Title: Sunshine Never Comes
Summary: Risk nothing to save nothing. Risk a little to save a little. Risk everything to save everything. – Dovahkiin/Vilkas –
A/N : If you couldn't tell, I just finished my S-130's/190's (Wildland Firefighter Training). I'm currently working on something longer than three pages (gasp!) but I wanted to write a little lala for the time being.
Risk nothing to save nothing.
I envy the insects that swarm around the night's flames. They are a people of their own who share a language, a dance, a religion that I shall never be part of. The call of a dragon ignites an unspoken ritual that demands they drop their swords, picks, and axes and sway their lithe bodies to its call. I watch only the beginning, for the climax is taboo; my knees buckle and I bury my face in the speckled ash. It burns my skin, but I can breathe, and I listen, I listen to their song, the song of the insects.
And I smell them. I smell the hair, the skin, the bone. I smell the metamorphoses, the heat and oxygen unmasking their cocoon to release their psyches. It makes my head swell and my stomach blister; vomit coils onto the tip of my tongue and spills into that ash. Steam boils, penetrates my skin, but I cannot untangle from my child's position. My thoughts spit at me; they want me to stand, to take a deep breath, to inhale the fire so I, too, can reach my fullest potential – they tell me I'll never walk again, I'll never be beautiful again, not in this heat. I shall become the most potent butterfly wing in your alchemist's medication.
But I cannot.
I envy them because I wish to die, too.
Risk a little to save a little.
"Ishild," Vilkas chokes. He pats the arch in my back, the round of my shoulder, and finally my hand. "Are you alive?"
I notice the hesitant pausing between each word. His palm tightens around two of my fingers and he comes closer, his face protruding through the black smoke. My lashes, dripping with tears, mucus, and sweat untangle so that I am able to see his Oblivion-silver hues. "Yes," I croak, suddenly aware that my airway has been replaced with tar. I begin to cough, cough, cough right into that vomit-ash. Ebony filth thicker than blood spills onto the mess. I try to inhale to cough, cough, cough more, but I cannot – I cannot breathe. I try to vomit again, try to cough, but only the noise of the dying omits. I'm closer than I thought.
Vilkas' fingers protrude inside my mouth. The iron is hot, hot, hot and burns. My jaw clamps onto his digits with no avail and I have no choice but to burn alive as he scrapes my insides. When he finishes, I can breathe again. I'd really much rather die. My body becomes limp and it's too dry to cry. "The dragon's gone," he assures me, but I don't care. I'm an insect suffocated inside a cocoon. I'm being left behind.
But he's there with me, sharing that iron maiden, and we lay, heaving, until the flames stop burning.
Risk everything to save everything.
They arrived with water squirming with worms. When I pressed the canteen to my lips, it stung worse than the initial burn. I let it drop down my ash-mud ridden face and then I squeezed my eyes and washed the rustic-tasting liquid down my pipes. Then I screamed.
We were escorted to Falkreath, the two of us, where Kynareth's children bathed us. I screamed like a child, like the insects, and demanded they murder me. Their holy waters were dyed black from the ash and the red of our blood, but there was too much – and I knew our second unborn child had been plucked with the rest of them. Vilkas' scalped fingers brushed what was left of my hair and he, too, mourned. He told me of what he knew and what he did not know. He assured me of my beauty despite how my face looked like pools of fuel had boiled in the crooks of my neck and had been set alight in a blue flame.
He promised me we'd have another chance.
The heat melted my skin only to the muscle, but it might as well have clung to my bones. I shivered and clung to him as closely as two sore lovers can. As I faded to sleep, I wondered why lovers are never released from their suffering.