this is for the bigots, this is for the sexists this is for the killers. this is for the big-house, pen sentenced cats becoming redeemers and for the springtimes that always show up after the winters. this? this is for you. make sure that by the time the fisherman returns you are gone. because just like the days I burn at both ends. every time I open my eyes I am cutting out a part of myself to give to you. - k.b.s. Timestamp: 33 Winter 511 AV It was with one foot still in the sea that the Sunsinger stepped at last into the temple of his latest goddess. Through the rooms he had drifted, wandering like the ghost of a man long dead, shot in the back, right through the heart, a glowing chunk of amber strung about his neck rather than a hanged man's rope. None of the acolytes approached him, allowing him to pass with his eternal invitation writ in wine upon his skin. It formed links of a divine chain, arching across the sharp jut of a hipbone and vanishing into the waistband of weathered, leather riding pants. He was stripped to the waist, boots shucked aside as well, in his obeisance when he stumbled at last into the sunken grotto at the temple's center. Syna's careful distance nonetheless cast the shadow of his horns long across the stone floor, limning the water with daffodil light and causing Rak'keli's winged serpents to glimmer where they were emblazoned on the back of his right hand. It was neither of those holy women whom he contemplated now. Last he had stood within man-made walls of a temple had been in Syliras. He had worn an expression of such grave and bitter challenge that it had incited a squire to ready her hand on her sword hilt. Today he just looked tired. He might have been asleep, laying flat on his back with embers of hair splashed across a crack in the stone. Palms pressed flat to the floor and his breathing was long and steady, matching the rhythm of his sinking heart. Though whatever curse caged the divine powers housed in Denval prevented him from opening the kiss Nikali had used to bind him here, need yet waited beneath, sluggish as giant's blood force fed into his once celestial veins. He was trying to remember, to envision and encapsulate all those lost lives to seek among them the answer that had had Syna breathing his name far from where he could hear it. He was told he was here to save Denval, but nobody seemed to know how. Including him. |