A/N: Written for:
The Prompts in Steps Challenge, 3.08 - ficlet, labour
ZEXAL bingo: the non-flash version, #160 - shadow
Diversity Writing Challenge, b3 - over 500 words poem
Can You Wield This Darkness Blade?
You want to help. The wall's falling apart and you want to help so very badly
but you can't do anything until the shadow recedes from underfoot and they're tripping you up:
cruel shadows, sneaky shadows that are like snakes winding around your ankles and threatening to bite
and they do bite, when you try to kick them away so you can move through their swamp: they bite and leave little pin-prick holes
that ooze blood and snake saliva. You'd slash them and scatter their guts if it'd work, but these snakes are shadow snakes
and not even the blade of light seems to deter them; they instead slither away, out of light, out of sight, hugging shadows
and shadows always are. They're always there, and this time your rope of life, of light, doesn't seem to go far enough
to build you Bifrost's bridge - but you need Bifrost's bridge. You need it somehow and if you need to walk on shadow snakes
to get there. You'll do it, because at the edge of your sight where a sliver of light slips through the closed doors is a red sliver:
red, not yellow nor white nor a pale silver that can easily be mistaken for its drearier twin grey. Red for life. Red for fire. Red for blood
and you know whose life, whose fire, whose blood and you worry because life and blood go together, but they also don't go together
and blood means death, blood means approaching death and that scares you, because even if you free yourself from these snakes
which hinder you so, you may be too late. And you can't allow yourself to be late. You need to get there, and you need to get there on time
because you need to help. You want to help. The wall's falling apart and you need to fix it so very badly
because there's something precious behind that wall and if it falls down, it'll be exposed to the world, like a baby born too soon
and their lungs aren't coated with pretty soap suds that'll stop the air from corroding straight through, so they corrode
and they shrivel up and they die like rotten and mouse-bitten cheese left in the larder, and what's behind the world's too important -
he's too important - to let him rot away like that, let his corpse hang on display like the trophy it will invariably be, and the slap to his face,|
but more than that, it's a precious thing, he's a precious person and it's worth painstakingly sealing all those cracks to save him
If it weren't for this swamp of snakes that held him fast, so fast, that even the blade of light wouldn't cut
But he'll do it. He'll get through. If light won't work, then there are four other elements that can fight: not darkness,
Of course not darkness, because darkness is the shadows, darkness is the snakes - no, that's not true at all. Shadows are fake darkness
Like mirrors are to light: fake, copies, incomplete…
You can win, if you wield the darkness as your sword and cut these snakes that bind you
And burn the poison with dark fire that will leave your blood in tact.
But you're a creature of light, aren't you? Can you wield this sword?
Is it enough...for you to need, to want?