How strange it is that two souls from the same bloodline could be so very different. How an angel could have sprung forth from a demon – how the paths they chose were so very different. But isn’t that how it always goes? Infection and Elysha had been so very different – a golden girl and a darkened monster. Perhaps you, Tiphon, had inherited the very pure silk that rode through Moose (similar to Elysha) – perhaps the oozing black oil of death that Infection had obtained from Eight chose to spare you. Perhaps it would always be this way in the bloodline of Eight.
And yet- does this change things? The rift of the lands, the merging of light and dark and sister and brother – the cleansing of the magic in the land. Perhaps there would no longer be a “good” and “evil” – perhaps the monsters in our blood would finally stay boiled down to brittle bone. You are no longer an angel, and Eight is no longer a demon.
He sees you approach, braced against the harsh winter wind – it’s astonishing how real life feels when you are mortal. The magic has drained from you as well – the shimmering aura, the ability to walk into the land of the dead. Much like Eight, the atmosphere around you is different. There is no longer magic floating like light beams around you – you are simply Tiphon.
“Feels strange, does it not?” Also strange is how time can pass, years and thrones and raids and death – and yet grandfather and grandson remain the same. There were few ties the two of you had, few interactions (for life has deemed you both on a different path) – and yet there is no falsity in saying blood is thicker than water. There would never be a time to deny that no matter what, the connection between you two never frayed.
“That it has.” Eight’s eyes roamed the meadow about them – usually barren in the heart of winter, it is now thrumming with homeless equines. “Things seem to be starting to find a place, though.” He is, of course, talking about the recreation of the misted lands – the petitioning to rebuild a home, rebuild Beqanna.

∞

and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in

The things we ache for when we are young – such viscous and fickle things. What had Eight pined for? He could not remember. He had never known love as a child – his mother cast him off when his first inkling of magic strained into his veins. She had shirked him when she realized that he was dark and callous like his father. And then? I suppose he ached for acceptance. He wanted a place in life, and the Dewdrop Deserts was clearly not in. He wanted a mother like figure, one to nourish his spindly legs and watch his might and magic grow. Instead, he got Gallows and her army of misfit children. Instead, he got the Chamber. Instead, the years passed by and he spent his time getting fucked up and fleeing and living no real life. Instead, he forgot all that he wanted, all that he was.
And now? Well, now you know what it’s like, Tiphon – to live forever. You know what it feels like to watch wrinkles caress the face of your lover, to watch your children perish before you, to see your fellow kingdom dwellers and friends fall to the hands of death. Now you know that love is a meager hope when your days are unlimited – now you know that there comes a time when the heart can hold nothing more, when feelings simply drip like the trickle of rain from hanging leaf.
Was Eight as dark as his son? Who was to say, truly? Once upon a time, Eight reveled in the idea of evil - in being something feared and forsaken. Now, Eight was content as is – he had spent his time wreaking havoc, fucking pretty women, fleeing the world when he saw fit. Now, Eight simply lived, day in and day out – much like you.
It is peculiar how the grass always seems greener. How when we have a gift, it can feel like a curse. Isn’t it though, Tiphon? You beautiful angel, you halo maker – you were distraught with the decades of loss and lifetimes you have seen go by. You burned for the chance to feel real - to scar and wither and wrinkle and ache like all the others. And now it is gone. Now you are one of the others – perfectly, absolutely, normal. You could find a lover and make her swoon; grow old with her in the concaves of the land. You could see your children grow from doe eyed innocents into a blood line of all your own, and you will not outlive them. But now you can taste the clawing grasp of mortality, you want to back away (in fear? In distaste? In the fact of knowing that this isn’t where you should be?).
“Wrong does not necessarily stay forever.” And how true was that? How many times had Beqanna been bereft with turmoil, with war, with ages of silent living? She always kept turning, her years stretching and grasping for something new. This wrongness, this awkward feeling of not quite right - perhaps in time She would recant all this too, stretch another golden cloth before her children and welcome them back into her arms – their magic and angelic arcs would become theirs once again.
“Everything is gone.” He repeats your words, and they are stark and loud in the filmy silence of winter. But maybe this wasn’t quite completely true. What had Eight had that was even worth keeping? The Valley was his lover, but you cannot keep a lover around when they want to be gone. And so she had left him, snatched up and run away with the magic of Beqanna. Could Eight fault Her for that? Could he be so angered that the thing he had spent most time with (when he so often left so much behind) – had finally left him?
“And now you are lost. Now you are not so sure what – who – where you are.” Eight spoke the words solidly, because he knew. Eight had been there so long ago – a young magician, apt to live forever, drunk on his own power. He did not know who he was, because he could be – was – everything, anyone, anywhere.
How odd to be having such a (perhaps intimate?) conversation with you. For decades you and Eight were shadow and sun, always glancing off of one another but never truly touching. It seems it takes a reckoning to bring the bloodline back together. You finally have a chance to question the once magician king – you finally have the breath for answers you have wanted so badly. But does Eight have them? Can any man truly look deep enough inside himself for that form of truth?
The question catches Eight slightly off guard – he had never thought himself as one that could so easily detach, but it was starkly true. He never stayed in one place for long – although he guarded the Valley, he spent much of his time away from it, using only his magic to tie him to the Valley and call him back. He had laid with plenty of women, sired children, even created some form of friendships – but nothing stuck, he never stayed.
“I am not you, Tiphon.” As the words spilled from his mouth, the reality of how very different their blood ran. How interesting it was that their lineage held such a drastic measure of light versus dark. ”It seems you have inherited your grandmother’s blood more than my own. It is both a pity, a curse, and a gift.” Eight looks deeply into your eyes, for perhaps the first time in the decades you have been known to him, and indeed he sees the golden angel inside of you. “I do not detach, because I cannot attach to begin with. It is both a pity, a curse, and a gift.”

∞

and now the storm is coming, the storm is coming in