Roots | ONC 2024

X : Burn

Sneaking into the soil stores is fickle. Shanirin has to move quickly between the various bridges, and duck in the shadows of various houses along the way to ensure no one who is out and about spots him or stops him in his tracks.

He can't stop. His heart trembles with the rage gripping him, his body poised as a bow and ready to do what he set out to. Shanirin distantly knows he should hesitate, perhaps feel guilty.

He does not. His vision feels crystal clear, despite the flurry in his head. The world turned on him. On his love. There is nothing more to it.

He cannot be kindly to this. The notion makes all his muscles ache and tremble.

He pushes himself and gets to the storage hut, uses his knife's sharp point to shimmy the lock loose and get inside, now standing before massive mounds of ceremonial soil that the council oversees and hands out to people who need them after meals.

Shanirin takes it in. He had never seen it like this, the fruit of all the soil gatherers' collective labour.

He still feels no regret standing there at what he wishes to do, mulling over his situation momentarily. There will be no turning back past this point, never again.

Shanirin grabs the single burning lantern hanging above the door, casting warm light into the room. He pulls it off the hook it hangs from and inspects the fire twirling within it as he holds it up in front of his face.

His vision blurs a bit as he grows mesmerized by the hypnotic flames, admiring them. He's gripping the handle of the lantern so tightly his knuckles turn white.

So quick. They'd all been so quick to waste Umi's life. This soil is all that matters is it? The only thing worth the risk?

Shanirin swings the lantern into the ground and shatters it against the floor with a burst of noise, releasing the fire within.

It catches the wooden floors, crackles as it grows, eating at the den. Lapping at the soil. Faint smoke starts rising as it all begins to burn.

Shanirin stands frozen for a few seconds, hypnotized by the numb peace that comes over him at this punishment being unleashed.

When the smoke grows thicker and the room hotter however, Shanirin snaps out of his daze, turning away and rushing out of the den, finding himself out front, glancing behind him at the ever rising bright flames one last time. At everything he'd just destroyed.

Then he turns away.

He knows he doesn't have much time before alarms sound, he needs to get out of the nation's reach fast. Go somewhere they won't pursue. Ha! A broken chuckle makes it out his mouth, his voice laced with hysteria, almost foreign to his own ears. He knows full well by now where they won't follow him.

He takes a final look at his home, enjoys the crackle of the fire behind him sending him off for a moment, then leaps off the edge of the landing.

For a few seconds he hurtles through the air, weightless, before he hits the safety net with a gasp, the rope biting into him as his weight sinks into it. He doesn't waste more time, grabbing for his knife and wedging the blade under the ropes, sawing at the net, focused and dedicated until he cuts himself an opening large enough to slide himself through.

He rolls through, falls into the tree boughs and branches just bellow, the leaves and branches whipping at him as he grasps for leverage and footing, reaching some thicker branches he grabs onto, settles himself against the tree trunk.

Shanirin takes a deep breath once there, a shudder rolling through him. He hears frantic yelling coming from above, people have noticed the fire by now.

He begins to slowly climb down the tree, his thoughts slow and sluggish now that the beast of his anger has been fed. He'd destroyed something vitally precious to his people. Shown them how it hurts to lose something irreplaceable.

To be made to feel helpless. Fire is merciless, it yields to no one. You can beg and plead. It will not hear you over the crackling of its own might.

It will not listen.

Shanirin reaches the ground as he mulls everything over, absent-mindedly swiping leaves off of himself and clearing branches from his hair. He can never return home anymore. They will definitely know it was him, and he will not ever be forgiven.

None of this sparks regret. He finds it hard to feel guilty when he seems so justified to himself. Of course it was wrong, and yet. He was wronged first. And two wrongs don't make a right. But they do make an even.

That's good enough for Shanirin. He shakes his head then, clearing it of these thoughts. He doesn't have it in him to lament his choices, he only has Umi to worry about now.

Perhaps he will grow to regret this later. Perhaps not. He isn't sure he likes how he lost sight of all his usual positivity for a while there, but he had had a point he needed to make clear, and only one effective, albeit drastic, way to make it.

Shanirin sets off into the woods, in the direction the Elder took his husband, trying so hard to draw his memories forward, recall a clear image. He is not good at finding his way, all he can go off of is the vague direction he remembers. Heart, the Forest is infinite though, and truly, who knows where Umi is right now. How far away that Elder might have taken him.

The farthest apart they'd ever been was the length of the one bridge when one of them went to ask for soil to bury a heart.

And now Umi could be half a world away, for all Shanirin knows.

It freezes Shanirin's blood in his veins, the awful chill devouring his insides. Umi truly might be lost to him. How can he ever find him like this, all alone?

His heart withers like a flower in draught, such redhot pain bursting from its shriveled form. He cannot live without ever seeing Umirin again. Oh please.

Shanirin will search for the rest of his life, if he must. He will do anything, anything at all, to reach his little one.

Oh, how he misses him now, the weight of his longing unbearable. His eyes, his smile, his touch. Tears spill again from Shanirin's eyes, his body heaving.

He wishes to collapse, crushed, but he forces a foot forward instead, then another. He makes himself walk yet forward, wiping at his face with his hands. He can't afford to break.

For love. For Umi, Shanirin will perservere. No matter what, he will perservere.