[open] I thought that love was a kind of emptiness; birthing, any

[garbage]

he must be wicked to deserve such pain;

 
He'd been in denial, at first. Denial at the way his stomach swelled, the flutter inside of him. It’s not that he hasn’t been here before – he remembers too well how it had been with Sleaze, the strangeness of it, his body shifting in ways he had not known it could shift.
He should have expected it. Why else would the dark god had come to him, all stars and savagery, if not to sow his seed in whatever magical ways granted to him?
(And it’s not that Garbage had been unwilling. No, he had gone to him, enchanted, and he did not ask if Carnage recognized him as his disgraced son’s consort, for that was very long ago.)
(Messed up. It’s all so fucking messed up. But he had wanted it. He’d wanted to taste magic again.)
 
Denial was long gone, now, stomach stretched to the point of pain and the movement within him incessant. He knows it will be soon, but is still surprised when the cramps take him. The pain is unique in the way it grips at his insides, twists, but Garbage is silent for it.
Pain is familiar. Pain can be weathered.
Still, it takes him to his knees, then to his side. The contractions increase, and then something within him gives, and then there is a child. Another son, black like Sleaze had been, but he looks as if he has been dipped in stars. Garbage is awestruck, for a moment, taking him in.
The child – his son – turns his face toward him, and when he opens his eyes, Garbage feels another twist.
Orange, like his.
He’s sorry for it.
Something ripples across the boy, and for a moment his features change, something strange and canine – something wrong - about them, and then it’s back to normal.
This is bad, Garbage thinks, and it is the first word he associates with his son - Bad.
Not that he believes the child is wicked. No, he loves him, he can already feel it, overwhelming and consuming. He touches his muzzle to the boy, cleans what he can from him, and he loves him, and he doesn’t know where to go from here.
 

garbage

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[lilliana]

Though she will never admit it (because who would she tell? What might she say?), the Magic wretched from her has left a hollow spot in her soul.

She leaves Taiga because she doesn’t think she can stay. She walks away from the destruction there (even if it was contained, even if it was only a corner) because there had been despair in Nerine; she walks away from the desolation in Taiga because her iron-laden heart can’t even fathom a word for what had waited for them back in the Redwoods.

There is no word for the dazzling way her heart broke.

So when she has a moment to herself, she follows the River (though it no longer laughs; it is like the Waterfall in her dreams and memories, devoid of any sound). Lilliana walks this trail wonders. Where are you, Neverwhere? She asks. Nashua? The mother begs into the silence of her mind.

Her heart catches at the faint smell of blood. It jolts her out of the heartsickness toiling within her, that harrows after each aching heartbeat. Stumbling upon the pair is as much an accident as any place she has ever found. Her blue eyes fall to the black colt first, who has a coat as deep as night and seems to carry something of the cosmos with him.

Orange.

It’s the orange eyes that immediately make her look to the stallion.
Orange. Like a dying, desert sun.

"You,” she exhales (though she doubts that the stallion would have any recollection of who she is. She had held the dying Craft behind a dune while he had screamed is this enough? over and over again, who still screams it in the occasional nightmare that plagues her). Lilliana is careful where she stands, shifting the weight of her own impending newborns from one side to the other.

"You have a child," she says, feeling the weight of a thousand paradoxes pressing against her when she looks into his orange eyes. 

@[garbage]

[garbage]

he must be wicked to deserve such pain;

His agony, his worst moment, was made a plot point, and he never knew it.
He never knew how many watched him stalk across the sands to Craft, watched him end her life, his own eyes rolling on the sand, screaming is this enough? He’d been there too – this version, the now-version – but he didn’t know there were others.
(Well. He knew of one other. Agetta, who watched the worst parts of him unfold and forgave him, loved him. But what would she think of him now, with a dark god’s child at his hip?)
So when the chestnut mare comes close, looks at him in confusion, he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t know her journey.

He only hears her words, the you exhaled through tight lips, and he feels guilt well up. It’s an easy thing, when you bear so many sins – guilt always sits at the ready. He looks at her again, trying to see if he knows her, but she is unfamiliar. He wonders if he knew her, once, before his first death – those memories are foggy, sometimes – but nothing comes to him, not even a glimmer.
She is a stranger, speaking to him like she knows him.
You have a child, she says, and he moves closer to Bad, protective, though she does not seem harmful – just strange, so very strange.
“I’m sorry,” he says – his default answer – “do we know each other?”

garbage

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@[lilliana]

[lilliana]

I KNOW THAT LOVE IS LIKE GHOSTS /
WHAT AIN'T LIVING CAN NEVER REALLY DIE /

There is an electric shade of shock in her blue eyes when they meet his.  Lilliana knows immediately who he is. Though her dreams have taken on other shapes, have since filled with other things, she has never forgotten him. (How could she? The murder of Craft has been the only killing she has ever seen.)

But she looks to him and Lilliana recalls what she had told his mother: You do not die here.

Craft and Anatomy had come to Taiga. Why hadn't occurred to her until now that the orange-eyed stallion might have met a different fate as well? The chestnut mare stays quiet as he moves towards his newborn and when Lilliana's gaze drops to the colt, the confusion briefly leaves her expression. The planes of her face soften and the angles reveal the tenderness of a mother. Her head drops slightly (she can't help it) as she peers at the colt before returning to look at his father.

"I-," Lilliana starts, with her throat suddenly feeling dry (parched for water, like sand could be lining it). "I don't think so." She tries to keep the memories of their last meeting (mirage?) at bay, knowing from experience that her echoes could ripple out towards some unsuspecting soul. And what would that do to him? What would the images of his mother dying, of his screams that had faded with the desert sun, do?

Lilliana blinks.

"Not unless you believe in past lives," she finally manages with a tentative smile, an attempt at cordiality. It's still such an odd thing - seeing this version of him here when the memory that exists in her head is so vastly different. The chestnut mare keeps thinking back to the Deserts and how she had been so certain that Craft didn't die there, that her story didn't just bleed out on those shifting sands.

A past life.
And now, here, there was a new one, a child to this stranger who had haunted so many of Lilliana's dreams.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," she quietly tells the pair. "My mind tends to wander these days and I'm afraid my hooves follow." 

love like ghosts - lord huron
image credit to footybandit

@[garbage]