Title: moonlight crucible
Word Count: 452
Spoilers: None
Rating: PG-13
Synopsis: Her grandmamma had warned her of many things; amongst them were the customary cautionary tales told to overcurious children.
Notes: I just missed the deadline ;; Oh well. In lieu of a challenge entry, have a somewhat poem-formatted drabble featuring fairytale AU Saïx/Kairi.
Her grandmamma always warned her
about
never talking to strangers.
Her grandmamma always warned her
of
those ugly, leering men with their
clammy-cold
hands that butterfly to her shoulders;
of
smiling, sycophant monsters
in
disguise all just waiting to
draw
her away and lead her astray.
But
bit by bit, Kairi forgets-
she
loses herself in her impenetrable
illusions
of safety, and that is when
her
world falls apart.
Come dusk, she visits
grandmamma’s cottage-
and she meets the man with
haunted amber eyes,
sharp-faced as new moons.
“You’re lost,” he
states-quiet, matter-of-fact.
“I’m not,” she replies as
she tugs at her hood-
red as a robin’s heaving
breast.
“Who are you?”
“A diviner, a seer from everywhere and nowhere.”
“Tell me, what does my future
say?”
“Everything
and nothing.”
“Do you expect me to
believe?”
(Surrounded by cicada-cry and cricket-chirp,
by moon-song and leaf-whisper,
the
magic hour draws near.)
“Believe
what you want, or nothing at all; but beware-
the
witching hour approaches. Tarry not, lest you wish
to
succumb to the denizens of the darkness.”
Her
laugh is a silver bell; stark in her voice rings
the
reckless naïveté of youth.
“You
don’t scare me,” she hums to the night-
but
he is gone - perhaps swallowed by the shadows;
in
his wake lingers the metal-and-ozone tang
of mystery and conspiracy.
(Unreal
twilight,
in the forests of the night awaits the fearful
dichotomy
of what is known and unknown, familiar and unfamiliar.)
Kairi
pulls the hood - scarlet-pimpernel bright -
over
her head and walks-towards the abyssal
beating
heart of the living woods.
When
she arrives, the house lies quiet, orderly-
as
it’s always been. At the kitchen table, the
young
diviner sits.
“I
thought I told you to make haste-
you
never know what awaits you
amongst
the shadows.”
She
smiles, a crescent-moon curve, tremulous
with
a lost child’s uncertainty. “You are very kind to
be
so concerned about my wellbeing.
Where is my grandmamma?”
“You
thought you would be safe here?”
“Where is-”
He
moves, weightless, luminous,
stirring
the spiralling dust; she sees the
lunar
distance close between them as
he
falls into orbit around her, a
hungry
wolf circling its helpless prey.
(A scream of breaking glass; a
clothespin-limbed creature,
all knotted sinew and silvery skin, all zipper-teeth
and featureless face,
snarls silently in her head.)
She
sees the crisscrossed scar, the
pebble-dull
amber-gold eyes. She
smells
the clean, cold scent of the moon,
feels the crimson-bright cloak fall
to
the ground, resplendent as
redbird
plumage flapping around her ankles.
Her grandmamma had warned her
about
many things, but she had forgotten about one.
The
best predators are the ones
you never knew were there all along.