scorch

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

And as the flames reclaimed their beloved Khaleesi, the stallion (for there had only ever been The stallion for her, only him) stopped, eyes drawn to her with a devotion of love so powerful that they could have left it at that, and forgotten the outside world entirely. They could have, if only her eyes reflected an emotion as steadfast and certain as his. They could have, if she hadn't given in to the pull of infidelity. They could have, if he had never disappeared.

The fire danced around the cheater's skin, mocking her inability to feel the pain of its tongues with its giggling crackle.

For too long, that sound alone occupied the space between the star-bound lovers. In Hestoni's every exhale, Scorch thought she could hear the roar of the Jungle, a sound long dead and impossible to revive; and yet he brought it with him, the sound that her heart most longed to hear. Somehow, it were as if her husband and their once-home were in tandem - or perhaps it was the unison of the pair's heartbeats that revived the Jungle, though only in the abstract. Despite everything, despite it all, they still brought the best out of each other - but - the best, the jungle, was dead and gone. And the same could not be denied for what remained of their legacy, and of their relationship.

Their stares lingered like winter's last snowfall, desperate, longing, and doomed. His eyes stuck to her with a wetness that made her stomach churn, for who was she to abide such tenderness? And yet in the same breath, she found herself looking to him. To his face, the one she always loved and always would; the muscles, the sweat, the height - everything. She wondered, irrationally, if he could still see her beneath her newfound flames - flames whose origin she was clueless about. With everything going on, the mare barely even registered the lack of ghostly babbling in her mind; later, she would worry. Later, she would mourn the loss of her connection with Ea, Echion, Rain, Kagerou, and so many more.

Now, however, she mourned only the death of her marriage, the one which Hestoni hadn't yet a clue about.

Siiiiiigh...

Scorch.

No, she thought, grateful to the searing flames which evaporated her falling tears before any others could glimpse them. No, don't say my name like that - with love. Please. Please. I'm sorry.

But thoughts held no weight, and she knew that she would have to verbalize her infidelity before long. God; she bent at the neck, stifling a sob. The sinews of her chest felt as though they were about to tear apart, the muscles woven together by some higher power now being shredded by the same. Merciless, merciless, merciless - and yet it was she who brought on the pain, she who bedded others, she who found herself wanting when he had always found himself meeting her every need.

He stepped to her, mindless in his adoration; how could she blame him? She, too, would approach him even at the risk of being burned. The child in her whom, not grown enough yet to kick, wiggled softly, reminding her that it would be the one scalding Hestoni now, with its existence. And let us not forget Blue, either. Taxed and utterly incapable of coherence, Scorch reached to touch him, too - but Hestoni retreated, ears pinning at the heat which greeted his efforts of reunion. A different kind of pain pierced the amazon; one of wifely need, one of subservience and dependence and utter devotion - all of these things, and a sickly knowledge that she had forsaken them in exchange for deviance and pleasure.

Her head spun, full of thoughts, of Nerine and abandonment and the Jungle, and of Hestoni and Brennen and Brunhild, of Blue and the unborn baby and god, the born ones - of the fire, of the silence in her mind, of how fucked she was. Only the sound of Hestoni speaking once more calmed her, catching her off guard just as she bent to spiral into a full blown melt down, complete with screaming and writhing and all.

You're on fire. Scorch laughed, the sound as uncontrollable as the rest of her emotions; by its garbled tone, Hestoni would immediately know she was crying. Yet she found that she couldn't stop, the soft noise growing louder as she disentangled her spiritual self from her physical body and viewed the situation as if from over her own shoulder. From there, dissociated and cold, it was funny: and as steam rose from the place below her eyes, she knew that it wasn't funny. The laughter was not that. But at this rate, with her consciousness dislocated and spinning, she knew that she knew nothing at all.

The laughter stopped abruptly, without warning, and the mare turned to stone. Flickering, her dragon eyes stared to a point just beside Hestoni, glazed and unseeing.

I fell asleep when it was summer and now it's winter. How long have I been gone? What happened?

Even from where she levitated, she felt it: the grinding of her bodily fluids as the very atoms of her entire self ground together, each of the cogs suddenly stuck in others. She could have sworn that the friction of her pieces made an audible screech; but in truth, the only sound made came in the form of her confession. Immediate, impulsive.

"You disappeared. For years." A part of her wanted to stop there, but it was clear by the way she would not meet his gaze that she would not. "Nerine fell apart. My legacy became forgotten. I... abandoned myself." And though the words were true, she knew that they were no excuse. At long, long last, she lifted her gaze - but when it met his, it was if they still saw naught. "I found solace in the arms of friends from times past, who reminded me of what I once was in your absence, and in the absence of anything familiar - in the absence of the home that I can never return to. I had a child with Brennen." She paused, bile rising all the way to her mouth before she swallowed it back down. "And I am having one with Brunhild."

"The child grows in my womb as we speak."

Shuddering, the mare struggled to remain cold, calculated, and composed; but a single blink left the dams wide open, allowing the oceans of flood water to cascade over her, pummeling her and drowning her and condemning her. She realized, as she sobbed, that the ocean was salty - a body of tears.

"I am so, so sorry, Hestoni - please, send me away - I will go any where, I will die if you want me to, please - I cannot live with myself -" she reached for him, and remembered the flames which refused to lessen their engulfment of her figure. She sobbed harder, the strength of the convulsion filling her mouth with vomit. Coughing and gasping, she stumbled, eyes squeezing shut as a keen ripped through the air around them. "Please, I just want to hold you, why won't it leave, I - I - I need to hold you, before I leave, please, I -"

And, given to its sickly sense of humour, the flames obeyed. Without a sound, they vanished - and in their absence, Scorch became utterly naked. Vulnerable, to the nth degree. Broken, and without a hope, the mare turned her cheek, expecting her once-husband to go.

After all, it was what she deserved.

Scorch

Once Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

@[Hestoni]