[private] bother me, tell me awful things.

[ghaul]

GHAUL

i can take you there, but baby, you won't make it back

He is disappointed that his call went unanswered. A victory with no new scars or the bright taste of copper painted across his tongue is hardly a victory at all. When he lands back in the Cove, he drags his head low with a visible frown twisted across his fanged mouth. His wings hand loose across his back and down his sides as he draws closer to his nest to check on the growing brood. Though he cannot appreciate their beautiful shells, he does find some comfort in the little buds of warmth within them. It reminds him that every move is worth it in the end. They are safe and his home is strong.

But he does not want to treat the entities as simple pawns, to be traded and fought over. He presses his lips to each egg and then he slinks further into Pangea. Ghaul lifts his horned head and gives a soft croon as he searches for them. Starlace had left a statue and preferred to be left alone but he wonders how different they are from one another. Do these two prefer to socialize? Are they anything like him at all? He waits patiently, searching his surroundings for any sign of their outlines.

“Craft. Anatomy. I wanted to introduce myself,” he explains as his wings tuck against his back properly. “I am Ghaul. Have I angered you, taking you from the north?”

He tilts his head curiously. The young dragon mostly intends to learn from them, as he did with Anaxarete.

@[craft] @[anatomy] hi sorry I wanted a thread with you guys

[craft]

I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;

She had not had the time to love the land where she had been placed, yet a part of her still aches as she moves. She does not know why, exactly, she moves – she should resist, she knows, if not for love of the land then out of a sense of autonomy, because she is not property, to be gifted or taken at will.
Yet she is compelled, as if by some strange force, to leave behind one land for another. Something in her veins bidding her into this cove, where she is promptly met by a monster.
She tries not to wear her initial disgust too boldly – not that he could have seen it, she supposes – but still, it is a hard thing to swallow. She diverts her eyes, focuses elsewhere, out into the waves.

She does not like the ocean. The smell of salt reminds her of her mother, and that is an ugly memory, one that leaves her laden with shame.
(What had she done? Her own mother! God, and Scissors had loved her ‘til the end. That was the worst of it. Scissors had never stopped loving her.)
“Hello,” she responds. Her voice is dry, desiccated. She swears she can taste salt.
She ponders on his question. She isn’t angry, not exactly. She should be – she thinks she should be – but whatever magic has changed her has also compelled her. She wonders if it’s something she can fight. If she can break these strange chains.
“Not exactly,” she says, though she cannot speak for Anatomy – perhaps she can feel anger. Feel rage. Craft hopes she can.
“I should be angry. I don’t like being moved without my asking. But I didn’t choose Taiga, either.”

Craft

@[ghaul]

[ghaul]

GHAUL

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire

His entire soul ached, every inch of it, when he was a prisoner in Nerine. He missed the dry heat of the days spent in Pangea and the humid smell of salt here in the Cove. Nerine had none of the warmth of the lawless heart to it that his own home did, and it left him feeling hollow. His ribs were full of loneliness. If Craft expressed a similar agony, would he let her return to the trees of Taiga? He dwells on the question only briefly.

He turns and observes her, the stars glimmering silently across his face and talons. She is unlike Starlace, then. A quiet, thoughtful clicking gently fills the silence that blooms between them while she considers his question. Would whatever magic fills her restrain him in the same way? Being muzzled and chained is the only thing in this life that he truly detests. From his awful birth to now, he has never allowed anyone to contain him.

His clicking stops when she finishes speaking. Ghaul examines the warmth of her face for a few seconds more before he nods slowly in understanding. “Where would you go, given the choice, then?” he asks with a tilt of his head. Of course, he does not know her home was wiped into nothing, buried with any memory of it.

Ghaul thinks he would have liked to have been born in Tephra, where winter never quite gets its footing. Maybe he would have been gentler, being raised by Isilya rather than Anaxarete. But then he would not know Clarissa or Draco, and his heart would not be so full. The constant give and take of life, he supposes.

“Should anyone try to move you, I will consult you before I answer their challenge.” It isn’t quite an apology – he doesn’t understand them in the first place – but it is something akin to it.

@[craft]

[craft]

I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;

The first time she’d left a kingdom, it hadn’t been her choice, either.
She barely remembers it – how she was stolen away by her grandmother, a pawn in a game she didn’t then understand. It would set so much in motion, that steal (including Penninah’s own death), and perhaps Craft would have been a different woman, had she been left to be raised in the deserts.
She will never know, of course, because this is the route fate has set her upon. And now she is here, in another strange land, with its strange champion.
She sighs, and tries to pull herself from the sea of what-ifs. It is so easy to drown there.

But his question, then, and she is thrown back in. It wounds, the words, though she does not think their hurt intentional.
“The Deserts is my home,” she says, swallows, “but I am told they are no more.”
A mountain walked or stumbled, and Beqanna was reformed. So why had she, Craft, an anachronistic queen, been returned to it?
She still doesn’t know. You could build worlds of what she doesn’t know.
The rest of his words are kind enough. Craft wonders if she would care, if she were moved again. This place isn’t a home, either.
“Thank you,” she says, and she is honest in this. She appreciates the consideration, even if she cares little about where she winds up.
“Was this place always your home?” she asks him. Part of it is politeness, part is curiosity. Wonders how deep blood-ties run in these new systems.

