you're only happy when you're making a scene; rodrik

[Araby]

Am I going crazy?
 
She knows something isn't right, but she simply cannot put her hoof on it. Of course, she's come to realize that nothing is quite right in this new world--it is not the Beqanna she was born and raised in, and though the neutral meeting grounds remain familiar (how odd can wide open spaces be, after all?), she does not yet feel welcome here. She doubts there is anyone here who even knows her face anymore--she doesn't even know how long she was gone, just that it was a long time--and even if she had any friends that were still alive, she has no idea where to even begin looking for them.
 
Even she has changed. As night falls on the world, she finds herself wandering the non-familiar meadow, preparing herself for the ever-constant sloughing off of her flesh. Her head tips to the side to relieve some of the pressure in her ears and her once-smooth gait has grown to be uneven over the years. She used to spend hours running beneath the desert sun, her long legs eating up the ground beneath her, but now she doesn't even trust herself enough to move faster than an amble. The earaches have become a constant over the years, and she doesn't know if it's simply from age--she's approaching her mid-teens now and she's definitely not as young as she used to be--or something else entirely.
 
Her skin itches uncomfortably as she begins to rot but she does not stop her slow pace. Walking helps her ears feel a little better, at least, even though she sways when she moves. Flesh peels back from her bones and surely she looks much like a zombie as she traverses the meadow in the growing darkness, but she is so confused these days that it doesn't bother her as much as it used to as a young woman. As dazed as she is, she is shocked to see a face that appears a bit familiar, though about as undead as her. "Rodrik?" she asks, incredulous. Her sister's father. The man she once begged to let her back into the Chamber after she abandoned the Deserts following her aunt's death. Could it be? Or is she just losing her mind?

@Rodrik

[Rodrik]

The nights have become restless. He has become familiar once again with the hour of the wolf and the emptiness the blackness holds. The silence and eeriness of the ancient redwoods of Taiga sooth his worrying heart, but lately he finds himself agitated. Instead, he was drowning in the abyss of forgotten memoirs and unwelcome memories of his past. He slips through the night, wandering away from the very place he has called home these past months—away from the only place that makes him feel safe. It was like the Chamber, but it was not truly the place he had built up from the ashes and had been proud to rule. The past was meant to stay within the past, but he can no longer shake these recollections of time. The years had become harder, and he finds that living an immortal life had never been what he had wanted. He dwelled within the times he had been someone, but wishing he could have changed the way he had been. There is blood on his hands, and he has used them like stepping stones to the path he has built his way up to receive his crown and remain on the top. Nothing last forever though—he had been tossed aside, easily overthrown by those he had welcomed and trusted within the Chamber. All of them had come and went as they pleased. Rodrik had found every one of them that came into his kingdom to be not worthy. Each of them had been selfish and ignorant of what power the Chamber held. They are blind, he had said countless times to himself. The once blood king had never needed a crown to rule or be someone, but losing the only thing he had come to care about (besides those he had called family and loved) had been the death of him. He had become nothing afterwards—only a forgotten name within the history pages. Their lives had never matter, and their story would never be heard as time went on. Rodrik snorts as he reaches the edge of the meadow. The summer sun faded away, and he can feel the heat of the day slipping away as the cold of the night washes it away. He pushes forward, into the familiar land that has always been and may always be, feeling the long blades of grass against his undying body. The undead, red devil has not changed one bit from the years he had become this beast. He lives forever, or at least until the darkness calls him and receives his soul (even then it has been years since he has heard from the darkness itself—only the omen, the hellhound son of his, had been his message and warning). As he falls deeper into the center of the meadow, the smell of rotting flesh seeps into his nostrils. He snorts annoyingly, the smell is unfamiliar but familiar at the same time. The devil’s hollowed, nutmeg eyes quickly find the holder of the scent—a rotting black tobiano mare. She looks at him, with those familiar eyes, and he cannot shake it away. He stops dead in his tracks. The past has come to haunt him this very night in flesh now. She calls out his name—questioning even her own eyesight at what she sees. Rodrik would have quickly slipped away from her if he had noticed who it was before, but it’s too late now. He has never been one to allow another one to have the upper hand on him, not even the likes of those who had once tried to overrule him if they had a chance. But it was her blood, her mother’s death, that had given him another step to stay on the Chamber’s thrown and to be tossed aside for his daughter’s ruling. “Who else would it be?” he replies, a hoarse voice that has not been used in time, but his devious tone has not faded over these last years (maybe decades) since they have last seen each other.

character info: here | character reference: here | image © rostyslav zagornov
@[Araby]