[flashback] sound and fury. (duvalyon)

[Dor]

There ought to have been fresh fear sprung from the sharp words, the hasty extraction and menacing approach of her harassed keeper. Yet the fear of forgetting which way was up, of wheeling lost in an endless black far from the lowering of any sky yet consumed; and she crumbled in his bed, knees drawing up to the burgeoning curve of her chest and hands shoving back through her hair in an anxious huddling motion. Had she been wearing her wings, they would have been ruffled and cocooned protectively around her. Duvalyon's cold phrasing, firm reprimands for the first time failed to instill within her an undeniable guilt. Instead there puddled need, unfamiliar and accompanied by an unrecognized hope. Spiders wove webs, webs tangled and connected, knotted and bound and left no one alone in the black. "Duv," she whispered. "I was flying." He was supposed to understand that, somehow, made apparent by the expectation in her face as she peered up at him. Still small hands unraveled from her hair to reach up, out to him. "There's more out there," she explained in case he had forgotten. Of course he already knew. Duvalyon knew everything. "Out there to see if there was only.. People come from up. To the market. They come and they don't look like you or the Ochya or Melia. They look like me or strange and different and maybe if you went too I could go see? If I saw Up, I wouldn't lose it again." She was very, very serious and yet still hanging upon him with her eyes as if, perhaps, he was beginning to fixate at the center of her metaphysical world as well as her corporeal. She wanted him to be happy. She needed him to be happy with her. She also needed Up and so of course believed he could give it to her. He had, after all, given her everything else.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Pet birds were not unheard of in Kalinor, but Duavlyon knew their owners never had to explain an existential discontent to them. They pecked, ate, flapped and made messes, just happy to be safe and warm. There was no longing for a proper sky, no raw need for something they couldn't articulate. At least not a discernible one. He was running out of time. Dor was getting older and one day she would buck every boundary, finally aware he could not fly after her. When she began to stray from his shadow of protection, would his father air secrets? His people were hungry for surrogates and she was approaching maturation. Why did such a thing bother him, though? Duvalyon had dragged back his share of unwilling mothers. He believed in the necessity of the harvest. Without it, he would not exist. The appall crept in with the idea of raising a surrogate. To tend something and offer it your protection for so long only to let it be used and destroyed; that was betrayal, and betrayal was a sin against both his dead mother's and father's gods. At least his captives had no affection for him, they kicked and screamed the whole way. Yet the decision still remained, what was to be done with Dor when she got older? He worried that his love for his sister would lead him to darker places. "Yes, Dor, there is more out there," he finally answered, "Lots of up, more than one person will ever need." "What you've read in books, heard spoken of... it all exists. But many in Kalinor never see it beyond the mouth of the cavern and live happily." He was thinking the difficulty out, ignoring her reaching hands. If she wanted to touch someone, it could be Melia who doted on Dor like one would a large doll. He was the last creature one should feel affection for. "And most people look very different from me and my nest. They look like you. Out there I am usually disliked" (loathed was a better term but he didn't want to paint an uglier picture) "So I don't leave often." His threats were giving way to reasoning, a gamble that logic would resonate with the bird-girl. "You can't see Up until you are older. It is too dangerous now. I can't watch you out there." He pressed his mouth into a line. "I will take you, though. The day you can understand what concerns I have about you, you will be old enough to leave."

[Dor]

The day Duvalyon mentioned would come and bear with it both wonders and nightmares neither had yet envisioned, Dor for lacking the scope and Duvalyon for being impaired by his own web's weaving. Yet tonight a current of emotion stabbed through the young kelvic like a line of red fire across cold wood, motivating her out of a trembling huddle and to her feet. Reason had little habit of progression with Dor, but the lower layers of emotion subdued beneath her keeper's controlled countenance could not have been more eloquent if they had been loud splashed and splattered with infused language and naked expressions. She was observant by nature, curious and watchful and for the vast majority there had been only him to study. And she had. "You're worried for me and something with," a motion of hands, grasping at dreadful handfuls of nothing when she came to a rocking halt on her toes in front of him. "Up and here. Duvalyon," she formed his full name, the one he had given her rather than the shortened version she had tried to return to him. It was in an effort to please him. "I like you. You'll show me up when I understand what disturbs you, won't you? You could just tell me." Impatience birthed imperfection. This time when she reached, her hands closed about his wrists light as the brush of wing feathers. She was still clammy, warmth stolen by a fear she still failed to understand found there in the black and the gorge where there was nothing but air yet it had seemed to be closing in. The prick of his pulse bumped up against his fingertips, reverberated down through hollow bones. Unconsciously, she smiled.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Duvalyon looked at the little hands wrapped around his wrists. Dor’s hands were almost the size of Melia’s, but lacking the fine-boned elegance of his sister’s. He was a fool for taking this creature, for fearing what would happen to a Kelvic chick if it were thrown into the wilds. “Yes, when you understand why I worry, I will show you the way out and then you can leave Kalinor and I behind for brighter spaces.” His eyes widened in a forcibly bright but resigned look. “There. Happy?” He wanted the conversation to end and never come back. If it did, he didn’t trust his own nature and taste for cruelty. Backed into a corner he might tell her everything, and then twist the knife with more knowledge than necessary. Her mother was a breeding sow who died unattended on his father’s table, and those in Kalinor would rather see her split in two and used as a husk for one of their sons. It would pour out of him as a punishment for her curiosity. Duvalyon knew that much about himself and his temper, so he tried to pull away from the subject. “I will see if I can get you more books with drawings.” To get her quiet on the matter, he had stooped to bribery. Duvalyon was about to disentangle himself from her feverish touch when a thought struck him. It was a tactic he had used before in very different situations. Careful of his claws, he affectionately tucked Dor’s wild hair behind her ears, as if he wanted to see her face perfectly. “Promise me, Dra-Dor,” his calming voice thrummed with a barely perceptible chord of magic. “Promise me, you’ll keep out of the gorge.”

