𝚒𝚗𝚋𝚘𝚡 — 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚗𝚒𝚊.

[sacral]

EVEN WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

Comments

[hallowedly]

( As it were, protracted. )

...every illusion is a beautiful dream dressed into being.

I've spoken the words. So they must be.

[sacral]

I've seen just how beautiful you can make them.

Are all words spoken capable of being enshrined as truth?

[hallowedly]

If you have the strength to make your will someone else's reality.

[sacral]

My will is my own.

[hallowedly]

Then what illusion will you weave?

[sacral]

It seems like I won't.

[hallowedly]

Then, take the bet.

[sacral]

A mirror image again.

Fine, I'll take it.

[hallowedly]

No stakes?

[sacral]

They'll shift.

[hallowedly]

What do you want, really? It will come to that. It always comes to that.

[sacral]

Would you ever allow it?

[hallowedly]

When have I been so uncivil not to honour stakes?

[sacral]

It was never that your sensibilities were concealed.

I want answers.

[hallowedly]

( A heartbeat's pulse of hesitation. )

...answers. ( And plural. )

[sacral]

Because it wasn't triumph or celebration. Even the shape of acknowledgement turned wrong.

[hallowedly]

What's done was done.

[sacral]

What was done has been undone.

[hallowedly]

( In crescendo, fear wells. Floods. Brims, then threatens burst, calamitously. A strange, animal and irrational perversion.

At first arresting, then tantalizing, the shape of it comfortingly close. )


Well, if at first you don't succeed.

[sacral]

Isn't that your reason for another bet?

[hallowedly]

It's to pass the time.

[sacral]

Do you accept, then?

[hallowedly]

How exciting. My junior's first bet.

Of course I must accept, to support him.

[sacral]

Name it. What you want.

[hallowedly]

Should I say 'a date'?