Holding you close feels like a cut throat

[Sabra]

[center]Once upon a time, in a land torn apart by disease and disaster, there lived a queen and her little princess. They lived together in a high tower, surrounded by the sea and safe from the world. Once upon a time, this tower had been a haven for the queen. It was where she had healed from her injuries, mostly, and birthed the little princess. It had began as a sanctuary. Now it was their prison.[/center]


My hooves click rhythmically as I pace the rim of my cliff side place. A year. I've been here for a year, aware of it for half a year, a new mother for half of that. Ten paces, end to end, over and over. Thirty-five steps to circle the oblong platform, pressed against the jagged wall for half that revolution. Over and over. There's little else to occupy my mind, though more than there used to be. It's not just me up here anymore, now I have company. 

My tiny daughter, all blush-dipped lavender, glittering like some Fey child. It was easier to think of her that way. Maybe in my death sleep, some impish fairy had planted their seed within me, thinking it some fine joke. Better than the reality, that the man who'd given her to me had done so with enough violence to end my life for a while. And now I was here, captive and in constant pain, feeling my sanity soak into the stones of our tower. Hating the man who put me here. 

Castile, my dragon, my captor. His barely bridled rage, his abrupt departure when I'd needed him most. His parting words still echoed in my mind, bitter and so deliberately caustic. No. I did not want a constant reminder of my trauma, didn't want to see Klaudius every day in my daughter's face. It was hateful to say I would. But I would not, could not, turn my back on her. I had named her Miela. Honey Girl. My sweetness and my salvation. Someone to tell stories to, to take care of. Someone to give my love to, seemingly the only one who'd take it. Ilma (I had learned her name at last) had been a kindness, but she hadn't the strength to move us from this perch, and had a life and duties of her own to see to. I couldn't begrudge her that. 

Internally I was healed, mentally I could survive. But my wing had never been reset from the break and dislocation it had suffered, and so had hung uselessly at my side since I'd been well enough to stand again. It had healed as well as it could, which wasn't well enough. Castile could hate Miela as much as he wanted too. He could hate me too. Without her, I knew for certain that I would care much less about my second lease on life than I did. Looking back toward my shining girl, my thin sides shivered in a coastal breeze. 

She was small. Too small for the sickness sinking it's claws into her belly. Yet another nail in the dragon stag's coffin. I had seen the symptoms in his visage, despite the high emotions coloring that last encounter. The illness had gripped her so quickly, before her tiny body had a chance to defend itself. Nothing I could fight, nothing I could do. Just watch and wait, while fever and exhaustion did their dirty work. We had to get out of here. 

@[Miela] @[Castile] @Whoever else feels relevant

[Castile]

and underneath the layers, I find myself asking what's left
a hollowed out form, the skeleton of a ghost, the pitiful echo of what once was

Even in his rage and disappointment, Castile cared enough for Sabra to return. He always comes back. The bond between them hasn’t been severed; it hasn’t even crossed his mind despite the venom they spit at one another on some days. They are fiery but that doesn’t hinder the emotional tie he has to her. For a fleeting moment, he wonders if there will ever be a day when they cannot do it anymore, when the emotions are far too high and they can’t be spoken off the ledge.

The aftermath of their last meeting had been bitter. A residual taste coats his tongue, his lip curling in distaste as he soars – as his reptilian counterpart – across Nerine. It was easy to abandon her then, to leave her and Ilma in a cloud of debris, and flee to the far reaches of Nerinian shores where he could easily find solitude. Here, however, in the silence of his isolation, Castile succumbed to his symptoms. The evenings were often spent shivering from fevers despite the fire churning in his core. His muscles ached and his weight loss was becoming noticeable even in this body. Lean now, less baroque. Even his scales are dull, but he tells his peers that he is simply dirty and he hasn’t preened himself in weeks. He lies to save his own pride.

After having lost track of time and relying on the angry roil in his gut having subsided, Castile rises to his feet and takes flight.

The flight seems brief as the infected lands blur underneath him. Hardly a glance is spared because he is staring at the tower of rock, seeing Sabra tend to her child in between agitated pacing. He knows what will follow – anger. She will furiously spat and perhaps even attempt to drive him away, but Castile doesn’t hesitate in his arrival. He doesn’t alight on top. Last minute, he decides to pivot his body and sink his talons into the granite and brimstone along the side. Pushing aside his own feverish exhaustion, he scales the remaining height of the tower and delicately reaches where mother and child stand waiting. Serpentine hisses slip from his exertion as he huddles his entire body onto the flatland, realizing how crowded it is when Sabra is awake and moving with a foal gallivanting nearby. Castile practically hugs his own body to allow enough space for all.

