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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "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


    how time twines around your neck; any
    #11

    “So what else can you do, god?”

    She asks him from the water with broken reflections rippling in her wake. He forgives the irreverence because he’d watched her, suddenly hungry, as she’d passed him (eyed the length of her back, and the slopes of her hips with a sense of greed that was entirely within his character). They are worlds away from home, but so much is still the same. When she is finally shoulder-deep the reflections in the water mask her scars like atlantis, and there is a moment where he forgets that she is ruined. And when that moment passes he wonders, however fleetingly, if she ever forgets, too.

    He could keep her.

    He could build her worlds (universes, dimensions, existences) like beautiful, expansive prison cells and then feed off the wonder and gratitude that would surely linger in the forefront of her mind. She could forget, at least for a time.

    Elektrum follows her from the shore into the water, briefly pacified by the gentle smile on her face. When he is close enough to smell the sweat on her skin he traces a scar on her shoulder with his lips, and says:

    “I can help you fix this, if that’s what you wanted."

    ELEKTRUM

    how time twines around your neck,



    @Lepis
    Reply
    #12
    Though I treasure the bonds I have formed in my lifetime, there has never been a moment I do not question them. Perhaps it is the result of my turbulent formative years, the lack of anything resembling permanence, but I am ever doubtful that anything will remain forever as it has always been. Our meeting is not the first time I have considered gods, but it is the first time I have met one in a physical manifestation.

    He, of anything, might be permanent.

    Not always the same, but at least omnipresent in a universe of universes.

    I'm not naive to the hunger of men, and I have come to suspect that regardless of his deity status he is still a man like those I know. When he reaches out to my scars I do not pull away, but the ripples around my navy legs suggest I might have thought of doing so.

    'I can help you fix this', he says, and I hold a breath in my lungs as long as I can. It burns, after a while, but at least it is something I am certain of, something I control.

    "No," I say, releasing the word just after the long exhalation of the breath I had been holding. "They do not hurt me, not anymore." Nerine's debt had been paid not only in the healing of my broken wings, but also in the sapping of the phantom aches that ran along the welted ridges.

    His breath is warm even in this temperate world. I close my eyes again for just a moment, and for a moment I see a different face. It lasts for only the blink of an eye, a figment of my wildly chaotic imagination. It is not who it should be in this moment, and somehow that comforts me. It emboldens me too, and strengthens the recklessness that I still hold firmly.

    "I want to see the top of the Mountain." I tell him, and even though the words are simple it feels like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I want to be at the top of a magical precipice whose glittering, low-lying hills I have not even dared approach. He says he is a god; perhaps now I will learn if he is something more than the gods I have already known. "Please."
    Reply
    #13

    There are things that he conceals under his tongue, things he is afraid to let slip out between his teeth. Confessions, as it were, that could ruin him and the benevolent image he’s worked so hard to create from only smoke and sorrow. The largest of these cancerous truths, is that if he were to be honest with himself his greatest fear is that he is small; a little speck of nothing consequential like the snow that fell around them in the meadow - that he might melt into oblivion by something as basic as the heat off someone else’s breath.

    That he is unimportant.
    That he is nothing.

    So when the ripples in the water scream out her betrayal and he sees them, when she says: “No” - it rattles him. And if he were truly a wounded animal she might have seen his fangs, then; a flash of white and saliva. It would have been easier that way. She would have at least known then that the bite was coming.

    Instead, she’ll only see his unwavering devotion to the curl in one of her scars while he traces it. She asks about the mountain, but he’s already decided where they’re going - he’s already chosen to be cruel simply for the sake of it. And much like an actual god his moods rise and fall like the waves, first high and then low - or they ride in on vengeful winds that change directions in the seconds between breaths. It’s why sometimes he’s careful, why he can mind scars in one moment and caress them in the next.

    “No,” he answers her, still buried in her shoulders. He’s still thinking about keeping her, but first -

    When she opens her eyes she’ll be somewhere new. It will feel familiar, but not quite right - like the air around them is heavy and full of static. The Mountain is in view, but they are worlds away from its peak. The moon is low in the sky. It was always there.

    “Welcome to the afterlife, Lepis.”

    ELEKTRUM

    how time twines around your neck,



    @[Lepis]
    Reply
    #14
    ""

    The dizziness that has been careening wildly within my chest collapses as swiftly as any dust devil, from terrifying to nothing in an instant. There was something in his voice, something that I recognize, something that crushes away every wisp of my constant projections.

