"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
02-17-2020, 01:13 PM (This post was last modified: 02-17-2020, 01:36 PM by Jassal.)
His own wounds have nearly healed. All the angry, weeping blisters have calmed and the swelling of his mottled flesh is soothed by the acrid mist in his chamber. The Sunken One’s attention focuses easier now and his claws – like massive spider legs, all twitching – pluck some unseen chords. All his crooked mouths grin. The light they seek becomes blinding and it consumes everything when they finally reach it. It must be so awful, to be in the light after all that horrifying dark.
He puts all their worst sins on display, overlapping in vivid hallucinations one right after the other. Every cruel word, every dismissive insult. All their failures come piling in and that fallen monster watches with wide eyes to see how they weep and crumble. Do they regret seeking out the light, now that they know it too comes with a price? Would they rather cower in the dark with his horrors? The Ancient One jerks with hacking coughs and bile rises up in his hundred throats to produce a new swarm of his crooked imposters. The ones before had been loving to some degree but these are all angry, all gnashing and screaming their fury.
They know what the lost travelers have done. They’ve seen their crimes all put on display and they have come to punish them for it. These new doppelgängers all rush into the light to meet the travelers and their voices boom in the perfect silence of this blinding white room. Content, the malformed god sinks back to observe for a while. They had to slay his creations to make it this far, he knows, but they had each made repulsive mistakes in the past as well. Not a single wretched thing in these tunnels is without some blemish to answer for.
The swarm converges on each wayward stranger and they hiss their accusations. “Why weren’t you strong enough? Why are you so hard to love? Aren’t you ashamed?” they ask, and their voices are so clear it begs the question of whether they’re real or not. And if they are indeed real, then perhaps the loved ones from before were real also?
Welcome to round four, uglies! We're almost done with this ride! When your character enters the room, they're blinded until they get the pleasure of reliving their worst mistakes/failures/crimes, whatever they're ashamed of most. Then, everyone they've ever known asks all the questions they don't want to be asked. Describe the key people your character sees, what they say, and what memories they relive. End your post with them searching for an escape from the crowd of angry faces. The monster has had some rest so his creations are top notch this round, by the way. He's getting good at this! All replies are due at 11:59pm on Sunday, February 23rd.
your heart, it's like a drum the chase has just begun
The light grows blinding, causing the aquatic beast to flinch and hiss, to shield her misshapen face in her knees. But it does not help. The light is behind her eyelids, flashing now with images. With memories.
She does not quite understand it at first. She is not a creature made for regret. But as the images swell and grow, she recognizes them. Recognizes them for deeds she herself has performed, in all her few years. Murderous deeds. The ones she has slain and consumed without second thought. The faces of those whose lives she had never seen fit to regret ending.
And there is her mother. The only true misery she’d even known. Lirren had left without second thought, and Waverly had always wondered, somewhere deep in the less primitive portions of her brain, if it had been her who had driven her away. The visions that come then are not truly memories, but vile suppositions.
I cannot stay Waverly. The words echo on a haunting whisper. You will murder me if I do.
Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.
It takes her a moment to realize the dry murmuring is more than the broken edges of a hallucination. To realize that she had not been left here alone. Surrounding her, crowding her, are those who had fallen beneath her teeth, furious visages pressed close. They mutter accusations, proclaiming her the beast she is.
She snarls in the face of their insistence, snapping, refusing to regret. Perhaps unable to regret.
But no, that’s not quite true. Because there, pressing through the crowd, is her mother, the very face of regret. Not the misshapen false representation of earlier, but an achingly perfect vision, drawn straight from the memories of her youth. “Are you certain you did not murder me, Waverly?” she whispers sadly, her disappointment the slice of knife she hadn’t expected. “All these faces, you barely remember. Are you sure I am not one of them?”
As she stares in dawning horror, every single creature in the chamber becomes a heartbreakingly perfect image of her mother. All dead, at her tooth and claw. Something inside her breaks at that. Whatever sanity she might have claimed in the face of these nightmares shatters.
“NO!” she shrieks, the words garbled through a jaw too long and stiff for speech. “You LIE!” Blindly, she lashes out, holding nothing back. Tooth and claw become her defense rather than her weapon. She needs out. Now.
