"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
10-19-2018, 12:35 PM (This post was last modified: 10-19-2018, 02:35 PM by Sabra.)
Dum
Ba-dum
I feel it.
A pulse. A beating heart. Mine, I realize with detached surprise.
Later, I do not know how much later. I remember where I am. Or where I should be. It's dark for the Afterlife. So utterly dark that I have to wonder... but no, I know I'm dead. The scene repeats and I wish I could look away. Klaudius. All smiles until he wasn't. And then...
Pain. The kind of pain that makes you wish you'd never been born to feel it. Muscle and bone rending apart until it's all I could do to stay conscious. Why did I want to stay conscious? So much pain that I almost didn't notice when he gripped me close. He'd held me like that once before, when I'd been too foolish to see what he was. Now I saw, but it was far too late.
Like an observing spirit I watch as he used my broken body, the look on his face so fragmented and hateful, even as he parodied a lover. Poor, broken girl. What had she done to make him so vengeful? I feel the ache of violation. I feel... sick. I want to look away, but can't. Ghosts have no eyes to speak of. I have to look, and watch the defilement unfold. His face, that twisted triumph when he builds a mask of jagged iron over his face, the razored pike protruding with undisguised menace. The girl knelt before him, too damaged to stand. Her wing dangled by thin skin and tendon, splintered bone visible and blood clotting down her side.
They held that frozen position for a moment, saying words I cannot hear. He lunges.
I want to scream.
For a second time I see that copy of myself be violently penetrated. It was quick. He'd had his fun, I suppose. Vented his frustrations. It slid cleanly between the ribs. Split the hide like it wasn't there, and sank until it met its mark. At last the horrible show was over.
Fade to black.
Later. I have a body. And it hurts mightily. Training must have really kicked my ass yesterday. Had my chest been stepped on by a whole battalion of soldiers? Go away, Mother, please don't make me get up. The air feels like ice in my lungs.
Ba-dum
Ba-dum
Later. Less pain, I think. It's dark, but I can see no stars, no moon. I can't remember... where I am. Why I'm here. My name... I have a name. Sabra. Princess. Queen. Failure... Sabra. It floats in front of me, and I'm not sure I want to claim it. That woman, who could be me, if I let her. Was she a one worth being? Being Sabra hurt. The scars were growing, marring the beauty she'd once been known for. Her heart was fragile, weak. Weak. And who would mourn her, should she vanish into the ether? Faces flicker in my sight. Friends both new and old. Children that I could only hope would grow to be better than me. Stronger. Cas... I'm so sorry, Castile. I'm sorry I wasn't strong enough. I only just got you back, and now... I feel a solid coldness beneath me.
Smell the wind that I loved so dearly. It pulls me down like stones in the sea. Irresistible and undeniably real. Just as irresistible is the darkness I am floating in. I can feel it, the desire to unbecome. I know I can make the choice. And... I find myself leaning towards the unbecoming. Isn't that what I've wanted, deep down, for years now? If I decide to be real, it will hurt. I will not be okay. I don't know if I will ever be okay again.
I feel my heart-
beat
@[Kagerus] so maybe possibly if you're interested dream-talk her into wanting to live again?
{ and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times }
Her dreams have been invading mine.
From where, I do not know - and moreover, how evades me too. We are separated by gods know how many miles, with lives of our own to the point that I do not have a true understanding of what has happened to her. The image comes closer together with each dream, but fragments are sharp and the blood often distracts me from my purpose of completing the puzzle. The visions she sees play out in my dreams and twist like knives, tying into my own reality.
Magnus hadn't raped me, hell, he'd barely touched me - and he'd had the heart to come and apologize without provocation. But it doesn't change how I felt in the moment, and it doesn't change the fact that when I see Klaudius' face looming over hers, it somehow morph's into Magnus'. It doesn't matter that her trauma is not my own in fact, for dreams have a way of manipulating one's conscious experience of what appears to be reality - and I am no exception, dreamweaver though I may be.
