made within flames } { eckharts

[Avalon]

Wolfsbane

            

Eckhart

♚

teach me

Torn heartstrings.
Ripped straight from her core
She never knew-
what was truly in store.

She whispered;
"Jeq, stay strong-
there is nothing left to fear,
All I wish to hear-
is your undying music to my ears."

Wolfsbane.
A girl left lost in a world all alone
Her remedy was;
setting wild fires ablaze-
all on her own.

Tender fingers and nails rubbing along the tiny ridges laced upon the steel core strings. Plucking one by one by one, a faint screeching sound echoed through the silent air as it snapped back, vibrating into place. A light wood, polished violin of a similar kind, and only a deep sigh was drawn out as my forefinger pressed, glided over the surface. The music once played upon such was superior- miraculous. Undying musical composition by a true prodigy, whose music would play for the district to hear, even in her absence- Jequirity Eckhart.


I was never meant to be as good as she. It was an aspiration that wasn't set out as an intention, all I wished to hear is her undying music. Crumbled up music sheets, ripped and pulled to their very extremities, I'd torn them from a leather back notepad- one that had been stuffed away beneath a drawer in her room for years. Music notes smudged upon a lined page, I allow my eyes to circulate over the both dust, and dirt, coated sheets. Studying it day by day, marking ink to paper as to where I'd grown, and where I'd receded. There were far less mistakes than how I'd started it off, but perfection wasn't what was aimed for. I'd learned it for Jeq.


Horsehair resting upon the wooden and ivory bow. Notes delayed- missed to only be marked down and circled along the paper sheets in a fine point fountain pen. I'd begin to grow agitated with the systematic one- two- one- two- repetition of screeching steel strings along the neck of the violin. Unpleasing to the ear, I'd decided to leave them untouched, broken in a unique sense. ("You'll never be as perfect as Jequirity. Why do you even try?") I'd exchanged my dollars for gold and silver coins, the vendor was a ghost smiling with pearled over teeth. They spoke to me, their voices were as soft as an angel, though their grins were as wicked as the devil. A cup of cinnamon, though they taste of vanilla.


("I do not wish to be, only so much to hear her music through the silent halls.") Hushed corridors were marked by the phantom playing melodies- frequencies radiating from Jequirity's room, and they ricocheted throughout the mansion. A canary had replaced her absence, the soft strokes of a violin playing throughout the night wouldn't- couldn't be from any other. Footsteps against the wooden panels and floorboards, the silent phantom of a queen who spiritually lingered, though her warm body was missing from beside her terrestrial throne. The words slipped between the cracks in her teeth, like Galaxy's, a queen never set out for the throne of marble and stone she'd handcrafted all on her own. She was absent, and others were out to take it in fair game. ("Everything's gotta be about you.") Indeed.


Seven days, and two weeks in counting. Each day marked to pass with a stroke of the bow across the steel strings of her violin. One- two- three- four- five- six- seven- seven long, forsaken days had ended with only a beginning that leads right back to the start of it all. ("When Jequirity gets back, maybe she can teach me-") Words had been left unspoken, stopped in their tracks before even a glimpse of hope could be found through the cracks. ("Jequirity is not coming home, Wolfsbane.") It was denial that had been slammed in my face, the door to a world of hope was hanging on its hinges. It was a surprise that it'd even been family who were the very ones to shut it.


("What do you mean? She has to come home! She has to! She has to! She has-") I set wild fires into my mind, only to let them grow as one. Uncontrolled and rising up in an abundance, they'd burned me to even more of a crisp than what I'd grown to become, scattered ashes left to trail. A glass eye made to replace one that was lost all due to a fire that burned a house which trapped its canaries in a cage like the song birds others admired. Too many permanent, though fading, scars and there's simply not enough fingers on my hands, that tremble, to count all at once. And some go to question, why or how I'd set fires to burn my bones. ("Her time is up, Wolfsbane. What're you going to do?") I felt the flames lick the forefronts of my fingertips, and my body would become a tomb for those who suffered to lay for their final resting place.


I'd picture myself-
A cloudy room, where the fires are never ending, and the smoke burns to the touch. Memories left on a loop against the mirrors that portrayed a girl who had the world in her hands. The melodies of her violin were so soft- so smooth- so magnificent. Ethereal in every way, I stood up, pressing my hand against the glass. ("Jequirity!") Her attention was not shifted no matter how much I cried out for her, instead her eyes were focused on the bow that slid across the strings of the violin. ("She puts on quite the show, doesn't she?")


("Your ghosts suggests you're a fighter, do you understand what this means?") I traded my gold and silver coins for sorrow, grief, and despair. The vendor, who was once an angel embellished in whites and golds, was now showing themselves for what they truly were. A grin turned cheshire, the pearled over whites revealed to be an off shade of rotting yellow. Eyes burned deeper than the fires of Hell, and voice was no longer a soothing song, but spoke in tongues. There was no trade to take back what I had given, for I'd have to pay the final price. ("It's too bad all good things come to an end, really.") Devilish laughter screeched against my ear drums, and I couldn't help but try and contain my screams.

"Jeq-Jeq-Jequirity... please.. please wake up- you have to wake up- please!"

There was a silence that'd fallen, a tension in the open air and it was only a matter of who was courageous enough to push a lost girl back into reality. ("Surely you'll just trip and fall on your own. No one's going to be your crutch, learn to walk on your own broken feet.")

"Wolfsbane... sh- she's dead.."