Her desperation for freedom grows so intense, it matters not to her over-stimulated brain that she does exactly what she had been accused of. She becomes, so easily and willingly, the mindless, senseless murderer they claimed her to be. And all it had taken was one small shove towards the edge.
Can you imagine the anguish of touching freedom, only to have it ripped away at the last moment? Only to watch it fade, vanish, leaving nothing but the taste growing bitter on your tongue. Even as I dashed away, hooves clattering impossibly loud against uneven stone, my only goal the brightness that hangs so inviting at the tunnel's end, hope flutters in my too thin chest as I leave behind the nightmare scene.
Faith snaps like a brittle femur. The light that drew me forward does not resolve into stars and sky. It is not clean, clear air that flows on too-quick breaths. Instead, all I taste is my own gore stinking sweat, the fetid damp of the deepest caves. And the light! If I have barreled into a new death, I would not be surprised. Not when my vision fills with empty brilliance. No shadow, no reflection penetrates it. I cannot even make out my own form. Light or dark or the absence of either, it makes no difference when the eye cannot begin to process it.
The only input my senses are given is the thunder of my pulse. The rotting meat and sour fear-sweat odor that I am drenched in. Two senses of five still accounted for in the blinding nothing light.
My throat spasms against the acid climbing it. More than half convinced that I have ceased to exist at all, my head swings wildly when the first shadow blurs across my vision.
Hardly anything at all. The merest suggestion of motion, and gone again. A memory surfaces, the endless stampede of the Afterlife. Souls that rush by in a turbulent river with no beginning and no end. Am I caught in it once again? Another blur, bare shades darker against the depthless light. A shadow puppet made of glass, there and gone.
"Hello?"
My voice, cracked and weak with disuse and still a painful loudness on ears straining to hear. A soft noise at my back, and I all but trip over my own legs to catch the glimpse of grey that imprints on my eyes like sunlight stains.
"Who's there!"
A demand, not a question. I have been toyed with before, and it was never a sensation I enjoyed. Anger bubbles beneath my fear, the rage of one too long denied. Another shade rushes the edges of my sight, gone as quickly as I turn to see. Tricks of the mind. Eyes wishing for something, anything, to see.
"You really are one crazy bitch, aren't you?"
The blood drains from my head. I know that voice. I'd know it anywhere.
"Klaudius," I hiss, turning with stiff legs and bristling wings. He's emerging like a creature fog-bound, shining and proud. The sardonic smile that so often found itself on his lips sits as naturally as the set of his wings. Lover, friend, destroyer. "You're dead." I state, the knowledge a thing I had clung to once. But I had been dead then, too. My skin crawls with memory as the broad chested stallion stepped closer, the careless toss of his head a show of his endless confidence.
"Miss me?"He is smiling, broad and guiless. Then he shoves with all his strength, one broad shoulder into my chest and I am falling, falling...
Fallen.
My landing is a soft one. Sand, hot and golden glitters beneath my feet, the sky an open, endless blue. Before me sits an oasis that lies still amid spreading date palms and shades the flat water that pools beneath them. A girlish giggle breaks the silence.
They break cover then. A milk-pale girl and her lover who shines as brightly as burnished copper. Their wings mingle with their closeness, eyes fixed only on each other. A pity, that. They do not see the approaching battalion, the faces hard with their grim purpose. One stands out from the herd, a stallion cut from gold and marble, face scarred and blazing. Her father. My father. King and conquerer.
I can only watch.
She screams enough for both of us as we watch the events of a lifetime ago, the death of a boy we loved and lost because we thought we could beat the odds. Blood, dark where it soaks the sand, where it stains our skin. I remember the metallic scent, even after all these years.
The first death I had caused.
With sickening speed, the scene whirls and shifts. I stand on sand still, but it is white and endless water laps nearby. In a tripping montage the next scene plays, meeting Klaudius, meeting Krone, my ill fated bid for leadership and my underhanded occupation of a land where I knew I wasn't wanted. No one wants a snake in their garden.
