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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


    [mature]  things we never thought we could be, adna
    #11

    sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
    B E T H L E H E M
    then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago


    Her pain is so potent he can almost taste it.
    Everything in him begs to take one step backward, out of her orbit.
    So that it cannot leave its residue on his tongue.
    So that it cannot sink into the marrow of his bones.
    So that he will not have to feel it, too.

    But something shifts in the hollow cavern of his chest and he listens, stone-silent, as she speaks. He has not asked, but his suspicion is that she does not say it for his benefit. He does not try to stop her, does not try to still the words in her mouth, if only to spare himself the pain of it.

    Because he’d taken to walking because his father hadn’t wanted him and his mother certainly hadn’t either. And perhaps when he’d set out he’d been convinced he’d find someone who might kiss his troubled brow and quiet the storms that ravaged him. He is older now – significantly older now – and he has stopped searching for all the love he has lacked.

    He does not remove himself from her orbit. But he does not shift himself deeper into it either. Perhaps the appropriate response would be to reach out and touch her, to lay his mouth on his shoulder and exhale some warm breath that might suggest she is not alone. But they are all alone and the ones who think they are not are naive, he knows. He does not touch her and he does not commiserate. He just rolls the marble of her pain over the surface of his tongue and nods his understanding.

    What will you do with it, then?” he asks without inflection. It is neither mocking nor challenging, it simply is. “That thing that was in your father and is in you, too?” he clarifies.

    Will you lay the world to waste or will you accept the fact that sometimes our parents are wrong?” His throat tightens again, though he refuses to think that he might have meant his parents had been wrong, too. Wrong to not want him. Wrong to think him not worth loving.





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    #12
    ADNA

    I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse
    I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words

    She would drown him in her pain if she could.

    She has no consideration for this stranger who did not asked to be pulled into the muck of her pain and her feelings. She does not care for the fact that he did not ask for her story—that he did not ask for her to explain. She is blind to the fact that she is an intruder on his space and is now making this all about her.

    Instead she feels it rising up her throat. She feels it like a visceral thing—a live animal that bristles and leaves her raw. His eyes are so steady that she feels stripped bare beneath his gaze. Her eyes widen and she holds his gaze, tries to study it so that she could figure out what lives beneath it.

    “I don’t know,” she answers, shifting uncomfortably underneath the weight of the moment and his honest answers. “I would devour the world on some mornings,” she confesses, because it’s true. She would tear it apart and not feel an ounce of guilt in the moment. She would let it all fall apart, save her two children.

    But she can’t just leave it at that.

    “But I don’t think I’m very good at not caring,” she laughs, and it’s bitter. “I am sure that’s a surprise to you.” Her laugh falls apart on her tongue and she looks at the ground for a second before she glances up again, studying his face more intently, with a ferocity that surprises even her.

    “Are your parents wrong?”

    She pauses.

    “Were they?”

    Because she catches onto the way he says ‘our’ and she is desperate for the chance that she is not the only one who has to grapple with things like this—that she is not the only person who must find the answers.

    the only way to be being found is getting lost at first
    but all I find are more bridges to burn

    Reply
    #13

    sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
    B E T H L E H E M
    then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago


    Perhaps he should be grateful.
    Grateful that she has come along and saved him from trying to remember this thing that does not want to be remembered.
    Grateful, in some way, that she has taken her pain and injected it into the place in his chest where his heart had lived once.

    He is not built for this, not really. He is not built for sympathy or compassion. He does not know how to relate to her except to dredge up the sediment of his own pain. Pain he has kept buried for so long that there had been some small part of him that had forgotten it had existed at all. He had convinced himself early on that he didn’t need anyone and he has lived his entire life subscribed to this false belief.

    So, for that reason, he cannot be thankful that she has saved him from the wreckage of his thoughts. Because this is so much worse.

    He focuses hard on her pain. He lets it consume him. He lets her own it, but he allows it to belong to him, too, if only for the moment. So that he will not have to think about how fiercely he’d longed for love once. It had brought him to the edge of ruin and he’d clawed his way out so viciously that he’d bled with the effort.

