Death and Solitude, 1769

[Axelu 4333]

 

The Nightmare

 

---

 

 

“Mother, mother where are you?”

 

There are plenty of things one can deem unfortunate: a farmer with worn hands earning his keep; a baker, fruitless and a maiden forlorn; a princeling, once teeming with ambition, dead.

 

But, really, what is death but a fear?  What is the world without desire and what is to own but to lie?

 

But it’s ne’er unfortunate -- not enough.

 

“Mother, where are you?” 

 

She called and beckoned; her fists were wearied, bloodied from pounding against the bark.

 

The bark surrounded her and she was breathless. Footsteps taunted her from above; as did the iron latch inhibiting her liberty. 

 

She wailed, yet none would hear. Her pleads were drowned by the surrounding thickets. Looming and viridescent as they were, the dense behemoths only swayed, their trunks groaning stagnantly.

 

He wished to protect her; safeguard her youth and honor from the brutality of war. He feared for her, the eldest of his progeny. She was his daughter yet did not share his likeness. She was her mother’s daughter; the wife he had forsaken. 

 

Honorable intention with misplaced doings. 

 

A brutal prince of war, who had damned matronly mothers and their sickly children as casualties of war, knew little of love. His own mother had disciplined him cruelly and bereaved him of affection. 

 

The Blackened Prince did not desire for his daughter a similar fate. He had lurched into her hearth -- her mother’s Palace, grandiose yet ever uninviting; besmirched with a winterish barrenness. He had lurched into her chambers, his guise a wolf’s hide. He smuggled his unsuspecting daughter and bereaved her of regnal cloth. He cut his and her own flesh and left ichor splattered across the room, thrashed and desolate. 

 

What life could she have known if she had roused from her slumber only moments earlier? If she would have bellowed and yelped; pleaded and survived?

 

Futile as it was to consider, she thought it; she thought it once she woke in a foreign, constricted thing. Too, she thought it as the vermin she consorted with, ravenous and plentiful whilst they writhed past the wooden boards into the subterranean cellar, teared at her raiment nightly and consumed the morsels given to her as sustenance with gluttonous resolve.  It was thought, in vain, amidst her solitude of eight years.

 

She could not see the seasons churn, and truly, the effects of age on this prisoner were minimal. All stays the same when you’re dead. The demons and imps do not dare console a tortured mind in the dark. Nay, they thrive off it. They etch sinister, permanent markings on it; they deflower faultless maidens and let godly men wither.

 

Her mother did not answer because to her, she was dead.

 

The woman entered her daughter’s chambers that fateful night and presumed her dead. Grief-stricken, she ruled still until that wretched fate claimed her only life in three years time.

 

Life goes on for most, until it doesn’t.

 

Yet, if the poor prisoner was dead, why did she breathe even then? Why did she eat and bleed and weep? Do the dead know emotion, too?! Do they feel?

 

If we do not know death,

If we do not know how it feels, 

If we are not aware,

Can we Die?

 

 

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Written by

A repentant sinner

 

Spoiler

big thanks to @Jentos for inspiring me to branch out in terms of writing. hope u enjoy and feel free to comment below, in character or out of character.

 

[Jentos 9422]

”If we do not know death, if we do not know how it feels, if we are not aware. Can we die?” recited hence the Schoolman, raising two fingers above. 

[osumanduas 1442]

 

The Count of Rochefort sits inquisitively upon the chest of his sleeping companion, staring the painter dead in the face with demonic gaze. Looking back to the fallen figure the blonde imp then reached out a satanic finger to flick them on the forehead. “Hey kid, the paintings finished, you can wake up now. . . hey kid, hey kid.”

[Callistus 988]

23 minutes ago, duscur said:

The Count of Rochefort sits inquisitively upon the chest of his sleeping companion, staring the painter dead in the face with demonic gaze. Looking back to the fallen figure the blonde imp then reached out a satanic finger to flick them on the forehead. “Hey kid, the paintings finished, you can wake up now. . . hey kid, hey kid.”

 

 

“A slave to the painting, and an ink for mortal kindling.

Ooh, ooh! A canvas named death, that pale thing, to snuff the very life away! You need only shred your blood now, and appease this gentle painting.

What a sweetly wilting maiden to ponder on!”

A much quaint being lying in the back deigned to whisper on the imp’s precedent

[Nozgoth 3083]

(bro... I love it)