holland vosijk and regret or longing, you can decide which word you wanna use!
hello, mei - we meet again...
ANYWAY, dramatics aside, thank you for giving me this small writing opportunity! I didn’t want to get ahead of myself and make it anything big, plus I lack the competence to create anything grand at this time. Work and school are frying my brain. So!! Here is a short thing for Holland. Notes and warning below first for anyone who might see it!
** SPOILER WARNING;; DO NOT READ THIS CONTENT IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE ENTIRETY OF THE SERIES FOR A DARKER SHADE OF MAGIC - NAMELY, A CONJURING OF LIGHT!!**
This small chunk is set with/for my current Shades series The Imbalance; chapter 1 is already up on ao3 which this has close relevance to. It is divergent from the series’ ending, and that’s all you really need to know! Thanks for tuning in!
If regret were a tree, would it blossom? Would it have bark the color of dark, poisoned soil...and what of its branches? Would they hang low, reaching for any breath of life and vitality that passed beneath it, or would they hunt the skies with jagged claws?
What is the shape of Holland's regret?
Holland's regret was a tree, or better, an entire wood. It bore sour fruit, the taste always too sweet, too tart, too sick. That was what regret did to a person—it made them ill; it was a rot that spread through the veins, coiling around the heart and ate away at all the good. It would devour him, piece by piece, breath for breath. It would do so until his tongue was black, until his blood was thick with it, until his heart beat a sluggish, wailing song of how it only knew pain and brutality and corruption and sickness. That, he thought to himself, sinking down against an old tree on his favorite hilltop, is what regret is. It is a sickness; it is a rancid smell and a foul taste you cannot be rid of.
He tips his head back and closes his eyes. He takes a slow and somewhat agonizing breath. He was still healing, everything in him still felt...lost somewhere that wasn’t there. He felt scattered. It took a strange amount of effort to simply breathe; his existence defied the rules of life and disrupted the balance of things. The balance of magic, he corrects himself bitterly. He misses it. Holland was grateful to be alive, to be able to bear witness to Makt’s own rebirthing. To feel the shudder of the trees, the sigh of the hills, and birdsong returning. Life returning.
And yet...It felt like a cruel punishment to leave him with nothing. Perhaps it is to be his atonement. After all, no one suffers as beautifully as him, right?
Holland spreads his fingers on the earth beside him, soft and verdant grass slipping between them. He could feel himself unwinding, his anger slipping away like the slow tilt of a pan filled with water, tentatively spilling over. Were he to open his eyes, Holland would see the small blossoms forming around him, might catch sight of the tree he sat beneath reaching like the arms of a lover to greet him. Had he not dozed into a comfortable sleep, he could have listened to the forest whisper his name softly.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
The king has returned, returned.
The king is resting.
The king is home.
