It is a strange thing, to find comfort in what can burn. His lungs are embittered to the smoke, but his body craves the calm it brings him. If there is nothing in this world — on this fish left to provide him comfort, then it was the familiarity of something warm and almost alive in his hands that chanced at it. It brushed down harsh edges, kept his thoughts in tidier rows against the madness that had been imbued into every inch of living, its once improbability spilling into every corner of his life like blood seeping into lines of fortune fanned across his palms. But, Ryo was never fortunate. Down to his foundations, down to what lay beneath that huddled in the darkest corners of his memory, he had no concept at all what ill luck was. He had no insight into what would come, what would be done — what he even was at the end of all things, waiting patient and quiet against all his fissuring.
Ryo listens as Ashitaka conceals the mark, reminiscent of the bruising Ryo’s never gained for more than scant moments — a handful of days against the span of weeks for most his age. Despite the danger it seems to radiate, there’s something nervous and hungry in him that wants to know more of it. There’s something in him that itches and writhes, something that he ignores as he knows better than to look into the face of it. He’s lived like this for months — knowing what could kill him would also bring him fascination, strange and inadvertent. He wrenches himself from the edge of it, shuddering once as Ashitaka turns back to the fire.
It was fear that made humans survive. It was fear that kept them struggling to clamber to the top, that would always and inevitably make them turn their weapons to the throats of their neighbors. It was fear that was alive in Ryo’s heart, in the hearts of mankind when faced with what could tear and rend — could deconstruct all that there was or ever is, just with knowledge of its existence.
It is funny how it follows him even here, even now. It is funny how the idea only changed in meaning, in shape. The loss of control was still a loss. The loss of ability to live in some capacity was still the loss of the ability to live. ]
What is best? [ Ryo asks, eventually and at length. As the fire too distracts Ashitaka, Ryo also watches it. What Ryo remembers is still is the gasoline, the murmur of needing more. Those last and fleeting words, carved out against accelerant. Smoke spools out from between his fingertips, thin and dark. Against the glow beneath them, the cherry of the cigarette is a bright and burning point — strange and artificial in its peculiar confinement. ] If my curse was handed to another, who could say what they'd do? To them, it could look like another possibility entirely. [ Who is to say what anyone would do? Would they turn to the public? Would they tell the world? Would chaos have swept over already? He doesn't wish to wonder. To Ryo, this was what was best and he would fight for it until the death. Even if he knew it, it didn't mean that others wouldn't see it differently. But, they did not know what Ryo knew. ] You're right to say almost everything carries it somehow.
[ Almost everything. The exclusion is clear to him as he says it. Humanity was cursed by the presence of something that they knew nothing about, the world and its creatures too would suffer in face of it. But, the world too had suffered humanity. Even still — to protect one's own is what was always inevitable. It was always what would be inevitable.
For a long time, Ryo thinks of home. He thinks of thick ichor, the bright flash of teeth against fur and flesh. He thinks of the rumble of inhuman roars, the sound of laughter instead. He thinks of the scent of ash, of brimstone. He thinks of the smell of convenience food grabbed in the earliest hours of the morning, the purr of music felt through his steering wheel of his father's old car. He thinks of how much he had asked of him.
Absence sets down roots in his heart, digs past muscle to bone and marrow. He breathes around its tangled edges, eyelashes fluttering against the ache it brings. ]
What if that curse, [ Ryo says, sudden and deceptively soft: ] the responsibility of what the world could become, was handed to one person?
[ Millions of miles from home, millions of miles away from his inheritance — this burden is still his. Still Akira's. ]
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It is a strange thing, to find comfort in what can burn. His lungs are embittered to the smoke, but his body craves the calm it brings him. If there is nothing in this world — on this fish left to provide him comfort, then it was the familiarity of something warm and almost alive in his hands that chanced at it. It brushed down harsh edges, kept his thoughts in tidier rows against the madness that had been imbued into every inch of living, its once improbability spilling into every corner of his life like blood seeping into lines of fortune fanned across his palms. But, Ryo was never fortunate. Down to his foundations, down to what lay beneath that huddled in the darkest corners of his memory, he had no concept at all what ill luck was. He had no insight into what would come, what would be done — what he even was at the end of all things, waiting patient and quiet against all his fissuring.
Ryo listens as Ashitaka conceals the mark, reminiscent of the bruising Ryo’s never gained for more than scant moments — a handful of days against the span of weeks for most his age. Despite the danger it seems to radiate, there’s something nervous and hungry in him that wants to know more of it. There’s something in him that itches and writhes, something that he ignores as he knows better than to look into the face of it. He’s lived like this for months — knowing what could kill him would also bring him fascination, strange and inadvertent. He wrenches himself from the edge of it, shuddering once as Ashitaka turns back to the fire.
It was fear that made humans survive. It was fear that kept them struggling to clamber to the top, that would always and inevitably make them turn their weapons to the throats of their neighbors. It was fear that was alive in Ryo’s heart, in the hearts of mankind when faced with what could tear and rend — could deconstruct all that there was or ever is, just with knowledge of its existence.
It is funny how it follows him even here, even now. It is funny how the idea only changed in meaning, in shape. The loss of control was still a loss. The loss of ability to live in some capacity was still the loss of the ability to live. ]
What is best? [ Ryo asks, eventually and at length. As the fire too distracts Ashitaka, Ryo also watches it. What Ryo remembers is still is the gasoline, the murmur of needing more. Those last and fleeting words, carved out against accelerant. Smoke spools out from between his fingertips, thin and dark. Against the glow beneath them, the cherry of the cigarette is a bright and burning point — strange and artificial in its peculiar confinement. ] If my curse was handed to another, who could say what they'd do? To them, it could look like another possibility entirely. [ Who is to say what anyone would do? Would they turn to the public? Would they tell the world? Would chaos have swept over already? He doesn't wish to wonder. To Ryo, this was what was best and he would fight for it until the death. Even if he knew it, it didn't mean that others wouldn't see it differently. But, they did not know what Ryo knew. ] You're right to say almost everything carries it somehow.
[ Almost everything. The exclusion is clear to him as he says it. Humanity was cursed by the presence of something that they knew nothing about, the world and its creatures too would suffer in face of it. But, the world too had suffered humanity. Even still — to protect one's own is what was always inevitable. It was always what would be inevitable.
For a long time, Ryo thinks of home. He thinks of thick ichor, the bright flash of teeth against fur and flesh. He thinks of the rumble of inhuman roars, the sound of laughter instead. He thinks of the scent of ash, of brimstone. He thinks of the smell of convenience food grabbed in the earliest hours of the morning, the purr of music felt through his steering wheel of his father's old car. He thinks of how much he had asked of him.
Absence sets down roots in his heart, digs past muscle to bone and marrow. He breathes around its tangled edges, eyelashes fluttering against the ache it brings. ]
What if that curse, [ Ryo says, sudden and deceptively soft: ] the responsibility of what the world could become, was handed to one person?
[ Millions of miles from home, millions of miles away from his inheritance — this burden is still his. Still Akira's. ]