    She laughs and it catches him off-guard. Perhaps more off-guard than the vitriol she’d spat at him to set this bizarre series of events into motion. He is neither wise nor kind. He is not personable or friendly. There is something in him that speaks of arrogance, even. There is no reason for her to share this with him, except that he had been there and he had been willing to invest himself in the rot of all that pain.

    He does not know if she’s being sarcastic but he assumes that she’s not when he shrugs a shoulder, says, “that isn’t surprising at all.” He has no doubt that she’ll make it known if it had, in fact, been said facetiously.

    She turns a question on him and the nostrils flare but he does not allow himself the luxury of squirming. How viciously he wants to! How viciously he wants to reorient his weight beneath the yoke she straps across his shoulders. Were his parents wrong? Moments earlier, he would have said yes. They were. They should have loved him. They should have wanted him.

    But now? Now he shakes his head. He shakes his head and he casts his gaze in the direction of the horizon.

    No, I don’t think they were.” He offers no elaboration
    .





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    #14
    ADNA

    I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse
    I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words

    It is a good thing is not built for sympathy, for compassion. She is not certain what she would do if she was faced with anything but the stoic lines of his face—unyielding and unwavering as she batters against him, as the oceans of her pain unlock from behind her rib and slam against the cliffs of his uncaring.

    It is easier to untangle herself from the murky waters that she has slipped into so easily when he is just standing there watching her. It is easier to try and pick through the threads that bind around her when he is not looking at her with pity in his eyes. He just watches and she straightens her shoulders.

    She’s not weak, she reminds herself, even as her heart thunders in her chest.

    When he says that it is not surprising, her lips quirk—just the barest hint of movement that reveal the hint of her fang before they settle again, like a curtain fluttering closed. It is a breath and then he is reacting to her own question. Just a breath before his nostrils are flaring and she feels something like victory to know that there is a pulse beneath his cold exterior—to know that she had managed to provoke this reaction.

    “I don’t think my parents were wrong either,” she confesses, and she wonders why it’s so easy to talk to him when he gives her no inclination that he wants to hear it. He’s not exactly drawing out information or prodding her with questions or even reacting when she spits it all up like venom in her belly. He’s not doing anything but just existing and she’s splitting her heart open and letting him see all of the ugly.

    Another hard breath. “My dad at least.”

    Another bitter laugh. “My mom thought I was maybe worth something.”

    That feels more outlandish now than imagining that her hunger would one day consume the world.

    the only way to being found is getting lost at first
    but all I find are more bridges to burn

    Reply
    #15

    sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
    B E T H L E H E M
    then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago


    Will he remember this?
    When she has gone, will he commit this moment to memory?
    Will he remember the pulse of her pain or the way she managed to thread it into the delicate architecture of his lungs?

    Or will she flit just out of reach, too?
    So many have come before her, spitting mad, gnashing their teeth.
    But none of them have made the pulse hitch. None of them have caught the breath in his throat. None of them have ever made him so fiercely want to fidget. Is it the weight of what she tells him or the weight of what she asks him that she finds so unbearable?

    She almost smiles and perhaps anyone else might have latched onto this. Might have tried to coax it out of her further. Might have murmured sweet nothings in an effort to elicit such a response. But he only watches, the expression passive. Not even the heart stirs. Perhaps it says something, though, that he’s noticed it at all.

    He doesn’t know what to make of her answer, so he makes no effort to dissect it. He lets it mean whatever she wants it to mean as he files it away. Maybe he’ll revisit it someday, this chance encounter on the edge of the meadow with a girl who spit venom. Maybe he’ll wonder what she meant. It’s more likely that he won’t, of course, because – aside from the one thing he cannot remember – it has never been in his nature to dwell.

    She laughs but it is mirthless, dark and dry. He studies her, tilts his head just a fraction. “And why aren’t you?” he asks. Because if she’s going to show him her darkness, he wants to see all of it.






