08-24-2018, 06:50 PM
The boy dismisses his family so casually, his parents and siblings just as easily as the children he has fathered as he tries to avoid facing his own feelings. That makes her angry – it’s not their fault that he’s having a midlife crisis. And he is caustic, the spite behind his words as sharp as the icicles that threaten to form in the icy world around them. She doesn’t last out at him, doesn’t put him in his place, but only because she can see the confused little boy hiding behind his angry eyes. She is caught between wanting to soften for that little boy he is burying and wanting to strike down the arrogant man he is showing the world, and that is when he steps off the side of the mountain.
The irritation wins out.
She lets him fall, and crash against the rocks below. She lets him feel the terror of the fall, and the pain of the impact, and the helplessness when his lungs don’t inflate properly against shattered ribs and he slowly loses consciousness. It’s not an easy thing, and she lets him feel it all.
When he regains awareness in Beqanna’s afterlife – on the strangely dim yet light shores of the other side of the beach, where all of Beqanna’s dead find themselves – she is still standing in front of him, resolute and stony-faced. <b> “Is this wanted you wanted?”</b> She asks him, dark eyes flicking from one end of the beach to the other. <b> “Nothing ends. You just move on, and here there is no chance to solve your problems.”</b> Time stretches between them, infinite and yet instant all at once. He can see his children growing up, their own struggles and triumphs that he cannot hope to share in. He can see her, this girl he is so in knots over, but he can’t touch her or speak to her. He has to watch her move on, grow old with someone else, raise that man’s children. Be happy. Leilan is but a blip in her memory. She waits, however long it takes, until he starts to have second thoughts.
As soon as he does, they are back on the side of the mountain. He is lying, shattered but alive. Each breath is painful, but a fall like this doesn’t kill an immortal.
Which is what she has made him. The fairy glides down to him on silent wings, and perches on a nearby outcropping wide enough to hold her comfortably. She casts a critical glance over his injuries and determines he will recover reasonably fast on his own, and that now he can’t finish the job he tried to start.
<b> “Listen to me.”</b> The ice is back, the echoing; she is back in her natural habitat. <b> “You’re going to live. You’re going to live a great deal longer. You might see this as a curse. I don’t care. Someday you will grow up, and stop behaving like a spoilt weanling. When you do, you will either see this for the gift it is, or you will come back and <i>politely</i> ask one of my sisters or I to lift it for you. In the meantime, know this: not all children need their father involved in their life. Yours may not. But if you intentionally hurt them, you will see me again. And you won’t like it.”</b>
And then she leaves him to recover his strength on the cliff and go home.
The irritation wins out.
She lets him fall, and crash against the rocks below. She lets him feel the terror of the fall, and the pain of the impact, and the helplessness when his lungs don’t inflate properly against shattered ribs and he slowly loses consciousness. It’s not an easy thing, and she lets him feel it all.
When he regains awareness in Beqanna’s afterlife – on the strangely dim yet light shores of the other side of the beach, where all of Beqanna’s dead find themselves – she is still standing in front of him, resolute and stony-faced. <b> “Is this wanted you wanted?”</b> She asks him, dark eyes flicking from one end of the beach to the other. <b> “Nothing ends. You just move on, and here there is no chance to solve your problems.”</b> Time stretches between them, infinite and yet instant all at once. He can see his children growing up, their own struggles and triumphs that he cannot hope to share in. He can see her, this girl he is so in knots over, but he can’t touch her or speak to her. He has to watch her move on, grow old with someone else, raise that man’s children. Be happy. Leilan is but a blip in her memory. She waits, however long it takes, until he starts to have second thoughts.
As soon as he does, they are back on the side of the mountain. He is lying, shattered but alive. Each breath is painful, but a fall like this doesn’t kill an immortal.
Which is what she has made him. The fairy glides down to him on silent wings, and perches on a nearby outcropping wide enough to hold her comfortably. She casts a critical glance over his injuries and determines he will recover reasonably fast on his own, and that now he can’t finish the job he tried to start.
<b> “Listen to me.”</b> The ice is back, the echoing; she is back in her natural habitat. <b> “You’re going to live. You’re going to live a great deal longer. You might see this as a curse. I don’t care. Someday you will grow up, and stop behaving like a spoilt weanling. When you do, you will either see this for the gift it is, or you will come back and <i>politely</i> ask one of my sisters or I to lift it for you. In the meantime, know this: not all children need their father involved in their life. Yours may not. But if you intentionally hurt them, you will see me again. And you won’t like it.”</b>
And then she leaves him to recover his strength on the cliff and go home.