"But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura
feel free to say goodbye, but please allow malis to post first. thank you my loves.
KILLDARE
The winds of change, the call him now, whistling a tune to rouse him from his fitful slumber.
It is only a few hours before dawn, the sky a deep navy with a splatter of white, hot stars against it. The crescent moon gives little light, drawing long shadows in it’s eerie silver luminescence, stretching the limbs of trees to make them seen crooked and nightmarish. A farce, the whole thing. He knows his glassy green eyes play tricks and his head seems to spin and tilt as he blinks them open and watches the night.
It won’t be long now.
Crickets trill in the drying grasses, the fading stalks swaying like the waves of the ocean, a uniform expanse of green bending in rhythmic time. An owl whoo’s, a sound he has never truly enjoyed, their glowing, yellow eyes had always seemed to know that which he did not. As he turns his head to find the creature, his breath hitches, rattling from his lungs like a caged animal. The very air straining to draw itself within his chest cavity. A wheezing follows and he winces, wishing himself away from the pain. He need not wake her, he was so rarely quiet now.
Instead of voicing his discomfort, he gulps it down, swallowing loudly and looking at the bruised colored mare. A small smile manages, she has been so kind, kept close and he can’t think of a time she ever complained about his inadequacies as of late. The way he nearly fell every time he stood, the way his legs shook as wildly of the leaves of a tree in a gale. Yesterday he had coughed up blood, the sticky red wetness painting the earth and rocks where it fell- she did not recoil from the sight. He almost did, grimacing as he looked upon it with an almost empty stare.
There was no hiding that, there was no fixing it either.
She did not complain, she consoled, she pressed her inky mouth to his thinning form and he felt needed, loved even- if it could be so. And there were so many hollows for her lips to find, most of his once thick muscles had long disappeared from beneath their earthy-colored wrappings. Each rib pressed its way forward, easily seen and protruding with an alarming definition. Nothing he ate made any attempt to leave evidence of his efforts behind, he had become less and less hungry too, What was the use?
He stretched his blackened nose to her, finding her stomach and though it was barely rounding he knew all too well that, come spring, she would be a Mother.
“Malis,” he said gently, his voice came in haunting whispers now. “I have to go,” he did not say where, or why, he didn’t need to. Instead he fumbled to his legs, struggling to get them beneath his body where they belonged, he would need them for just a moment longer. It was hard, that long walk, picking his way to the Beach carefully because he could not afford to be careless.
An hour passed, maybe more, maybe less. The rush of the waves finding the shore was soothing and he collapsed to the earth, one side heavily against a rough rock. The water could not reach him here, but he could see it, he could smell it everywhere, and he did- raking in the scent and sighing. A gull called, parlaying the coming dawn to the roosts that no doubt littered the craggy surface of the cliffs not far behind them. Coughing he eyed the horizon, waiting the sun, wishing one new day, one more hour to feel the damp sand beneath him and memorize the churning music of the sea.
“Will you name them,” he began, racing to breathe, to get enough air to speak. “If it is a boy, call him Knight and for a girl, name her Noble. Will you?” His earthy head turned to her, locking his pale green eyes to hers, hoping he did not ask too much. He always seemed to be asking for things now, mostly help but it still made him feel like a burden. Like she had given him so much and he had given her so little.
Perhaps, before she can answer, the sun breaches the horizon, bleeding orange and pink and yellow above the azure water. Killdare turns away, staring off into the distance and letting the heat from the golden rays warm his face. His eyes close and he smiles, opening them to take in the sunrise for the last time and a pause, a heartbeat of stillness. “Malis?” he asks, twisting back to find the familiar face, that he knows will accompany the scent that has been woven through the very arteries of his heart. They are no longer empty and forgotten, those glass-green eyes, they are knowing, his memories flooding him and warming his blood. Something he had not felt in a long time.