”I rather enjoy keeping you to myself,” the sense of possession is working its fingers into his mind, ”and away from the plague.” Suddenly, he cannot remember if he – or anyone, for that matter – has told her of the recent events. Does she know how dead their home is? Or how they barely even have a home at all? It’s only a matter of seconds until he expects some amount of explosion; her expression is enough to tell him that jokes aren’t welcomed, not now.

Yet he can’t resist trying to soften the situation.

”Pretty view,” the sunsets, he has noticed, are unparalleled. The horizon is unobstructed. There have been many evenings that he spent nestled against Sabra’s body to watch the sun fall below the ocean as it painted the world in an array of colors. It was a tender period of time, when he cradled her corpse hopefully, but it has since concluded. A flickering glance sees the reflection of the sun rippling on the water’s surface, but his attention is more keenly focused on Sabra and her child now. Looking down, as he remains a dragon, he sighs with an offer that doesn’t entirely appeal to him. ”I can take you back to the mainland,” his slit pupil darts unhappily to the girl, ”both of you. If that is what you want – an escape.”

An escape from this rocky outcropping.
An escape from his anger.
An escape from him.

castile

[Miela]

There is little she knows but sickness. 

She sleeps, a lot. A lot more than a girl her age should. Exhaustion, it is all she feels as her little body awakes, as she drags herself to her mother, as she tries unsuccessfully to drink. What was a nightmare to an adult, was hell on earth for a foal. 

Three months. Three months being holed up in the tower, three months of progressing sickness. Miela's petite body grows weaker each day - brittle bones struggle to hold her weight, hooves drag almost zombie-like along the cold granite of the cliff-side palace. What should be a vibrant, glittering coat grows duller by the seconds - her hair falls out in unsightly clumps. The fever dizzies her vision, the cough scratches her throat. She is not doing well - in fact, she is far from it. 

She is knocking on death's door. 

But, even in the plague, there are some things that make her happy. Curled to her mother's side, at the opening of the cavern, she watches the sun begin to set against the sky. Soft pink, lavender, tangerine, and cerulean swirl together beautifully. She is enchanted, so much so that she hardly even notices her mother talking with Castile. 

Not that she could focus on it for very long anyway. 

So, the glittering girl lays, sweat covering her delicate frame, chest heaving as she wheezes. In and out she reminds herself to breath, though it hurts. In and out...

@[Sabra] @[Castile] basically she needs a healer asap lmao.

[Sabra]

Pacing as I am, Castile's arrival isn't surprising. He's a hard creature to miss normally, awe inspiring in his reptilian guise. Gazing out over the sea I watch as the dark speck in the sky grows into the shape of a great winged beast. Shifting my weight mindlessly I can see every stroke of his wings, the curl of his tail in the wind. I'm not surprised, and still I flinch when his claws crash home into the granite cliffside. 

Suddenly the kinetic motion ceases. Miela is behind me, huddled against the wall in a feverish doze. I remember the way he'd looked at her, the predatory gleam that had filled his eyes at her birth. It's not there now, as we stand considering each other. I may as well be a rabbit in the face of a midnight wolf, for all the damage I could do. I didn't have to guess at that, not with our history. Still... my gaze drops away shamefully. Am I so far gone that I believe he'd hurt me willfully? 

"You're a damn idiot, drake." I can feel my anger bubbling back up, teeth gritting against each other in frustration. "A plague, is it? I should have guessed. You may yet get your wish, you know. Miela is... Miela is very sick. Like you are." There's the same brightness in his eyes, the same rattle in his breath. Swearing softly I realize I can't attack him. Not like this, when he's clearly already feeling so very low. Instead, I follow his line of sight. 

The sun is dipping its toes in the ocean, painting the horizon with his jewel bright garments. So many sunsets. Hundreds of moon rises. Enough laps of this flat rock to wear a pale ring into the surface. I almost can't believe it when I hear him offer what I had been so set on demanding. Liberation. Freedom. A chance to get my girl to a healer, and Castile too, if he'd allow it. Swallowing back a lump of emotion, I nod without looking at him. "Please. I don't care where. I- we, can't stay here any longer."

In the back of my mind I had been starting to believe that I'd be here forever. That sickness would take the fairy girl, and Castile would decide I was becoming too much trouble to bother with, and leave me to waste on my remote rock for the rest of eternity. Hungry, thirsty, cold, but unable to die. A grim train of thought, but I'd had little else to fill my days. Just thinking and pacing and watching my daughter fade away. My head turned to face him, eyes glinting like cracked jewels when they caught the dying light. "Let us go, Cas. Please. I love you for what you did for me, but it's time." Looking back toward the half- sleeping girl I notice the rainbowed firelight the sunset is drawing from my coat, and with that the nature of my paramour is remembered to me. Perhaps I should be flattered? A dragon hiding his treasure from the world, protecting it as well as he knew how. It was the last thing I felt like, but maybe that was how he saw me. His treasure. 

@[Castile] @[Miela]