Craft

@[ghaul]

[ghaul]

GHAUL

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire

He wonders what her Deserts were like. Pangea has been described as being like a desert, but he is at least intelligent enough to guess they are not quite the same. A frown develops across his lips. He can give her the sand and the sun, but it could never be the home she dreams of. Ghaul has only ever been strong enough to provide what his people need. Still, he finds himself trying to supply their every want as well.

Her words bring his attention back to her and he slowly shakes his head.

“No. I was born in the meadow snow,” he explains, remembering how the cold had tried to choke the life from him when he’d only just begun. “I was small and weak, born too soon. My mother died there, so my father took me to Pangea. Then he left and I grew up.”

Ghaul is careful to keep his emotions from spilling into the words. So much of his childhood was shaped by loneliness that he does not care to revisit those dark corridors of his mind. Instead, he keeps his sights trained on the future ahead. There will be time to mourn all these sad tales when he is dead and there is nothing but eternity stretching before him on the other side.

“I brought you here to keep my children safe when I am gone. I want them to have every opportunity to thrive,” he explains, turning his gaze in the direction of his nest. A selfish part of him would like to remain forever, to just lounge in the Cove and watch them grow each day. But he was not meant for such a lavish life and he knows this.

@[craft]

[craft]

I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;

She has thought, on occasion, of trying to remake the Deserts. She knows she is more powerful, now – that whatever happened to her left her imbued with some kind of magic – but she has not yet plumbed the depths of it, has not tested for its boundaries. No, her powers have been for simpler things – gifting the children of the past kingdom and now this one with small tokens. She has not tried to turn the magic back onto herself, to manifest her desires, because that is one of the few cards she still holds to her chest.
She cannot lay them all out yet, because if they fail, it will mean –
Well.

She listens to his story and a part of her tugs in sympathy. While she doesn’t have Anatomy’s affinity for children, she’s been a mother many times over, and had the luxury of birthing all her children within the safety of her kingdoms.
(She thinks, pained, of her dark and orange-eyed son. What kind of mother had she been to him? He would have been better off born in meadow snow.)
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she says. She feels like she should add something else – something like no child deserves that - but she thinks, again, of Garbage, and is afraid the words might ring hollow.

He gives his reasoning then, though she had not asked. But she smiles, and she likes him more for this, that he worries for the children, wants them kept safe.
“I’ll do my best,” she says, “though Anatomy’s always been better with children than I.”
An understatement, perhaps.
“Your children…” she begins, and there is a tightness in her throat she did not expect, and does not want, “what are their names?”

Craft

@[ghaul]

[ghaul]

GHAUL

And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire

Like her, Ghaul has never tested just where his limits lie in regards to his strength. Just how hot can his fires burn? How many miles of land can he lay to waste? When do his scales become like paper? He was wondered these things, but he has never had a reason to exercise his full might. Prey is weak and his enemies require only so much of his effort before he is content.

But Craft is far from content. He is not wise, but he knows well enough to understand that much. Ghaul offers only a small shrug when she expresses her condolences. His childhood shaped him into what he is now. Perhaps greater kindness would have tamed him and persuaded him from his conquests. That is not how the story went, however, so he does not dwell on these things as others may.

“All parents harm their children in some way – even the greatest,” he finally says as he pauses to consider how he has raised his brood thus far. Will they come to the same conclusions when they mature and begin nests of their own? A sharp exhale marks his concern before he continues on. “Asphyxea, Cirilla, Yadigar, and Virgil. The triplets are a year older than Virgil, but they are all strong in their own right.”

The stars across his cheekbones glimmer a little softer when he thinks more directly of them. They are each wildly different from their siblings and yet equally remarkable. There will come a day when he cannot watch them as they sleep, all piled into their nest and snoring gently as babies often do. But for now he enjoys admiring their tiny bodies as they grow and change each day.

“Do you have children, Craft?” he asks, suddenly realizing he has mostly talked of himself. He does not realize, of course, what a loaded question he has asked.

@[craft]

[craft]

I was in the darkness, so darkness I became;

She’d tasted contentment, in those last years in the Deserts. She thought she’d put her sins behind her, had pretended she could forget their blood on her hands. She’d been a good queen – she knows this – and she’d had a lover, a solid man who loved her back, and she thought she would die of old age, somewhere in the warm sands, looking out at the oasis.
Of all the ends she’d imagined for herself, waking up in some dystopic future Beqanna had never been one, and now, she thinks, she will never be satisfied.
Not that she deserved such a thing. She knows, deep down, as she reckons with a terrible sort of sanity, that she deserves punishment. She is a murderer, multiple times over. No kingdom fealty, no matter how deep, could erase that.

She listens to him speak of his children. She watches him soften under their memory. She enjoys watching it, in a way – such a straightforward emotion, the love for one’s children.
Well. Maybe not for her.
She bites her tongue at his question. She should have expected it, maybe – this was the formality of kingdom discussions, was it not? Small talk, questions passed between one another? Besides, she was the one who asked, who propped open this door.
“I did,” she says. She thinks of her twins, her first children. She’d loved them the most, she thinks, though a mother shouldn’t say such things. But they – and all the others – are gone now, surely.
“I think,” she says, and her voice is tight, quiet, “that too much time has passed for any of them to still be alive.”

Craft

@[ghaul]