Her Patchwork Gears

The common world is cold, and dark as pitch, but he hears the click of crooked gears sweet crooning and he knows he’ll find her. Falah sought to vanish, as only she could beneath the glare of the maker.

It had been too long since he knew her caught and was lost in what he’d so gladly be for her.

He doesn’t march as she does, wary and naked. He watches sickened by his own want. He’d needed to see her again, and she is there again in front of him.

“Where were you, dearest?” He watches her stop upon hearing him, stricken and lovely, the smell of ichor in snow. She shakes with it, whether fear or cold he sees it in her bones and he can only call out to her.

“Falah?” he calls to her as she falls to the ground, her body finally drops beneath her, as sleep takes her from him.

He can do nothing but wait, as ice dances on her skin, before being warmed away by his intention. He is lost in the love of her breath, the memory of her voice, and he wanted nothing more than to hear it again.

Ice and earth blight ruff on chosen skin, slight and hurt and torn as rags, all this to mend in his hands. 

He holds her, so much more dear than he holds the world devine and common, but still only in his arms. So rarely there and so he claws at the notion of her presence. It wouldn’t have been right to fear it, the seeping ink of her ichor, on his hand, on the snow.

If this is trust, or terror he will never know it, the twisting whirl of her soul, of herself, of all thats been done.

He carries her like the shame of his failure, careful and lonely. A disaster in his affection.

She sleeps in his arms, and on his path, as darkness looms, the thicket of the forest bears an oasis at his admonishment. A Fire bound in sensibilities. He holds nothing apart from her, and regrets that he must set her down to the grass before anything else.

Past her body, beneath the skin, which oh so hurt to see, her mis-colored gears cranked away, as one. Crooked, and out of tune.

He looked at her and knew she would never be her pieces.

What sweet twisted agony made her? Every piece that has become her, perfect in his vision. What strange cruelty made her lovely to his scrutiny? Not for the Maker, but as she was made. The beauty in her ticking.

Still wide beneath, is the one great eye of her Master, gaze tapped on him. He can’t help looking away and back to task, leering wasn’t his purpose even if he faltered.

Even then he’d bestill his temptation, a pilfered body beyond her invention, a piecemeal transgression to spite movements tampered. He’d long since done enough to earn her ire, but he couldn't help his heart when she was awake.

Let alone as she slept, far beneath the Maker’s grasp, he almost-

He’d forgotten himself, this was her body that needed mending, and so with his will like ladder-stitch he pulls her together. Every last horrid thing he’d had the last fond mercy not to have inflicted.

He begs for a world where not one piece of her could know him an enemy, even grieving her existence in lieu of it, as he binds the shallowness of the whole-cloth body draped haphazard around her soul.

From her hands to her arms, passed farther threw her body, slow and careful, his essence as a thread.

Last being her face, like that would stymie his overattention.

But he pulls too tightly once or twice, and she-

“Stop, stop- please.” she screams pulling at the grass, new scrapes on new skin, such short work of all he’d made of her. She begs and howls, nameless beneath him, a wicked cacophony he wished he could only be a half witness to.

He can’t help hearing the sweet somber click, between a lover and a victim, and the vicious temper of his own cowardice. How dare he seek such forgiveness in her sleeping self.

She cowers ignorant to his touch, pleading restless for things long past. She won’t remember this, her voice made many in a night of horror. She shakes, and she is overstill beneath his hand before her breath is made half wakeful.

That sweet promise, that peace in her, and he lets go.

He backs himself away, his form sluggish with crossed purpose, burned by her reception of his touch. 

He forces himself away, to gaze at the fire. To let that be what burns him. To hope she never wakes so he can always hold the shame and the fire, and never see the sun again just so he never forces his way again.

But she wakes anyway.

Her breath slowed by conscience, her edges undone, as much by him as her aching memory. He still can’t look over.

She touches the grass, like it hadn’t been her lifeline in a sleep of woe.

She looks at everything, and he knows it for the pitter patter of her gears, in the gaze of the Master. In her every breath and whimper. 

She breathes to speak first before he interrupts, “You're awake.” finally forcing himself to look down at her.

Her waking breath is enticement itself, and he goes over to her. She shakes beneath his touch, and he feels the fool for it, whatever her response.

“You should rest”, like she could do much else, he should’ve just stolen her. Taken her in hand, what loss could it be, his life for what he’s been.

He’s hurt her before, those pieces maddened in the night.

Her soul in tatters for the Maker’s enrichment.

“You should let go of me.” she says, as the fire burns before his gaze, and he looks away to steal as much as he can, as close as he can be to her, like she’d ever run on broken skin to be rid of him.

She shivers beneath him, as he touches her foot.

It was the one thing he hadn’t healed.

It was a calculated risk wasn’t it? No better than his brothers, their Maker. “You shouldn’t run. I know you want to run.” he stroked where Ichor had since dried. 

The sharp glower, no creatures beyond judgement in silence beneath the driest snap of the tree's branches. He brushed her leg softly, like it wasn’t for his own elation, a comfort all his own in his hands. Her body, this self she invented. This body he mended, just to see her.

“I- I- I do,” her breath caught, “I want to run, you aren’t safe.” and while he’d love the better meaning, the world wouldn't quiet itself for nothing. 

“Have I ever been, Falah?”

“No.”

“Then why run now?” She looked away from him, there was a soft rumble where she’d sprawled, and he felt it through his caress. The only sweet sound in this cold common world was this feeling of her soul through her skin.

She couldn’t even help it. He was sure, as he pulled again at the thread essence of his soul.

There isn’t an inch of her he hasn’t learned, in skin, ichor. Even the vastness of truth was something he knew in her now. 

The Maker would be much obliged, to tear him to pieces in plight of even this small disloyalty. A once heeled thing healed enough to run away.

She looks him in the eye for a long moment, ready to bolt before she stills and says, “You know don’t you?” She doesn’t mean the question of it, and he’s enchanted by the ice on her breath.

“Why do you think I’d know?”, he says evasive, wanting so dearly to remain unseen. But still, what's the price for keeping her close?

“My place is beneath your gaze, Ahmel.” She says as plain as anything, a truth before the flesh. “You shouldn’t remake me so easily. It isn’t fair that you’d look so far from me when you have.”

“Did you feel obliged to push me down?” ‘Before I was one.’ Is what she doesn’t say, but it's there, “I shouldn’t say that Ahmel.” her heart’s smooth turn clashes, as she backs away from something horrid, still as close as can be.

“You don’t need to know this,” he can’t hide it in a lie, and he watches her as much as he can.

“I still need to.”

“No, you don’t.”

“What’s changed? Ahmel.” Falah asks, as if he’d have said anything before. Like he’d let himself be close before. “You’ve given me everything, if you should be ashamed, then let me suffer for it.” 

He’d watched her sleeping, soft breath, as her body ached from his failure. 

This shouldn’t have happened.

“So, I’ve given you everything? And you ask for more. Greedy thing,” He says the words sharp and sweet, and soft and salacious, a life lived all as one was meant to be without confusion. 

There are some who think it a mercy to be had and gone by the same hand, and while he knew the lie before the disciples of the common world.

He almost believed it.

The world stays quiet when she asks, “Do you only want me for this? When you’re grieving your loyaltys?” and while it’s only a whisper in his ear, he feels the cold truer than the fire he’d made.

Cooled embers beneath his attentions, Falah wanted, and so he gave. 

“Oh no, never so rarely, Dear. But, how could I even ask for more?”, he feels the sky was as bright as the Maker’s glower between the keyhole spaces of clawlike branches, but there is no feeling akin to her want, and so the forest like everything else leaves them be.