U0 : A QUIET PLACE
tell her it’s just a scratch.
… but that isn’t the whole truth, is it?
she told you not to lie. a simple request. it’s courteous to comply, especially considering how she’s only been good to you.
his gaze lingers for a moment more, his eyes delving a little deeper than usual. he looks at her differently these days – back then, in their younger years, he used to fixate on her small, delicate hands. he used to listen to her prayers, watch her lips as they whispered good graces. now, when he looks at her, he’s curious. curious about what she’d say, curious about how she’d react.
drip.
there’s a small stream that runs along the lower east side. it would’ve been easy for him to take a quick detour to clean his wounds and wash away all worrisome evidence – but he opted to bleed.
drip.
tell her. tell her that it’s —
“just a scratch,” he says, placid and poised. “don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”
he raises the canned tuna closer to oracle’s shoulder, right under nyla’s nose. hesitation, intuition. of course. a feline’s sense of smell is far superior.
drip.
mistake.
a bit of red weaves through the intricate fabric of oracle’s robes. he drops the cat food without consideration and latches onto the small splotch – and in doing so, his wrist twists over to reveal a sizable gash across the back of his hand. blood beads, threatening. it’ll surely scar.
“let’s get you to a sink.” he rubs the cloth between his fingers. the red stays. ( he knows it would. ) “quickly, before it stains.”
she can see him ... deliberating. sil watches her with those heavy eyes that feel like he’s pressing down on her with all his weight, and it’s then that oracle realizes that as much as she’d like to understand him - to know him - if he won’t allow it, all she’ll see is the thoughts that roil within him like churning waves of a desperate, angry sea. sil will never reveal himself. she should have known that.
she should have known better than to ask.
oracle knows that it’s a lie the moment that sil’s words escape his lips. he has a honey to his words that sweetens them when he doesn’t want her to know something, and if sil has studied her for years, she too has watched him from the shadows in ways that don’t feel half as heavy. she looks into his eyes, and behind the tumult of his thoughts, there’s curiosity there. curiosity about her, as if he’s the open book and she’s the one with her cover closed. oracle stares at him, a long and heavy stare. it tells him that she knows. it also tells him that she won’t say anything about his lie, because she never does. that’s not oracle’s way.
“ so it seems.” she says with a grace that she doesn’t feel. it feels wrong when sil lies to her like he is. like he always does. he’s always keeping secrets.
pulling her attention from his heavy eyes to hide the hurt that will surely show in hers soon, oracle turns her attention to nyla on her shoulder. the cat is eyeing the can of tuna with a gleam in her gaze, and sil’s hand is close enough to graze her cheek if he wanted to. the smell of tuna almost masks the scent of blood.
she knows it will drip before it does.
nyla leaps from her shoulders with a hiss as the can of tuna is dropped, and with the red that spreads along the white folds of her clothes, oracle is trapped in a vision of a red sea. a horrible one. it lasts for but a moment, her gaze drifting far away before she’s forcing it back to the moment and to sil who has her clothes grasped in his hands. the gash that beckons the sea of blood.
one hand reaches to smack his lightly away from her robes - some part of her heart twisting at the touch that seems so intimate, knowing well that it means nothing. she is bound to the deity. the colour red that stains oracle’s clothes is a premonition, and she must heed the warning. her lips twist down into a frown when she grabs his wrist and pulls it toward her. her eyes narrow in accusation. “ you lied.” ( she knew this. )
a sigh. “ forget the food. forget my robes.” oracle’s eyes don’t quite meet his. her grip is a shackle on his wrist. “ follow me. we must clean the wound instead.”
