feeling mad as the moon IP: 172.243.247.39 Posted on August 28, 2017 at 03:24:42 AM by Echidna
Maybe he was hell –
Yet, there were too many instances when he was also paradise. There are so many memories between them, good and bad. Each one curls inside her mind, in her chest, usually dormant but awoken when he is near. She savors the feeling, like a hot knife against her throat. It is a sensation she does not quite understand and has only felt on occasion. His question makes her blink at him and she pauses, holds her breath for a moment. If she were still a mare, her ears would have pinned against her poll defiantly. “No,” she says quietly and her arms cross over her thin chest. She looks for a moment over to her mare grazing in the shadows, her thin silver tail whipping at her round hips lazily.
Echidna was under the impression there was no reason for all of this. It was the rut they’d pushed themselves in. She mentions the universe because it is essentially a cop out. A way that she doesn’t have to blame herself for the mess and all the hurt between them. His response echoes her own thoughts, she flicks her dark eyes up the canopy of trees and tries to sneak a look at the blue sky beyond the myriad of branches. Echidna picks at her nails absent mindedly until he speaks and then she cannot help the look of bewilderment on her face. Her hands drop limply into her lap, her shoulders curl forward like she is caving in on herself but then she shrugs.
“I didn’t see myself that way,” Echidna says and plucks more grass. She bites the inside of her jaw thoughtfully, her eyes narrowed down the bridge of her nose. “I was pretending. I felt like I was on the outside of myself watching.”
Knell had done something to her, in strange sense. She thought if she could fake her happiness long enough, it might take root but it never felt right to her. Everything she did chipped away pieces of her until there was hardly anything left except a robust emptiness. Echidna pulls up a clump of grass to expose the dirt beneath, her fingers make tiny circles and symbols in the air until a small cat-like creature worms up from the ground. It trots around the hole it came from then sits down beside her hand.
“What else was I supposed to do? I didn’t think I would ever see you again and even if I did, what was the point anyway?” Echidna says keeping her eyes on the dirt cat. It licks its paws before climbing up onto her hand.
It was never easy for her to admit feelings and thoughts to anyone. Echidna preferred to keep herself well contained, which was dangerous. She turns her hand over so the cat stands in her palm and then crushes it – she tosses the dirt back onto the ground. “Ever since you told me you didn’t want me anymore, I haven’t been the same. I know it was my fault,” she pauses then and takes a deep breath.
“It just wasn’t easy to hear,” she says and shrugs. Replies: