bring me to life; any

[Moselle]

The least she can do is give him kindness. She’s a dead thing come back and he’s a dead thing stuck; he deserves nothing but kindness. Unless he’d prefer pity but she doesn’t have it in her to pity him unless she pities herself too. The god-king (rumor has it, that’s what the mad magician calls himself these days) took that from her at the same time he took her virginity and she cast down her crown to the next poor victim of the throne. 

Moselle’s face is pinched in thought and not good thoughts either. More like memories that she’d much rather forget but they shaped her spirit in the afterlife, carved it lean and missing in some parts. Sparser, she felt clean again and could only remember a select few of them from before - her daughter, the evil magician, Ashley and Ryatah. Had anyone else mattered much until now? Perhaps not, not as she stands here and whiles away the hours with him instead of finding those who are most precious to her. 

But she is reluctant to go. He feels like he could be a friend and her earthy magic likes him, even if it’s just because he’s dead and dinner for the things she could call up to reclaim him back to that original dust and dirt that they all are. Maybe star-stuff too, like she had once been. Unfortunately she doesn’t share his sentiments about the weather or the sunsets, she didn’t remember and didn’t care. Failed to appreciate them then and now, so she studies him.

His smiles come and go, like the dusk-wind around them and the fading light that casts them into shadow. Still, she watches him as he watches the sunset and marvels at how she’s failed to notice others before. The curve of jaw, the line of their neck and the way their hair falls against it - some straight and some in unruly curls, kind of like hers. She had always been small, opting to be less frightening in a child’s shape that even now she maintains. 

Moselle did not have those curves and pockets of flesh that enticed. Yes, she had borne a daughter but magically for the most part, allowing for her hips to widen to a mare’s for that one moment in time that she was something other than a youngster with the old old eyes of all those that had come before. She’s not sure why she’s thinking all of this, realizing that each of them are alone with their own thoughts but the peace between them is not awkward nor does it necessitate words. It’s just pleasant.

His question has her tilting her head in response. She hadn’t given it any thought; having thought only to find her daughter and her friend, or whom she hoped could be counted as a friend. Moselle had lacked those too, a creature of little comforts and only necessity. “Honestly, I don’t know. I had thought to find my daughter at first… I can feel that she is in this realm but also not here, like she’s gone but was here not too long ago.”

She shuts up, realizing he hadn’t asked her if she was looking for anyone or what she planned on doing. He’d asked her where she would go and well, she didn’t really know. “The lands have changed. It’s not the same as before,” and she doesn’t have to explain further because she knows he’ll know what she means by that. Instead, she unknowingly shapes small horses of dirt that gather all around them before crumbling back into clumps one the ground.

 The poses they hold tell stories but she’s not sure if they’re any stories that she knows or if they’re making it up as they go along. It’s a distraction to keep her from thinking about how she has no plans and nothing but a great reluctance to go off and explore new lands.

@[kensley] i don’t know what this is? rambling i guess... :/

[kensley]

( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )

He is not ignorant to the change in her expression.
He thinks to reach out and touch her, to press his mouth gentle against the slope of her shoulder, as if she might draw some comfort from it. As if he is not a dead thing and the mouth is not cold and stiff.
He does not know what it is that haunts her or pulls her features into a grimace. He does not dare ask either. He knows, perhaps better than most, that sometimes it is better to keep darkness barricaded inside of one’s self. So as to not force others to carry it. It does not occur to him, however, that offering to help carry it is something else entirely.

So, he turns his focus to the sunset instead. He is vaguely aware of the weight of her gaze. But he feels no stirring of bashfulness. Heat does not gather just beneath the surface of his skin – not that it could, even if it wanted to – and no color pools there either. He just goes on studying the horizon while she goes on studying him. He wonders what she sees. If she can see the way the shoulders bow beneath the weight of all he has carried with him over the years. He wonders if she can see the parts of him carved out by sadness and fear and guilt. She had touched him and said that it felt as if sadness seeped out of his pores. He wonders if she can see it, too.

He wants to say something. He wants to look at her and say, I know. I know that I am not much to look at. But it doesn’t matter, he thinks. Because he never was much to look at. Almost the spitting image of his father, which had always been burden enough. If only because his mother’s expression darkened each time she looked at him. Because she was not impervious to the hell his father dragged her through, regardless of how well she played the part.

And then, finally, he drags his focus away from the horizon and he turns back to her, armed with his question. Perhaps his heart might have clenched when she mentions her daughter if he were still a living thing. Because he has thought that he’s smelled his own daughter on the wind, only to round a corner and find himself just as dreadfully alone as he’d always been. He smiles now but it is a kind of sorrowful thing. He nods, vague, because he understands. “I know what you mean,” he says.

He exhales, forcing air out of his lungs that no longer operated, because he finds some small comfort in doing so. He does not know yet just how fiercely he will come to miss it, these primal things. The pang of hunger, the vicious want for water, the way the ribs ache when fully expanded around a deep breath.

The lands have changed. How it had devastated him to find that this Beqanna was not the Beqanna of old. Again, he nods. His gaze lingers heavy on her face one long moment before he glances toward the horizon again. “Maybe we can stay here a bit longer,” he murmurs. And then, without looking at her, adds, “I don’t think I’m quite ready to go yet.”