"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
I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you
Her wanderings finally lead her here.
It had taken several days after she had finally emerged to piece together the logical conclusion—for her to find an answer. Her heart continued to send out echoes, small cries that reverberate throughout all of Beqanna. She reaches for a sound of him; she reaches for any piece of him that she can find. It is a desperate kind of searching, a hunt that always ends up taking her back to the place where she began.
It doesn’t destroy her, but she feels the rivers of her heart changing.
She feels the way that it solidifies; the hurt that continues pounding like waves against the shore.
But, finally, she finds the answer in a dream. She wakes suddenly, eyes opening as white as the stars above and lifts. She does not mean to stay here. She does not mean to search through this plane. Instead, she angles her head toward the galaxies and exhales herself into the spinning array of constellations.
Her breath escapes out of her into a plume of smoke, blending with her world of ash, and she slowly lowers herself back to the ground even as her consciousness floods outward. It cuts through the sky like a spear until it pierces the veil of the Afterlife and when it reforms, she stands there as she did before all of this began. Flowers still bloom in her hair and the tattoo curves up her spine, but she is otherwise unmarked.
She is washed in the silvery light of the moon that is not her moon and the air is sweet and crisp. She can taste honeysuckle on it and the smell of fruit hanging heavy from branches. It is a gentle perfume and a reminder of life in a place that should hold none. Her eyes open hazel and her mouth falls into a soft line.
There is none of the rage on her face and none of the exhaustion and none of the mourning.
There is just a girl who waits in a world hung perpetually in the midnight hour.
Just a girl who turns her gaze to the horizon and cradles hope to her breast like the last piece it was.
" i could be ugly in loving you. filthy and soft-mouthed. wolf-tongued and terrible.
i could carry my heart in my mouth like a bird dog to you, so gently i wouldn’t leave a mark. "
“It’s always night, here,” Larva says as each of the serpents watch the sky above them. Sometimes the stars wander into the shapes of their memories, of Vulgaris taking his first steps or Larva meeting Dillan for the first time. Time seems to crawl along and spin right out of their grasp all at once but he doesn’t seem to mind. Vulgaris just lets his shoulder lightly meet his father’s as the sky shows them Adna playing shortly after her birth. The elder man laughs softly and turns to look at his son, each of them with tired eyes and satisfied smiles.
When Leliana appears, he lifts his gaze to observe her. A slow sigh slips from his lungs before he nudges his youngest son, steering his attention toward her. Vulgaris swallows hard and hesitates before another nudge convinces him to approach her, head hung low in shame and remorse. Each step feels weightless and more like simply floating toward her as he used to in dreams. His scales and fangs are all swept from his face like glimmering dust in the moonlight as he bridges the final gap between them. His lips find the corner of her jaw but he can’t bring himself to pull away and meet her gaze.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Leliana. But you’re not dead, are you?” he asks curiously, watching her with bright green eyes. Vulgaris lifts his head at last and does his best to smile for her, but there is sorrow in the corners of his lips that he cannot hide from her. She isn’t here to stay and he knows it. She has to return to her kingdom, to their children. They won’t drift through the rest of eternity as his parents do, together forever with nothing to drag them apart anymore. In a way he has come to envy both the living and the dead.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stay, Leli. Everything was my fault,” he says softly with his lips hovering over her neck. “You deserved your revenge but I couldn’t go back on my oath.”
He can only vaguely recall the way the lava burned or how his last breaths felt like agony before it all went black. The pain feels even longer ago than the day they met, though, so he doesn’t dwell on it much. Mostly he’s spent his time explaining how they met and how they fell in love. He recited all of his children’s names for Larva and what he loved most about them. Vulgaris even confessed his crimes against his family and watched them played out against the stars.
“I want you to go back and do everything I held you back from. I want you to find someone better.”
His voice cracks but he doesn’t try to retract his words. Behind him, Larva simply watches, like ancient carvings of gods observing the goings on of mortals from up on temple ledges.
@[leliana] my two saddest ponies all at once. this is going to be a rollercoaster.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you
Before she knows it, she finds him—but he is not alone. With him is another stallion, older and carved from stone. She finds his eyes and is not surprised at all to see that they are the same shade as Vulgaris’. She is not surprised to know the shape of them set in his features and her face blossoms like a rose before him. There is sorrow beneath it like a river’s current, but it cannot stop the sheer joy at reunion.
The absolute, earth-shattering joy at these stolen moments.