Letting him take me, because I was young and foolish and thought it would bind us. My fear when his darkness showed, and I fled.
Sylva, sanctuary and solace. A bright, shining happiness that I threw away on my own ignorance. Let down the few who felt any kindness towards me, cut each of us loose to wander the world. The spite that drowned me then, the paranoia, the fear. The beginning of my mind's unravelling. I watch it all with a churning gut, knowning each new chapter and wishing I could turn it back.
Castile, doing his best to control himself even as he tries to beat me. A battle-game. I lost then, and I wish I'd known it to be the prophecy that it proved to be. Nothing ever changed between us. Always, it was battle and always, he would win. I had struggled and struggled to hold on to what was never mine.
Klaudius again. Time had changed us both for the worse. Ragged around the edges, aimless and angry. So easy it was for him, to erupt with a fury I had only glimpsed before, and had finally fallen to. Watched my own ravishment and murder. The panicked light fading from my eyes as help arrived just too late.
Weak.
Waking up, only to find myself trapped and imprisoned, out of love he said. While he found love elsewhere.
Angry.
The images flow faster, an endless river that displays my every fault and flaw. Every moment of bad judgment, each decision that had brought me to where I am now. Alone. Utterly, completely, unforgivingly alone.
"You know, I don't think there's anything we could say that you're not already thinking."
Throat tight with tears I refuse to shed, I turn dream-like to the fluting voice. Miela. Of course it's her. Properly this time, pert nosed and beautiful. There's a cruel turn to her jaw though, and I don't know if it's me she got it from or her father. He stands beside her, proud as can be, and a twist in my gut tugs harder at the besotted look he gives the girl. That was why I had left, wasn't it? He'd loved his sister as he'd loved me. A daughter couldn't be any worse a choice to such a one as he was. Is.
"Clever girl. Too bad you let her die before she could show it."Klaudius chides, as if I were a child stepping on ants and not a mare who'd abandoned her own daughter. A different voice chimes in, rich with smoke and thunder.
"And after you fought me so hard to keep her," Castile drawled, jagged as a mountain peak and twice as beautiful. Predatory and feline, he circles, and the old feeling of being hunted claws at my chest. It had thrilled me once. Now it's just another knife in my heart, the blood of an old wound seeping around the edges. "I should have known. You were always the weakest of them. Pretty, but weak. A diversion, until I found a worthy mate."
Even after all this time, it hurt to hear the words. I want to rage at him like I had before. But I am nothing but a nuisance to the dragon any more. I had borne him sons, and that was all the use he'd had for me. Some kind of retort sits on my tongue unformed. Stillborn. Dies as I am drowned out. Others speak, faces I had not noticed til now and some I recognize only from distant corners of my memory.
"Useless girl. I should have had your head smashed in at birth. Was it worth it, watching him die?"
"You only loved us because we're his. And even that wasn't enough. Why couldn't you love us?"
"You really thought you would be a worthy queen? Stupid and arrogant, what a combination. You brought us to ruin."
"I don't know why I wasted my time trying to help such a pathetic creature. You might as well have died in the creek for all the good it would have done!"
"Why can't you stay dead!"
You, you, you!
Me.
It was my fault, every last bit of it. I am being crushed beneath the weight of their accusation, and every stone thrown hits its mark. Every face I see knows the truth. They are angry, and why shouldn't they be? What would their lives have been if only I hadn't gotten in the way?
There is no kindness in any of them, no mercy, no way out, and my ears are ringing with their blame.
I wanna be Immortal, like a God in the sky
I wanna be a silk flower, like I'm never gonna die
There is pain like no other that burns angrily in Thorn’s chest. Taking back what has been is clearly out of the question. He cannot return to the crushed skull of his brother, and he cannot return to the happy faces of his family . . . but still he dashes madly for that light that must be what saves him.
—
“What have you done?” Thorn looks up in horror at the shocked face of Bea. His heart thuds violently in his chest.
“I—I don’t know. I didn’t—-” but he can’t finish, boyish face falling slack in a complete lack of understanding. Bea is now peering down at the crushed body of a green snake. Tears pool hot and heavy in Thorn’s eyes.
