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In-Between

Chapter Text

I've been spending time in the in-betweens again; though I know I shouldn't. 
I am drawn to them, like Death and Fear; as repulsed as I am attracted.
My ambivalence tears at me, pulls at the beat of my heart, the breathe of my lungs.

I wake early, rise, and pause in the doorway, awaiting civil twilight.
It's a danger I knew better than you before you were taken and less now that you are gone.

Light winds it's way through the room, catching on edges and dipping under, rising over, coating the room in a rosy glow;
A counterpoint to the thoughts in my head, skeletal snakes in the dark that twine and rattle against each other.

It's time for me to rejoin the world, and I drape my sanity around me like a cloak;
And affix an expression on my face, a mask to hide behind, sheltering the dead that live in my eyes.

Chapter Text

I am a walker of worlds and spinner of songs.
I have danced beyond the edge of Fiddler's Green
And sipped from stars whose light will die before it ever reaches your eyes.
I have held the power cosmic, bathing in its terrible beauty;
I hold infinite 'verses within my liar's soul.
I fear nothing that is unknown and, as I will teach you over a thousand thousand years, all is knowable.
So come fold yourself within the shelter of my arms, fall captive to my gaze;
Allow me to take you to the spaces in-between and show you the magic that lives within their mad sorrow.
Together we will build a destiny to make dark angels weep with envious joy.

Chapter Text

The first is a love story, though I only know this because Raven (my nine-winged guide that casts no shadow) tells me so. 

She has skin of glowing midnight, jet eyes that see into my soul, her dark hair is a shining halo framing her face, features now forgotten, though her beauty lingers on in my mind even past waking. Her story is a secret not mine to tell.

He is broad and tall, tan leathered skin hidden under countless layers of grit, sharp white teeth the only contrast to the shades of brown. His hair would be light and soft to the touch if it were not caked with mud and blood.

He is in a courtyard, surrounded at first by allies, but they are ambushed and there are more of them than us. He and his brothers are cut down, he is half buried under two of them; he watches through his lashes as the enemy slit throats or stabs through the heart any man suspected of clinging to life.

He says a prayer to a dead god that never stopped listening only because it never started, and gathers the blood that has pooled in his brothers wounds to coat his throat before slicing his own neck carefully, just breaking the skin, but if they do not check to closely he may yet live to seek his revenge.

The second is a Loki dream, only fragments remain. 

There are a couple dozen versions of Loki, maybe more; either at the top of a Mayan temple or maybe at the steps in a wide open courtyard. 

Another Loki appears, as tall as all the others combined, and starts stabbing down with a spear; hunting through the pack for one particular version of himself to destroy, indiscriminately killing other parts of himself as he does. 

He finally finds the him he is looking for as one breaks away from the pack; the runner has shoulder length tight golden curls and a sneer, or a smile. He runs to a ledge or cliff face and dives into a pool that changes from only a few feet deep to nearly bottomless as he breaks the still water, and the larger Loki dives after him.

Now they are both the same size, and they grapple under water, both forms rippling and changing, one trying to kill himself, the other to subdue; and then one is kissing the other and the killer stops struggling, falling into the embrace.