Bitter
PT: Inspiration came from recently bought maple syrup .__. Wow...my mom and brother actually bought maple syrup...wow... And cranberries, because that's the only other thing I thought of XD
Disclaimer: Nope. If I did I'd, like, do something about the fics in this fandom. Too many cliche stories -shot- -sighs-
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When they are young, they taste sweet...
When there are old, they are bitter...
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Her hands sink into the myriad of them, feeling their skins, cool to the touch and smooth to feel. They are strewn, thickly, across the ground, scattered like drops of ruby blood that look eerie in the wild moonlight.
The wind blows, lukewarm, through the air, cutting gently but firmly in all directions. Winds—northern, southern, western, eastern—whip her loose hair and silver clothing in all directions, blowing upwards the scent of the cranberries; their heady smell fills her senses. She inhales deeply, willing herself to postpone the moment when she will exhale. Breathing and breathing in the bittersweet scent of cranberries, her mind flooded with the dark red drops of juicy flesh.
They are small, large as her pale thumb, but filled with so much bitterness...but she knows that someday they will wrinkle, shrivel like skin always does. So young, so small—so bitter and whole. But someday they will crumple under the weight of bitterness...right from the inside...and they will all lay scattered and withering across the ground, waiting for birds to pluck them up. Remnants.
So young, so pure.
But they will learn—someday, they will be bitter with age.
They are remnants and proxies of her—when she was young, bitter, and in a way so pure and sweet. When she loved and trusted...but in the world she walks, she is the largest pearl in the clam. Always and always that pearl could be so beautiful, so meaningful—and doomed to the world's saddest fate. Like cranberries. Like her.
She is a bitter, shriveled cranberry and her only source of solace in her time-worn pain—her agony, her despair, internally—is hidden in these youthful cranberries.
She sinks down on the ground, feeling it firm and cold, pressing against her knees, and runs another hand through the blood-red berries, comparing and contrasting to the only one she can compare it with.
Him.
The one who is the same as her—and yet so different.
The one with the fiery—yet somehow innocent eyes that wallowed in their own naiveté—was he shriveling yet? breaking?
He is a pearl, and now the alternate pearl, the largest now. And he is not yet broken.
At that moment, she cannot stand it anymore:
Her fists, running over the sea of red, tightens like a vice around handfuls of cranberries; lifts them upward to her nose, inhaling the uncanny odor; and, neither caring nor thinking of the dirt over them, stuffs them into her mouth, teeth working.
Up, down. Up, down.
Their bitter, bitter taste, breaking through the skin, crushing the flesh...
Up, down. Up, down.
Bitter, young, still unbreakable...
Up, down. Up, down.
The feeling of them running down her throat, dirt gritty...
Up, down. Up, down.
The most bitter aftertaste—
Overwhelming.
She cannot take it anymore.
Bile rising in her throat.
Lurching forward as her insides burn; she spews them all out, sickeningly—
Thalia stares, dismayed, at the mess of loathsome red; as their remaining bitter smell rises upward, defiled, to please her nostrils.
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PT: So, how was that? AU, I guess, but if this is too confusing...basically, Thalia muses over cranberries—they remind her of her and Percy for a moment, and suddenly, in a moment of...insanity?...she swallows a lot of them, then throws them all up. Second part will be in Percy's point of view. Review if you can, critique is more than welcome, questions may be asked.