A few seconds ago, the creature still had some fight in it. Writhing and angry, the serpent hissed when Thorn stepped on it in fear. He gasped as the little light in its black eyes began to die. If he was quick on his feet—and a much more shrewd being—he might have been able to hide the death before his siblings found him.
But Thorn is a sweet thing. He merely stared in horror.
“Mama said the green ones are good!” Rosine gasps once she stumbles upon the pair. Thorn looks up at her with glassy eyes.
“I tried to fix it . . .” he moans. It was too late. He was too young and too afraid.
—
“Stop!” Thorn screams. The puppies are rolling and roughhousing. They tease and push and prod. Thorn, exceptionally sensitive as he is, quickly grows overwhelmed. Just a moment before, he had stumbled to the earth over his gangly front legs and slammed his head into the dirt. He is too disorientated to use his healing. The pain is hot and quickly fills his brain with white noise.
The other three slowly come to a halt and peer at Thorn quizzically. He crumbles beneath the weight of their stares and turns his back.
“Come on, Thorn,” Bea says, childish voice mildly exasperated, “it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a big deal to you,” the winged sabino snaps, dopey voice suddenly too harsh for his age. “You don’t know what it’s like.” He starts to cry and for once anger instead of sadness wells in his throat.
“Are you serious, Thorn?” Rosine prods, sounding more irritated than Bea.
“Guys, let’s—” Tamlin starts to defend him, but Thorn cuts him off with, “I hate you.”
He runs into the overhanging ferns, leaving the trio to sit in stunned silence.
—
A Tephran summer is in full swing. Crickets chirp peacefully in the background of the Wonderlocks’ tropical nest. Thorn is sulking quietly beneath a large elephant ear leaf. His ears are turned back into his mane and his head is tucked dramatically over his curled legs. The white and black feathers of his wings ruffle angrily as he tucks them too tight to his back.
“Thorn.”
The colt looks surprised when he finds his father standing over him. “Papa,” he parrots back, returning his head to his legs.
“Cut it out. I want you to come for a walk with me.” The undertone of Nightlock’s request tells the boy he doesn’t have a choice in the matter.
“Okay,” Thorn concedes with a sigh, dragging his clumsy legs beneath him. “Where to?”
“Out,” Nightlock replies with his signature vaguery.
They pad on for a while, fading afternoon sun turning into a beautiful dusk. Thorn occasionally looks nervously up at his dad, stumbling over a pebble here and there. The image of his concerned siblings’ faces as they watched the pair leave are burned into his mind. He hadn’t spoken to them since his outburst earlier that morning.
Finally, Nightlock comes to a halt beneath the deepening shadow of a rainbow eucalyptus tree. Thorn’s purple eyes distantly study the colors before finding his father’s gaze.
“You can’t speak to your siblings like that.”
“What are you talking about?” Thorn snaps, though his face immediately shows his regret. Nightlock merely scowls and looks out at the environment behind his son.
“Your mother is extremely upset, not to mention how much you hurt your siblings’ feelings.”
“Yeah, well—” the colt starts to rebuke, but his father quickly cuts him off.
“Save it, Thorn. There is no reason at all for you to say that to Bea, Rosine, or Tamlin. None.”
“Yeah? Well, I hate you, too.” This time he spits it, but he sounds more calm. Thorn pivots on his back legs and rushes through the underbrush, tearing streaming from his eyes.
“Thorn!” Nightlock cries, and for a moment the boy thinks he hears a sliver of hurt.
—
An electric shock jolts Thorn’s eyes open. The room he had run into is full of all of the familiar faces he has ever known: Mama, Papa, all of his siblings, even Prayer (a fleeting childhood crush). He stares at them in shock as endless relief washes over him. Tamlin is distinctively missing but for just one second, he does not think of his dead body in the previous chamber.
“Mom—” Thorn begins, but the magician finds his gaze with a furious one of her own.
“You killed him, Thorn? My son? My baby boy? How are you still standing? How have you not thrown yourself against the wall until your brain is mush on the ground? You killed him, my favorite son. He never yelled the word hate at his family. Do you really think you deserve to be here over him?”