    His breath still warms the raised skin of my shoulder. It had reminded me of the hot springs of home, and I had closed my eyes to imagine - just for a little bit - Loess in the summer. His 'No', startles them open again. I blink rapidly, untrusting of the world that has appeared around me for the brief moment it takes me to remember who I am with. The sensation is no less disconcerting than our last effort, and I have almost projected relaxation at the sight of the distant Mountain (at least we are back in Beqanna) when the stallion speaks.

    I do not immediately question him, Instead, the realization seems to dawn slowly. I shiver, my coat and wings still heavy with water, but I am not sure if it is the cold or the wrongness of the world.

    "Am I dead?" I ask him at last, tilting my dark head to look up at him. There's worry behind the stormy eyes, but it is not for the reason it should be. This place feels like the world before, and I brush a foot against the grass at our feet and find that I can feel that as well as I could remember feeling anything.

    @[Elektrum]
    Reply
    #15

    It isn’t a secret that death in this world was subjective.

    The majority would argue that the beach was the end - that the shorelines, littered with bones and bodies alike, rotten with the stench of decay, was the last place for almost everyone; that there was no coming back from there. Elektrum knows better. 

    Because he’d seen his mother die, over and over and over again. 

    Once he’d watched as Cordis pulled lightning from her bones to breathe life back into Spyndle’s eviscerated body, watched the pieces of her reassemble even when there were too many of them to count. Once he’d watched her let the water into her lungs, and when Cordis came (because she always did; a symptom of her sickness) he’d watched her take her heart and keep it. He’d followed her once, through time and space, to the place beneath the willow where her bones grew algae in the river water.

    He knew then that there was more.

    And in the beginning he had come a thousand times. He looked for her always - at first thinking he would bring her home, that it would be enough to fix things, that she wouldn’t just escape into death again. As days turned to weeks turned to years, however, his mind had started to waver. He wanted to hurt her like she’d hurt them. Another secret, another pulsating tumor he keeps close to his breast that rots away behind his ribs.

    It isn’t beautiful like the last world. There is no lilac sky, or glass lake. There are no seasons, either, and so the winter falls away like petals on wildflowers only to be replaced with nothing but gray, and dust, and mist. There is a moon, but it’s low and heavy and foreboding rather than gentle.It feels like Jupiter, like the gravity is strong enough to liquify their bones and melt their bodies into puddles - like they are being pulled into the earth, and for the afterlife, there are a thousand different reasons why that might make perfect sense. This world is a tomb, and it keeps its bodies, its souls, close. 

    You can feel it in the heaviness in the air. 
    You can hear it in the hushed silence. 

    No, he is no stranger to this world, but the ache of it still steals the breath from his lungs at first. The skin along his back rolls and prickles, and for a moment, he forgets Lepis, forgets the earned ‘lesson’ he is teaching her about betrayal. Instead his eyes skirt through the trees and into the horizon to look for her, an instinct he cannot seem to shake despite any misgivings that he harbours. 

    “Am I dead?” She tilts her head in a way that softens his resolve for a moment. He parts his lips to assure her that he is not a murderer, but catches himself. 

    “Almost,” is what he says instead, and wistfully.
    “No one living would find you here, at least.”

    It’s a threat, perhaps; another flash of pearly whites to show her what he is capable of when he isn’t catered to, and one that he delivers with suddenly vacuous eyes. His body is straight and rigid despite the gravity, and there is nothing soft left about him now.

    And then, because his ego gets the better of him (as was often the case):
    “Do you like it?”


    ELEKTRUM

    how time twines around your neck,



    @[Lepis]
    Reply
    #16
    I have no gift here, it seems. Any attempt to spin emotion leaves me grasping at straw, little flecks of feeling that bleed away as soon as I touch them. The Afterworld is doing this, I realize: taking my gift and leaving me empty of everything but myself. This is not something I experience often and it is uncomfortable. The buzzing has returned, and flits along my bones as I watch him watch the horizon.

    Wary, I think, recognizing the trait with intimate familiarity. There are few places I am not watchful, and it is clear from the catch of my breath that this world is not one of them. I can feel the thunder of my heart in my chest, the rising pressure of the world around us that is so still. Too still.

    It almost seems to me coming closer.

    I shiver, and turn to look behind me as the god speaks.

