@ischemiac said: ❛ how long has it been since you've slept? ❜
"too long." perhaps her tone is ill-fitting ⸻ spoke with all the displeasure of a all-night study session dragging on into the midday haze, beyond the precipice of exhaustion and into the second wind of invigoration, a temporary boon. she cannot gauge how many hours ( or days ) have passed, as if her metamorphosis into nothing but cargo had transported her not only across oceans but realities into a realm of permanent dusk unable to evolve into dawn. the sun itself has abandoned this rural piece of the world, the overcast sky smothering out all but the fires: those atop wooden torches, the pyres of bodies mangled into iconography, the burning wreckage of cannon fire.
should she stay still too long she is certain her legs will fail her, as if the tide of exhaustion will finally reach her, seizing each ankle with the pain she has managed to stave off ( or worse, the puppetmaster pulling at her limbs, a prisoner not in reinforced steel but the unholy cathedral of flesh and bone ) ⸻ survival, she finds, is exhilarating but the cost is sure to decimate. this is not her life. this is not what she was built for. she lacks the training, the natural talent. irregardless, she is trying her best.
"i'm okay, though," bright-eyed, she smiles because he doesn't ( so stern, she finds, so sad ⸻ how she'd love to pick at the seams of her guardian angel, pluck each feather for his wings until she can say she knows him, until she is more than a thing to be transported, a chess piece moved from one side of the board to the other ), convinced that if they stop she will never find the strength to begin again. "don't worry about me, i'm tougher than i look." birdsong laughter, light and sweet, it is a revelation she was unprepared for: she carries her own weight as if it is all she has ( isn't it? ), an active participant in her own rescue. absence in the sharpshooter eye, the artful dance of a blade, perhaps, but she refuses to have a princess made of her, useless outside her vaunted tower. besides, who has time to sleep? "i'd be lying if i said cannot wait to get back to my own bed."