(no subject)

Aug 04, 2007 00:57

Nothing quite compares with that brief, black instant where you realize you will never see them again.  Your friend, your brother, your lover-gone forever.  Even if you saw it happen, it doesn’t always get you in that moment.  You deny it and bury it under the other things that clutter your mind, and you let yourself forget until you don’t see them the next day, or the day after that, or the one after that.  People will trick you as it sinks in, people wearing the eyes or the hair or the flippant and fleeting smile of that person you cared about who was lifted out of the picture and pushed down into the earth.  For a minute, your mind believes it, but then the truth crashes back down like a pane of glass and sets you straight.

All of that stretched before Cye as he sat still on his bed.  The room was just as empty as the rest of the ship felt, and a lone candle flickered and distorted the shape of his shadow against the wood paneling.  It grew and shrank and twisted into some awful and foreign beast, but he ignored it.  He had eyes only for the sword that rested near the foot of the bed.

It was elevated on a rumpled cushion of sheets and blankets like some priceless artifact on display, and the reflected glint of firelight turned tempered steel into gold.  He could not make out the dragon etched into the side of the hilt, but he could picture it perfectly in his mind’s eye.  It was the sword Ryn had given to him when he had decided to come back to the ship.  It had seemed so special then, wrapped all in silk and presented as a gift.  It had been something he could have and keep and own.  Gradually, it had transformed itself, first into a weapon, and then into an extension of himself.  While he was, by no means, the best swordsman on the ship, he had come into his own with that blade.  But in that lonely room, some of that original significance was returning.  He was once again seeing the present his friend had given him two years previously.

He knew the sword was his own-the decorative dragon was evidence enough of that.  But at the same time, it had become like a little piece of Ryn that he could hold onto for as long as he wanted.

He knew then that he would never give it up.

writing: roleplay, writing: general fiction

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