change, the essential process of all existence
(please don't be put off by the rating/warning/category combination; basically it's gore, but it's not gore, so i didn't tag gore :)
Birds were made to fly. The bigger wings and the more feathers they've got, the better.
The prettier.
The untouchable.
And she thought, why can't I fly?
And she thought, are my wings not big enough?
And she thought, what if I had
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
MORE
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
what if i had
And then she has them.
They are sprouted all over her head, not just from the righteous sockets that crown her ears but before them, after them, all around them, uncontrollably febrile, and they die in a horrid succession, one after the other with such vigor that she starts to mark them, blackened ash at catalyst's base, and then, by and by, she notices that none lasts any longer than ten years.
(There are just that many, composing the constancy. It is all she can do to keep track.)
Her hair has always been gray. The feathers do not wither as they come to term. They offer no signal on their perishment. And neither, thinks Melia...neither will I.
Neither are they strong enough, pure enough, to propel her up to heaven, or down to hell - in those fantastically conventional ideals that the Agnians hold, that Melia realizes she has always subconsciously also shared.
Better to be at the Bionis's head than at its foot. Better to be at the war's quell than at its knell.
She can't see, for the wings. Can't fly, for the power.
And the wings beat, and beat, and beat, and beat, and they beat the vibrating, brittle-boned shell of what once was a pretty little bird named Melia into the hard, bloody ground.
An empress emerges, as flourished from the bitter seed.
She's disappointed.
That her soul flickers not gold, but silver.
She wants life. Hates death. Loves chances. Rejects commands.
She wants to watch the flowers bloom - more than that, she wants to have grown them. Wants to have had a hand in life, in life, in
life
for once, as if she hasn't already had a family, as if she hasn't already awakened countless Blades as companions and friends, greeting them in the morning and bidding them good night when she's had her human tiredness all tuckered out.
what
if
i
was
what
if
i
was
STRONG
what
if
i
was
what
if
i
was
empty, and broken, and starving for water, water, water, water
and it hurts, don't you know it hurts, to have stamens stabbing into your eyes
your eyes, your eyes, your eyes
And you know how it is when you can't hear if your eyes are closed, if you can't feel when the sounds are too loud, you can't grow a damn thing because the roots have blocked out the sunshine, don't take my sunshine, what the hell is a sun's shine--
She breaks, in a back room of the stronghold. Her legs are stickly stems, not fit for walking anymore, but the robe hides it the way the mask can't hide the flowers.
Like Telethia, but there is stingy gray in place of world's end's rainbows (and they only come after a rain, wherever is the sunshine, whoever is the musk of the cloud).
Like rotting, necrotic flesh, the face of a young man's sorrow in an old man's body, and flowers are what you put over a grave.
Someone has died here, in other words. Many people.
Many doves, arcing for peace and harmony and branches extended
i could scream how they poke and poke and poke and poke
And I curse your wings because they taught me flight and I trample your flowers because they taught me grounding and I strip your petals limb from limb and I say
to hell with you, you horrible queen,
.let's go together