She remembers her mother though only vaguely, but I have only a father to think of. He is good to me, though - and like her, I do not dwell on these memories long.
Her latest dreams have been... dissociated. Desolate. Without conviction and utterly deflated. I can taste the staleness in her lungs when she breathes and hear how she dismisses the beating of her heart as if it is just another way to tell the time, a broken clock on its last legs, the hands making their final rounds round numbers that, in the end, are meaningless. In these moments, her consciousness feels like warm static that threatens to cool, a numbed entity which lacks compass or balance in that it pertains to nothing at all.
She feels the desire to unbecome, and without thinking, I feel it too. I remember the pull of the lake, how I've slipped beneath its topline once before, how it felt to drag in a lungful of water. I've been better lately, I've had my children lately, I've had my kingdom lately - but there will always be a part of me that wonders what it might have been like to die that day. To die any day. To get to stop these meaningless happenings which amount to nothing once all is said and done. When my consciousness slips from this place, there will be nothing left... And while that terrifies me as a mother, as a wife, as a lover, as a fighter, it soothes me as a soul.
There will not be another left to mother. Nothing left to commit to or love. Nothing to fight for.
There will be nothing.
Nothing.
Can you imagine... nothing?
I'm in her dream once more - and if I'm telling the truth, it's not of my own personal prowess that I intervene.
(It will always be her who restores my will to live and to carry on. To say that she saved me once would be a lie and to say that she saves me every single day would still not be enough, there will never be words to describe the way that she makes me feel or the way that she reminds me that now IS important. Nothing will come and it will be terrifying and we will all have to face that someday - but for now, I am to be happy with her. With myself. With us, together. I don't know where I would be without her. My darling Solace, the lifeblood which thrums through my veins. She is the reason. She is my reason.)
"Sabra." I close my eyes, remember Solace, remind myself that Sabra has someone out there, too.
I have always had to save myself. I've had help along the way, who hasn't? But in the end, it's always come down to my own will. I am not old by equine standards, let alone by those of the immortals. Yet already life feels overwhelming. Ravaged, raped and murdered. "It's enough to make anyone bitter." I observe to the void, and anyone else who might care to listen.
The tenuous threads that are holding me to life stretch and thin, gossamer ideas that could break at a glance. I see them now, like fine cobwebs in morning dew, glowing like starlight and leaking from my skin. They pull away, downward. To the dull outline of a pale body prostrate in the black. Each gleaming strand links us, tugs lightly at my mind.
No one really talks about how easy it is to part someone from their life. Now I'm being given a prime example. Before me, one more thread fades, winks out of existence. I bob just a little higher. When they're gone the choice will be made for me. That in itself is a choice, though. I wait and watch two more strands die out, feeling like I did when I used to play at challenging Death. Flying as high as I could, then folding my wings and dropping like a stone. Watching the landscape rise up to meet me. Finally snapping my wings open, at the last possible moment, never quite willing to let myself end.
I'm less surprised than maybe I should have been, when a voice not mine echoes in the dark. Sabra, it's time.
Time for what? Time to go, and leave this mortal coil? Time to sever those last few lines and find out what lies beyond? The voice is vaguely familiar, but I can't be bothered to think of why. This is my death, I'll do it how I want to.
A taste of irritation flavors me, a more vibrant emotion than I've felt since I got here. "What do you want? Can't a mare die in peace? Haven't I been through enough?" My voice echoes back, biting and scared. More emotions, and I note with horror that they seem to be thickening the lines that draw me toward life. Good, be angry, someone had told me once. Anger means you'll fight. Images not mine play across the endless night. Almost images. Impressions and emotions, vibrant and rich. Love of such an intensity that it could create or destroy anything. I don't think I've ever felt a love like that. Or if I did, I ruined it.
