
88th of Fall, 515 AV
He had gone back to where he had dug the hole. He had gone back and he had brought a knife.
It was Ramsay's, and his friend did not know that he had taken it from his pavilion-home. Kyo would give it back when everything was over.
The knife was used for what was called skinning animals-- cutting off their fur. It was curved and very sharp. It knew how to cut into flesh.
Now he stood in the fading light of day and let the heavy winter cloak fall from his shoulders to pool upon the ground. It was cold, snowing still, and the air stung his bare torso. He let himself shiver for a few long moments, then tried to make himself still.
The knife was brought up and turned in towards himself, pressed with two hands against his chest, over his heart. For a moment his hands didn't want to do it, they wouldn't let him go on, but then he forced them forward, and the blade cut deep into his skin. He bit back a cry of pain, digging the knife in deeper. Blood welled and overflowed. So did tears, which he wiped away with the back of one hand.
He did it because he was alone. No one felt this with him. His boy was dead. No one felt it.
The hole he had dug was the closest anything could come to understanding him. It knew the shape of his pain, even though it could not 'know' anything, being made up of just air and the cold and dirt.
And that wasn't enough. He had dug the hole to show on the outside what was inside him. But the hole he had dug would not last forever. He wanted it to, wanted it to stay as it was and always reflect his pain... but hadn't he also wanted his boy to stay? That had not happened. He knew that the hole, too, would go. Maybe when the weather got warm and the coldness holding the crisp edges in place had gone. Maybe the next time it rained.
He needed something else. And that was when he had realized. What was inside was a scar. What was outside should be a scar, too.
So he had gotten the knife and come out to look down at the hole and copy it into his skin. Then everyone would see, and maybe they would start to understand.
Kyo lifted the bloody blade from his breast and brought it back to drag out another deep line, connecting to the first. The hole he had dug was made up of many lines and edges, arranged into a sort of jagged, imperfect circle. That was what he would dig into his flesh.
But his hands were fighting him again as he raised the knife another time. Now they didn't just hold back-- they were shaking and his slick fingers kept trying to let go of the knife. He tried to tighten his grip, teeth gritted against the difficulty and the pain. Even though it was ice-cold out, sweat wet his brow and ran stinging into his already-watering eyes. He made a noise like a grunt and forced the blade back in, trying to do it right, trying to give the inner pain --something not exactly of the body-- a physical expression.
