HEATHENS

tie a rope around your neck, and let me kick you off a bungee I was trapped in the darkness, locked away with my only memory of the world no longer relevant, from it's burning bodies to it's soft blue sky. It was not there anymore, because that was Helovia, and this is now - this is the Rift, where nothing feels right, where safety does not come in solitude, but in numbers, in not even being here. We don't belong here, and we know it, the Rift knows it, it's so obvious as we crowd its lands and explore the territories presented to us. We aren't meant to be here, we're supposed to be back in Helovia, we're supposed to be safe in Helovia, we're supposed to stay there - we left it, we left it when there was so much there. There was the hot, sandy days of the Throat, the ocean's song crashing up against the shore's of Helovia, there was the gods, bright and there was the Marsh, filled with unease and unwelcome but it was so familiar - there was Momma, drifting ceaselessly through the Marshes, through all of Helovia, a kísértet, and my heart broke because she was there alone, she was doomed to wander through the ruins of an empty Helovia. I wasn't there to be a worry on her mind, Sameira wasn't there to be her guiding light, nobody was there. Helovia was gone, brought to its knees by a false god who preached his power and destroyed everything that could have been held dear. And here, in the sanctuary he offered, nothing felt right. It felt like there was always someone watching, keeping an eye on my movements, on my intentions, as if they saw right through me and I couldn't stop them. The paranoia sprouts here, rooted deep in my chest as it has been, but it has only now been egged on my the restlessness, the inability to determine whether it is day or night, whether I am alone or with company. My body has forgotten how to navigate through the darkness, how to find my way through a world I cannot see, taking it inch by inch because I am too afraid. Eventually, I hope to make my way with ease, but for now I am terrified, swallowing down terrified gulps of air as the silence drones on, as my body feels too weightless, too unstable to be stood on solid earth. For a moment, I lose sense of where anything is at all, the ground, the tree that brushes against my side, the branch grasping at a mangled wing - I lose it. I'm collapsing, tripping forward and feeling my lungs take in unfortunate, painful breaths as dirt and hopelessness get caught up in my throat, body shaking as I let out sharp exhales. "Fasz," I whisper as the panic settles in, gut twisting as my body presses against the wet dirt, smeared with cool mud and sweat that trickles down my neck. I feel the cracking of my heart, of my will to keep going because there is no one left, I feel less at home than I did before, and I have never felt at home. Not in the Throat, not among the koponya arcok, there is nowhere for me to feel at ease, nowhere I feel safe enough to put my emotions to rest, to let the paranoia slip away and fall back into twisted serenity. That was not the case now, because my throat, my lungs, my whole being is being crushed under the anxiety, under the crippling fear that I will stumble blind through this world until I wither away, until my own magic reveals the brittle bones that lay beneath my skin, peel away at the layers that hide the mess that I keep inside, the emotions that tumble together into an ugly knot, full of anguish and recklessness, hopeless and loud, it's screaming and thrashing, a tantrum to be thrown at inconvenient times. It was my refusal to leave Helovia behind, to leave her behind. I hadn't wanted to be herded into the same blob of children that shared a father with me, into the frantic mess of Volterra spawn who so faithfully followed, as if it were their duties to proudly parade along behind him into a new world. Sick. The panic is subsiding, the uncertainty is fading back into just whispers at the edges of my mind, but I am still consumed by the anxiety, still washed in fatigue and a refusal to wander my way back towards wherever my family may be. "Kibaszott gyűlölöm ezt a helyet," I mumble, spitting towards the ground as I raise myself to a standing position, knees still bent and buckled as I let my ears pick up the responses of the animals in my vicinity with the hum of noise that escapes them.

@Saoirse