“I am not dead,” she says quietly in affirmation as Vulgaris’ lips find her flesh. “But it is difficult to not feel as if I am.” After all, the world has taken so much from her. She has felt the blood of innocents on her hands. She lost Vulgaris. She has no idea where Dovev is. Magnus remains bloodied and bruised and refuses her help in accelerating the healing. Tephra remains coated in a heavy layer of ash and destruction.
If that is not death, what is?
But in this cocoon of silence and awe, she does not have to sink into the belly of her despair. She does not need to bathe in the waters of her failures. She is washed clean of them and she can turn to meet his gaze when he finally does look at her, when his smile wavers. “It was never about revenge,” she says quietly, but there is not admonishment in her voice. How could he understand what pierced her heart when he had been carved for war from the start? He had only known bloodshed and chaos on his tongue.
“I wanted,” she pauses, correcting herself gently, “I needed to make things right. It was an impossible calling in my blood. I couldn’t ignore it.” There is a soft laugh, broken on her lips as she leans to press her forehead into the strength of his neck, wondering at the way he feels the same and yet so different.
“And what did it bring me? Children were hurt. Innocents were killed. Families torn apart. My thirst for justice did more harm than had I simply let the injustices continue.” She feels the reality of it quake in her bones, a fear that it may rip her apart should she pause long enough to let it. But he is there and real and in this world, she does not have to feel the impossible sting of the dagger in her breast.
Another time.
Another time.
“Come back to me,” she pleas, finding the curve of his jaw and the velvet of his mouth.
“Please. Don’t leave me and our family alone. We need you.”
" i could be ugly in loving you. filthy and soft-mouthed. wolf-tongued and terrible.
i could carry my heart in my mouth like a bird dog to you, so gently i wouldn’t leave a mark. "
Her voice is soft the way it used to be, gentle and kind when he uses the wrong word for her war. He nods slowly when she explains and he knows what she means. When he thought Dovev had hurt her, he wanted to tear Nerine apart and set fire to everything they ever loved. Everything in his core cried out for justice back then. He presses more kisses, gentler this time, against her face when she lets her regret pour out in waves. He would do anything to keep her from hurting like this, he thinks.
“But you didn’t mean to. I know you only wanted us to pay for our crimes. I know.”
He breathes her in and sighs, wishing he could drink her pain into himself so she wouldn’t carry that burden by herself. But then she asks him to come back and he nearly chokes at the thought of being brought back to life. Here, in the eternal night, he can no longer harm anyone or break her heart the way he routinely used to. Larva finally moves closer, taller than each of them with a solemn face.
“I understand if you have to go. We’ll have the rest of forever to catch up again, Vulgaris.”
Vulgaris looks back to him, brows furrowed as he weighs his options. He misses falling asleep beside her, especially after their time apart, but could he risk ruining their lives again? She could finally have a life she deserved and yet she came all this way to call him back to the land of the living. He turns back to her and trails more delicate kisses against her jaw, down her neck as he holds her close.
“I would die a hundred more deaths to make you happy. It’s the coming back that terrifies me.. But I will do anything for you, Leliana.”
Larva feels a half hearted smile creep across his face as he begins the long walk back to his own wife, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll be sure to tell Dillan all our grandchildren’s names.” Vulgaris watches him go and it summons a strange sort of ache in his chest. They’ll be reunited again, eventually, but already he misses his parents before the old serpent is even out of sight. He buries his face in Leli’s mane and breathes a slow sigh as he tries to accept what’s to come.
I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you
They meld together and she feels a tear hit her cheek; it feels cleansing and the emotions that clash in her breast go to war. She laughs softly and it is the sound of spring rain as she presses a kiss into the ghost of his hide. “I didn’t want anyone to pay,” she confesses as another tear falls. “I just wanted it to stop. I wanted to see the cruelty come to an end. I wanted to know I didn’t turn my cheek when it continued.”
It feels so inadequate to explain the dying star in her chest in such a way.
It feels painfully small to try and she can only laugh, can only shake her head at the way her tongue trips over itself and the way they continue to misunderstand one another. But they don’t on the important pieces. They don’t on what matters and her face tilts upward when his father comes to them. “Thank you,” she breathes, her expression open and vulnerable. “Thank you for caring for him here.”
But her attention can’t be caught by Larva for forever.
