though lovers be lost, love shall not; tarnished

[Dominion]

and death shall have no

DOMINION

And death shall have no Dominion.  

The words whispered along her skin in a thousand long-dead voices, a chant that repeated endlessly until it became a blur of sounds that had no meaning.  It was the only thing that existed, that eternal echo in the darkness.  Fragments of thoughts drifted through her consciousness, snippets of awareness that were quickly drowned out by the heavy weight of empty space pressing in on her from all sides.  Faces flashing in her mind: a man whose laughing eyes made her heart skip a beat; a serious, solemn boy who made her heart ache; a tiny dancing girl whose smile lit her up from the inside.  There and gone again, and every time their voices joined the chant.

And death shall have no Dominion.

She was spinning, swimming, drifting through the nothingness that had once been filled with stars.  All gone now, swallowed down by a dark god somewhere at another world’s end.  Devoured one by one, screaming as they sacrificed themselves to give their last living daughter a chance to escape.  Three faces, the only three stars left in her sky, and their images slowly, so slowly solidified out of the nothingness into a solid presence.

Love.  The boundless love of a man for his lady, laugh though she had when he’d called her a lady.  The helpless, hopeless, heedless way she’d found herself throwing her heart at him without a hint of restraint.  The unconditional, all-encompassing love she had felt for her babies the moment she’d laid eyes on them.  Their love for her, soft and needing and somehow innately trusting that she would do whatever it took to take care of them.  All that love wrapped around her, sinking beneath her skin and holding her tight, anchoring her to those three faces.

“Oh, Dom.”  His voice made her ache, made her yearn to feel the brush of his lips against her skin, the weight of his body pressing into hers.  She could almost reach, almost touch him if she just—“No, love.  I know.  I want it too, but you can’t.”  A whisper, a breath against her cheek, and more words that twisted their way around her heart and squeezed.  “You were only mine for a little while, darling, and we can’t go back.  I want to.  I want to be every single star in your sky, my heart.  I want to light up the night for you, for only you, forever.  But I was never meant for forever.  You though?  And death shall have no Dominion.”  She could almost feel his lips against her forehead, could almost feel the rush of air against her skin as he sighed.  “You were never mine to keep.  But I treasured every moment.”

Tears fell down her cheeks as she whispered a broken goodbye to the man she had loved for four too-short years.  She felt his presence fading, felt him dissolving around her, using everything he had left to give her one last push and she was moving, down, down, down through the darkness toward a world she had left behind…had it been days, hours, moments ago?  Closer now, she could feel the faintest tug as it tried to draw her back even as she slowed to a stop.  She couldn’t feel him anymore, one less anchor to a past that was dead and gone.  But the children.  Their love still wrapped around her, holding her close.  She could almost feel them cuddling into her as they’d done when they were alive.

He took his time, her not so little boy.  He always had, pondering every word before he spoke, such a solemn soul, a stark contrast to his charming, silver-tongued father.  And when he spoke, his words were heavy with consideration.  “I don’t know why.  You never asked why we came into your life or why we left it.  I don’t think it ever occurred to you to ask why.  That was always my favorite question, not yours.  I don’t understand why we existed at all, if we were just going to die.  Except.  We changed you, I think.  We gave you the life you always wanted, safe and loved and raising your babies somewhere you didn’t have to worry about us starving to death or being hunted our whole lives.  We gave you a taste of happiness.  

“And…and we fulfilled your duty to your family.  You never saw it that way, I know.  But part of you wouldn’t have felt right, living and dying and never fighting to bring the next generation into the world.  Even a strange new world like this one.  You never saw us as an obligation to your ancestors.  Children have always been a fact of life for you, and one you loved ferociously and with all the devotion in your heart.  But…you don’t owe it to anyone to try again, and to keep trying until you have nothing left.  There are more important things than four dead tribes from another world.  You are more important than your legacy.  And your legacy will be greater if you understand that.  Wait to try again.  Wait until you need to, until it burns inside you brighter than all the stars that ever filled the sky.  It’s only then that another star can be born.  Do you see?”

As if he knew the answer already, he began to dissolve around her just like his father had.  She wanted to call out his name, to beg him to stay just a little while longer.  But she had lost him long ago.  She whispered another goodbye as he too pushed her closer to the world she had left behind.  The darkness started to fade around the edges, and Dom could almost feel ground beneath her feet as she once again drifted to a stop.

“Hi, Momma!”  Her baby girl’s voice was sweet and clear and bright, the high-pitched voice of innocence unbroken by the trauma of her death.  “I love you.  You did a good job, you know.  You didn’t mess it up, and you didn’t lose us.  It wasn’t your fault.  And if you do want to try again, that’s okay.  If you want to love somebody who isn’t Daddy, if you want to have more babies, you should do that.  We want you to be happy, especially because we can’t be there to make sure you will be.  And Momma?  I know it’s hard.  I know you’ve lost a lot of people, and it’s hard to keep your heart open when it’s been broken over and over like yours has.  But can you promise me something, please?  Can you do me a favor?  I’m not going to be there to remind you, so you’re going to have to remember for yourself.  Don’t forget to dance!”  Baby Aya lit up with her biggest, most radiant grin as she started to fade.

“I promise, baby,” Dom said softly as the last of her little girl’s love dissolved around her and pushed her back into a world that had slowly started to become her own.  The darkness faded, and Dom saw the frozen surface of her lake.  Weeping willow branches draped around her, welcoming her back to the world.  They were gone, her three loves.  But this time she had gotten to say goodbye.  This time, it was not the senseless cruelty of a vindictive world.  It was…a gift.

