Star Scarred

Siralos's hair was woven from the stars, like rivers of sunlight pouring from His scalp. Igls Unth had liked to sit and brush her hands through His hair, and it was soft and light and hummed between her fingers. And she remembered, she remembered He used to sing while she did it - a soft kind of sound, rising from the depths of His throat, echoing through their huge palace.

She liked to imagine the words He sang drifting up through the parthenon of stars above, through that endless clash of dark and light, through the emptiness of the galaxy, bringing it a flash of warmth, something to cure its crushing loneliness. She knew that it would take light thousands, sometimes millions of years to reach its destination - blurry fingerprints of the past pressed into the sky, and wondered if sound could be the same way.

And sometimes, just sometimes, when her mind would wander to its darkest corners, she would imagine His song even reaching him. Her father's soft, soft voice, a line of heatless flame striking through the earth, trickling all the way down, down, down through what could only be endless black. Thousands of years passing, millennial heat from a dead song. But it just had to be a spark, just one spark of His voice, that would reach her poor, begotten brother. She hoped he would remember, or maybe not remember, maybe... maybe remembering, knowing that this was his father's voice, maybe that would be painful and only deepen that incurable loneliness... so no, she hoped he did not remember, and instead just listened to the echo of this faraway song, and knew that he was not alone in all this.

And as she stroked her fingers through her Father's hair, she wondered how her brother could possibly survive without Him. Being in His presence was an eternal source of warmth, and she remembered the way He would turn to her after she had finished twiddling her fingers through his winnowed hair. She could remember the heat of His eyes, like an eternal sunrise, focused on her. Feel it though her eyes were shut, feel the heat of His eyes blazing painlessly on her skin, knowing that if she dared to open her own eyes, she would be blinded by His brilliance. And then He would thank her, words one and the same with the Sun's radiance, a simple thank you that would make her heart bleed in an ecstasy so blissful she felt like weeping.

How could anyone survive without that nourishment?

She supposed, well, she supposed, she'd just have to find out.

After all, her swords were buried deep into her father's back.

He was barely breathing, light choking out of him in flashes of deep red and hot white that blazed on the inside of her eyelids. His long, beautiful hair was pressed against her throat, and wet with her tears. She remembered, she remembered His singing, His singing that she believed that was lighting up the entire universe. And now He was stumbling on His words, all locked up in his throat, struggling to break free along with the blood.

"Sweet thing, why would you ever do this?" He said, after a time.

Eternal summers, a belief that nothing should ever, ever change.

Ivlis's corpse lay scattered into pieces, his assault on the palace groundbreaking. He had used some spell, some dark, horrifying thing that had reduced her Father's defenses to nothing. Took his power, Ivlis had said. Sneered, jeered, laughed about having finally obtained his freedom. And yet... even with His power reduced, even with His glow weakening, Siralos had cut her brother limb from limb. Her brother had not even touched Him, He had offered him not even that mercy.

She pushed the blades to their hilts, and He made an unholy sound.

"... Why should I answer that?" She said, an equally unholy sound spilling out. "You never answered us anything."

Her brother, twirling in the darkness, blood caught in the air - her Father's grin. Doubting is a sin, she knows this, and yet... and yet... No matter how much she repented, no matter how often she bathed in his soft, healing light...

He had given away his flame, and so now he spoke without heat, and so soon his words began to lose their meaning. She could not remember the last time that she felt warm, so long ago had that sensation been ripped away from her.

"Haaahhaa..."
"Sweet thing. Grant me this, just this one thing, before I die."

She frowned, nodding her head.

"Let me see your eyes, please. Those eyes I gave you, so beautiful that they had to be hidden forever..." He shuffled beneath her, breath whirring. "Do you remember how to do that? Open your eyes?"

There was a long pause, the light playing out beneath her eyelids, a dance of white and red and gold. A long long pause in that cool half-dark, her heart hammering. But ... with a whine that rose from His throat and fell into hers, she cracked open, the world so intense and so bright and her Father's cold face staring up at her, sunrises or sunsets cast from his eyes and though it hurt, though it hurt to look, though it hurt so much she could not look away because he was... he was... he was grinning.
She was trembling and He was laughing, laughing blood, laughing a stain of red and He leaned towards her and hissed, "You were both... horrible, horrible mistakes."

"Remember..." He tilted His head, "This is what you wanted, what you both wanted. A world... without me?"

His eyes widened, "Is hardly a world at all...!" And then... then... His face contorted, nails on blackboard scoring in pocketmarks of the stars. The heavens above began to creak, the parthenon spilling open - and she released the blades in his back, stepping away.

He fell, crumbling inwards, and suddenly his radiance was gone. All the light, any fading warmth, the long strands of His hair... oh... oh His hair, His hair that she used to brush turned jetblack. His skin wrinkled and curled inwards, like a used up match, his body a shade of ash.

And yet, yet, she could still see, or imagine, His grin. Beneath her skin, cutting through her.

"Goodnight, Igls."

And with those words, she felt all her self flash out, drawn.. pulled towards Him, Him who was not the Sun anymore, not anything anymore, collapsing, heaving inwards. The stars above came crashing down, the floor began to crack and creak and lift beneath her, towards Him. And she felt, saw, the strands of her hair being pulled from her scalp, the feathers on her back beating against what felt like but was not a harsh wind.

When a star dies...

She flapped, pulled inwards, tripping, swirling towards him, caught with her bones crushing.

When a star dies, if it is large enough.

She still had her eyes open, and she saw, she saw in the heart of the supercrushing darkness, she saw His eyes blazing out at her. Like sunrises. Or Sunset.
And in that moment, she and He were nothing else and nothingmore, and everything was becoming Him, and all things were meshed and crushed and melted together in a sea of black and not black, gold on gold.

It becomes.

She saw His grin.

A black hole