timestamp: the lion’s bride, pt. i ; second seed, 300 ac location: king’s landing, the docks tagging: @blacktde
the bone hand’s heir is not a man unacquainted with ghosts. enough skeletons — — man and beast alike — — had washed upon the shores of old wyk ; tidepools with salt crystalized formations that became home to the gaunt figure, even then something peculiar about the boy. that said nothing of the family’s own ghosts, where the sentiment of women and children first seemed to linger. after three decades of such an existence, little should truly startle him.
yet, as he returns to the docs in the light of the sun dipping over the horizon, his breath catches without water to fill his lungs. the sight of a man he had once known, once … once. the ring that did not quite fit his knuckle seemed suddenly heavier, and lithe fingers begin to spin the thing around and around, a whirlpool - like motion. it would be best to say something, to acknowledge what the waves had returned to him, but instead he stands still as the grave and watches, waiting to be spotted himself.
𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝙳𝙰𝚈𝚂 𝚆𝙷𝙴𝙽 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚃𝙴𝚃𝙷𝙴𝚁𝚂 𝙾𝙵 𝙻𝙸𝙵𝙴 𝙰𝚁𝙴 𝙶𝙾𝚂𝚂𝙰𝙼𝙴𝚁 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝙽. nights where he feels so lightly connected, it feels as if he is not there. a figment of his own imagination, only the pain threading him back through the end of the needle, the household tapestry free of his image. he knows what it means to build a body with no god attached, discovered it in the summer sea, drug down by the ropes and the rigging of a drowned ship. a gasp where water floods the lungs, where salt stings the eyes, where he’s reborn upon the a black kyanite deck. where he learns to never try and race the tide on the sands of the gulf of grief, for the tide is the devil. it will run a man out of breath, cull him in the inlet of slaver’s bay, chase him to his death. the tide is the very devil, and the devil has its day.
at the ends of the sea, aurion blacktyde learns to GIVE NO QUARTER. both sea - born and sea - doomed, he has returned home in ill - fashion, a dead man with dead eyes, trapped, treading water and waiting to drown. the iron islands have forgotten him, a new rebellion come to shift the tides. standing upon the docks, he is ancient and dreamless, caught in the crosshairs of once intimate sight. derran has remained handsome, where he has greyed beyond repair. a limp in his step where the bone never healed, back marred by the rough work of a whip, lattice lines which dug deep into the skin, but left consequences that wove lithe muscle through his limbs. he has plunged into a pact with the deep, an entity of the ocean. how much heartbreak he would have saved, if he had left without saying goodbye. his lips split into an ailing grin, silhouette weary as if wading a pool, a ghost before the bone hand’s heir that looms. ❛ you have not changed [...] i’m afraid you cannot say the same. ❜
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