Vulgaris has a gravity all of his own and she’s soon caught in the riptide of it. She is pulled back in closer to him and her lips find all the angles of his face she knows so well. The angles that are made anew in this plane, washed in the light of the moon that never leaves. They are gentler, softer, and she falls in love with them in the same way she fell in love with all of his harsh angles that night by the river.
“I don’t need you to die,” she whispers into him, finding her chest against his—finding home. “I need you to live. I need you to fight for that.” Her cheek comes to rest against his broad back and she shudders. “I don’t know what I will be like when I go back.” She had risen from the ash and stood over a land covered in the pockmarks of the war she breathed into existence. She had solidified into a core of her pain.
“But I know who I can be if you come back with me.”
She knows that in their world, there’s still a chance for the sun to rise again.
" i could be ugly in loving you. filthy and soft-mouthed. wolf-tongued and terrible.
i could carry my heart in my mouth like a bird dog to you, so gently i wouldn’t leave a mark. "
He knew he could never destroy the war machine that he helped to build. When the world asked him to choose, he rejected the offers and chose death instead. Vulgaris let it swallow him whole and slept for what felt like a hundred years in the blink of an eye. Larva doesn’t linger to answer her thanks but rather takes his few words and disappears in the distance like the ghost he’s always been. Her love works quickly to fill the void his family leaves and he finds himself smiling against her skin. How strange, to feel her lips on his bare face without the scales to dull her affections.
How strange to be so new and yet so old all at once.
“Then I will live a thousand lives if each one is with you,” he says against her shoulder. She has risen from the ashes of his home but he will rise from his own grave to carry her back. The fire of his thousand-sun heart would have it no other way. He closes his green eyes and listens to her voice with his ear against her skin, admires how her voice sounds as it echoes off her ribs in this afterlife.
“I didn’t know who I was before any of this. All I really knew for certain was that I loved you. It’s the one thing that’s kept me anchored when I thought all was lost.”
His heart is all scar-tissue now from beating itself against the fortress of her magic but it can breathe a sigh of relief when she speaks again. The war in Tephra is over just as the war between them has died. Vulgaris finally lifts his head and breathes a slow sigh as he finds her eyes once more.
The details feel out of reach when she tries to catch them, slipping past her like the gossamer silk of a spider's web. There’s a feeling buried someplace deep inside her chest, tangled in the fingers of her ribs, something that catches and pricks painfully at her. A thing that desperately wants to be discovered, or remembered, a thing that she is desperate to forget.
So she turns a shoulder to it because that is easier, and because when she opens her eyes it still feels like she’s waking in a dream.
“How strange.” She murmurs, lifting that delicately beautiful face to peer around a place with no shape and no sound and no edges for her eyes to fall against. It is a long while before she tries to stand, and so many of those early seconds are spent feeling like something is off or wrong, something she can’t quite place. They add weight to her brow, draw a deep furrow against a shade of soft, dappled mahogany someplace hidden beneath the tangles of a dark silk forelock.
It is unease that finally pushes her to her feet, unease that urges her forward into a dreamscape that swirls with grey and white and fog, a place that feels like it might have been beautiful if it had a sound. She imagines it would sound like morning, with birds that sing too loud and too soon at a sun that rises too slowly. There would be a creek, too, and this strange silver mist would roll right off the waters glittering surface - and trees. Where else would the birds be singing from if not from the leafy fingertips of beautiful birch trees.
But even though she tries so hard to cling to that peaceful picture in her mind, there is still that prickle in her chest, a burr caught between her ribs and it hurts more with every hesitant step she takes. With every quiet breath she -
She freezes, is frozen by that sudden surreal panic that rises like a tide in her belly. Is locked in place by bones that tell her no and joints that cling too tight, too painful.
She doesn’t breathe.
She doesn’t breathe. She doesn’t breathe.
And all at once she feels like she must be suffocating, like her lungs should be burning and the vessels in her eyes should be swelling and bursting. Like the world should be coming undone, should be shattering to pieces around her ears. Something, anything, everything should be happening because she doesn’t breathe, can’t breathe, doesn’t need to breathe.
But nothing happens, not even a heaving in her chest as the panic sinks its teeth into the vulnerable meat of her heart, and the memory of adrenaline pushes her into a run.
She just needs to get out of this place, this dream? Just needs to wake up and forget everything because these truths bubbling up inside her make her feel so small and lost and scared, make her see things at the edges of her mind that she doesn’t want to acknowledge. A girl on fire and crying out in pain, and it’s so strange because she wears Linnea’s quiet face.
