she forgot to count the words when she spoke them. not because she spoke out of line, but rather that she spoke at all. so openly, so loose. her own tongue hanging lofty in her mouth felt more akin to a droplet of lead breaking down smaller fractures of smaller bones. no sense in regretting it now though umiko is sure to reprimand herself later, just as she always did. the world … this world, it bore down upon her flesh so fervently that it nearly burned the bridge between her soul and her heart. the aether here is so blinding and it stretches so far, even she can barely muster up the courage to attempt in comprehending everything.
he is another tide altogether. blustering fury hidden behind all too pleasant greetings and the firm press of white gloves against bleakest grey. why she felt the want, the need to speak at all, let alone in his presence puzzled her. disturbed her. there had been branches of bone bleached white, and then the deepest pits of black water. she sees nothing now, but she can feel it — a frayed rope, ghostly and alive. its frayed ends writhe below her feet.
❝ you assume too much, you are so loud with your own thoughts. ❞ under his gaze she does not flinch, she has seen too much to do that now. a measured pause passes by, then dies. a thought knits her brows though she will not give it a voice let alone her own. ❝ perhaps you see too much as well. ❞ not like her for she does not see everything, she can only feel and hear and align herself with the colours of the world while he plucked them apart. for that reason alone, umiko truly despised him.
it truly was a play, a drama, and emet-selch had always donned many masks to act -- the hero, the villain, the righteous, the misguided, and yet, however did umiko continue blazing bright, so unbearably herself? it was between exhaustion and disdain that he spread his arms wide, head turned solemnly to the side. ❛ do i? ❜ the snarl of his smile made his gaze golden like that of a predator; calculating, patient, and hungry. ❛ then will you allow for me to rejoin this star, hero? surrender when so many believe in you? ❜ in a dramatic flare of putting his hand over his heart, he added, ❛ how heartless. i wonder what her stalwart companions will think. ❜
insufferably, he was sure those companions would stand beside her no matter how much she sank or faltered, propping her up when they could no prop up themselves. allies, and not only in name: the bonds of echoes.
a frown carved into his face, bowed back stiff with ages of want and desperation. ❛ i prefer to say i see too little, ❜ he murmured, voice like gravel, ❛ after all, what is this shade of a world compared to what all i have known? ❜ still committed to memory was every archive, every vision of the people who once stood beside him, creators not creations. there were no consequences, no turmoil, simply a collective existence near eternal -- it was an eternity devoted to a forgotten paradise.
❛ still, you are leagues above your brethren. even in the time of the ancients, few could attune themselves to the underworld. ❜ emet-selch wondered if it was because it was her, or simply a stroke of chance, tugging at something he loved and would do anything to see again.