Gently he lays his head back, using the stone behind him for support as he watches her and then the sun and back to her again. Tracing her features without fingers, finding those curves of her jaw that must have tasted of his own lips he had kissed them so much. “Thank you,” he breathed, the luster slowly fading from the depths of his irises. “For such an amazing life,” there was nothing more after that, he became still as he looked out over the waves, out towards the place where nothing hurt anymore, somewhere a broken body wasn’t needed.
she was the ocean, and i was just a boy who loved the waves
here lies
KILLDARE
once a king, always a soldier, and forever a boy
who loved the ocean
lover of
engelsfors, dacia, and malis
father of
vercingetorix, arkzenkiel, raelle, hellbane, mortal, victra, ivo, roque, milia, noble, ivy and knight
Malis, you were never meant for broken things. I love you, more than this life <3
hold fast hope, all your love is all i've ever known
He thinks she sleeps, but she only pretends to do so to ease the guilt he feels – guilt she cannot understand. In all the world there is only him, always him, and in these last weeks, last days, there is nowhere else she would rather be. Knowing that his time was limited, their time together, she slept only when he did (fitful and interrupted) in the curve of his belly and with her head across his forelegs. It was easier for him to lay down, easier for him to hide the way his legs now trembled beneath him, hide the way he had become little more than a brittle leave battered at the end of a branch. So they rested often, always in a tangle so that she could soak in his warmth and press kisses to the deepest hollows and sharpest bones.
She was soft for him now, in a way that she had always been, but she made no effort to hide it from those who chose to visit. There was no sharp, no fury, no wild wrath. Only a small blue mare and the broken man she would forever love. It hurt though, to watch him fade, to have no way to slow it or stop it or trade her life for his. She would have, in an instant. He was her better in every way, he was the only good part about her. She knew, too, watching him fade, that the good in her faded too, the light he had placed and held there. It would burn out without him. How could it not when she was why he would die like this. She had known what it would mean to love him, had known it the day Victra was born and her feelings for her were so painfully strong that even she could not hide them with her stubbornness. She had remembered her grandfather, of whom the Chamber had demanded his heart. She remembered her father, of whom the Chamber had demanded his life. She had known then that the Chamber would take Killdare, too, if she chose to love him, chose to bind to him as she had. But she had always been selfish, always broken, and she had loved him anyway.
How could she ever live with this truth, this choice.
What would be left once it consumed her.
She feels his nose against her stomach and there is a smile on her mouth, soft and sad and every bit as broken as the both of them. He had done this often in the last few weeks, touched the roundness of her belly, a roundness that promised new life come spring. It soothed her somehow, this weight in her belly, the innumerable times he had traced the roundness with soft, dark lips. It was a small sliver of good, of normal, in an unraveling of time that otherwise felt like a nightmare. Before he can pull his nose from her belly, before he can pull away from her at all, she reaches out to touch her lips to his forehead. She brushes his forelock aside, dark and smooth – though not as soft as it had been, once – and places a kiss on the whorl of hair on his brow. “I love you.” She says again, a hum, a thrum, hiding the cracks in a voice he fissures beneath the weight of so much pain. It was something she had been reminding him of constantly, amidst kisses and touches and her head cradled against his chest. “I love you, always.”
Malis, he says, and she flinches because she can see it in his face, in the bottoms of his eyes, I have to go. She rises before he does, easy and graceful, and she doesn’t make any move to help him stand. Maybe it is selfishness, because there is nothing inside her that makes her want to hurry this along, maybe it is because she knows he will want to be strong in death just as he was in life. Instead her eyes are on the faint gold outline of the dark horizon, fixed there blindly until she feels his nose at her shoulder.
They walk in silence, away from the rising sun – though it follows them anyway along the crease of the horizon. The quiet hurts her somehow, but there is nothing to be said, and she knows how hard this trek must be for him already. So instead she is closer than a shadow at his side, blue and bruised and beautiful, with her nose possessively against the crook of his neck. Mine, is what she doesn’t say, what she has always said, mine. When they reach the beach he splits away from her and collapses with his back against rock. For a moment she hesitates, uncertain, and the feeling is so strange. But then she returns to him, laying down against his side opposite the rock so her ribs are pressed to his and her mouth can touch his forelegs and his chest, can travel along the hollow of his neck and up to a face that her lips have memorized effortlessly. “Killdare.” She says, but she has to stop because it is too hard to hide the brokenness from her voice. Instead she drops her head across his forelegs, her head against his chest, and finds solace in the rattle of lungs that still breathe, the faint hum of a heart that still beats.
