3rd Trial of Saun, 720
Beacon
Beacon
She had tried to shut out the echos, to live more in the moment, but how plausible did that seem when you were always dealing with the daemons of the past and the future?
Her tent was scorching hot, the canvas walls doing nothing to keep the humidity from wetting her brow. She had managed to wipe away the sweat that accumulated only twice before giving up entirely. It was another uphill battle she didn’t want to pursue.
Sobriety had its benefits, but when night fell and the loneliness that accompanied it did too, it made reality all the more difficult to deal with. Why she hadn’t sought refuge in the alcohol she always had within her reach? She didn’t truly know. Even as she analyzed her choice to not drink from the dented flask, she couldn’t come up with a valid reason. She simply didn’t want to.
Sometimes the darkness that lingered had to be met straight on. Sometimes she longed for the darkness. For someone with mental aches and pains, she could only happy facade before she felt like she was missing something. She wondered if that made her insane. How would missing being sad sound to any reasonable person? Her depression wasn’t part of her, and it was these words she so often tried to convince herself of. But some days and most nights she fell short of persuading herself of everything but.
Isodol allowed her head to fall back. Her neck muscles were too sore to support the heaviness she felt in her head. It was like someone had reached in there and replaced her brain with a lead weight. They had also not bothered sewing her back up after the extraction, an exigent throbbing blurring her vision and clouding her thoughts.
She had peeked out the a little hole in her tent wall, a hole that very much needed patching up once Isodol could afford to do so. Outside she had witnessed something extravagant. There were a myriad of celestial tidal pools so far from her. The stars were strewn across the dark in a chaotic pattern, causing an unfamiliarity that made her skin crawl.
Could she truly be such an insignificant being amidst a galaxy so vast and unexplored? Did she have any purpose at all? These thoughts transported her back to a time in her past where she had been out hunting. It was that day where the clouds had shrouded the sky in a grey complexion. She had wondered then if there was anything more to life than the very acting of survival. As she stabbed the rabbit, she had felt its life force ebbing out of it. There was nothing else, nothing tangible at least. There was nothing that remained of the rabbit that would have otherwise given her clarity as to its importance in the world. It was just there, trying to survive but being inadequate enough to not. There was nothing the animal could have done aside from escape, and it had failed at that. It was almost as though destiny had intervened, some unseen deity proclaiming that the rabbit’s end had to have been then and no later. The rabbit had no control of its existence. It ate, it excreted, it reproduced and nothing else. That was the very basis of survival and all other behaviours and activities were flourishes to help make life more pleasurable. But what did that actually prove? What if you could see through the cracks in the visage and view with perspicuity the truth? The world was full of lies. People spoke them to one another, people illustrated fake smiles and performed false gestures all to enhance their status in the eyes of others or in the eyes of themselves. Could the entirety of life not be one giant lie in itself?
It had never occurred to her just how lost she was, asphyxiating in her own imagination.
The throbbing of her head only increased. Perhaps a drink would help assuage the pain… or make it worse. Another risk Isodol could take, an addition to all other risks she took part in to just feel alive. As she continued to dwell, she began to realise how redundant and cyclical life truly was. You woke, you executed some duty in order to acquire money for food, for shelter, for entertainment, you used said money to engage in said activities, and then you slept in order to replenish your body for another round of the same thing.
Everyday was just a temporal loop with slightly altered actions and reactions up until the very day you died. Then and only then would the loop end. Was she just a rat in a maze ignorantly turning corners, retracing her steps and finding herself met with dead ends? Most mazes had exits, but the maze she was lost in didn’t feel like it had one. Like a rodent spinning in a wheel.
She rolled her eyes at the remembrance of the saying, “life is what you make it”. There was only so much you could do, though. Perhaps if she was an immortal or a deity of higher standing, with all the answers at her fingertips, things would be different.
She reached beside her for her knapsack. Inside, she rummaged through the contents until she found what it was she was looking for. Withdrawing from the bag, she flourished a dagger. The moonlight that filtered in through the small hole of her tent wall reflected off the metal, evoking a glint that reminded Isodol of the glowing embers of a fire.
With her other hand, she gently rolled up her sleeve. With her forearm exposed, she twisted her arm so that the antecubital part was supine.
She set the blade down, only to momentarily observe the ridges and bumps that marred her flesh. Thick lines of various sizes littered her skin, some light pink, others one shade short of ruby, and others a matte white-their deathlike pallor noticeable in comparison with those parts of her body that remained unaffected.
What she had so diligently worked to build had commenced to fall apart. She no longer wanted to pursue happiness, for it seemed to elude her in almost every occasion. It was as though she were trying to search for something invisible. This notion only encouraged her to wonder if she was the only one who was so utterly oblivious to it.
She was a rose who had wilted, the thorns still remaining. The world had made her hard, insufferably so. This particular night had cast a shadow over her heart the way that ink blooms in water. Was the feeling she was experiencing in her chest just rime swaddling her heart with its frigidness?
She traced over the lines of her skin with a fingertip, closing her eyes. If she could recall the exact moments she made each incision, she didn’t show it. Her face remained as stoic as stone. The only obvious sign that she was alive was the soft rise and fall of her chest and the flicking of her eyes behind her eyelids.
With her eyes still closed, she subconsciously reached for the blade, still sitting, still shining with tempting energy. She grasped its hilt tightly, her knuckles turning white from the pressure. She raised it until it just barely caressed the fine hairs on her arm; the silver whispered sweet nothings to the marks already on her skin.
I will soon facilitate the creation of more of your kind. We will decorate this young girl’s body with the harrowing screams of her mind.
Slowly at first, she trailed the blade across her flesh, then quickly. She heard the skin tear; a crackling of leather, the shrill shout of an early thunder clap. The sounds filled her ears and forced her to suck in a sharp breath of cold air.
She opened her eyes and watched a thin stream of crimson running down her hand, across her fingertips, and silently dripping onto the tent floor.
A contradiction at best, Isodol let the corners of her mouth turn upwards into some insidious form of a smile. Although, simultaneously, pools of salty water were brimming the edge of her eyes. The floodgates took no time in breaking as the tears spilled over and cascaded down her clammy cheeks.
She made several more quick cuts before stowing away her blade and exchanging it for an old shirt in need of washing. She diligently pressed the soft material to her wounds. The sting from her slicing gave her something to concentrate on. It brought her focus away from the thoughts she had about the past or the future and to the now.
The present was more important for once.
She wrapped the shirt around her arm by way of makeshifting a bandage in order to keep it from falling off and wiped the tears away with her free hand.
“Everything’s gonna be okay,” she cooed to herself as she gently rocked back and forth. “Things are going to get better.”
She debated on grabbing her flask, desperately wanting a drink now, but decided against it. She instead just kept rocking herself, her only form of comfort in this lonely existence.
“Just keep smiling; everything’s gonna be okay.”