Then she hears it, the sound of voices, of familiar voices that make her forget the coldness settling in her skin, and the way her lungs sit frozen in her chest. She collides with her mother, interrupts a moment between them that should’ve been gentle and beautiful and so pure. But she shatters it with her rough, ragged edges and the ice of her skin when she presses her face into Leliana’s shoulder. She feels immediately braver as any child does when they’ve found their protector, feels like it’ll be okay now because mom is here and so is dad and they would never let anything bad happen to her. So there’s so much aching relief on her face when she lifts it to glance bashfully between her parents, finally feeling foolish for making such a scene. “I thought something was wrong,” she explains with such soft, earnest eyes, “I don't know how I got here or where here even is, but you’re here too so it must be okay.” She takes a deep breath, a shaky sigh, and curls her body in against her mothers long legs, hiding beneath a wing from mist trying too hard to touch her skin. “I just got a little scared because I can’t find my heartbeat anymore.”
She can feel the magic rising like a phoenix in her chest. Something good. Something pure. It feels like her healing once had—something that she can understand and mold and direct. She presses kisses into him and feels it responding, weaving toward him and pulling him closer into her. She wants to breathe life into him again, wants to breath in the saltwater from his lungs and then spit it back onto the ground.
But before she can, before she finishes pouring her magic into him, a voice catches her attention.
And all of the joy in the moment dissolves into pure fear.
She breaks apart from Vulgaris as her child crashes into her chest. Before she can stop herself, she is reaching down and pressing crimson lips into the soft down of Linnea. “Shh,” she is whispering as she smoothes back her hair, as she presses another kiss into her forehead. “It’s okay,” she murmurs even as she feels her heart begin to stutter in her chest, as she begins to feel her throat tighten.
Without breaking from her, she dips into her mind and feels herself freeze. She feels the memory of her daughter’s death sear into the back of her brain. She feels the pain and the darkness and when she opens her eyes to look at her husband, they are wide. It takes every inch of her strength to keep her composure, to hold her ghostly daughter to her breast, to keep her breathing even. “Of course things are okay, my darling,” she says. “How could anything not be okay when your family is with you?”
Her voice is soft and calm, despite the way that her mind whirls, the cogs beginning to turn. She knows that she has enough power within her to pull Vulgaris back, but both of them? So much of her magic has already pooled into him, a hook irreversibly sunk into his flesh and just ready to pull him back. But she knows she can’t just turn her back to her beautiful daughter and so she lets her mind wander to where her body rests in Tephra, where the vegetation begins to grow thick around her slumbering form.
“Do you trust me, little bird?” she whispers, looking up at Vulgaris, letting the question be for him too.
it's only you and me there until the darkness calls let's face the dawn together; we'll brave whatever comes
06-04-2019, 10:09 PM (This post was last modified: 06-04-2019, 10:09 PM by vulgaris.)
VulgariS
" i could be ugly in loving you. filthy and soft-mouthed. wolf-tongued and terrible.
i could carry my heart in my mouth like a bird dog to you, so gently i wouldn’t leave a mark. "
The familiar fingertips of her healing and her magic find their way across his skin and he doesn’t shy from them as they begin to put him back together. He doesn’t notice their yearling daughter rushing toward them, her silent hooves finding muted sand until she collides with Leliana. Vulgaris opens his eyes and watches his wife stumble back before quickly gathering the girl up in her embrace. Why is she here? She’s a healer; she shouldn’t be able to travel between this world and the one before it. His brows furrow as he tries to make sense of it until the sky replaces its visions of the serpent’s life with those of his daughter.
No. Not yet, not like this.
There is no blood in his veins but he feels his body turn ice cold with dread as he watches her burn in pain. His baby, his Linnea is supposed to live much longer than her parents so that she can experience the world. She’s supposed to grow old and live a happy life. Luckily there is no breath for him to steady or a heart to slam into his ribs as he’s filled to the brim with dismay. He need only hide his expression from his darling daughter right now.
“You’re with us now, Linnea. Everything is going to be alright now,” he says as he steps forward and kisses her small temple. “Close your eyes and when you open them, we’ll be back in Tephra. I promise.”
He swallows hard and lifts his head to meet Leliana’s. Vulgaris gives her a snort nod and he braces himself for whatever is about to come. The words don’t find his lips but he hopes his wife knows to save their daughter if there is only enough time or strength left in her for one of them. Somehow, he would find another way back to them.
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