+ Fallacy, a 100themes Challenge +
Sarehptar

Theme: 6, Break Away
Characters: Kharl
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Need to Know Info: Kharl is a birdie, because I say so.
Title Provider: Overture (Trans-Siberian Orchestra)

In the Restless Tides of Night, Lightening Raises Shadows and for Moments Gives Them Life...

Sometimes, it is all too much. He grips the marble balcony cruelly, and his white hands are cold. Tonight he has not worn gloves because he wants to feel things. Tonight he wants to know what the frigid air feels like—but even his skin, this white flesh that is not really his own, cannot feel it correctly. It's all a false pretense, a false form pulled around him tightly like a veil to stay the hands of the world. He has worn it for so long. It hurts sometimes, and he ignores it: because this should be his real face. These delicate hands should be real, this delicate smile that is a lie should hold some truth. Garfakcy believes so thoroughly in his lilac eyes that it cuts him to the bone. The hollow bones.

This mouth and these lips that speak in human language, in the language of Dragons, in a language that is not his own… Sometimes he regrets his own abilities, regrets the life he has made for himself. Sometimes he regrets clipping his own wings.

The full white moon seems to mock him, to call him. Only a marble wall… The words ring like shattering crystal in his mind. Only a marble wall and so many walls that you have built inside. He is leaning against the ice-white rail with all his weight—half what a man his size should really weigh. He knows that the carefully built, mortal-like muscle and skeleton are only illusion, knows that he could shed them as easily as cloth. And he wants to, and he does not want to. Soundlessly he watches an ivory owl take flight over the forest. Somewhere inside the castle, his companion sighs contentedly in sleep. Somewhere across the ocean, Rath turns in his nightmares.

He is not aware of giving in, he is not aware of making the choice, but something inside him must be. If for only a little while… He releases the inborn spell that weaves his human form—releases it completely. There is infinite pleasure in it, warmth and power coursing suddenly where they were not before. His wings rest delicately behind him, waiting patiently for the white feather down that spreads like fire across his ivory skin. And then he is free, for the first time in four centuries, and the balcony seems suddenly too small, the marble wall suddenly a ridiculous excuse for a cage.

The owl calls to him shortly, tersely, in a way that is not welcoming and not rejecting. There is a sound like sibling in it. Languidly, he flaps beside it, round light eye intrigued and unblinking. He has no hands left to wave, but his talons flex experimentally in answer. For a long while they share the cold October sky, two silent immaculate birds.

The white fire that constitutes his feathers does not burn any of the trees they pass so lowly over. Returned to his true body, he cannot smell the scent of cinnamon and ash that fills the air, thick and visible. Not in the way he would have before, not in the thick and pleasant way it will smell when he has to take back that human-like form. And he will have to take it back, he knows, because the world is not so simple. He cannot simply voice his wishes with a jeer or a song, cannot simply assuage hatred and handle enemies without a human's smile to hide behind.

The full white moon is beckoning still, but the mockery has gone from it, and it feels now like a rider, resting and dancing along the full, pure span of his wings. Turning from the night companion who does not know whether to call him Brother or Human, Kharl wonders how high he can fly with these wings that are his but are so foreign. He wonders, and laughs a trilling note, if he can fly high enough to make the moon true a presence on his shoulder—he is free for the moment of his other burdens and the weightlessness almost frightens him. He knows he cannot fly that high, is not that free, and for a moment his cruel taloned grip tightens painfully.

In the ash coated night air, the first mournful notes of a phoenix's song echo over the forest, carried by the frigid rays of moonlight.