Equal Night
?It'll come in a rush.?
In and out, slow and easy, he breathed. His own words were an echo of a whisper slithering through his semi-conscious mind. Salvador had been in and out of sleep for three long days now. The night before, Rei had finally come home to stay with him, to forgive him, the fool.
Whether or not the mongrel still lay in the bed beside him, he could not say. Salvador?s sleep came in fits and starts all through the evening and the following day. With his head turned away from the tracker, all he could see was the thin sliver of a moon. All he could hear was the roar of a blood tide washing against the shores of his ear drums.
His everything still ached from the battle his friend the Nightmare had unleashed upon him three nights ago. Every last drop of magic he had lapped up from Aoife?s blood the night before that had been exhausted putting his body through the repairs. He was tired, spent, and his nephilim lover was needlessly worrying.
Salvador had tried to tell him.
?M'fine. 'll be fine. S'almost here.?
No one had ever really asked him quite the way that Rei did, though. Not even Sinjin had begged him to put it into words. Probably because the sinner knew him better, knew that words and Salvador did not often get along. And the sinner had also seen it, time and time again.
But for Rei, who had not, he had tried.
?A tingling, flooding, burning rush like pure adrenaline. Jam the needle in and boost the heart. Teeth in all the cells, biting and gnawing and gnashing and scrabbling.?
"It sounds ? painful. And very intense."
Salvador could have laughed at him. Deep inside his own head the writhing, anxious monster was cackling at the absurdity of the idea. Pain was relative. As long as he had gone through this, he could not remember a time in which it had actually caused him any agony. Only madness.
Seconds ticked away like hammer blows against the inside of his skull. There were no clocks in Matadero?s second floor apartment, but he could hear it all the same.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
A maddening backdrop of a harmony against the rush of air he heard wheezing in and out of his lungs. They were a bellows in his chest. His mouth was dry. He was so hungry. This was the near death that came every year. A little worse this time because of the dual-destructive gauntlet an emotional Daemon had put him through.
Feelings somehow made it worse than the actual physical damage he had suffered.
Thum-thump. Thum-thump.
The countdown clock ticked away in perfect synchronization with the decreasing tempo of his beating heart.
Thump.
Tick.
Thum-
There was always that moment, right before the hour struck, where time stood still and his heart stopped beating. No bell tolled to mark the occasion. There was nothing but a seemingly endless stretch of silence, and the feeling that he was made of stone instead of flesh.
Then he heard them. A thousand, thousand, thousand little whispers swarming in from every horizon like locusts set on plague mode. And he was the field of wheat waiting helplessly to be devoured.
Salvador sucked in a gasping breath full of air saturated with the taste of blood. A red haze shrouded his vision. His heart hammered back to life so suddenly that it felt as if his ribs were bruised from the inside.
And then in an instant, all the ache was gone and he felt only numb; a warmth in his cells that washed out all sensation and left his skin tingling.
?S'not a change.?
Rei with his simple mind had wanted to simplify what he couldn?t possibly understand. For his own peace of mind he had wanted to call it something. No matter how many times and in how many different ways Salvador had tried to explain, though, the mongrel did not understand.
?I don't change. But I do. But I stay the same.?
No great and mystical physical metamorphosis had come to claim him that night. In fact, the only sign of its coming that his lover beside him might have possibly seen was the change of color in his eyes. The drain of three days healing had left his irises yellow.
And now, without having fed on any fae at all to restore the magic in his cells, when he lifted his head from the mattress, Salvador?s eyes were burning liquid red like freshly spilled blood. The glow of them even leaked into the sclera and ebbed like sun flares seen through a telescope.
?S'her season. Her power. All of it in my veins.?
And it needed an outlet.
_______________________________
(Dialogue parts taken from play with Elemmiire Rei.)
?It'll come in a rush.?
In and out, slow and easy, he breathed. His own words were an echo of a whisper slithering through his semi-conscious mind. Salvador had been in and out of sleep for three long days now. The night before, Rei had finally come home to stay with him, to forgive him, the fool.
Whether or not the mongrel still lay in the bed beside him, he could not say. Salvador?s sleep came in fits and starts all through the evening and the following day. With his head turned away from the tracker, all he could see was the thin sliver of a moon. All he could hear was the roar of a blood tide washing against the shores of his ear drums.
His everything still ached from the battle his friend the Nightmare had unleashed upon him three nights ago. Every last drop of magic he had lapped up from Aoife?s blood the night before that had been exhausted putting his body through the repairs. He was tired, spent, and his nephilim lover was needlessly worrying.
Salvador had tried to tell him.
?M'fine. 'll be fine. S'almost here.?
No one had ever really asked him quite the way that Rei did, though. Not even Sinjin had begged him to put it into words. Probably because the sinner knew him better, knew that words and Salvador did not often get along. And the sinner had also seen it, time and time again.
But for Rei, who had not, he had tried.
?A tingling, flooding, burning rush like pure adrenaline. Jam the needle in and boost the heart. Teeth in all the cells, biting and gnawing and gnashing and scrabbling.?
"It sounds ? painful. And very intense."
Salvador could have laughed at him. Deep inside his own head the writhing, anxious monster was cackling at the absurdity of the idea. Pain was relative. As long as he had gone through this, he could not remember a time in which it had actually caused him any agony. Only madness.
Seconds ticked away like hammer blows against the inside of his skull. There were no clocks in Matadero?s second floor apartment, but he could hear it all the same.
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
A maddening backdrop of a harmony against the rush of air he heard wheezing in and out of his lungs. They were a bellows in his chest. His mouth was dry. He was so hungry. This was the near death that came every year. A little worse this time because of the dual-destructive gauntlet an emotional Daemon had put him through.
Feelings somehow made it worse than the actual physical damage he had suffered.
Thum-thump. Thum-thump.
The countdown clock ticked away in perfect synchronization with the decreasing tempo of his beating heart.
Thump.
Tick.
Thum-
There was always that moment, right before the hour struck, where time stood still and his heart stopped beating. No bell tolled to mark the occasion. There was nothing but a seemingly endless stretch of silence, and the feeling that he was made of stone instead of flesh.
Then he heard them. A thousand, thousand, thousand little whispers swarming in from every horizon like locusts set on plague mode. And he was the field of wheat waiting helplessly to be devoured.
Salvador sucked in a gasping breath full of air saturated with the taste of blood. A red haze shrouded his vision. His heart hammered back to life so suddenly that it felt as if his ribs were bruised from the inside.
And then in an instant, all the ache was gone and he felt only numb; a warmth in his cells that washed out all sensation and left his skin tingling.
?S'not a change.?
Rei with his simple mind had wanted to simplify what he couldn?t possibly understand. For his own peace of mind he had wanted to call it something. No matter how many times and in how many different ways Salvador had tried to explain, though, the mongrel did not understand.
?I don't change. But I do. But I stay the same.?
No great and mystical physical metamorphosis had come to claim him that night. In fact, the only sign of its coming that his lover beside him might have possibly seen was the change of color in his eyes. The drain of three days healing had left his irises yellow.
And now, without having fed on any fae at all to restore the magic in his cells, when he lifted his head from the mattress, Salvador?s eyes were burning liquid red like freshly spilled blood. The glow of them even leaked into the sclera and ebbed like sun flares seen through a telescope.
?S'her season. Her power. All of it in my veins.?
And it needed an outlet.
_______________________________
(Dialogue parts taken from play with Elemmiire Rei.)