02-03-2022, 07:31 PM
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
Made of scars and stars, Ciri had always navigated this world with a little naivety, not always understanding the ways of the heart or the minds of others, how they always worked. How could she, when the Underneath had shown her exactly why. Why she had been different, what she truly was despite the mortal coil of this dark body. Things like love and hate, complex emotions that sometimes ranged in the gray, these were things she felt so vibrantly for how can stars truly know what it is to feel until they experience it for themselves?
She can count all of her regrets, all her mistakes, through every scar that touches her body. She regrets not being able to raise her only child and that Jah had taken him (and unknown to her Amet himself) from her, she regrets the way things had ended with Amet. She regrets not being able to tell that something had been wrong with Gale, she regrets that she has constantly failed to save or avenge him. She regrets not being as strong (in body, heart, and mind) as she had always tried to be. She regrets this anger that resides within her (stubborn and bloody) that perhaps had been too much for Leokadia and why the mare had disappeared, taking whatever had been unfolding between them with her.
Most of all (when she had stood amongst the glassy pebbles on the burnt beach left by a dragon who she had once known) she wishes, and wondered, what would have happened if she had been as honest with Castile as she had been with Amet. That is the one choice that still leaves her with so many What ifs. Where would they all be now if she had simply told him the truth? What if she had stopped trying to care about everyone else’s feelings and put her own first?
What would have happened if she had told him that she had fallen for him and given him a chance?
It’s been a very long time since these thoughts had crossed her mind but when she had been locked inside the ice, all she could do is replay these decisions and choices in her head over and over again. All she had was time, to replay every single memory and every single thing that had happened. That had led her here. And for some reason, tonight, Castile is imprinted on her mind. Perhaps it had been the grin on Kestrell’s buffoonish face that had brought it back. It had been so similar to the one the dragon shifter had flashed to her (charming and roguish) when they had first met beside Hyaline’s lake. The beginning of the end to everything she had known. Nothing had been the same since, nothing had been good since. Or maybe it had been stirring in her since she had spoken to Mazikeen beside the burnt remains of the wisteria (the charcoaled remains of her innocence).
It prickles in the back of her mind, it calls to her.
It’s these thoughts that bring her back to the Isle. On silent starlit wings, haloed by her crimson stars, she lands on the very beach she had been thinking of (the one that tethers that small piece inside of her back to the young girl she had once been, the only thing left of him.) She is still too thin, her skin too sore, her rage still blazing and unchecked. But she’s here, standing on the only thing she has left.
She can count all of her regrets, all her mistakes, through every scar that touches her body. She regrets not being able to raise her only child and that Jah had taken him (and unknown to her Amet himself) from her, she regrets the way things had ended with Amet. She regrets not being able to tell that something had been wrong with Gale, she regrets that she has constantly failed to save or avenge him. She regrets not being as strong (in body, heart, and mind) as she had always tried to be. She regrets this anger that resides within her (stubborn and bloody) that perhaps had been too much for Leokadia and why the mare had disappeared, taking whatever had been unfolding between them with her.
Most of all (when she had stood amongst the glassy pebbles on the burnt beach left by a dragon who she had once known) she wishes, and wondered, what would have happened if she had been as honest with Castile as she had been with Amet. That is the one choice that still leaves her with so many What ifs. Where would they all be now if she had simply told him the truth? What if she had stopped trying to care about everyone else’s feelings and put her own first?
What would have happened if she had told him that she had fallen for him and given him a chance?
It’s been a very long time since these thoughts had crossed her mind but when she had been locked inside the ice, all she could do is replay these decisions and choices in her head over and over again. All she had was time, to replay every single memory and every single thing that had happened. That had led her here. And for some reason, tonight, Castile is imprinted on her mind. Perhaps it had been the grin on Kestrell’s buffoonish face that had brought it back. It had been so similar to the one the dragon shifter had flashed to her (charming and roguish) when they had first met beside Hyaline’s lake. The beginning of the end to everything she had known. Nothing had been the same since, nothing had been good since. Or maybe it had been stirring in her since she had spoken to Mazikeen beside the burnt remains of the wisteria (the charcoaled remains of her innocence).
It prickles in the back of her mind, it calls to her.
It’s these thoughts that bring her back to the Isle. On silent starlit wings, haloed by her crimson stars, she lands on the very beach she had been thinking of (the one that tethers that small piece inside of her back to the young girl she had once been, the only thing left of him.) She is still too thin, her skin too sore, her rage still blazing and unchecked. But she’s here, standing on the only thing she has left.
-- Ciri
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