out of his gasping opponent's chest; blood spatters like rain, hot and wine-red.
He turns to leave, tugging his coat back up to cover the space where his right arm should be. The sound of a body falling limply to the floor is all that remains of his enemy.
As he ran for his life, the trees seemed to be mocking his every step. Leaves shook overhead, dry and crisply brittle; it sounded like skeletal laughter on the wind.
The moon was a crimson red, and it chilled him to the bone.
"Knights of Asgard! To me!" he cried, crashing his sword against his shield to draw their attention. "To me, men!"
He heard the drowsy grumbles--that he was a crazy superstitious man who refused to let his subordinates sleep--but how could mere superstition frighten him so?
writing since 2010 · 9 entries · 9 days shown up
each square is a day—lit means Kali showed up.
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the words Kali reaches for
redlawmurmurscoversoundsmileshandhelpgreenblueprincelingchasmyoungbastionmooncrimson