We are all broken pieces, trying to find where we all fit. I am so tired of trying to fit. I cut myself on my edges and lose myself in my own reflection. Love is a beautiful, fickle thing. It breaks my heart with the wanting.
Far away, on a high up cliff, tears stream down my body's face, muscles twitching in frozen seizure. I am so cold. The core of me is dropped so low in temperature, preserving me for my body to heal itself. For flesh to knit and bones to mend. Tears crystallize on my cheeks, icy streams that track to the hard stone beneath me. I could be a frost coated monument to broken things everywhere.
With the wanting I break. But what of the having? Am I done with possibility, curiosity and chance? Am I done filling my lungs with cold air amid the stars, and feeling the wind kiss my wings? With the wanting I descend. Until my feet stand next to her, almost solid. If I touch her, this will be gone, and I will have to try again. Fine then. Be that way. I'll return, and I'll avenge myself. Bring ruin to those who would destroy me.
{ and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times }
It's enough to make anyone bitter.
I am reminded of my own misfortunes, and find I have no reply. There's nothing I can say to her self-pitying self reflections that will rouse any sort of motivation within her. Not yet, anyhow.
I'm beside her as we watch the threads tethering her to her corporeal figure gently detach. I'm careful to extend my finger tips and catch the gossamer strings as they float past, stowing them carefully in my pocket for when she decides she'll want them again. She doesn't realize how severely dreams impact reality. Or perhaps she does, and does not care - but I do. She will want the threads again later, and I will supply them, though the truth of the matter shall be in her hands and not mine.
I feel her withdraw from my words as if struck, her mind going spitefully to the option she knows I had not meant when I'd spoken. I allow her this vehemous reaction, carefully safeguarding her against the reality of the option she flirts with, though if she chose it wholeheartedly, there would be nothing I could do. Safely, anyhow. And as we stand on the brink which bridges life and death, I find myself questioning just to what extent I would go for Sabra.
I would go any extent for my wife, I have proven that.
In my guts, I know that I am representing Sabra's Solace. That I will go all the way for her, too, if it came to that.
But in the moments following her scathing words, the once-queen brings us right to her body. We both stare down at it in silent contemplation; I feel her memories and loves flitting past almost painfully, and yet their passing feels seamless, too. I hold my tongue as we stare at her crystalline figure, not knowing what might be best to say to her as she stares that the key to life - one which she may grasp, or throw into the Abyss.
"I needn't tell you the reasons why you yet belong on this earth, Sabra." The wind of this high Nerinian peak breaks through the seams of her dream, foretelling of her return to it in both mind and body. "You see them all in the lines of your face - and in the faces of your children."
Life is hard, and it hurts. These words I allow to drift between us, available if she wants to hear them, meaningless if she does not. But I promise that it is worth it. Death is final, Sabra. What we have here - that is all there is. This figure we are looking at - she embodies the love you have yet to receive. Don't squander that. For in the nothingness of death, there will be no love to heal the wounds inflicted upon you by others. You will exist in death as one tormented. Do not give death that triumph.
10-25-2018, 07:22 PM (This post was last modified: 10-25-2018, 07:22 PM by Sabra.)
I'm being petulant. I can feel it, and it's irrational but still I can't seem to stop. I want to be angry at the world. I want to be angry at Klaudius and at everything that let this happen. I want to be strong enough to handle these things and I'm terrified that I'm not. More than anything, I'm angry at myself for being so weak. This is no way to die. It's not... like sunrise breaking over the mountains, it dawns on me. This isn't how I want to go.
When I die, it will be on my own terms. Not because some jackass stallion is having a bad day and decides to take it out on the closest living thing. My eyes linger on the body before me, lifting when a motion catches my sight. There she is, the disembodied voice that has been coaxing me down to this point. She's familiar to me, a unique pattern of browns and blacks and whites that undulate slightly in this ethereal plane. It's strange seeing anyone here, let alone her.
