12A/N: Just a short little thing I wrote in about an hour or two. Just stretching myself, flexing the old muscles after a long hiatus. – A little scenario I had in my mind for a while. I kind of meant it to be duird/pagan-esque, or have that spirit, plus my old flavour. I'm remembering how much I love writing. Please comment! I need to know who's still out there.
I'm back! Updates on my stuff will most likely come soon.
There was a hazy, dew-speckled meadow that had contorted, shifted, and hid itself away from villages, cities and empires for eons. Bent, crackled oak trees curled their dark ancient wood around it and whispered its secrets to no one but the air around them – always watching, constantly protecting. The grass sprouted wildly and the mist drifted aimlessly.
In the centre, crowned with moss and adorned with lilies, was a peculiar, for a place that human hands had not ripped to shreds. The small cobblestone wall was incomplete – whoever or whatever had made it had given up after a mere four meters. It was only two meters tall, as well, and quite simple. The stones were hurriedly put together; many of them were eroded and crumbling. Vermilion grass sprouted from every possible crevice, and the air around it smelled of damp soil.
Encased in the middle of the barrier was a wooden door.
There was nothing especially remarkable about the entrance. The chipped lilac paint had long since faded, and was swollen with years of rain. The planks of wood were rotting, ridden with holes, and dirty. There was no knob.
All the same, it opened.
The figure that stepped carefully, deliberately and imperially out onto the damp weeds that covered the ground made nearly no noise. He looked like a boy of eighteen, though that would be impossible, for then he would have gone mad by now. His long, elegant ivory hands gently closed around the wood and shut it, as he bit his lip solemnly.
Though he seemed human, he still appeared fluid with his surroundings. His tree-tall, fox-slender frame did more than fit the meadow; it commanded it. His flaxen hair was an autumn dawn, but wild as a torrential storm, a shock of a sunburst that raged with the gusting wind. His wide, dip-lidded eyes were raven-black and wolf-cunning, sparkling with the green of embedded, unrefined emeralds. The pink of his curving lips were rose-petals, and when he grinned it was not a boy but a jackal, with untamed spirit and cougar teeth. The pale of his pure skin was the first snowfall, and the shape of his soft face was the strong structure of jutting mountains, yet the tender slope of the rolling welsh hills. His whole being resonated the forgotten memories of the ancients, the whole meaning of love, hurt, horror, elation and life.
All the leaders, the greats, the idols, the lords, the kings and the emperors were grains of sand to this ruler.
But he was just a boy.
He lithely danced to sit atop the wall. Every movement was immaculate, lasting, monumental. Every flick of his wrist, swish of a lash and twitch of the mouth was music, genius, inspiration. With one knee to his chin, the other leg dangling, barefoot, he let his toes touch the wet grass. He still bit the bottom of his perfect cherry lips, and there was sorrow in his eyes.
His gaze moved outward, past the uncultivated grass, the wild wind, and the dense trees. It moved beyond the long-forgotten world he mastered, where whispers belonged to the sky, and the ground and the ocean, to the world that confounded him. He could see it now – the bustling streets, the huge edifices, the markets, the carriages, the people, the barren lands, the dying dogs, the shit lying in the middle of the street, the broken glass, the dark alleys, the clandestine, lewd, rough and uncaring liaisons, the rooms with only mirrors for only looking at yourself, the dead decaying, the vomit, the gaudy, the shrill laughs and the meaningless; the contamination of the beginning.
Then he could see her.
The curve of her hips that matched the slope of her smile, the jutting of her shoulder blade that he dared not touch; the arch of the foot that had somehow stepped into this meadow and discovered him. The arch of her back that he had always wanted to draw his long fingers across; just to see it shiver and bow into him. He could see her glossy mass of ebony curls, and her azure, china eyes that seemed to sing of spring as they burst from dark lashes on powder white skin.
Mostly, he could hear her words as they fluttered and then boomed into his heart from her full crimson lips. Those lips had spoken of everything he had never known, and they were so unlike any of the words he had ever heard from the people of her race. The air around her grasped had them tightly, and the trees quivered until their leaves flickered to the ground. She alone, of all her people, of anyone he had ever met, moved with the earth, the air and the ocean.
He lusted, craved, and needed her until he would moan at her absence. He adored, worshiped, loved her so that the very rustle of her satin dress burst through his artery as it pumped blood into his veins. To explain it would not be to understand it. What he felt was not a word nor an idea. It was a being, a state, a truth and core to everything that existed.
Her. With her playful looks and dazzling shape and tempestuous mind and twirling, electric words and fire-saturated ideals.
Her and only her.
He tightly gripped his knee until his knuckle turned white, and screwed his eyes until his head went blurry, and he felt the meadow bend and grip with him. He clenched his teeth and he felt the world tighten; this boy, this thing of ancient history and eternal earth, this composite of nature. This beautiful, immaculate master could feel the wetness on his face as the shrill, frozen wind scraped his face mournfully, and he grieved. The gasps escaped his throat, and ripped it raw.
But he, he could not escape her.