Galaxy meme: Night light; slumber
[late night reflective asks]
Night light: who/what makes you feel safe?
The answer blooms slowly to awareness. When one’s life is not constantly on the line, the feeling of safety is often overlooked and taken for granted. Looking out from the tower of a citadel, it is easy to think oneself invulnerable, untouchable, and to be born within its walls does not yield the same experience as seeking shelter there. Foolish, Berkut thinks. I make the people feel safe.
But he digs deeper for an answer nonetheless, past the confidence, the invincibility, the self-assuredness, to the faintest recollection of what panic feels like, the drumming of fear in the chest, and holds it. A moonlit hand reaches out of the shadows and gently caresses the back of his own. His heart stills its manic thunder.
“Rinea,” he says simply, but with a confidence belying the struggle it took to reach an answer, as if it was obvious and natural. Yes, who else? But with the feeling still present, he reaches again. It is the weight of cool metal in his hand, the pungent scent of horses, which wash calm over him this time.
“A fine lance and a trusted steed can all but ensure victory in battle. My horse Idris has carried me through a number of them. And--” A great shadow, as great as Rigel Castle itself, rises up before his mind’s eye. He is a giant, his fur-lined cloak ripples with the mountain wind and the avistym sun rains down and turns to gold on his gilded pauldrons. It is only the giant’s back which Berkut sees, his towering lance planted on one side and the point of his shield sunk deep into the earth on the other, but the hammer begins its pounding within his chest once more. In the mingling, blurry emotions, there is fear, and there is awe, but growing clearer through the sediment is the desire to seek shelter in the giant’s shadow, as one would a fortress.
“... My uncle was the guardian for all of Rigel,” Berkut says finally, pensive and subdued. “While he was here, the Empire was invincible.”
“Now-- Well, Rigel yields to Zofia now.”
