The Wolves Will Roam On. || Self-Para
Crisp winter air nipped at his flesh and hung from his lobes like an ornament. His warm breath crystallised as he expelled it, the contrast of temperature and the smoke that clouded it buffeted from chapped lips. It turned over and over itself as it rose into the winter sky. Grey on white, both just as condensed. Misty hazel-grey eyes followed its rise and watched from a detached perspective as the very oxygen they breathed pulled the smoke apart, disintegrating it in its purity.
"This is it, El Patchio. Standin' on the edge, waitin' to see where fate guides us." Rory's eyes slid from the sky above them to fall his companion. No, more than that. His blood brother. Jack was the other half of his soul, the dance to his rhythm, the punch to his joke. They were in this together. They always had been and they always would be. Shoulder to shoulder running on the rooftops of this wasteland they'd made their own; god's unwanted children living life to its fullest. They took the platter that had been roughly handed to them and they savoured every bite. "They'll call us insane, ol'boy," Jack stated, ruffling the front of Rory's hair before gazing meaningfully off into the distance.
A smirk tugged at Rory's features as his eyes scanned over Jack's elfish ones and he nodded, letting out a long sigh he didn't realise he'd been holding in. "I think that people like us, Pyro, people that know we could destroy ourselves but choose not to, I think we're the sane ones." He glanced back down at the roof of the building under his feet and at the city beneath them. The dusty haired teen cast off his finished fag butt to the pavement far below with a flick of his tobacco stained fingers. "We're the sane ones, Jackie boy. 'Cause we believe in our own power."
It was their power to be free of torment and to live without restrictions. To live without the hindrance of the little social constructions that were long dead and infected and that plagued all the people fighting below them. They believed in their own power to leave a Falling City and have no regrets. This city was no refuge. It was a cage. A cattle pen that the Undead stalked the fences of. For Jack and Rory it had been a stop in the road, a stepping stone to greater things, and now it was their time to move on.
The boys were travellers. Gypsies on the road without a home because each other were all the comfort they needed.
The things you own end up owning you - his Granny's words. They were words that had stuck with him and were sketched across his heart. He and Jack, they weren't owned by anything but the skin on their bones and they certainly wouldn't be owned by a City doomed to Fall. The only force that could restrict them was death and they were good acquaintances. Death and Rory had flirted on occasion. Witty lines thrown back and forth as Rory bartered his way out of his grip to dance back to Jack's side time and time again.
The lad's would take to the long road that weaved across the wasteland they called Earth. They'd take to it and see where it led them. There was no destination in mind. The dead would not stop them - the boys were faster - and they were going to see as many corners of their wasteland as they could. Maybe they'd even find a pot of gold at the end of it; dusty and rusted in its apocalyptic cauldron, but gold nonetheless.
Rory noted movement to his side and it was Pyro stubbing out his cigarette to then hold out a hand to him. "Together, laddie?" A twinkle in his eye. The sweet glint of adventure. Jack's chemical burn scar was exposed to the day light like a trophy of their freedom. They had hit the bottom and now they could truly fly like their wings had never been clipped. They'd sunk so deep together that the height of the building in which they stood on was nothing but a small dip.
A reciprocating grin etched onto Rory's cheeky countenance and he took his hand, their burn scars proudly adorning the backs in unison. They could do anything.
"Together, mate," Rory confirmed. With that the two jumped. They slid through the air. Two trapeze artists long rehearsed, two parkour athletes long trained. Seemingly last minute they released each other's grip to catch their lives on a lower building. The synchronised tuck and roll onto the flat roof adding mud and dust to their already dishevelled appearances.
Everything comes from dirt. It's dirt that defined them and from which all things grow; and grow they did. Rolling onto their feet they ran.
Two wolf boys with the breeze in their unruly locks and the elements battering shamelessly at their well weathered skin ran from Fall City; the mark of dirt upon their skin.