“Wait . . .” Thorn is dazed. His ears begin to ring. “What . . . ?”
Nightlock steps forward. “Remember when you told me you hated me?” Thorn gulps in response, dragging his eyes to Nightlock’s empty ones. “Why did you say that to me? I was trying so hard to show you I loved you. I thought I was getting better.” Nightlock cocks his head to the side, a simple smile lifting his lips. “I know why you said it. Because I hate you, too. Because I’ve always hated you the most. I was tired of your crying and your sensitivity. And look what you did! You finally got me to hate you.”
The rest of Thorn’s siblings group together and step forward. “And what about us, Thorn?” Their voices ring together like hell’s best chorus. “You never apologized for what you said. And the little ones? You made sure they never knew of the hate in your heart while the rest of us had to live a fantasy. We know how much you wish you were alone. We know you wish we would disappear. You’re spoiled. You don’t deserve the love you have.”
Thorn’s strong heart shrivels. His heartbeat grows faint and his legs begin to wobble.
“Please . . .” he whispers on a weak breath. “I’m sorry . . .”
Prayer is the last one to step forward.
“You know I died, right, Thorn? Maybe if you had stuck around, you could have saved me from that hungry sister I told you about. But you didn’t stick around. You never do, not even for your family. You deserve this.” Her words are the least personal, but they are ones to kick his heart into hell.
“Stop!” Thorn screams, dry throat suddenly sore from the force of it. He shoulders his tall body through the much shorter crowd, not caring who he hurts in the process.
Dreamscar leaves a trail of blood and gore behind him, dripping from claw and beak, from his dark mane that dries sticky and brittle with the strange, sweet, blood of the False Mother and clings to his neck leaving dark stains as he creeps through tunnels lit only by the near-useless blue glow of slime mold that grows along the walls of the cave. The heart in his beak continues to beat weakly against his tongue as if to remind him that, somewhere, its owner is still living her pointless, deathless, existence far beyond him. He does not know where he is going, only that he is following a feeling, following something that beats and quivers, something that his magic can grip, for all that it seems so much stronger than anything that Dreamscar could ever control. Not like the real Hippogryph, generally so easy and pliable to his machinations, no, this is something different entirely.
Even the thought of his true mother brings a rumble of anger bubbling from his throat. He has not forgiven her for the anger he bears towards her doppelgänger. As he growls, there is a shifting sound and an acrid smell to the air within the tunnel that grows worse the deeper he goes and there is a moment when, suddenly, all the light blinks out, leaving him stumbling in the darkness, blind and scrabbling. In the next instance a white light blazes and he screeches, amber eyes searing and squeezing shut, but the light is inside his brain. He steps backwards, tripping on his tail so that he lands hard in a sitting position, dropping his stolen heart with a wet smack, and clawing at his burning eyes with those great black talons. Bright blood blossoms across his face like flowers.
The stabbing in his brain fades to a million pin pricks. The silver pin pricks turn to a red fog across his eyes when they finally open on yet another dimly lit cavern.
Or is it the same one?
The feathers across his chest ripple with suspicion and he trills questioningly into the silent, empty amphitheater, listening to his voice flutter and echo off the rocky walls. There is a tug, it pulls him further and deeper into the earth, so he turns to gather the somewhat bruised and dusty heart from where it lies, congealing, but he goes to press on and finds his way blocked. Again, horses, but not just horses. He recognizes the black stallion with his copper highlights, the white filly with the spots on her face and the owl perched on her back. The aliens, Ghaul, the Shadow Queen. Set and Draco, and a thousand rabbits and groundhogs and squirrels. There are a handful of fawns, silent, their large, liquid, eyes innocent and accusing. Everyone he has known. Some he has hurt, or tried to hurt, or wanted to hurt. Some he has eaten. All he has wished would fall under the spell of his love inducement, all he has wished were easier to bend under his will.
(His vision shudders and there he is, in the meadow crooning softly to a fawn no more than a week old. The creature comes to him even without the use of magic - ah but they are so trusting, so stupid at that age. He chirrups softly and the spotted creature stalks on stick-thin legs to his side, wide-eyed. It chews at his tail and finding that dissatisfying, noses its way to his chest. The stallion curls his neck to rest the cruel curve of his beak gently against the fawn's back and the gentleness with which he does it creates a touching moment in the orange glow of a summer evening.
