WHERE WE REST. WHERE WE WEEP. Hands rubbed raw, red, knuckles swollen; folded in her lap like prayer beads, like Sunday penitence. A stony, eerie stillness that settled like snow on a winter’s night: FRIGID; too perfect, so stiff she might have been artificial had it not been for the steady rise and fall of her chest. Every movement practised. Every footfall muffled; a body that had long since memorised every painful creeeeeaaak that disturbed the inmates. The doctors. The girl. Still screaming; still screaming. Always screaming. A noise that filled her ears like ALARUM bells. An ocean of space between where she was and what she wanted despite the close quarters: The Prophet’s design was cruel in its nature -- nothing had ever been allowed to be soft. Slow and gentle lest she disturb the others that lurked. Cracked masks and flaking paint, such HOLLOW, empty eyes. Left with the circus -- left with the scraps to ROT. It was a fate she had not anticipated. The Prophet had always had a CHOKE HOLD: she’d the misfortune to be at the receiving end of his grip, his temper; a lesson learned and SEARED into her at a tender age. This was FRIGID. Sterile. Clinical. So, so very close and terribly far. Hands trailing across tile, across planks; so far removed from the OPULENCE she had grown to detest. I had wanted something plain. I had wanted something so simple. Rhea had nothing left to give to Kronus: he looked to the very world instead.
“You are too loud.” A hiss, a murmur; cracked like a WHIP across what they called a SACRED place. How profane, how VILE. Strands of hair that fell like roots across her back, her legs, the floor; braids still half pinned, the vestiges of status that still clung desperately to her like the lace at her wrists. “Too loud for even something new.” She did not look; stared resolutely ahead; imagined the timbres, the foundation; mortar and brick CRUMBLING with time. “--You’re either brave, or very stupid.”
&& @deliiverus