    No one living would find you here, he says, as my nose brushes briefly against his when I turn back to face him. I think nothing of it – we are simply standing close – and instead try to understand his question. Do I like it? Do I like the way he hardens in front of me? Wistfulness replace with something far darker? Do I like being almost dead, or perhaps barely alive?

    I recall, even in my flurry of thoughts, the warmth of his nose as I’d accidentally bumped against him.

    "You’re alive. You would know where to find me." I say aloud, taking a bold step forward to feel the hard line of his shoulder and rigid neck. Not soft – but alive. "Do you like it?" Are the words between the buzzing, as I begin to pull away again. No good will come from standing too near any man – be he god or mortal.

    "I would rather be entirely alive." I tell him, realizing that as I distance myself the heaviness around us creeps in more swiftly. My eyes find more grey on the horizon with each passing breath, but the rate slows the closer I stay to another living thing. Without realizing how close I have come to him, I return to myself to find I cling to his side like some frightened child holding a boulder for comfort. "Please take me home." I say in a small voice.


    @[Elektrum]
    Reply
    #17

    The hourglass is nearly empty; the feel of her nose against his reminds him of this.

    He’s never brought another living being to the afterlife before (through time and space, abundantly), and he can feel his own magic crumbling like hardened clay. It hits him like a wave that breaks across his back, but instead of washing over him it soaks through his skin into his deepest pieces. He couldn’t keep her. Not today. Despite his every intentions their time together is drawing short.

    He decides, then and there, that he will at least squeeze every ounce of her from these last few grains of sand.

    “You’re alive. You would know where to find me.” She says, because she hasn’t seen his fangs or felt his bite, because she doesn’t know what he is capable of - what is reeling, quietly, in the back corners of his mind. For a moment afterwards he pauses to wonder if he can call what he does living, the way he loops again and again through time and space without meaning or reason. Existing, perhaps, was a more appropriate term. The thought, however, is cut short when Lepis moves to press her body against his shoulder and he doesn’t move away. Elektrum doesn’t usually give them this kind of power (to touch him as she pleases), but Lepis is getting away with more than most today.

    “Do you like it?” She asks, pulling away and leaving his skin cold.

    She doesn’t get far before she feels the haunt of this world; he sees the way her body trembles and folds in on itself. For a moment he is silent, weighing out the different options she might mean. Does he like this world? No - he hates it. Let it burn, and let the fire be so hot it eviscerates any hope of bringing Spyndle back out again, of falling into their doomed cycle even just one more time. Does he like the way she moves against him? How she fits against him like she belongs there? How her skin touches his skin and leaves it warm, for once?

    He could learn to.

    He is about to answer her (he doesn’t know with what) when her body curls against his again, when she asks for home in a voice that doesn’t seem like it could be her own.

    When he asked her if she liked it, what he had meant was:
    Do you like my power?
    Do you like my greatness?


    Because a battle is beginning inside of him that she won’t see reflected in the straight lines of his face. There are parts of him that crave her approval, parts that seek out her laughter, something that he hadn’t anticipated when he’d plucked her from the field concluding her weaker than the rest (and a truth that makes him decidedly sick with himself). And there are other parts - parts that resent her for these new feelings, parts that are still bitter from her ‘betrayal’, parts that unabashedly acknowledge him as the benevolent god he has become who could change the outcomes of his next decision if he only wanted to.

    Those parts are bigger.

    “Of course,” he reasons, slinking forwards so that his lips can find that same scar again. Lepis is right to think that no good will come of standing skin-to-skin with him, and she will learn it now. She can’t see the magic bleeding out of him as though he were a pierced artery. She doesn’t know he has no choice - that there time is up anyways.

    Call it the call of the void, because he says then: “But there’s a price. There’s always a price.”
    He has all of eternity to decide if he’ll let the guilt of this eat him alive.

    ELEKTRUM

    how time twines around your neck,



    @[Lepis]
    Reply
    #18
    I believe – perhaps mistakenly – that the worst of my life is behind me. This belief is foolish, of course, because the world is a dangerous place for those like me. Those that are small, those that are weak, those that tremble in the face of fear.

    ‘Of course’, he says, and there is a warm rush of relief even in this cold place. The warmth remains, even when realization begins to sink in and he reaches toward me. My hooves seem rooted to the grey earth, the almost-forgotten paralysis of fear. I have avoided this with my gift, using false emotions as a memory suppressant but in the Afterlife I am stripped of my ability, and fall back to old habits without thought.