"Shut up. Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP! She can't! She can't be dead! Jeq, please... you have to come home... please.."

A lost cause with hope that was growing far too strong than what one had been capable of. Words spewed were nothing but foreign- gibberish. The only noise to be heard through stubborn ears was the melody the harp strum at the canon of Jequirity.


("But do you know what it is you're fighting for?") The bow of my violin is my weapon, though I simply do not fight. Gliding the bow along the strings, I only wish to let the music live on that Jequirity had not finished. ("The show must go on, that's all I know.") They chuckle and giggle with their piercing teeth exposed, though I do not focus on what they have to say. The canary bird sings once again, and this time it is strum on Jequirity. ("The show has finished, not with an applause, but with sorrows and despair. Isn't that what you paid for?")


Crinkling music sheets lined the floorboards, torn to pieces and only to be taped back together again. Against my neck I held Jequirity, my violin, closely. Bowing the strings the song bird sings again, soothing to the touch. ("No-") Last words were left unspoken, tongue sliced off like the head of a serpent, and it'd rendered me unable to hiss. My last words I told to Jequirity were signed, ("Come home soon.") I'd learned it all for Jequirity. ("I only wish to finish the undying songs of which she started,") The tears trail down my face and I can feel them slip off the tip of my chin, resting my eyes close a soft, gentle smile forms against my lips as the melody comes back to haunt the halls that were quiet for too long. ("Who do you do this for?") The question was left open, retrieving no answer to the self in return. Settling the violin down within it's leather casing, the name was etched into it like stone. Jequirity Eckhart. ("I'd learned it for Jequirity.")

{ credit: arx }

the pain of growth

[я𝑜𝓈𝑒]

[presto]

ELVAINA E C K H A R T

[/presto]

{ open the slits in your face
and start your day
you don't have much time
to make your slits look just right ;

A single line of crimson upon flesh that has become a wasteland, and my bones fell out from beneath me. I had stood before the screen, stone core and stone skin, a statue with the might of a lion, as blades slashed into innocent flesh and a relentless rain of blood hissed through the air. But my true nature is glass and I am glass once more before the glint of Death's scythe like a glare of disdain and mockery boring, blazing into the not just the fragile surface but the very core of my soul. Stone is only a masquerade; fragments and fragility are the truth.

I screamed, I screamed until my lungs were singed, black, and torn to ruins by the treacherous poison in my breath, planted by the hot tears that had poured into my mouth from my eyes, scarred and burned and ravaged by what they had seen. Locked in a haze forced down my throat by hands stiff with grief, I cut her name into my arm - JEQ - until my arm and the ground below me became a crimson sea. I cut her name into my arm - JEQ - and now I play a game of hide and seek with the wounds, obscuring them from prying eyes with the long sleeve of a peach colored sweater.

Lungs on fire from the air they cannot release, tongue twisted from words that cannot escape, eyes adulterated by my sister's blood - this is the reality Daria Staite crafted for me with one swift flicker of blade. Crimson to turn to stark white, rot to sink to nothing, silver to tarnish to dull darkness - these are the remains Jequirity Eckhart leaves in the wake of her faded breath cast out into the claws of oblivion.

JEQ. Her name is a ghost upon my arm. It stares at me, endlessly, its eyes a pair of voids. Each line, artfully carved into my flesh, is a reach into my soul to tear tear tear and rip rip rip from the inside until the pieces cannot be stitched back together. (Dust cannot be reconstructed into what once was.)

JEQ. It is just a name written in a hologram spilled across crystalline stars. It is just a name carved into flesh - both mine and hers - and the headstone of a grave. Just a name, just a name, just a name - but if that holds true, why do the set of only three letters turn my insides raw with agony?

JEQ. It should mean nothing because she, she is nothing but a constellation of cold flesh and bones, drained hollow of breath by the blade of Daria Staite. It should mean nothing, shouldn't it? It should mean nothing, and yet it means everything, it is everything. Her name is what holds my frame together; her name is what breaks it apart. Her name is the breath in my lungs; her name is the knife in my windpipe choking out my air.

Her name, scarlet on my arm, will fade to ghostly white - an old, old scar, but never forgotten. Fresh blood will spill no longer, pain will ebb and cease to bite me to the bone. But the memory, the scar, is etched into my very being.

I wear her memory as a tattoo.
It is stark ink rolling across my skin like black lace. It is the tears, cruel and beautiful, that stain my face and mar my eyes with scarlet.
A tattoo - it will never fade. Not against the wind, not against the rain. A tattoo - it is eternity; I will take it to the grave.

I will take it to my grave, beside Jequirity's.

Our home haunts me with the muffled words, shattered and torn by sobs, carried between walls. I find her where a sea of crumpled and tattered music sheets flood the floor. A violin stands gravely before us, with the Jequirity carved into its front. (My gaze flickers to my arm, where my ghost of a sister's name is engraved. Wolfsbane and I are matching, only my agony is translated into my flesh and flesh is shielded from her eyes by the sleeve of a sweater.)

I blink once.

I blink twice.

I am motionless.

The slices in my arm is tucked away into security and secret from my sister, but my tears are not. They are emblems of anguish ripped down my face, and I own not one mask to hide it.

Words spill from my lips, frozen in a part -
"One last song. She said one last song. There will never be another, Wolfsbane."

I am motionless.

{ i'm in your mind, i'm singing
i'm in your mind, i'm singing
look in the mirror
and ask your soul if you're alright ;

table: fox.
lyrics: "before you start your day"
by twenty one pilots.