    Reply
    #16
    ADNA

    I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse
    I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words

    Adna has never enjoyed the prickling sensation of vulnerability. She preferred the guarded feel of her scales and the knowledge that while she was not the scariest creature in the woods, she was scary enough. So why then does she feel the need to bare it all for this perfect stranger? Why does she feel comfortable letting him see the ugliest parts of her? The questions loop in her mind, tumbling over themselves.

    He continues to ask just the right question—putting pressure on just the right spot to make her nearly break. She resents it and finds that it’s almost cathartic to not care. It is cathartic to just lay it out for him to pick through. Let him see the carnage of his life and know—let him know just how worthless she is.

    “I had every opportunity as a child and I squandered it. My father was Champion of Loess and then King, and he took me on his kingdom visits to train me up.” It is easier to paint him as a monster. It is so much more difficult to try and remember the kind parts—the beautiful parts. The parts that she had worshiped so much as a child. “My mother was always kind and quiet. She was a healer but then she got magic one day and became Queen of Tephra.” A moment of puzzlement on her face. “I think that she still is.”

    She isn’t sure where she’s going with this—why she’s unraveling her history for him.

    “I have done nothing. I let my parent’s tumultuous relationship leave me angry and mean and I abandoned my family. I left my sister. I had children with a man I knew could never love me like he loved his wife. I almost left my own children—“ she cuts herself off, breathing hard. “No, I couldn’t do that.”

    Tears glitter in her sage green eyes as she looks down at her feet, at the ground beneath her.

    “I don’t even have a real reason for being the way that I am. Maybe that’s the worse part."

    the only way to being found is getting lost at first
    but all I find are more bridges to burn

    Reply
    #17

    sometimes i wonder, will god ever forgive us for what we've done to each other?
    B E T H L E H E M
    then i look around and realize, god left this place a long time ago


    He listens.
    For all intents and purposes, he hears what she is saying.
    But to say he understands would be a stretch.

    He has undoubtedly traversed this cursed place in its entirety. He has touched every forsaken corner of this land. But the names and the faces and the places and the stories he has encountered along the way have never stuck. They have never been worth remembering. So little is these days, he finds. He has seen so many fantastical, unimaginable things and they have been left by the wayside. It is not that he is difficult to impress – though he has been accused of it – it is merely that he has very little interest in the world at large, even less interest in the people in it.

    She is the daughter of royals and he supposes that means something. He supposes there must have been some level of expectation bred into her, held over her head – either by herself or by her parents. But he just goes on watching her, his head – that plain, ordinary thing, the color of mud with broad strip of white cut down the center – still tilted at that funny angle.

    He registers the tears that gather in her eyes but he says nothing. Her chest heaves with her breathing and he grits his teeth. He has no words of wisdom to offer, though he is undoubtedly older and more experienced in disappointment. He has been a disappointment since the day he was born and he wonders if that’s better or worse. Is it better to know that your child will never amount to anything or to harbor the belief that they will someday move mountains only to one day find that they don’t have it in them after all? Does it matter?

    You’re not mean,” he says after a pulsing beat of silence. His expression does not change. “At least, not as mean as you think you are.





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    #18
    ADNA

    I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse
    I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words

    Maybe she’s unstable. Maybe her mind has finally splintered and she’s left with the nonsensical pieces of it and has to make do. Maybe she’s just always had a little streak of crazy in her—something that she has been all too happy to indulge over the years. But suddenly the self-reflected, self-loathing turns outward, it nearly explodes out of her in a force that nearly knocks her to the ground; something all-consuming.

    “And what do you know about me?”

    Her teeth are bared again and there are tears in her eyes, her face still beautiful despite the things that she is so convinced make it ugly. She wants him to react, to say something. She wants him to feel this storm in her chest and know that he can’t just sit here and watch her come apart without feeling anything.

    She wishes that she had so many of those gifts that now run rampant through Beqanna. She wishes that she could force him to understand. She wishes that she could drown him in her pain until he finally realized what it means to burn with it. Anything but the impassive way that he stares at her now, anything but the stoic, unchanging face as she rips herself apart and then he—oh, he just dismisses it completely.

