#elderring

(send me a 🍃 for a story)

They say a storm is a perfect hiding place.

Tonight is no exception. The light of the full moon is extinguished by the endless expanse of clouds. The sound of footsteps is muffled by the drumbeat of the raindrops and the crashes of thunder. The flashes of lightning blind and distract more than they illuminate.

A door creaks open and light pools out into the rain. Thunder booms and the light fizzles out, and a boy jumps back with a gasp. Out of all the creatures hiding in the storm, he is the most afraid; but, just like the others, he has a reason to hide.

With a final glance towards his parents’ room, one hand tracing the mess of bruises on his skin, the boy steps out into the storm.

Immediately, he shivers. He pulls his coat tighter around himself, but it has no hood; after a moment’s hesitation, he runs to the edge of the wood.

A raindrop falls on his eye and he winces, blinks hard. He knows there’s more shelter if he walks deeper into the forest, but his heart races at the thought of that dense darkness. His gaze catches on a familiar tree stump and when he opens his eyes he is five years old, watching a waking nightmare. He stares up at eyes bigger than the moon, eyes taking shelter from the storm, and the eyes stare back.

The young boy swallows, hears his mother’s voice in his head. It was only a dream, you pathetic child. The words repeat, this time in his own voice. Only a dream. Only a dream.

In the end, the eyes behind him win out over the eyes in front. Knowing his parents could easily wake and see him through their window, the boy steps forward, as alert as hunted prey. The crunch of leaves underfoot and his gasping breath is lost to the incessant beat of raindrops and thunder.

He wants to stay as far from the clearing as possible, but the path and his feet lead him there anyway. (Surely the path didn’t curve this way in the daylight?) He walks to the tree stump and he shouldn’t stop, but he does. He shouldn’t sit, but he does. And then the boy hugs his arms to stop the shaking, and looks up towards his fate.

The eyes look down at him.

He blinks.

They blink back.

His stomach twists in on itself, but he doesn’t look away; as frightened as he is, tonight, what’s behind him is even scarier.

‘Will you help me?’ he asks. His voice is as quiet as the rustle of the leaves, but he asks. He’s not sure why. His body does not answer to his mind any longer, it seems; only to fear.

The eyes blink twice more, then do not open a third time. Left alone, a forgotten raindrop tricking down his skin, the boy tucks his knees to his chest and sobs.

When dawn breaks, he drags himself back to the path (had it shifted in the night? Was it just hidden under leaves?) and back into bed. The storm had softened; now it was just rain.

The boy feels empty, all his feelings cried out onto the leaves. The emptiness persists when he is woken barely an hour later by his parents, familiar expressions of fury twisting their faces.

And then fear pierces the emptiness, followed by wonder, because in the shadows of his parents is a pair of eyes – eyes the size of pocket-sized moons. The boy blinks, and the eyes blink back.

hozier

cherry wine, work song, like real people do

SUCH a good album! the tenderness of it all......the softness.....the RANGE he has......his VOICE......king

wasteland, baby!

no plan, talk, dinner & diatribes

the thought of their past belongings and body parts finding new uses and lives around the campus and the realm of the gentry. no one even knows what their original major was; they change it so often no one knows how they'll ever graduate. maybe they should just stay forever... it seems so tempting to them, just unravelling the rest of their life into little pieces as well and scattering them to the wind for anyone to take. (2/3)  

but secretly, the only thing they have not and never will discard is their campus name, and they are very aware that they have grown way too attached to it... no one can ever know that not only do they FEEL like they owe everyone to do what they ask them to - they also HAVE to do it if you call them by their name. what do you think is their fate in EU? (3/3)            

Plunging into water raging beneath the surface of cracked ice; the unconcerned quiet in the eye of the storm; the strength of the fragile plants in-between the concrete.