K

oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

Slowly (agonizingly slowly), the frayed ends of my sanity meld back together. The hallucinogenic trances become few and far between as I meander alongside Lilliana, though she often feels I'm well enough to leave at times. Despite the fact that our dedication to one another's company had redoubled after a couple episodes of me panic-teleporting, such instances of unpredictability no longer plague us. When Lilliana does leave me at the river to go and visit the other important individuals in her life (because really, I am sane enough now to realize that she has a whole life outside of her influence on mine), it gets lonely; but mostly, I enjoy the experience.

Learning to be alone with myself hasn't been easy... In fact, I'm not sure I've learned at all. For one thing, when sleep evades me, I spend my hours tracing every inch of the riverlands. While it has occurred to me that I might search elsewhere for those individuals whom I call family, the strength has yet to gather in my mind and my body; even more than that, this place has always been where I come to in times of homelessness and loss.

Loss.

The word rings heavy in my gut, echoing through to my throat moments later. Perhaps it had been on account of my delirium, but when my firstborn daughter died, I felt the ripple of her energy transferring from one astral dimension to the next like a bullet through my heart. That episode (complete with full seizures and sleep-talking) had been traumatic to view from the outside, but from within... doubtlessly painful, but much more peaceful. A gentle wrenching of my heart in two. Clasping Warlight to my chest in the hazy blue-grey of the afterlife seemed a grievously unacceptable goodbye - not that it would be goodbye forever (not in the way it is for those who are severed from the afterlife by a lack of magic), but it still haunted me. Haunts me. Watching her mortal wounds melting away amidst the neutrality of death left me hollow, wondering at the pain she endured as she left this world, my sweet little girl... The leader of my triplets, the general I had always imagined her being as I watched her play, the sweet young woman whom I now realize I could never have spent enough time with no matter how hard I tried. Letting go of her life felt like losing a piece of my heart I hadn't realized had swollen to occupy every length hollow of my ribcage.

Yet when she whispered to me the tale of her pressing her son into Solace's arms, another piece of my heart started back to its beating. Hope filled my breast. It made goodbye sweeter - but never easier.

I send out of thread of love to the afterlife now, thinking of those moments Will and I spent together. I hope she can hear me; I hope she knows that she has always been enough.

Tonight, my legs do not wander restlessly.

Tonight, I loosen my mind - the knowledge that my wife is out there somewhere recenters the energy that has been off kilter since my rebirth. Imagining our mental reunion may bring tremors to my innards (tremors born from a fear of that comatose state I was forced to induce in my beautiful wife for so long, for too long), but they cannot stop me from trying.

Not when I know she's out there.

Kagerus.

Her voice finds mine as though the subtle light of my unconsciousness is her sun and all of her stars, too.

A desperate need to rush forward and assail her with a greeting of a similar intensity grips me.

Solace!

Our physical distance leaves the dream murky - I know that she's out there, but my recent turbulence in life leaves my mental skills far from honed. I sense my corporeal form stumbling through the midnight riverland, rushing towards the source of the voice which has so recently uttered my name.

In the dreamscape, tendrils of me lash through the haze, seeking but one entity upon which to attach themselves. When they land true for a single moment, it's as though the heavens open above us - but the moment is fleeting, and the seam of joy closes. My search continues.

And yet, in that moment, I'd felt another lifeform attached quite literally to my wife's - questions tangle into the fray that is my mind, further disquieting my attempts to find her.

Solace! I call again - and in my throat, I feel the name ripped into the cool autumn air. Half awake and half asleep, I dream of reuniting with the one whom I've so desperately been longing for...

K

oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

Her battle-steady will to find me cuts like a blade through the final restraints shackling my mind. Were anyone to ask who Warlight received her general-esque characteristics from, I would always answer with the name of my lover; though I may have been a general, Solace was a queen. Her will yields to none. When her the world witnesses the making of her mind, it bends to accommodate her wishes. A bow at the middle; a display of untarnished respect.

The authority of her voice speaks to these truths, its unwavering power clearing the haze from my consciousness. In all the ways she and I have found to weave our souls together, it has never quite been like this; the desperation of a lifetime apart bleeds into the mix, staining us the blood-red of a battle won.

The feeling of the fall, the feeling of the high kicking in.

Oh, my love.

Everything climbs, love and joy and jubilation tantamount - and then it drops (rise and fall, give and take, my hold on this slippery magic an imperfect one). What remains of my sleepiness disperses into the surrounding night air as my consciousness slams uncomfortably into my corporeal form, one which walks desperately in the direction of my mate. The familiar caress of her consciousness fuels my haste, sending me into a mad dash through the riverlands, the uneven terrain ringing crystal against the obsidian of my hooves.

Her light guides me when consciousness insists that our dreams severe. At first, following the blue of the light is as natural as following a course of migration; it's only when the light throbs and pulsates that I realize what this truly means. Reunion, a year of coma. Reunion, after months of death. Reunion, after months of rebirth.

The child in me who fell in love with the child in her cries. Her tears are sweet and pure; she is finally coming home.

When the crispness of unseasonable frost gives way beneath me, I slow. Round a bend. Breathe in - but its not air that fills my lungs, it is only her. Cast in an electric-green hue, she stands a beacon, reminding me uncannily of the day we took our exodus from Hyaline, summoning our many many subjects to the Cove. Another sort of homecoming.

The bothersome thought of politics bothers me no more as I fold into her embrace (a seamless transition, as though we are two halves of one whole). What was and what may have been give way for thoughts only of now, only of here; the doubts and the fears which have plagued me during my time back on this earth forget themselves. With our shadows cast long behind us, we stand together, the fibers of our beings commingling to the nth degree. "Solace." Her name falls from my lips as one might utter the names of gods; a prayer. My lips find the small of her shoulder, pulling her closer to me than ever before. "Solace - I am never leaving you again." The world shifts around us, obeying for now, an environment hell bent on giving two lovers the one thing they want most.

Dawn rises in the corners of my mind when I finally pull away, though only minutes have passed. Minutes that I would stretch into an eternity were I not already aware of how harmful an eternity in one position can be. Instead, I relish in the bittersweetness of the present, preferring for now to give myself utterly over to the sweet, and to forget the bitter. Though I step back and leave her touch, something inside me is once again whole. It never clicked until now that I would always have an emptiness without her - that that emptiness can only, and will ever only, be filled by her.

My eyes turn reluctantly, then linger on the colt. He looks like her. He looks like us.

"Clegane," I murmur, voice gathering in my throat like folded fabric. "Sweet one... your mother says hello." I inhale as if to say hello, but the rest becomes knotted just below my jaw. Grief pulls ugly at my expression, bringing my head again into Solace's chest. I thought I would be strong delivering this news - but with my wife next to me, and the image of our firstborn fading into the afterlife, it is all too much to handle. My emotions run rampant; I lose myself in the fray. "Oh God, Sol, I can't believe she's gone... I can't believe... She's gone..."