"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
She felt like a stone caught in a shallow at the edge of a rock cliff, battered and bruised and worn away until she was only bits of sand and sediment swallowed deep in the throat of the ocean. She felt changed, unrecognizable, wholly different from the wild-eyed bay yearling that had run with the large cats in the jungle. It was like an entire lifetime had swept past her, like time had stood still for everyone except her. She had been tortured and she had fought at first, but the cracks that had appeared on her skin were identical to the fissures spreading like spider silk across her soul. It was only when she had given up that the torture had ended and the world that could have, should have, must have been a dream disappeared to the deepest parts of her being. The second time she had woken in a dream as real and ruined as the blood searing through her veins she had not hesitated, and it had been so easy to kill, as effortless as the knife that had spun from her fingers to bury itself in someones spine.
The second time had been easier still.
And she had wanted it.
She felt that knowledge, that memory like a hot stone burning gruesome blisters inside her belly. She had been different then, changed, and she could have no more refused the sweet copper stink of blood than she could have asked her lungs not to burn for the air they breathed. But even now, restored to who she had been before, it was impossible to forget that consuming urge to spill blood from the fluttering pulse of a bare, trembling throat. And though she rarely slept anymore, too suspicious of waking in yet another world that twisted and warped and forced her to be the worst parts of herself, she was mortal (just barely) and did sometimes succumb. But the sleep she found was restless and riddled with the darkest bits of her subconsciousness, and often she woke just as her teeth sank into one of her sisters prone, broken throats.
It was night now and the stars that hung in the sky seemed like cold, silver lights where they winked and twinkled and flickered in and out of passing clouds. She watched them for a long moment and could not help but wonder if that was where she would end up someday, cast into the cold and dark of an endless oblivion. Surely it was nothing less than what she deserved. But her eyes fell after a moment and she continued on through the shadows with restless unease etched clearly into the lines of her small indigo face. It only took a moment to reach the Gates border, she had memorized the way as soon as Ilka and Pyxis had decided to call it home. But even as she drew to a halt she could feel something like regret turning her veins to ice.
She had no right to think that a kingdom named after Heaven itself would be a place she could ever call home.
Yes, Magnus had offered, but surely he wouldn’t have if he had any way to know the truth of the secrets she kept buried in the blackest places of her ruined soul.
01-08-2016, 06:42 PM (This post was last modified: 01-08-2016, 06:47 PM by Romilly and Guthrie.)
Jenge asked for more Gates people to Malis. Hope you all don't mind.
Romilly
raising our hands, shining up to the sky
The years pass in moments to the silver black young woman. The woman who was not so long ago a girl. In ways she still is such, yet she must move on as the time does. By and by the time fades, weeks, months, years. It all blurs into one, yet she knows it is so precious. Much more precious than time had been in Up. When time was forever and they were eternal. How she wishes to go back to that, how she wishes her father had not played his cruel joke. She had yet to see the humor in it, she isn't sure she ever would.
Down is different, Down is hard and it is expiring. She does not wish to think of how she too will expire, yet Guthrie insists they prepare. She can't, she won't, she doesn't want to.
She avoids it, like she avoids leaving this place. As if wandering too far from home will bring about her death more quickly. As if it will age her all the more and she will fade into the leaves and the grass of the Gates. A memory. Forgotten.
Perhaps that is why she had given in to the act of procreation. This small something. This young girl to keep her memory alive, in the most trivial of ways. Perhaps that is why Mother had so many of them. Perhaps, yet she had never asked. She never would.
Mother was a kind enough soul. Pure and innocent, more so than most, though Romilly can't say she's witnessed the true evils of Down. Mother is an odd creature though, vying for a man's attention more often than not. She prayed this one would stick, dark and odd a creature as he was. It would give her Mother something to cling to, something she so desperately desired. If Romilly could want something more than to return to Up, to not perish on this forsaken plane, for her memory to not wither like brittle fall leaves. It would be for her Mother to be happy. Truly happy. And loved, loved romantically, something none of them could give her.
Here she wanders the Gates clover ridden fields, a young filly traipsing along behind her. The babe glinting in the night light, hair like tinsel both silver and gold. Bits reflected not only from the stars in the sky, but the ones that twinkled on her Mother's flank. Romilly can not help but notice when someone new has arrived, especially one that seems to enjoy looking at Up as much as she did. "You are new." She says slowly, mystically, taking a place alongside the woman she does not know. Craning her head to the heaven's and sighing.
"Cetus." She breathes motioning to the section of sky in which they look. "The sea monster." She turns her flaxen adorned head to look at the woman, eyes burning like starlight. "I'm Romilly, this is Lidell. What do they call you here in Down?"Her question is asked as if this is a normal day to day conversation. Night to night in their circumstance, though she isn't unaware of how odd the others might find her talk of Up and Down. She makes no intention of remedying it either.
