prayers. (drabble for the vestal)
Gods, hadn’t she prayed enough?
Hadn’t enough words spilled into the void of her inn room? Hadn’t the bloody stars swallowed enough of her prayers to choke on them? Were the heavens not yet bloated and vile with the excess of her faith? She’d suffused the solemn air of the church with screaming fit to rend her throat. She’d spat blood after one of her confessions, shrieked confessions about what she’d seen down in the dark.
Why, then, did the stars not answer? Where was the peace promised by her faith? Should that not have served as a bulwark against the encroaching madness? No, because she could no longer see God in her dreams – only the throbbing, the rotted, the mottled and the mad. She could hear them, all of them, their cries and screams and mutterings all pouring into one lunatic river of gibbering truth.
The only reason the tavernkeep hasn’t cut her off yet is that she keeps sending different members of her entourage to fetch more alcohol. It’s the only thing that stops the dreams these days.
You need to stop, says the graverobber, you’re going to die like this.
(The graverobber thinks later that she’s never seen anything so hideous – not down in the dark, not out in the warrens, not even in the most plagued corners of the weald – as the smile that cracked across the vestal’s wavering mouth as she returned,
She can feel it burning in her throat, twisting and turning in her stomach; any more and it’s going to come back up, she’s sure of it. It doesn’t matter. Another pint poured, another pint down. Whatever it takes to drown the raving truth.
It does come back up – she’s kneeling in the mud now, behind the inn. It’s raining. She can’t see the stars, so she’s staring at the ground, silent and shivering under the chilly drizzle.
Ho there, says the knight – a pious man, and she discovers she hates that, she hates him, she hates his unbroken faith and his perpetually stoic expression, and she hates herself more for failing to maintain any of that – are you alright, vestal?
She can’t speak, right away. She’s afraid more will come up from her beleaguered stomach.
He kneels down next to her, and places a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Too much to drink, Sister? he asks, without the barest hint of reproach or condescension. She hates his voice. He’s so kind. He’s not yet broken.
But she is. She knows she is. She can feel the pieces of her own mind floating around in her skull, awash in merciful alcohol, blurring it all.
No, she says, and chokes back the resulting, wrenching heave. The Light will not answer. There are no stars out tonight, and the light will not answer, and I have to drown my dreams, and the light will not answer, and all I can hear when I sleep is the screeching truth, and –
- and she collapses in the mud, sobbing, because she knows that for all the wine in town the dreams will come again.
God, she cries, haven’t I prayed enough?
Even as the paladin reaches to help her up, she’s crying still – and she earns nothing for her troubles but the rain.
annaxmalina
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
germansingergirl