Nothing lasts. That murderous beak closes on the back of the young deer's neck, piercing into the flesh so that when the Mimic jerks his head back with a shake he does not lose his grip. The fawn's neck snaps instantly and he lets the body fall limply at his feet.)
"Murderer."
The voice comes from behind and he turns to find Hippogryph. He trills again, curious. She appears whole again, as if this is not her heart he holds. Tentatively, he reaches out, and, for a moment, feels his power respond, latch onto something that should not rest within her deep chest. The dark mare steps forward and Dreamscar pulls his head back, tucking his chin into his chest to make room for her approach.
(He sees himself, coat still black, he is a twin to his dam but for the white rings around his eyes that promise he will grey. Black as night with a star on his forehead, wide and bright and beaming. He is content enough, sleeping curled against his mother, but she is dull and fitful. Her teats are swollen and purple, infected, and flies gather in the places where his beak has pierced her skin over and over as he cries to nurse. Her eyes are bloodshot and so red that there is nearly no difference between the stained sclera and the dark irises. Her pupils are dilated and she sweats and groans, her body fighting fever.
You did that to me
In the vision, the colt is sleeping, but he wakens and tries to feed. The milk that gathers in the corners of his mouth is tinged with blood, and the supply is small. In anger he lashes out with beak and claw at her leg, her thigh, her belly. This is not the first time this has happened, old scars and half-healed welts re-open under his raking talons. In pain, the mare tries to kick, to run, but she falls instead. The child, angry, squeals and claws her hip in an attempt to get her on her feet again, and she tries, she loves him too strongly not to try, though her body fails her over and over. He leans on that love until the mare's heart seems like it will break, like it will seize.)
"It hurts worse than dying."
He has always been a monster, but all he had wanted was for his mother to love him, and she had been unable to do so.
"You," the word crawls shuddering and stilted out from behind that heart still clenching rhythmically in his bill, "Not. Dead."
How can she know anything hurts worse than dying when she refuses to do so? She is backing him again into the center of the circle, again to his destruction. Will they do this, over and over, killing one another in anger and hatred and rage? He tries to lean on the love for him that he has bred inside her over these last four years, but the mare laughs, and it is cruel and harsh and strange, true to her, as if she had been plucked from the long distance and dropped before him, freed of her madness, freed of her devotion to him, of his control.
"Well that's just not going to work on me any more, Son."
Behind him, the fawns call for blood and the crowd closes in tight, but Dreamscar refuses the shame and misery that they try to thrust upon him. No. Once, maybe once there was a time when he felt shame and sadness and disgust for the things he was forced to do to survive, but those days are long past. There was a time when he cried as he disemboweled the creatures he ate, that he snuffled apologies into their bloodied coats, but those days passed long ago. He does not regret that his life has come at the price of so many others', and he does not regret the cruelty he directed at his mother in his anger and sadness and angst. She is his mother, it was her job to soothe his hurts and make things better, and she had failed. Failed repeatedly. He growls a warning, biting down on the cool heart so that black blood oozes thickly out of it.
"No. You. Your fault, Mama."
His eyes scan the cavern for the way out. He will kill her again if he must, he has already done it twice.
He rushes towards the light even though it suddenly becomes consuming. He runs into it even though it swallows his vision and leaves him blinded, even though every part of it feels just as wrong as the dark.
He hears them before he sees them. All their voices – his father, his mother, and his siblings. And for a moment he is relieved, Because maybe this means he is done, maybe this means he has finally found a way out. But he begins to decipher just what they are saying, and when he focuses on them, he discovers that they are angry. The light fades until he can see their faces, and there they are; all of them black (or mostly black), and most of them with their bright yellow eyes.
Torryn has always been different from nearly everyone in his family. He was not black. He could not bend the shadows, or manipulate them in any way. He was plain— just blue roan and nothing at all unique about him— and though his mother used to kiss his brow and reassure him that that didn’t matter, he had always felt that maybe it had.
