Out of the Light – Writing Prompt #37

It has been too long since I’ve done a writing prompt, which is both good and bad. Bad because I miss the free writing and randomness of it. Good because I’ve been working on EG. Whatever spare minutes I’ve been able to steal for writing have been spent on my wip. But I’ve had ideas for prompts scratching at my brain, begging to be let loose, and I had to take some time to run with one.

Today we’re back to conflict, a conflict of desire surrounding something as simple as light. Two characters are in close proximity, either starting in light or darkness. One wants light, the other darkness. Why?

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Here’s mine:

He passed through the portal with the relief of escaping. He stepped into darkness, the breath easing from his chest. Already his shoulders relaxed with the lifting of tension. Wings coiled too tightly unfurled, stretching with a leathery rustle. He dropped the last shreds of glamour clinging to him and freed his soul from its bindings. Here he was not mortal. Here he did not have to be a human.

The balm of his freedom touched the ragged places. Damn, it felt so good. He moved unerring in the dark to the mouth of the cave, craving the release of being himself in the greater abyss of the cavern ahead.

Alive.

Here he lived. Here, he was truth.
* * *
She bided her time amid the shadows, claws clinging to the stone above as she hung in wait. He would be here soon. Talons stroked the dark in a caress, rippling through the blanket of safety without a disturbance. He would smell like them. Stink like them.

Too long had he been gone from her company.

His wing-claw scratched his arrival across stone. Still she waited. He would leap to flight when he reached the shelf, spread his wings and remember who he was supposed to be in the embrace of darkness. He had spoken to her of the release he felt when returning home from his travels, the joy of it.

Joy he did not deserve.

She spoke the Word when she felt him near and light sprang to being. He cringed back. Wings that should never be shamed furled. He rose on two legs as he shrank. The heat shimmer of foul magic wavered and he became less.

“And that is who you are now. The light hides that which you should never have forgotten. Begone. The Caverns welcome you no longer.”