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[open] my mother told me some day i would buy galleys with good oars, sail to distant shores - Printable Version

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my mother told me some day i would buy galleys with good oars, sail to distant shores - Sol - 04-25-2023

What am I supposed to do when I want to talk about peace and understanding
But you only understand the language of violence?
Sometimes, questions come up in life that beg—no, demand to be answered.  They cannot be ignored; failure to respond is an answer.  Failure to act is giving Death permission to come into your space and do as He pleases.  So, when the questions come up, how do you answer?

What do you do?
 
What are you willing to give up to save someone you love?
 
Nocturnal had loved Cross in her own, broken way.  She hadn’t remembered Quark or their children, didn’t remember her death—nor her resurrections—and she had finally felt free enough to be happy.  Sol was conceived during one of the happiest moments of her life.  Free from her own ambition and duties, she had finally been allowed to be a mother and simply be.
 
But then something happened.  Something bad.  Something so, so terrible she had blocked it out from her memory, even here, even in Death’s realm.
 
Sol had been taken from her, dragged off by some creature the likes of which this world had never seen and Nocturnal had thought she would never find her sweet darling girl again.
 
It was Gendry all over again.
 
She hadn’t been able to find him, hadn’t been able to save him (not even after going to war with The Valley)—fortunately, though, he had taken after Quark and had been strong enough to save himself.  He found his family and lived and died and made peace with his demons all on his own.  Nocturnal had destroyed her whole life searching for him and still, she never brought him home.
 
Sol?
 
She had been just a baby.
 
The great dragon took a deep breath, exhaling a calming puff of black smoke through her nostrils.  The black ocean stretched out endlessly before her, as did the ghostly white beach she now rested upon, and Nocturnal couldn’t help but think that this was the worst part about being dead.  The silence, the endless amount of time she had to simply think about things and how terribly everything had gone.  How much, how often, and how she had failed her family in nearly every single way.  A warrior queen who had won every battle except the ones that mattered.
 
Nocturnal chuckled, at first, her whole body shaking with the motion.  She tried to stop herself from laughing but couldn’t quite control it.  Before long, her slight chuckle had turned into full blown cackling and the huge beast rolled over on her side, shrinking whilst her whole scaly body convulsed with laughter.  Soon, her black scales turned to soft dark flesh and silvery-brown hair.  She gave up her wings, and fangs, and fiery breath for hooves and blunt teeth best used for nibbling on grass.  The mare rubbed her dark face against the sand, her scar half-buried in it, and she reveled in the grittiness of its texture before forcing herself to get back up to her feet.
 
She kicked off, racing down the empty shoreline, spooking the ghostly carrion-birds that lingered in the dead trees and causing demonic creatures to hiss at her approach.  She knew exactly where she was going, though she didn’t know how, and she knew exactly what she was going to do.
 
Nocturnal raced towards Death Himself, a pale white stallion with an eerie glow; He waited at the End for everyone, no matter who they were.  They could find Him anywhere; He was everywhere they looked—they only need to have the intent.
 
~
 
She slid to a halt before Him, feeling no need to huff and puff—she was dead, after all—and she looked Him straight in His inky black eyes.  “May I request something of you?”
 
“Hm?”
 
“Please let me see my daughter.”
 
“Which one?”
 
“My youngest.”
 
“You will not like it.”
 
Nocturnal felt a weight in her very soul, an agony, a sudden desperation that only a mother could feel for their child—by blood, or by love and choice.  “I do not care, let me see her.”  She stepped closer to Him, almost nose to nose, and He sighed heavily before reaching out to touch her.  She felt a sudden pull and was jerked from the ground; they soared through the sky, across heaven, earth, and dimension.
 
She saw stars, and moons, and suns, and planets, and things she never could have imagined, and then finally they found themselves in a world that was indescribable.  It was a place of nightmares, of pain, of torture and her child was screaming.
 
“No, no, no,” Nocturnal sobbed, stepping forwards to try and touch her child’s bloodied shoulder—but she stepped right through her.  “Please make it stop.”
 
“I cannot.”
 
“Please—please, I will do anything.  Please.  Make me cease to be, take my fucking soul, remove me from existence.  I know you can.”
 
“You will never come back.  There will be no reincarnation, no chance at redemption—”
 
“I know, I know.  Please do it.  I will do anything, I will take her place if I must.  Please save her.  Please.”
 
“Very well,” He nodded, looking between the two of them—the mother, sobbing and desperate, and the child who had been locked in place, frozen in time, torn to pieces repeatedly and then put back together.  She was Their plaything and He wondered what had drawn them to her so, what had made Them come for her and take her to this awful place.  “Would you like to say goodbye?”
 
“No,” Nocturnal shook her head.  “No, she has suffered enough—just… I want her to know she was loved.  I want her to be with my father, I know he has returned.  I haven’t seen him for some time.”
 
“I can put her there, but I cannot control what happens after.”
 