She didn’t notice yet the sky full of stars sprinkled across her skin.  Nor did she see Beqanna’s sky, filled now with its own stars instead of the stars of a dying world.  She just leaned up against the trunk of the old willow tree with a smile curling the edges of her lips upward, greeting an old friend as the world began again.

No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

DOMINION BY SAMSHINE | HTML BY MAAT

[Tarnished]

We were young and wild and free,

fightin' in a love we couldn't leave.

It will be noted that I was not present for the Valley mutiny.

As Demian’s newly-appointed Righthand Man, one might think I should be off somewhere kissing his ass every hour of every day of every week—but that isn’t the way things work in the Valley, or, rather, it’s not how I work. Position means nothing to me. It never has, it probably never will; I come from a family that’s highly respected already, I’m capable of more than half of the population will ever be in their lifetime—power has no appeal to me because I already have so much of it. I do nothing with this power of mine, of course. But I can, if I want to. I can bring all of Beqanna to its knees with a mere sneeze and only the magicians would be able to stop me. Healers can only heal for so long, after all.

Disease tends to linger for much longer.

I smile, jagged teeth and jagged edges; I have no idea why I chose this form, besides secretly hoping to run into one of my wayward little nieces and maybe scaring the shit out of them. I’m nine feet tall on two tree stump-like legs, I have long bony arms that end in even longer, bonier fingers—the tips of which graze the ground. I have the ugliest dark gray pelt I have ever seen, and a long, thin stem with a bright bulbous light at the end protrudes from my forehead; I think I’m somewhere between bat, ape, and angler fish but I’m not exactly sure. I’m not even sure where the idea came from—but it’s amusing when I run into someone in the dark and they run blindly into the woods, screaming their heads off.

There’s no method to my madness, I have nowhere to go and nothing to do. But somehow, as always, I end up back at our place—the lake spreads out before me, glistening, filled with distorted stars and a rippling moon all its own. The willows reach for their reflections in the water and their reflections reach back, but they never quite touch one another; I think of her, then. I think of Dominion.

She came and went without word, with a promise to come back after she got her head clear.

It’s been years since I saw her last, I have long since given up hope that she will come back—they never come back. Another smile pulls at the corner of my lips, wistful but bitter; I think of the things we used to do, things that might have been had I not left and come back and then left her again. It might’ve been my family instead and I wince when the thought crosses my mind, remembering the earthquake and that girl’s broken little body. No, that wouldn’t have been my family.

I would’ve saved mine.

(I would have saved hers, if I could….)

I shift, slipping back into my old skin the way a lesser being changes back into their favorite shirt. Roan and scarred and golden-eyed. I flick my ears back, too captivated by the lake to notice the portal and swirl of stars opening up behind me; I don’t see it until the last second and I whip my head around, confused, because she’s there—she’s there and looks the same as she did three years ago. “Dominion?” I ask, blinking repeatedly, as if that might make her disappear. As if I am seeing things.

“Dom…” I don’t know what I want to say, if I should say anything. She looks so happy, so calm… peaceful. I bristle, inwardly, at least, I’m still too shocked to actually express my anger outwards; if she were going on a space adventure, she could have at least let me know instead of letting me wait around for her for an entire fucking month.

tarnished

vanquish x nocturnal

Even on the way down, even on the way down.

[Dominion]

and death shall have no

DOMINION

Of course he was the first one to find her. He’d always found her at the end of the world, so it was only fitting that his was the first voice she heard when it began again. “Hello, Tarnished.” She breathed in the scent of the willow, the crisp, clean scent of the snow, and him. “It seems I owe you an apology. I’m guessing it’s been longer than three days.” It had been the height of summer when she’d left for a bit of a wander, some alone time to clear her head. At least six months must have passed since she’d been recruited by Beqanna’s dark god and sent spinning through space and time, facing the vast empty unknown and gods far darker than he.

There was something extremely satisfying in the fact that she hadn’t completed his mission. She’d chased after her dead ancestors, said goodbye to her dead loved ones, and done not a damn thing for the arrogant bastard who had pulled her out of her life and sent her on a quest to hunt down his lady. Maybe that was why so much time had passed, or maybe it was inevitable. Either way, she had broken her word to her friend.

Opening her eyes, she met his gaze, giving him a once-over and noting that he seemed well. “I am sorry, Nish. How long have I been gone? Feels like hours and an eternity all at the same time.” It wasn’t long ago she would have had no idea how that was possible. But a voyage to the end of the world and back would be enough to change even the most adamantly ordinary person’s perception of time, and as far as she could tell it had been forever and just a day or so.

If he wanted to know, she’d tell him. About galloping through space, diving through wormholes, the Devourer, all of it. Even Ben and the kids. The dark god and his mission, the end of another world, and finding her way to this new beginning. She was curious, of course, to see the sky. All her stars had given themselves to save her. What would it look like without them? Still, the sky would be there waiting, and her dearest friend had waited long enough. She walked up to him, closing the distance between them. Kind of wanted to lean into him, feel his solid presence, wrap him up in a giant hug and just breathe him in, but she held back in case he wasn’t ready to welcome her right back just yet.

Oh, fuck it. If he didn’t like it, he’d say so. She hugged him, grinning against his skin. “Would’ve been a hell of a lot more fun with you than it was without you. Next time, I damn well want you by my side at the end of the world. Sorry I left you behind. If I’d had a choice, I would’ve dragged you along for the ride.”

No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;

DOMINION BY SAMSHINE | HTML BY MAAT