Will you name them, he says finally, breathy and faint, struggling, so she lifts her head to run quieting lips along the tremors that grip his throat, If it is a boy, call him Knight and for a girl, name her Noble. Will you? He shifts, turns, and those pale green eyes find her face. She reaches out to him again, for him and for her, the act of doing something helped ease the terrible weight in her chest. Her lips find the curve of his cheek, the hard line of his jaw, and she smiles for him as she always has, soft and easy and openly affectionate. “I will.” She tells him, tracing shapes against the brown of his face. “Those names are beautiful.” They remind her of him, Knight and Noble, pieces of his memory and either one would perfect for a child of theirs, of his. “Our child will know you, too, Killdare. They will know your honor and your strength. They will know of your loyalty, and the fierce love you had for your kingdom and your people, the love that you have for your family. They will know you, I promise.” She meant to hide the pain from him, the sorrow, but it seeps through the cracks in her voice and in her face until she is brittle and bruised and shattered against him.
Don’t you dare leave me. Those eyes say, furious and broken, two shattered windows filling her mouth with glass. But even she is not so selfish so she turns from him, hides them, until they are empty again.
When the dawn finally catches up with then and sunshine peels from beneath the horizon, Killdare lifts his face to greet it. Beside him, Malis is only still, only quiet, only wanting to soak in his warmth and his bright before it is gone. While his eyes are closed, hers are stark and open and sharp against his face. They trace all the lines and hollows, planes of sharp bone beneath that smooth brown, and it doesn’t matter that she could trace him in her sleep, that every part of him will live forever within her. She still wants more because she is greedy. Malis? he says, and her focus slips back to his face, back to a pair of green eyes several shades lighter and softer than hers. But she is startled by what is looking back at her, by the intensity that had been lost when the world came undone. She knows in an instant that he is whole again, that he is only Killdare and not a stranger inside, and this makes everything so much better and so much worse. “Killdare.” She says before she can stop herself, breathless and aching, with her lips pressed urgently to his dark, fading face. Thank you, he breathes and at last it is okay to crumble, because this man knows her for her strength and her weakness, will not be afraid of the way she shatters like glass within his grasp, for such an amazing life.
He is gone before she can answer, faded beneath her lips until they fall from his cheek. The dark that creeps in is immediate. The pain, the ache, that crushing agony that threatens to rend her chest in two. Without his eyes to keep her anchored, without the rattle of his lungs to tell her that he is still there, still hers, she falls apart. She drops her head beside him, unable, unwilling to leave the body that was his. She knows there must be others who wait to say their goodbyes, others who followed their progression and kept their distance either out of respect or fear of what the small blue mare would do if approached. Let them come, she thinks, eyes closed and face pressed to a shoulder that was still warm. They must realize that she will not leave him because they do come, sometimes in clusters, sometimes alone. There are some she recognizes by scent (she lifts her head for none of them, not even when his body is stiff and cool and so, so empty), some who touch her shoulder before they leave again. She knows one of them is Victra, dark-eyed and wild, and she is glad that Killdare cannot see what she has allowed to become of their daughter.
Only when the last of them have come and gone does she finally stand and leave him, touching her nose to a cool cheek and smoothing his forelock down out of habit. She steps back and away, joining those who had stayed, and lays her flat gaze on Woolf, the mulberry stallion who had appeared only moments before. She is wordless when she looks at him – wordless because she knows that her nephew will already know the request she has for him, knows, too, that it is likely why he is here at all. She nods once, sharply, stiffly, and then turn her attention back on the body of the man who had been her everything. Woolf would pile the wood and start the fire, and when it finished burning there would be only ash left. Nothing for the birds to pick at, nothing for the sun and the air to rot. She had seen rotting bodies, and he deserved better than that. “Goodbye.” Is all she says, a whisper, faded and brittle. Then she settles into the black shoulder of the horse at her side, refusing to look up and find the red of those eyes lest she fall completely apart.
how could a heart like yours ever love a heart like mine
something has been taken from deep inside of me; the secret I've kept locked away no one can ever see.