His father is the closest, his eyes bright and glowing yellow even in this relentless light, but there is none of the quiet kindness Ether’s usually has. There is a sneer to his face, his sharp teeth glinting as he hisses, “You’ve always been a disappointment; entirely useless. Your siblings have nearly all inherited the ability to control shadows, and then there’s you.” Haunt appears at his shoulder, a shadow that manifests itself into a living creature, and the trilling laughter that mingles with the murmur of voices makes him grit his teeth. “How disappointing that the son born out of love turned out to be so utterly weak and mediocre.”
He closes his eyes, willing them to go away. Harken, Harbinger, and Wrenley – they’re all there, too, all taunting him. They spin shadows and craft shadow creatures that swarm him, they disappear in and out of their own darkness. Even when he closes his eyes all he can see is the yellow and amber of theirs set against dark faces, and he growls beneath his breath, “Stop, stop, stop, please just stop.” Atrox is there too because he heard there would be black horses with yellow eyes yelling, and he never turns down a party. “You suck!” He screams as he throws an empty PBR can at Torryn’s head, before laughing and going back to watching NASCAR.
They can’t be real, they can’t be real, he tells himself. But there is nothing warped or distorted about the faces staring at him, and there is nothing wrong about what they are saying. They are saying everything that he has always thought, every insecurity that he had locked away in the cavern of his chest.
Shaking his head furiously he spins, but they have all pressed close, and between them and their allotment of shadow creations, he cannot see a way out. He’s going to die here, surrounded by his family, suffocated by his own failures and insecurities.
It is violent.
The way the darkness suddenly gives way to light.
It chases a splitting ache through the center of his head as he recoils, staggers to a halt there in the center of this new chamber. The heart beats ragged in the cavern of his chest and he struggles to draw breath. There is still that same bitter panic polluting his bloodstream as he screws his eyes shut tight against the light and tries in vain to steady himself. But he sways on his feet, even still.
‘Jarris.’
It echoes in the chamber and in all that empty space in his skull.
It is calm, almost sweet, a stark contrast to the frantic beating of his heart.
‘Jarris.’
And now, some urgency. But he does not trust himself to open his eyes. He does not trust the wicked things here at the center of the earth.
But he is not safe, even with the eyes closed. And as he stands there, he remembers. In flashes and glimpses, he remembers them all. The lives and the deaths and everything in between. The heart spasms and seizes and burns, still.
He is standing in the center of the meadow, his face turned up to the sun. He can feel its heat all the way down to the marrow of his bones. And when he lowers his head, there is a chestnut mare there. She smiles sweetly, shyly. He hangs off every word that comes out of her mouth, carves her name into the meat of his heart. Plumeria.
‘Open your eyes, you fucking coward.’
This voice is different, cold.
He opens his eyes.
It is his son who stands there now, staring hard at him, his jaw set. He’d know him anywhere.
Kensley. Jarris opens his mouth to speak but no sound comes out. His tongue lies fat and heavy in his mouth. Useless. This figure does not blur at its edges, it does not waver. There is nothing about this figure that suggests that it is anything other than his son. He is harder now than he remembers him but so much time has passed and Kensley has always resented him, shirked any attempts he made to forge a bond.
‘What have you done?’ Kensley asks and then tilts his head. So much like him, Jarris thinks. Of all of his sons, Kensley was always the most like him. ‘You never deserved her.’
He does not have time to answer before Plumeria emerges from someplace behind Kensley and then settles in beside their son.
“Plumeria,” Jarris gasps, numb with relief, “I was just-”
‘Don’t speak,’ she interjects and he immediately goes quiet. And then numb with something else. His relief dissolves around those same sharp edges of panic.
‘You told me you loved me,’ she whispers and the voice shakes and the heart seizes again. ‘I believed you. Why did you lie?’ In this light – blinding, severe – it is not difficult to see the tears that gather in her eyes and the sight of them cleaves his heart in two.
“Plumeria,” he says, a plea.