    “You don’t even know my name,” she spits and takes a step forward, her muscles trembling beneath her scaled exterior. “How do you know whether I’m mean or not?” She regrets how vulnerable she has been with him—how open she’s been even though he’s given her literally not a single reason to be. He’s just been quiet and what previously felt like a place where she could talk feels like judgement.

    It sets her blood on fire, leaves her furious and embarrassed and desperate for a shred of dignity.

    “I could tear your throat out and not regret it for a second,” she lies, taking another step forward.

    the only way to being found is getting lost at first
    but all I find are more bridges to burn

    Reply
    #19
    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]Is it for show?[/font][/font]
    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]Or has he flipped some mechanical switch in her brain  that has her spitting vitriol again, gnashing her fanged teeth?[/font][/font]
    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]He supposed it does not matter.[/font][/font]
    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]None of this matters at all, he thinks, not to him.[/font][/font]
    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]Though it seems to be of some vital importance to her. [/font][/font]

    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]He knows more about her now than he thought he would when he’d opened his eyes and found her standing there. He knows that she feels worthless compared to whatever expectations had been stacked against her. That it makes her cry to think of all the things she’s lost or were never hers to begin with. He knows that there is a softness in her, even in all that darkness. He knows enough and this is perhaps more than she’d wanted him to know. [/font][/font]

    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]It feels cruel to fashion up that slanted, wayward smirk in the face of the storm that lays her to waste. How thoroughly and viciously it consumes her as she descends upon him. Perhaps she has underestimated how little he cares - about this, about himself, about the aimless and unremarkable life he lives. (Can it be called living?). But he does not try to stop it. He makes no effort to hide it, just watches her with a glint or some dark something in his eye. [/font][/font]

    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]She issues her threat and he lifts his chin, peers down the length of his nose at her. “[/font][font=.SFUIText-Bold]Do it, then,[/font][font=.SFUIText]” he says and then he shifts his weight, lifts his chin even further to reveal the vulnerable length of his throat. “[/font][font=.SFUIText-Bold]You’d be doing us both a favor.[/font][font=.SFUIText]”[/font][/font]

    [font=.SF UI Text][font=.SFUIText]He drags in a long, steady breath. “[/font][font=.SFUIText-Bold]I will gladly be your martyr, the reason for being what you are[/font][font=.SFUIText].”[/font][/font]
    Reply
    #20
    ADNA

    I wish I could take the hands of time and turn them in reverse
    I'd take back every long goodbye with venom in my words

    She hates the way that he just smirks at her.

    She hates the way that even her fangs cannot quell him—cannot stir a reaction out of him. She feels so much, too much, and he seems to not feel at all and it is infuriating. It sets her every nerve on fire until she wants to scream; she wants to pound fists against him until he comes undone. Just let her see something, she thinks, wild with anguish. Just let her see some slip of humanity beneath his stone exterior.

    He lifts his chin to reveal his throat and the predator in her needs no other invitation.

    Adna is reacting before she can stop herself, hindquarters drawing underneath her and then pushing her off so that she is lunging forward. Her jaw unhinges and then snaps shut and before she knows it, she is by his side. He smells of cedar and the forest and her vision clicks to thermal so that he is nothing but a map of heat. She is shivering and her fangs are pressed against his throat now.

    She imagines she can hear the way that his pulse loops steadily underneath it.

    It is unnerving to know how little he is affected.

    For a second, she just stands there, contemplating, knowing that she could do it. She could sink her teeth into him and let the hunger consume her. She could be the monster that her father told her that they are. She could just unlock that beast that wails in the back of her mind and give it full control.

    But something stays her hand.

    Maybe it’s exhaustion or defeat in the face of his apathy.

    Maybe it’s something else entirely.

    She drops her head, fangs scraping against his flesh but never puncturing. She closes her eyes and presses her cheek to his shoulder, letting a slow shudder run up her spine and turn into tiny tremors.

    “How do I not care?” she asks. “How do I be more like you?”

    the only way to being found is getting lost at first
    but all I find are more bridges to burn

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