The gentle caress of dawn is bittersweet, tainted by the raw, restless hours that lingered long before it. Each hour passed into the next seamlessly, and yet the sun still hid away behind the horizon, tucked away beneath a dense blanket of constellations. The atmosphere is thick and rife with a palpable tension; the air humid and stifling, and yet it pales in comparison to the warm, swelling heat rising within the hearth of his breast. His heart and lungs are heavy, rising and falling with each instinctive, purposeful thrust, as blood pours into his veins and arteries, flooding through the expanse of his system and yet, he cannot feel anything at all.
He is alone, a dark pillar of strength and stoicism standing amid a sea of dried brush, which delicately laps at the broad length of his legs, entangling itself with the sweat-slick skin that lay across fine muscle and bone. The puckered, pink scars fade beneath the faintest of moonlight, settling across its blank, black canvas, hiding beneath a tangle of unkempt hair. A single vertical stain is streaked across his cheek where the salty brine of drying tears lay, fallen from a pair of angry, distraught red eyes, as vivid and as bright as the burning, bristling fire that burns hot from within.
The stench of death is burdensome, settling between the rigid lines of his shoulders, boring into his pores as it stirs the deepest, darkest memories from the recesses of his mind. He observes in silence as one of his closest friends slowly begins to waste away, the once firm and compact muscle becoming lean and weak beneath a slew of russet skin – his eyes, once full of life and ferocity, now empty and forlorn. A fragment of the strength and energy Killdare had once had; a shadow of what he had once been.
Though his heart still pounds against the visible lines of his rib cage (weaker and weaker with each thrust; fading away slowly), death has already begun to seep into the hollow of his sunken belly, between the ridges of his fragile vertebrae. His mind, once sharp (and his wit even sharper), now lay weary, tired. The days had turned into months, and the months into years, but his memory had never recovered - it had never returned to him, and the thought of it leaves a gaping wound within his own chest.
Guilt has already begun to fester, as infectious as a bleeding wound, enveloping the entirety of his body and mind. There had been many moments that he could have sought his presence; many moments he could have reached out to the once burning magma King, but instead he remained in the shadows, watching as the fire within his once bright and calculating eyes faded into a flickering ember. Selfish, he chided himself, and it was the truth – for as long as he has lived, death has never been easy to swallow, and his heart is too weak to look it in the eye.
A shaky breath emerges from his lungs, lips parted with the many words he longed to say, with the memories he craved to relive with his closest friend, but he could not bring himself to wade through the volcanic ash and dense cloak of night to move nearer to him. No, he watches instead as the feeble, weakened form rises from the ground as the horizon begins to become awash with vivid color, with auburn and rust painted across its midnight canvas. His heart clenches in the iron cage of his chest at the sight; it is wholly suitable – the very colors that had once bubbled up between the crevices of Killdare’s layers of pumice and magma.
In silence, he shadows their every movement, observing the sallow line of the fading King’s spine in contrast to the feminine swell of his Queen’s belly (life and death, shoulder to shoulder). An impenetrable sorrow has already begun to crawl along the surface of his nerves, his heart aching and tender, and a part of him longs to pull away – to drown the memories bubbling beneath the fissures of his mind, to swallow the pit of desolation opening itself up inside of his chest – but he cannot bring himself to.
Gently, the tide embraces the shore, covering it with its cradling touch as it moves to and fro – there is nothing but the bleached, drying bones settled into dunes of sand, and the unwavering scent of demise to cloak him, and it descends in a heavy blanket, shrouding him in its nauseating warmth. Silently, he watches as he collapses unto himself, the sharp, jagged lines of stone prying into his sickly skin, her gentle lips brushing across the vacant hollow of his protruding bones to soothe him. He turns his cheek, then, pained red eyes staring out into the dark abyss of the thundering sea, his tired heart unable to bear watching the loving exchange made in a final moment.
Soon, the sound of her weeping envelopes him, drowning out the lamenting regret that had long since settled into his own bones and drawing him back to reality. His heart sinks to the very pit of his stomach as his eyes take in the sight of her draped over him, agony and anguish pulling her beneath the surface, suffocating her in its merciless grip. It is then that he knows he is gone; the light fading away from his eyes and leaving them empty and void – the flame extinguished; with nothing but ash left in its wake.