“That is enough, she will find her way—I… please, give her something to keep her safe once I am gone.”
 
“Very well.  She won’t even remember this terrible place.”
 
And with that, Nocturnal disappeared forever.  Her soul gone, wiped clean from existence.  There was nothing else to be done, nothing to be said.  She had sacrificed everything.  She had given everything.  And that, in itself, was her own form of redemption.
 
~
 
It was cold, that was the first thing she was very much aware of; she jerked her head up suddenly, scrambling to get to her feet—last thing she remembered, she had been walking along in The Forest listening to her mother tell her a story.  Something had been following them and then… nothing.  Sol could remember nothing and as far as she could tell, her mother was nowhere to be found.  “Mama?”  She called out, though nothing answered her except the hooting of a lonesome old owl.
 
“Mama, where are you?  Are you out there?”
 
Sol took a tentative step forward, her ears swiveling back and her nostrils flaring.  She couldn’t even so much as catch a whiff of her mother, which in itself was surprising, but the fact that she couldn’t even remember what she smelled like came as more of a shock.  “Something is wrong here,” she murmured, peering around at the white birch trees.  They looked nothing like the trees ‘back home.’  “Something is very, very wrong here.”
 
Little did the filly know she was home, as home as she would ever be.
sol
No Crosses Count x Nocturnal


RE: my mother told me some day i would buy galleys with good oars, sail to distant shores - Tatter - 04-25-2023


Burn everything you love then burn the ashes.
In the end everything collides;
My childhood spat back out the monster that you see.

Nocturnal is one that he had rarely seen in the Afterlife, despite their closeness in life. There were so many circumstances that had pulled them apart - war and revivals and new love and new children and so many other things, but perhaps the one thing that had been their downfall in the end was the idea of eternity. The thought that all of time had remained spread before them, to be united as a family for as long as the universe continued to exist. Life had separated them, but Death had reunited them, and it is all too possible that Tatter had taken that for granted.

It’s been years since the last time that they had spoken, each of them drawn back to the world of the living for separate reasons. It had been a brief conversation as the day had been ending, and they had parted with a swift embrace and a promise to meet up again soon, to properly catch up on all that life had offered them.

He hasn’t seen her since.

He hopes that maybe the return of the Chamber would draw her from hiding, that the electric pull of her birthplace would summon her to reappear. In his mind she will simply always exist, always be the only constant in his life, no matter where this life drags him. Though his death so many years ago had come before hers, her death had almost been too much for him to bear; his soul had threatened to rip open the gates of the Underworld alone, and it had nearly destroyed him.

The idea that she could be gone, erased from existence?
Inconceivable.

The soft hooting of an owl startles him from his thoughts, and the stallion huffs out a breath as dusk begins to gather around him. The birch forest is where he has always felt most at home, though he had once called the cliffside caverns his favorite. That had been another time, another age, nearly. He is turning to head deeper into the forest when the bleating of a child catches his attention, and his dark head swivels toward the noise.

The scene is achingly familiar as the filly comes into view, and he swears he knows the exact shade the girl’s adult coat will come in, and when he sees her golden eye he wants to crash to the ground. “What is your name, child?” he asks her, possibly more gruffly than he intended, but his throat feels thick, and his vision seems to be swimming before him.

“Where is your mother, girl? Who is your mother?”

Tatter.




@ Sol

RE: my mother told me some day i would buy galleys with good oars, sail to distant shores - Sol - 04-26-2023

What am I supposed to do when I want to talk about peace and understanding
But you only understand the language of violence?
Years ago, though in Sol’s mind it had only been months, her mother had recounted the attack that had occurred when she wandered too far away from her father.  The stallion had cornered her alone in The Meadow and she had been lucky to leave with her life.  She never strayed from her father again, not until she was an adult, and Sol had taken the cautionary tale to heart; so, when Tatter appeared, barking questions, Sol shrieked and tried to scramble away from him—tried and failed and tripped over her own clumsy feet.  “Mama!” She wailed again, curling in on herself, though her mother never appeared and the only thing that answered her whimpering was the quiet rush of wind through the thin white trees.

“I don’t know where she is,” Sol mumbled into her leg, thick warm tears sliding down her cheeks, she tried curling herself into a tight little ball.  “She was just here with me.” When he didn’t launch into attacking her, the filly lifted her dark head and fixed him with a stare so intense that, despite her tear-streaked face, it rivaled her dam.

“Her name is Nocturnal,” Sol told him, her ears springing forward; he looked so sad, so lost, that she slowly started getting back up and inched towards him, reaching out with her little nose—marked with a snip identical to his own—to touch it against his.  She recoiled after the slight brief contact, unsure if it was welcome or not, and cocked her head to peer up at him shyly with her ruby red right eye.

“My name is Sol,” she smiled sweetly, desperate to lift the sudden blanket of absolute silence, oblivious to his grief in the innocent way only a child could be.  “Just like the sun.”
sol
No Crosses Count x Nocturnal