I'm not okay

Zèklè And in the sea that's painted black Creatures lurk below the deck But you're my queen and I'm a lionheart How long do you lie there, on the ground, alone, in the presence of nothing but your heartache and the tree? Your soul aching and your tears bleeding onto the soft, dead ground, your breath rising and falling in gentle heaves? How long are you alone, just you and the tree and the leaf that isn't Iso's spirit, you know it isn't, but you really would very much like it to be - so to you, right now, it is. How much time do you get to process? No time, as it turns out. No time at all. Literally. You don't get to be alone - hell, you weren't even alone to begin with, because fuck personal space, apparently. First fatherhood, then single fatherhood, and - now that Mauna is big enough to be left, occasionally, to his own devices - there's the eyes, the voices, the ceaseless presence of this shithole. Someone is always watching, waiting, an uninvited witness to your thrashing pain who stands behind a veneer of silence and lets you make a fool of yourself, and you've mostly learned to live with it. You ignore the staring and the breathing and the laughter, you tolerate the weird light and the strange plants and the towering, monstrous beasts that you may once have found fascinating, inspiring, but can now only stare at, blandly, blank. You've managed to roll with the bizarreness that is this world for this long. Guess it's about time for things to be shaken up. You wish you could lie there for forever - but if wishes were horses the world would be vastly overpopulated and everything would stink of horseshit. Or something. You don't remember the exact words now; they're eluding you, drowned out by the telltale sound of Mourning Flowers as thick hooves crush them underfoot. One ear flicks casually toward the sound, a small piece of your mind rolling through names and possibilities. Mauna is the obvious answer, but the footsteps are too heavy for your innocent son. Iskra, maybe? No- it doesn't smell like him, and besides, you know his gait almost as well as your own. This is a stranger, or a near stranger. Or maybe a dream - because part of you, that cruel and stupid part, hopes, prays, that maybe it's her. That maybe she's the one heralding the call of the flowers, eliciting their miserable cry, her cloven feet pressing perfect hearts into the ashes. He can picture a trail of plants sprouting behind her, life rising from death. Is the agony of your heart, the weight of his pain, enough to summon Isopia here? Spoiler alert: it's not. Oh, you know it's not Isopia, that it couldn't possibly be Isopia, that it will never, never, no matter how deeply your foolish heart may wish it, ever be Isopia. You know it before it comes into focus, a looming, dark figure at the periphery of your vision, glittering with unnatural light and reeking of rain and putrid magic; but still you hold onto that idiot's hope, because what else do you have? You don't turn to look at it - why bother? - instead opting to stare intently at your leaf, watching with a strangely intense focus as it rises and falls against your chest, fluttering in time with your escalating heartbeat. You can feel your pulse racing (why?), your skin growing damp with sweat (you know why), your ears ringing with the deafening sound of the mourning flowers' cry and the surge of your blood and the deafening, horrible howl of knowledge (no, no, you're wrong, no, can't be, no, no), because there, at the edge of your vision, at the border of your solitude (are you fucking shitting me right now?)- "Kaos," you reply with surprising evenness, your voice almost pleasant, almost conversational, almost normal - - because what the fuck else are you supposed to say to the genocidal demigod who slaughtered your sisters, best friend, mother, and goodness knows who else, right before your eyes? Your sunbeam eyes remain trained on the leaf, watching it rise - and fall - and rise - and fall. You try to count the veins, to map the shape of it with your gaze, to memorize the exact shade of green it is when the light hits it just so. You're studiously avoiding the reality of your situation by focusing everything you have in on this leaf - because otherwise you're pretty sure you're going to crack. You surprise yourself with your candor, your voice still remarkably steady as you fixate on your leaf. "No, not much," is the causal agreement. ('Sorry?!' screams a part of your mind. 'SORRY?! The FUCK you're sorry, you mother-killing asshole, you monster, you fucking nightmare on four legs, you heartless piece of SHIT. You're not sorry. I'll show you SORRY!') You do not say any of this. Maybe, you think, as you stare at your leaf, this is all a bad dream. A weird nightmare brought on by lack of oxygen, or some bizarre plant, or a fever. Certainly it seems to be - there's no other way you can be lying here, under a giant tree in the middle of some crying flowers, chatting casually with the killer of so many people you love. This is a bizarre hallucination, and any minute now, you're going to wake up on the shore of the Throat, your hair slick with salt and sand in your hair, Ma yelling and the twins laughing and Sparky playing and Iso nearby, teaching Mauna all about the world. Except this is reality, and that's the dream, and sooner or later you're going to have to face that. Just... maybe not right now. "Are you gonna kill me, too?" you ask of Kaos, because why else would he have come? Maybe it's foolish to be so blunt, to tempt fate with stupid questions, but what the hell - if you're gonna die anyway, you'd rather know. And if you die, maybe you'll be able to find Iso, and poke fun because she never believed in spirits, but here you both are, spirits, laughing, exploring, adventuring. Dead.

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@Kisamoa