He does little to acknowledge those who have followed, those who have come to see what is left of the once powerful, formidable King. Instead, he presses the hardened line of his nose to her shoulder, darkened coal against deep indigo, his own hot tears falling from the curve of his jaw onto the darkness of her own coat, staining it. Beneath her, there is nothing left but the shell of what had once been, the skeleton of what had once housed a beautiful, intricately complicated soul, and he murmurs to her that it is time to get up, that the sun is setting, and the sky is giving way to its vivid hues of magenta and plum as the sun drifts beyond the horizon.
When she eventually rises and presses herself into his broad shoulder, nestling against the hardened line of muscle and bone, he draws her near to his breast, cradling the thickness of his neck over hers as his heart pounds steadily against her ear. His gaze lingers on the still, lifeless body of his closest friend, of his brother, and quietly he murmurs, ”I’m so sorry. Goodbye, my brother.”
--
Killdare,
The world will never be the same without you in it. We stood united, side by side, through combat and strife - it feels as if a lifetime has gone by since then, and surely, it has. Your companionship, our brotherhood, meant more to me that you will ever know. I will not forget you, and I look forward to the day that I see you again.
I will watch after Malis, and your family. You have my word.
I thank you, for everything.
Goodbye, my brother.
wounds so deep they never show; they never go away. like moving pictures in my head, for years and years they've played.
03-01-2017, 10:51 PM (This post was last modified: 03-01-2017, 11:00 PM by Nymphetamine.)
Like a Thorn to the Holy Ones
The feeling was like that of grasping the details of a dream upon waking. Vague and aloof, always just out of reach. The signature pelt of the once Governor stirred in the twilight, more brown than red without the sun to highlight the russet undertones within the fibers of his coat. His dark eyes blinked the sleep away as he tried to pinpoint the feeling, and he sighed in frustration. There was only a notion of sadness and alarm but that was all. The autumn hair pulled at him, urged him up, forward and the stallion was considering giving into the wind’s whims. He had stayed in the shadows after Killdare had been found, returned from the powers that be having forgotten almost everyone. Save Malis, he had never truly forgotten her. The rest of us, well we were a blur of his own distant memories forever just out of reach. This “new” Beqanna had taken his drive, and Nymphetamine had tried to find his purpose but he was unable to pick up where he was before. Where he was once muscular and filled out he was soft and hollow. Not sick, no just not fit. Gone were the days of distant travel and long stretched of galloping across plains and meadow, for now, he stayed mostly to the shadows. He thought back to those days and missed them dearly, Tephra was home, but he didn’t think it would ever have his heart as Chamber had.
And as with many things the moment he allowed his thoughts to leave the dream he had been so focused on to that of the past the notion that had stirred him from his shadowy slumber returned. Killdare. Nymphetamine’s nostrils flared and an urgent panic sat at the back of his throat, his legs scattered beneath him as he frantically pulled himself up. Up out of the shadows, out of his isolation, and out of his self-centered thoughts and memories. Sometimes you just sense things, there were always unspoken powers working within Beqanna and Nymph took this to be one of those moments. One of those times that you accept the higher power and maybe even thank it. The night was waning quickly, was quickly upon them. It had been many moons since He had seen Kildare and in the moment the Necromancer was kicking himself for wasting time. Wasting moment, wasting memories, wasting away. He would be lucky to make it in time, but he would try.
The crisp sunburnt grasses crunch under his hooves as he cantered off in the direction of the beach, following the faint scent of Killdare and Malis. Nymphetamine ran on, mind racing and berating himself for months on complacency, assuming things could and would be the same when he once again found his way. Time seemed to race but stay still all at the same time as he moved from thought to thought, as the scenery changed and shifted around him. Muscles ached from the prolonged effort of covering such a distance at the rushed tempo he held. But after a time he had reached the beach. His eyes scanned the shore, as salt accosted his nose and the relentless rush of waves hailed his ears. In the distance he saw Offspring, tall and statuesque forever the poised and composed leader. There were others some he recognized as children of Killdare, and as he drew closer he realized he had not made it in time to say goodbye to the stallion that had been his closest brother at arms, and the truest leader he had ever known. Malis lay beside her fallen lover, openly grieving now that he no longer needed her strength.