How long has she been watching me try to drown myself in self pity? I meet her gaze for a moment, trying to assess something deep within, before dropping my line of vision back to the crystalline form between us. I could be made of some precious stone, faceted and almost glowing from within. How much of it is real and how much is vision I can't tell, but I don't mind looking either way.
"I'd make a hell of a poltergeist, you know. He wouldn't have another moment of peace between now and his own grave. Doesn't deserve any less." I'm speaking to myself as much to the liquid form of the antlered woman. The blandness has returned to my voice, no more inflected than if it were the weather we were discussing. My crystal gaze flicks back up to meet hers. Stoicism is not my native state, but it's all I can muster at the moment. "I'll go back, if only to see what's happened since I fell. We will come back to this, you and I. Some day."
I am no prophetess. Still, the words felt true enough in the moment. This conversation would resume at a later date, perhaps many years down the road. Maybe then I would know if it was gratitude or disdain I felt now. I wait a moment longer before bowing my head in it's graceful arc, placing a delicate kiss to the brow of my doppelganger. The threads of light between us grew in an instant, until the darkness filled with them entirely. All else was blocked out.
Until it wasn't.
Somewhere between the earth and an eternal twilit sky, my eyes flicker open. Air that has recently only trickled in and out of damaged lungs now courses in a steady stream, shifting ribs that protest the need for motion. The internal damage has all but healed over the weeks (months?) that I've been inert. By the splintering shock of pain in my wing, however, it would seem that the priority has been keeping me alive. There had been no extra energy to spare to repair the torn muscles and tendons that gift me flight.
What had started as an irritating numbness in my extremities soon rises to the forefront of my awareness as a burning, prickling sensation overcomes every inch of me. My circulatory system has kicked back on with a vengeance, and it's all I can do to lie there gasping and trembling as the fire burns away the cold I've been existing under. Oh gods, I'm going to kick Kagerus' ass when this wears off.
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
Each day, Castile left to address his grief and peel his eyes from her limp body, but he returned each evening to remain guard over it. It should be decaying, he often thought, and the sight of it still intact and not rotting gave him a nightly rush of hope.
He had fled the bloody scene with Sabra clutched in his grasp, flying across Nerine and twisting among the clouds before finding solitude on a large plateau of rock that towers from the ocean. It’s an elevated island, he mused upon seeing it. Only those capable of flight could reach him, but those few individuals would, hopefully, be smart enough to let the growling beast be to himself.
As the sun looms toward the horizon, it presses a sweet kiss on the ocean as it extends far beyond Castile’s eyesight. Scarlet, orange, and yellow smear across the water’s surface and paints the world in shades of sunset when he soars to the familiar outcropping of rock, his body already having shifted to that of a dragon. It has easily become routine to rest alongside her and to cradle her cold body to his fiery warmth. It’s wishful thinking, he knows, but he cannot bear the thought of having her taken away from him, leaving him alone with their sons when she is the glue holding them all together. ”Sabra,” he breathes as he alights heavily on the rocky ledge, sending chunks crashing down into the ocean below. She doesn’t respond. He didn’t expect her to, but his ears still yearned for the sound of her voice.
Even months after it happened – has it already been that long? – Castile refuses to lose all hope.
A rumbling growl trembles the rocks underfoot as he lies down, curling himself and pulling Sabra toward him where he can curtain his wing overhead. There’s a softness in him not often seen in this form. The turbulence of his emotions is wearing and his mind is hazed by a shadow of solemnity. As he rests his head on the ground, he begins to drift asleep.
An abrupt and raspy intake of air startles him, however, and elicits a malevolent snarl. His slit eyes snap open and he expects there to be a disturbance outside of their shelter – his wing still lying above her and his own head – but when his body shifts he realizes that it isn’t an outside source. It’s her. It’s Sabra.