‘I said stop talking!’ she shouts and he grimaces because this echoes, too. Loud and angry. ‘All you ever do is talk!’ The tone borders on hysteria now and he wants more than anything to close up the space between them, press his mouth to her temple, soothe the hurt that rolls off her in waves. ‘All it’s ever been is empty promises! Why wasn't I enough, Jarris? Why am I not enough?’ Her shoulders shake with sobs now and the sound of her crying tightens a vise around his windpipe.
They are not alone. It is not only the three of them. There are so many countless others who bear witness to this. He wants to yell at them to turn away their eyes, to spare Plumeria’s privacy. But, upon closer inspection, he sees that they are all just as familiar.
He finds Demetra’s green eyes staring back at him. Her mouth is pressed into a thin line as she shakes her head mournfully. And Charity, so fragile. Heartpin and Leslie and Charade. And another woman made of glass who bears an uncanny resemblance to Charity, too. They are all shaking their heads, staring hard at him.
And the children. All of his children. Adison, in particular, who he’d promised to protect. ‘You were supposed to take care of me,’ she whispers. ‘You said I’d never have to be alone.’ And her sister, Falon, who reaches out to comfort her as she, too, begins to cry.
“I have failed you all,” he says but this does nothing to sate them. If anything, it stokes the flames of their disappointment. The bone-deep sense of betrayal he has instilled in all of them. Even Dear is there, peering at him from the congregation of children, confused by their hate. But he knows by the look in her eye that she has lost whatever trust she’d had in him.
But it is not only the many souls he has loved or cherished that stand there before him.
There, to the left of Kensley and Plumeria, there is something else. Something not quite equine, but alive all the same. He looks at it and knows that it is the Tundra. His beloved Tundra, gone. Because he’d abandoned it, too. Because he had loved it more fiercely than he had ever loved anything else and he’d left it, too.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. And the crowd begins to move. Not away from him but toward him.
‘All you ever are is sorry!’ Plumeria cries.
‘You’ve always been such a fucking waste,’ Kensley spits.
‘Why couldn’t you just try harder?’ Charity asks.
Their voices reach a deafening crescendo and he shackles his focus to Plumeria’s face in this sea of angry faces. Because he has always found such comfort in her. Because it has always been her. But there is no comfort to be found in the way she weeps now. There is no comfort for him in this chamber.
He’s standing at the edge of the Tundra. The once-king, ice-king, lost-king. He has abdicated his throne. And he is thinking about all of the things that he’s done wrong. All of the decisions he’s been forced to make. He is thinking about how he’d give anything just to go back.
And it doesn’t make any sense. Because so many of them are gone, dead. But there is one face missing in this crowd of everyone he’s ever known and pledged his heart to. Kennice. They bear down on him and he tries to suck in a sharp, panicked breath. They are real. He can tell it in the heat of their breath as it hits him square in the face as they hurl their accusations, as they call to mind every thing he’s ever done wrong. If he reached out and touched them, he’s certain they would be solid. And Kennice lies broken in the tunnel behind him, changed.
“I have to,” he gasps, “I have to go, I’m sorry.” He tries to push his way through them but they merely bear down on him harder, closing in on him from all sides.
‘Oh, you have to go?’ Kensley demands. ‘Go ahead and go then, coward. Run away like you always do. Leave me here to pick up the fucking pieces.’
Jarris meets his son’s eye.
He is standing in the meadow again. So much of his life happened in the meadow. The following sequences happen as if in a timelapse: Plumeria gives birth to their children, Charity gives birth to their children. And Demetra and Heartpin and then Charity, strangely, again (strange because it is not Charity at all but Adaline). He is smiling. Smiling until it hurts. Because he loves them all, he swears he does, he has just never known quite how to tame the bastard heart.
‘You may go, Jarris,’ Kensley says as the others continue to yell and demand and spit, ‘but if you try to come back again, I’ll fucking kill you.’ And Kensley does not look away, says it like a promise.
Jarris swallows thickly and nods. He understands. He looks then to Plumeria and shakes his weary head. “I’m sorry, Plumeria.” And then he attempts to shoulder his way through them. But they press in closer and he can feel them crushing him and he cries out in pain and frustration and exhaustion.
jarris
now I’ve been crazy, couldn’t you tell? I threw stones at the stars, but the whole sky fell