Nymphetamine had grown up under the eye of the green-eyed stallion. Killdare had taken him from a brash and brazen youth, given him a second chance when most would have exiled him, and then lead him to rule Chamber’s diplomates. Nymphetamine was never sure if it was Chamber he served for the land itself or if it was actually Killdare. He would never know, but he knew Killdare deserved the most honorable of send offs. A noble soul and distinguished leader he blood bay knew he would not leave until the dead was done. By this time he stood next to the dark pelt of Offspring, he looked to the stallion who was much the opposite of himself, his head dipped in solemn greeting, but no words were needed. Nymphetamine wanted nothing more than to go back in time to have more time. It was Killdare who had bound them all together as allies and cohorts of a greater purpose, he knew that now, and as soon as they had lost Killdare they had scattered… it seemed fitting that he had brought them together one last time.
He liked to believe they stood watch over the vigil. Two close friends and allies, there when it mattered until the very end.
But even then as those who came spoke their farewell’s and whispered their memories Offspring too left Nymphetamine's sike and spoke his piece settingly beside the grieving mare. Malis never budged, and a small smile took hold. He had not been able to find that kind of love, and he was glad Killdare had the comfort as he passed. He watched from his post, the silent sentinel, memories playing across his mind. Of their first meeting in the Meadow, to the treks to distant kingdoms full of banter and jovial name calling, to the quiet serious moments in the thick of Chamber’s pine forest, the moments Killdare so desperately wanted to do away with him due to his endless drama with Kimber, The endless stream of nicknames crafted to perfection. However, it was the subtle moments that Nymphetamine cherished with his once and always King the most. The quiet moments of confidence and pride in the work they were completing, the vision they shared.
He walked forward, having waited alone in his memories for long enough. He didn’t touch the cool body of Killdare, it was for Malis only, and he dared not disturb her final moments with him. But he shared their space for the moments he said farewell. For that it how it had always been, when he thought about it, Malis and Killdare and anyone else shared their space for they belonged to each other. A deep exhale was all the stalling the bay had left, and when it was gone he knew if he didn’t whisper his thoughts now there would be no choking them out. His emotions were already thick in the back of his throat tightening his jaw in resistance. "You left us too soon Killdare. I’m not ready for a world without King Hot Pants’ guidance…." A small cry broke through his efforts but it wasn’t without a tiny laugh at his favorite nickname for the once-magma king. Even with the several attempts to finish his thoughts fully, he was unable to. Instead, he choked out a simple Thank you.
Thank you your teaching me,
To be a leader.
To be fair.
To be just.
To be loyal.
To find your truth.
For Everything.
It had never been Chamber, it had been Killdare, and Nymphetamine knew he would have followed Killdare to the end of the world had he asked, even if he didn’t. He pulled himself away, and retreated to a distance, far enough away, where he would stand watch until the end. He watched the fire be built, he watched Killdare's body go into flames, and it was so perfectly fitting. I’ll make you proud, Killdare, I promise. Your legacy will continue, we won’t let them forget. The fire danced in the ever-brightening sky, and Nymphetamine left into the new day, knowing no day would ever be as bright without the green-eyed Magma King walking amongst them.
let me tell you something baby,
you love me for everything you hate me for
It had been quite some time since something awoke her from her slumber, especially to tug her out in the dark of night and to a place she'd never visited. The beach. The dip dyed mare couldn't possibly understand what brought her here but alas; she stands on the end of the wind-blown grass and watches from a distance as the waves gently lap at the bones that the salt and tide has not carried away. A faint scent is on the wind but more than smell she feels something great within her that says one of her own is gone. A friend, a King - a brother, father, and lover. She had heard whisperings through the meadow and river but had not believed.
"I was never prompt, you know that old man," she chuckles with a wry grin as her nose begins to sting with the thought of tears, "You are so loved, even in death - I respect everything you have done for me and for the Chamber (may it live on in our hearts) - I will watch out for the others, I promise you that. Rest easy, I'll annoy you as soon as I get the opportunity." There is no one to hear her promise but she knows the magma King can hear here, somewhere beyond the salt and earth.
