[private] midnight where we used to dance; colby kid

[Glaw]

She makes her peace with what happened as best she can.

It is hard, because she sees the children dying in her nightmares.  The Baltian boy and the Stratosian girl meet their demise over and over again when she closes her eyes and falls into sleep.  She couldn’t stop what happened.  None of them could.  Their deaths had been just a short thread of a tapestry woven long ago, cloaking what could have been into darkness instead. 

The nightmares she has are far richer than the life she now leads while awake.

Everything is blurry now: the days pass like a single heartbeat, the weeks come and go like one breath into the next.  It all happens too fast and just outside of her.  Like she is an observer instead of a participant in her own life.  Guilt makes tears prick at the corners of her eyes and makes everything messier, harder to see clearly.  When she does have moments of lucidity, Glaw finds herself drawn back to the place where everything started. 

She goes to the Ruins, and when she leaves, the cycle starts all over again.

Her dainty feet press their path into the desolate dirt.  It has become her own well-worn trail into the land that she follows now, under the cover of night.  The moon is fat and low above her, at least, making it easier to pick through the rubble as it illuminates her way forward.  She was always a slight thing, even before the sprites whisked her away, but now she is even more so.  Her tail curls tightly, and at the end, a pale banner of hair seems to wave against the dark.  Even the spiraling horn atop her forehead is a delicate piece.  Her mother might have even called her beautiful now if it weren’t for her twisted, ugly mouth.

Glaw sees her destination just ahead and quickens her pace.  It is where it all happened so many lifetimes ago.  She bows her head and closes her eyes.  The memories come again, and with them, a tear starts to slide down her cheek.  Why had she thought she could help when she was the most useless of them all?  Someone more capable might have stopped what had happened, might have done better.  Who was she to think that she could save the world when she couldn’t even save herself?

glaw

[Tiernen]

I'VE WALKED THE EARTH AND THERE ARE SO FEW HERE THAT KNOW
HOW DARK THE NIGHT AND JUST HOW COLD THE WIND CAN BLOW

The mountain had changed him too, and he is still wrestling with it.

His sharp teeth had disappeared, as had his carnivorous appetite, but something else had been quick to fill the empty space. He cannot name it, but he feels it—the way his senses have heightened to the point it is nearly nauseating. He hears every sound, is overwhelmed by smells, and finds that his eyesight is sharper than it has ever been. It seems harmless enough, but could any change after what had happened on the mountain truly be considered harmless?

He didn’t think so.
Not after everything else that transpired.
He is certain that there is a catch to no longer craving meat—he just has not figured out what it is yet.

All he knows is that the nightmare had offered the storm—the one where he devours his own family — has not haunted him since, but instead the medley of nightmares that had swirled around him echoed in his sleep now instead. He did not know if that was a fair trade, to rid himself of his own nightmares only to be saddled with others.

He comes to the Ruins for a reason he does not entirely recognize; perhaps thinking the answer to his question lies somewhere amongst the rubbled history of a people that were not his own. All he knows is that this place is typically quieter than anywhere else, and he would have been content to stand here in his own solitude had he not heard her—her footsteps amplified by that unknown power he still does not understand—and he turns his glowing white head in her direction.

He does not recognize her as someone that had been at the mountain. He had been too distracted by the tornado and his own tormented thoughts to pay much attention to the others that had gathered, but he recognized something in her all the same; the haunted look in her eye, the sorrow that trails down her face, and despite his own longing for quiet and reflection he is soon standing nearly alongside of her to ask, “Is everything alright?”

T I E R N E N

@Glaw