Castile’s jaws clench together as he bumps her gingerly with the tip of his snout. There is a rattling rise and fall of her chest as her lungs struggle to work after having been stagnant for so long. There is no other movement, no other sign of life yet, but her breathing is enough to elevate his levels of hope. ”Sabra?” his voice is gravely, quaking the rocky outcropping as it sounds more like a growl than her name. Frozen, Castile can only watch intently, wishing her back to life.
Living hurts. It's a simple reality that's been known for as long as beings have drawn breath. It doesn't hurt all the time, and the kinds of hurt are certainly variable. But there will be pain. I had been existing in a comatose stasis for longer than I knew, for as long as it had taken to repair my damaged heart and lungs, and to overcome the pure shock of being mostly dead. Right now, I was wishing the damn ghosts would have kept me. Shaking like a beast on the verge of hypothermia, I let the pain wash through me in unsteady tides. In and out, in and out, until the trembling becomes less severe, less spasmodic. Slowly, I'm able to notice things beyond my own skin.
The burning in my limbs has subsided enough that I can feel the stoney surface beneath me, the warm air around me. My first fleeting thought is that I've somehow come to be resting in some volcanic cavern. This could be true. But there was a bigger, more persistent truth to be had. All around me was a scent like fire and ash mingled with a musk I knew. A deep, rumbling sound echoes throughout the whole of me. I can almost hear my name in it, as though the mountains themselves were welcoming me back.
A sigh, the deepest breath I've been able to manage thus far. My eyes blink away blurriness, and like magic, a face comes into focus. Black and white and shining, with mismatched eyes that hold the same expression.
"Cas...?" It's the smallest thread of a voice. There is far more fear and pain in it than I would have wished. It takes an agonizing amount of effort, but I pull the weight of my skull from where it's been resting upwards, try to roll to my knees. Dizziness creeps up on me, threatening to take back this small ground I've regained.
"Cas, help me. Please, love." This time there is stubborn frustration woven into the low notes of my voice. My nose is a hairsbreadth from the ground, everything hurts, but I can't bear to lay down any longer. I hate myself for the weakness in my limbs, that he has to see me this way. Still, it's so, so much better than being alone.
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
”Yes, Sabra,” his breath is hot and blankets across her entire body as she stirs for the very first time. It startles him, but Castile doesn’t slip away or even add the slightest amount of space between them. Still resting in his dragon’s body, his tail wraps around their immediate area, his titanic wing still being held above them like a tent. ”Sabra,” he cannot resist tasting her name again on his tongue, even if it barely sounds more than a growl rumbling from his throat.
He so desperately wants to hold her, to never let her go, but she is struggling to find her feet and she is so, so weak.
But she is alive.
Castile’s heart bursts seeing her eyes slowly open to look at him and to hear the sound of her voice again. He never realized how much he would miss it, how dear she truly is to him. Sabra sees a tenderness in him that he reserves only for his family now – they are all that matter.
He wants to respond to her, to verbally acquiesce, but a lump has formed in his throat and he’s unable to. In its place, Castile slithers his tail closer to her to play as a support wall. To complement it, his large snout gingerly presses to her, providing as much assistance as possible. He would be useless as a horse. Fleetingly, he considers lifting her with a paw, but shies from the potential of scraping her with a sharpened talon. But the gentleness that he touches her is met with a soft expression of his eyes. ”You’re alive,” he says, the words truly audible and understandable for the first time.
Despite Cas's support, my legs are still too unsteady to hold me. I satisfy myself instead to be laying a bit more upright, offending limbs folded against my barrel. One tattered wing drags lifeless alongside me like an abandoned cloak. He's in his draconic guise, far larger than me. All sharp edges and glinting scales, fearsome enough to strike terror into his foes. I've never seen him fully shifted before. Still haven't, as he's curled around me like an enormous cat, one wing a sheltering canopy above our heads. Still, it's not fear I feel with him close by. Not of him, any how.