[Dor]

The liquid vibration of Duvalyon's voice asking so prettily of her widened the girl's eyes, locking them to the wine colored depths of her keeper's regard. "I promise," she found herself saying, eager to say it and in doing so grant him satisfaction. A wilt weighed on the edges of her smile within moments, however, when the rest of his words finished their processing and the content current, brought on by his gentle touch, calming inarticulate fear, faded. A study was made of the familiar lines that made up his face, a breath lifting teacup shoulders and drooping them. Abruptly, she shook her head. It effectively dislodged the murder wisps of hair he had just tucked behind her ears. "No," she said. "No, I want you to go with me, Duvalyon. I don't want to leave you and I can stay here, in this dark place, with you. If you want. We can go to Up together sometimes, yes? When I'm larger and you won't have to worry."

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

Without thinking Duvalyon answered Dor’s pleading request with a chuckle. “With me?” He patted her head but it did nothing to smooth her hair. “No, Dra-Dor, the last thing either of us should want is perpetual fellowship. When you are mature you are going to go far from both me and Kalinor.” How long did it take for Kelvics to reach an age where they would be of interest for surrogacy? Dor grew so fast he couldn’t guess how many seasons she had left. “It is the best thing for you.” Of that he was certain. The girl-thing would see more of the world and the twilight Symenestra would fade into the haze of a mildly unfortunate childhood. Everyone notable had a childhood of middling quality. She wouldn’t be the worse for it. This desire to stay with him was born of no more than habit, and could easily be replaced by a lust for sunshine. Young girls did tend to grow dramatic and recover from “catastrophic, world-ruining” events within a week or a change of scenery. He wondered idly if he’d miss her. Probably, he was stupid enough to secretly indulge a melancholy twinge.

[Dor]

"But we're, we're," she fumbled for verbal footing. Books were fascinating to her not solely due to pictures of strange and unknown people, places and things, but because words contained a mystery she was forever attempting to unravel. Curiosity combined with a narrow attention span assured that the enigma of language lasted longer in its trials. "We're connected." Finally, the appropriate grouping of sounds shaped in her mouth. "Duvalyon, you and I are a web with two strands," and she ticked off a pair of fingers and crossed them in display. "Tied together. I can't leave you. I don't want to leave you." A ripple of frustration went through her like feathers ruffling, instigated by her keeper's apparent lack of concern for their eventual parting. A hand spread between shallow breasts, curving against her heart and then sliding down porcelain pale skin to span the flat of her stomach. "You're inside of me. Belonging."

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

The Symenestra shuddered, his body flashing cold. Inside of her? Belonging? It was madness on her part. One did not swallow knives because you liked the feel of them in your hand. There were barriers and healthy fears to keep one from handling precarious things too easily. This was too intimate a connection to desire with a Symenestra that didn’t espouse Esterian sentiments. He thought he had made the division between them stark enough to avoid this depth of feeling. What a pathetic creature she was. Something like pity threatened to touch Duvalyon’s heart. Dor’s world was so bleak that she looked at him with a feeling as monstrous as love. He saw in her frail Melia desiring a dismissive father’s affection and the desperation of his own race to leave the twilight of their demise. For a moment he wanted to soothe the ache he saw before him, just as he wanted to heal the dissipation of his people and his sister’s hopes. It would be so simple to fulfill this creature, yet what was the end of this? It would be easy and gratifying to take her hands and pretend the scavenging future did not brood over them, easy but cruel. Dor reeked of longing. But her ache would only lead her to destruction. It could not go unchecked. Duvalyon reached out and struck her face, hard. “There is nothing between us, Dor,” he pronounced with chilling flatness. “Nothing but obedience. Whatever is in you, vomit it up. It is worth no more than that.”

[Dor]

There would come a day when the falcon found this scene in her memory unexpectedly limned in love. It was not lost love, broken or unrequited love. It was just love of a different color, love crafted by the confines of its surroundings, possibly even corrupted by them, but still love. Love had begun the bonding within her, and love had Duvaylon rejecting it. On that same day, Dor would wonder if the Symenestra who had raised her even recognized it for what it was. This was night, however, gloomy and harsh despite the soft walls of the spider's home, and with the slap her heart shattered. Shock caused her to stumble away from him as much as pain, losing her footing and eternally ungraceful when in human skin. Birds were not meant to walk. Birds were supposed to fly. Only this was falling, back pressed against the curve of the wall and stunned eyes coming up to stare at Duvalyon. There was no hiding the hurt, hurt that had so little to do with the physical in proportion to the internal agony of rejection. "Duv," she sort of chirped, soft and fading. Nothing, he said. Nothing between them save rules, rules that without affection lacked meaning and point to her. Truth was she wanted to vomit, just as he ordered; but a tremor took her hands again until she was shuffling back to her feet, spinning on the balls of her toes and in another handful of heartbeats would be gone in a mercurial flash of lights -- precious light in this place she was unable to see -- to fly out as much distance between them as she could. Rules be damned. The tears welling in her eyes were hot and searing and for the first time she did not want Duvalyon to see her.

[Duvalyon Hellebore]

When Dor left, the paltry lights of Duvalyon’s home were snuffed behind her. The meager glow had been for her sake should she awake in the night. The Symenestra returned easily to the dark, but didn’t sleep. Between them, painful love could not be destroyed, only change vessels. ~Finis~