04-08-2020, 12:14 AM
[table][tr][td]![[Image: b94dbd8a-65a5-11ea-af51-45358cb49cc4.gif]](https://piskel-imgstore-b.appspot.com/img/b94dbd8a-65a5-11ea-af51-45358cb49cc4.gif)
[div style="width: 300px; max-height: 100px; height: overflow; overflow: scroll; padding-bottom: 5px; margin-top: -5px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 8pt; color: #152232; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;"]He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something — something inward and important — that he was striving toward some goal, perhaps very hard to attain.
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[/td][td][div style="width: 300px; max-height: 100px; height: overflow; overflow: scroll; padding-bottom: 5px; margin-top: -5px; font-family: georgia; font-size: 8pt; color: #152232; letter-spacing: 0px; text-align: justify;"]He kept fancying that Ivan was absorbed in something — something inward and important — that he was striving toward some goal, perhaps very hard to attain.
— Бра́тья Карама́зовы
Try as he might, Ivan could not summon up the memory of his birth. The effort was akin to one trying to reach through and claw away a thick swatch of cobwebs. For all his dramatics and glumness, typical of the second-born son of Selby and Moth, Ivan thought his inability to recall the experience was that it was so traumatizing that his brain had elected to ignore it and push it far back into the cotton of his mind. He wondered if it really could be that living as a rational being was one of the greatest feats on this earth, just because it was so hard.
He loved the feeling of grass under his paws, and the scent of his father, he loved all these little things in life, but he was often tempted by the idea that before birth he was probably the happiest and safest he had ever been.
Ivan tried not to think about it, because he was aware that he was standing on the precipice of a very dark place. Too much thinking could plunge him right over the edge and he wouldn't be able to drag himself up out of it. Ivan tried to be happy and grateful, but everywhere he turned he saw contradictions and hypocrisies. Some nights he could barely sleep because the memory of Alice's wheezing and coughing rattled in his skull like a woodpecker. Bad things shouldn't happen to good people.
He just never expected it to happen to his own mother.
Ivan was startled by the outrageous cacophony going on in the territory. Satellite-shaped ears swirled frantically as he attempted to pinpoint the source of chaos. He thought he was prepared to expect the worse, though he had never in his short life seen a dead or badly wounded body of a Tangler. He was not prepared for that body to be his mother's. Ivan had gotten a splinter or two in his pad, or accidentally ripped out a claw. There was that time he sliced his ear on a sharp portion of Caustic's fence. That was nothing.
The young black cat broke into a full gallop, feeling his heart sink lower into the pit of his stomach the closer he got. Blood roared in his ears, so loudly that even he could not hear himself think. Ivan slid to a stop next to his brother and Alaric, saw clearly his mother's unconscious form, and raised his gaze to see a complete abomination of a creature. He didn't know what he was looking at and it made all the blood in his body freeze. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE SUPER NATURAL. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL. He didn't realize he was holding in his breath, an awfully bad habit he had nurtured since sneaking into Caustic's yard when he just could not handle a situation. He didn't even have time to register his own grief for his mother's pain.
"Mother of —" And like a snap, Ivan's body dropped to the floor like a deadweight, falling unconscious in a faint.
He loved the feeling of grass under his paws, and the scent of his father, he loved all these little things in life, but he was often tempted by the idea that before birth he was probably the happiest and safest he had ever been.
Ivan tried not to think about it, because he was aware that he was standing on the precipice of a very dark place. Too much thinking could plunge him right over the edge and he wouldn't be able to drag himself up out of it. Ivan tried to be happy and grateful, but everywhere he turned he saw contradictions and hypocrisies. Some nights he could barely sleep because the memory of Alice's wheezing and coughing rattled in his skull like a woodpecker. Bad things shouldn't happen to good people.
He just never expected it to happen to his own mother.
Ivan was startled by the outrageous cacophony going on in the territory. Satellite-shaped ears swirled frantically as he attempted to pinpoint the source of chaos. He thought he was prepared to expect the worse, though he had never in his short life seen a dead or badly wounded body of a Tangler. He was not prepared for that body to be his mother's. Ivan had gotten a splinter or two in his pad, or accidentally ripped out a claw. There was that time he sliced his ear on a sharp portion of Caustic's fence. That was nothing.
The young black cat broke into a full gallop, feeling his heart sink lower into the pit of his stomach the closer he got. Blood roared in his ears, so loudly that even he could not hear himself think. Ivan slid to a stop next to his brother and Alaric, saw clearly his mother's unconscious form, and raised his gaze to see a complete abomination of a creature. He didn't know what he was looking at and it made all the blood in his body freeze. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE SUPER NATURAL. I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE SUPERNATURAL. He didn't realize he was holding in his breath, an awfully bad habit he had nurtured since sneaking into Caustic's yard when he just could not handle a situation. He didn't even have time to register his own grief for his mother's pain.
"Mother of —" And like a snap, Ivan's body dropped to the floor like a deadweight, falling unconscious in a faint.