As trusting as a newborn foal, I settle into the curve of him. He's solid as the ground beneath us, the warmth emitting from him almost uncomfortable. Still, I press close. I need this touch, the sense of security I've always had in his embrace, because nothing else feels safe right now. Maybe he can burn away the wretchedness I feel inside.
Unbidden, a wave of nausea rolls through me, making my teeth clench and one traitorous tear slide down my cheek. This coming back to life thing is an utter bitch. Blinking hard, I rest my head against the smooth scales of his shoulder, waiting for the world to stop reeling around me.
You're alive.
Like good whiskey; His voice is warm and smoke-smooth, woven together with emotion and filling me with melting heat. I nod mutely, finding my own throat tightened with feeling. I miss his mane in this form. Burying my face in it and kissing the satin skin underneath. Instead, I press my lips to the hard scales of his shoulder. Not an urgent kiss of passion, but simple physical reassurance that he's really here. "You came for me. W-where are we, what's happened?" My voice is still hoarse from disuse, but growing stronger.
My shaking begins again as memories filter back into my mind. My last recollection is Klaudius' ironclad face as he stood over me triumphant, blood pulsing from my chest in a fatal stream. The fury of it is almost enough to bring me to my feet, only to slide back down again, trembling like a thing hunted. "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to fucking kill him!" A ludicrous claim coming from someone who can't even stand yet, but it felt good to say it.
My body, however, is quick to make me regret the sudden increase in blood pressure. Dizzy again, I have to let him support me. "I'm almost didn't make it back, Cas." My ice-blue eyes meets the glow of his, voice mixing fear with the childish belief that he'll make things better. I can't face it on my own.
and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was
A jagged – albeit eerie – smile stretches across his scaly lips as the feather-light weight of her curls into his side. Every fumble, every sigh, never escapes his notice. Sabra resigns her attempts to stand, finding better security folded into him like a newborn. A sigh escapes the confines of his lungs, the exhalation sounding like a winter gale but with the heat of summer. ”Rest,” the reassurance is a low grumble as his neck curls to allow his head to settle on the rocky ground adjacent to her. A slit pupil watches as she presses her lips to the hardened scales of his shoulder, keeping close to him despite the unnatural heat radiating from his core.
There is almost a tone of surprise in her voice, but also admiration, as she notes his unwavering presence. A slow blink of his eyes is the only indication of his consideration. ”I never left,” he eventually counters with a faint shift of his wing. ”I took you away. I brought you here.” The gravely sensation of his voice tickles him, the strangeness beyond his comprehension. Why is it more difficult to talk like this? Alas, he finds solace in the way they currently embrace and how he can shield her from the high winds and frigid cold. Therefore, he remains as is despite the clawing of his voice against his (long) throat.
”One of the rocky outcroppings. Offshore.” Castile lifts his wing and slides his tail aside so that she may cast her eyes across the plateau before it drops down into an endless ocean reaching far beyond their view. The sunsets are beautiful from here, he doesn’t add, not wanting to admit how many he watched alone with her body limp against him. To the eat lies Nerine, his home, his birthplace. But he doesn’t look at the kingdom, not this time. His mismatched eyes fall heavily on Sabra as he returns his wing and tail into place, almost chuckling as he does so. ”Already dead,” even as she rises from death, Sabra retains her fiery attitude. Fortunately, it isn’t warranted any longer. ”I killed him.” Admittedly, Castile is proud of the feat, but it has changed him.
For better or for worse remains undetermined.
A sudden solemnity washes across Sabra as she lets her mind trickle to what happened. Gingerly, Castile bumps her with his snout. ”But you did,” rolling the conversation into optimism, ”You beat death.” He never thought it possible, not after having seen it all play out, but here she is, talking to him and laying kisses into his scales.
![[Image: kag]](https://78.media.tumblr.com/2e8039018ce4dff6112c167ec23e886a/tumblr_p72zjit7wC1s5a0qvo1_100.png)
