[private] Be my death or my forever || Lepis ||

[Wolfbane]

You're fatal but I love who you are

Be my death or my forever

Having never been dead before, Wolfbane was surprised to find that life after life felt more like living to him than it did before. There is a place, his father Longclaw had told him once, where the divide between our world and the world of sleeping souls is very thin. A place where the dead walked among the living, but not exactly in their plane of existence. Most horses called it the ‘Afterlife’, but Wolfbane’s father had merely referred to it like a home away from home. When he had died, Bane had often looked out into an empty night sky and wondered if his father was there, waiting and watching for his family to be together again.

Now he knows better.

After the fire in Loess, hardly anything remained of his or Lepis’ actual, physical bodies. There’d been remains for the others to find and seared bones for the scavengers to pick at, but the blaze had eaten away most everything else. Wolfbane had been the luckier of the two caught in that fire: he’d passed away just before the first flames had even begun to lick at his skin. His wife, however, had chosen a painful death willingly.

She was the first horse he’d looked for on the other side, and (finally free of its wretched curse) his soul had known hers in any shape, form, or dimension when she came. He would’ve spent an eternity haunting these moon-glowing hills and mountains if she hadn’t been there shortly afterwards, lost as he was in life without her, and certainly he deserved to spend an eternity elsewhere - hell, perhaps. But for some reason this wasn’t the case. Bane passed first and surprisingly, Lepis decided to follow. They woke up there together, Lepis accepting her fate and speaking to him as if nothing had changed, and his first words to her were, “You are so beautiful. I’ve missed you terribly.”
And she was. And he did.

It seemed that death had brought out the best in him, and no matter how it affected Lepis he couldn’t possibly have loved her more. He hadn’t understood what it was to love the essence of her, but here he was free to do so… if she wanted. Here he could ‘exist’ without suffering, without malice or pain, and that allowed him to understand just how true the ideas of “soulmates” were when it concerned them. She had given up everything and more for their love; now it was time he returned the favor.

“If there’s a Queen of the Afterlife, she won’t be for much longer.” He conceded, pulling her closer to his side with one white wing. This wasn’t hell, was it? How could it be? The only idea of hell he could fathom now was an eternity without her, so instead of haunting these dark passageways he felt compelled to beg her forgiveness until time itself ended, if that’s what she wanted. He was unable to correct a past life’s many transgressions, and nothing he said now seemed to suffice for the things he’d done in life. That was a singular regret he would carry into this new world like a dark mark on an otherwise happy state of ‘reality’.

“You could always go back.” He mused quietly, turning his nose to sweetly bury it into the crook of Lepis' throat.

You're my little Bloodfeather

@[Lepis] thank you for your patience <3

[Lepis]

l e p i s

gave me the blues and then purple pink skies

The world she sees is hazy, a muted and somehow blurred vision of the living realm. Everything she sees ripples at the very edges, minute fluctuations that mark this ephemeral place. They are not Dead here, but nor are they truly Alive. Her eyes, blue-grey and long-lashed, peer out at the summer horizon of Loess that spreads around them. The sky is blue everywhere that she looks but it is a dimmer blue than the sky she remembers, and she turns to remark on this to Wolfbane the very moment he begins to speak.

The words die on her lips when the pegasus meets his eyes, a shade of olive green that she has not seen in some time. They are just a shade darker than Pteron’s, and some part of her is sad that she had forgotten that detail. But a larger part of her is elated that his familiar gaze is no longer mismatched, one eye blue and the other green. She nearly forgets to listen, catching the last five words with a slowly growing smile.

He is the only thing in this place that does not seem a moment away from evanescence. His is bright and crisp and clear, as vibrant now as he had been in life. When the dun mare leans against him, the palomino stallion feels more solid than the earth below her, and she closes her eyes as she rests against him. This she has missed the most of all.

Lepis tilts her head so that it might better rest against the warmth of his neck, and pulls her wings in just a little tighter to decrease the space between them. Relaxed, she thinks she might fall asleep when Wolfbane speaks again.

“Would you really want to?” She asks sleepily. It would be a different sort of venture than conquering the world of the Afterlife, and one that she had not thought Wolfbane would be eager to undertake. At least, not so soon. It only then occurs to her that he might have meant that only she might go back. That would be exactly the sort of self-sacrifice that the former king of Loess might think necessary. Lepis tuts and kisses firmly at the part of his chin she can best reach without stretching.

“You will have to try much harder to be rid of me.” She tells him archly, adding the reminder: “My return would be little more welcome than yours.” She’d offered Loess up as kindling, after all, broken her word and lied, allowed Wolfbane to roam Beqanna while protecting only her own. He had been the one to bear the Curse, but she had knowingly chosen to let him wreak havoc rather than risk his life. Lepis tells him this, both because she wants him to know and because she enjoys being able to tell someone that her failure to stop him earlier had been purposeful rather than incompetent



@[Wolfbane]

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