    ‘There’s a price’ he reminds me, and I wonder how I had ever forgotten. I had let myself believe that I was safe, fooled myself into believing that I was in control.

    It feels at times as though I am destined to be unhappy.

    As soon as I have found something perfect, fate rears its unwelcome head. I think of Wolfbane as Elektrum traces the scars of my neck and shoulders, and I do not pull away. I don’t want to be fully dead. For all the struggles of living, it is not yet something that I am ready to abandon. There are things I intend to do yet; I am not finished with my story. Fighting a god would surely be an immediate end. I have witnessed a few moments of his abilities; there is no way to deny him in a way that does not endanger me – or the small thing that I so desperately hope is growing inside me.

    “What is the price?”I ask against the warm span of his shoulder. His proximity makes this necessary, though I do not pull away to speak less intimately. I shiver as the heavy grey hangs ominously around us: death ethereally paused, perhaps, by the potential creation of its antithesis.

    Perhaps magic is not absent here after all.

    Perhaps everything here is magic.

    I have never been a great philosopher, and abstract thought makes my head ache. I would rather deal with what is in front of me, or in this case: beside me. I’d flinched at his touch the first time, belly deep in the water, but not anymore. One ear flicks back toward him, and a quiet breath eases between my lips as a low sigh. No longer paralyzed, it seems, and I attempt to meet his gaze with a brow raised as if to emphasize my inquiry regarding the price for taking me back home.

    @[Elektrum]
    Reply
    #19

    Is this his darkest timeline?

    He can hear the words leave his mouth but they don’t sound like they belong to him. He wonders if these moments now are the worst that he will ever be, or if he is capable of more brutality still. He wonders if Spyndle were to appear in his peripheral if he would keep his resolve or see it crumble away like ash in the wind. He wonders, because things like this have ruined better men than him. He wonders, because he’s throwing around power he isn’t cautious enough to wield to begin with, because he’s going to be burnt - because she’s going to be burnt.

    But it’s too late, isn’t it?
    He’s made the leap, and all that’s left is the fall.

    When Lepis asks him what the price is he laughs in her face and the sound is mangled and warped. She already knows; he can feel the realization as she sinks in against his touch, as the features on her face fall into straight lines. They both already know, because the way that he traces her scars now is akin to the way a lover might. He wants validation. He wants someone else to hurt the way that he hurts. He wants her.

    He wants.

    “You,” he states simply as he smiles against her skin. Drunk on power he can’t see how this is a bad idea; that this might ruin her, and turn to ash all that’s left that he admires now. It’s too late. So he presses his lips against her neck, whispers something inaudible against the softness of her skin, and he takes them away from here.

    So that when he makes love to her its in between the galaxies, and the spaces that exist between a thousand different dimensions. So that when he makes love to her she will remember it for its magnitude.

    So that she’ll call him a god, and she’ll mean it.

    And this time when she opens her dark, wild eyes she’ll be home with the snow cascading in gentle waves all around her. It will remind her of the stars, of how small she really is in the grand scheme of everything else. And he’ll be standing skin-to-skin beside her, with his lips still pressed against the side of her neck and his warm breath spilling out across her shoulders. He’ll be invisible, choosing to exist only in the spaces between their breaths, but he’ll be there; a god and his creation.

    ELEKTRUM

    how time twines around your neck,



    @[Lepis]
    Reply
    #20
    The snow falls slowly, a barely tangible curtain of white that stretches across the entire horizon. Here and there, my pale eyes pick out the thicker clouds of rising steam, hot water meeting cold air at the steaming pools. All my pieces have been spread apart, and it takes  several long moments to recover. Long moments that are punctuated only by the low creak of a fallen limb in the distance and the ghostly warmth of the god against my neck and shoulders.

    He's there when I blink, I've decided, some omnipotent presence that I was not meant to understand.

    Once I am mostly assembled I take a single long breath. The exhalation of it is less stable - a stuttering sigh - but I remain still. The stars blaze in my closed eyes, the brilliance tattooed even into the darkness, little reminders of the combustion of the cosmos around us only moments ago.

    "You should have left me there." I say to the nothing, and my voice is as soft as the snow, barely more than a whisper. I do not clarify where there might be, but when I open my eyes and take a step away from him, a step toward home, I add: "You're not welcome here." My power is minimal, and I doubt that a banishment from a mortal kingdom would give a deity any pause. Still, it is what I have, and I pull my pale wings around me like a shield as I leave him behind.

    @[Elektrum]
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