"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
She has to find Kora. This much she knows. Has known since she tumbled through the air between the realm of the living and the dead, since she rode a wave of electric across Beqanna. First to Kratos, then to Lagertha and Scorch. Why hadn’t she gone to Kora first? There were too many reasons, in truth. All excuses, she knows. But Kratos and Lagertha had been at the end of the world, and Rhy needed to see if they were okay. And then, she saw Scorch because telling Kora their parents were dead just wasn’t high on her list to do. It had been hard enough telling Kratos and Lagertha and Scorch. Every time she said the words, the weight of it settled on her even more. Each time she spoke the words, it was less like and dream and more like reality.
These things really did happen. She fought monsters and watched the world come to an end. She heard the static that devoured the world. She found her parents in the afterlife. Together and happy but still, gone. There would never be a moment when they found her in the Jungle and wrapped themselves around her in a hug. She’d never get to be their little girl in life again. Any hope, however remote she had, of such a reunion was long gone.
Then of course, there’s the last problem. She doesn’t know where her sister is. Somewhere cold, likely, but she hadn’t seen Kora in the Tundra when she had been. Her sister was probably tucked deep in some blizzard where Rhy would never be able to find her. Despite her newfound skill of being half-dead, Rhy still couldn’t read minds or track someone down in any particularly useful way. So she goes to the only place she can think of – the meadow.
The sky above the meadow cracks with lightning. Not constantly, but enough, like a lighthouse. Bright and vivid and out of place in the otherwise blue spring sky. Eventually, no matter where Kora was, Rhy figured her sister would notice the electric storm in the sky. The tendrils of lightning reached as far as Rhy could manage across Beqanna, the bulk of the storm settling over the meadow. Kora would know. She would come.
07-14-2015, 05:04 PM (This post was last modified: 07-28-2015, 04:49 AM by Kora.)
look at the stars,
look how they shine for you
Sometimes, I walk the frozen landscape of Icicle Isle and forget that its winter isn't my doing; sometimes, I am surrounded by a skyfall of snow and forget that it is. When I first came to the abandoned herdland, I was struck by its emptiness. And I was drawn to it. Perhaps a life of isolation isn't what my parents wanted for me, but it's the life I know. I've never really had anyone except mother and father -- besides Rhy, though until recently I wouldn't have said I had her, either. With all that we've been through, we aren't sisterly as others are, but we do care for one another. I know that. And for different reasons, I know that we both regret the childhoods we forced upon each other. The rift that had separated us since birth was not something we chose; Rhy didn't choose the electric, and I didn't choose the fear. But it was there from the beginning, and only now that the ice in my veins serves to strengthen my butterfly-heart have we been able to start choosing differently.
Still, there's something about being alone that comforts me now like never before. I used to need someone else's strength to survive (the strength of mother's sunshine and father's understanding) but now I have my own. I breathe, and frost comes forth. I sigh, and a hailstorm lives. I shift, and so does the snow -- a shadow of my every move, an extension of my will. More than that, though, it is a part of me. Just like Rhy's electric is a part of her. And sometimes, the whiteness of my snow reminds me of the whiteness of her lightning. Perhaps we're more alike now than we've ever been.
It's easy to lose track of time on my own, especially in the north where seasonal changes are already subtle; and with my own winter influencing the climate, the passing months are even less distinguishable. Recently though, I've noticed the days becoming longer and I find myself wandering south out of simple curiosity. How long have I been here? I pass the old border of the herdland into greener places, and to my surprise I keep going. The growing heat makes me feel a little nauseous at first, but once the air around me cools and the icy armour that covers my body thickens instinctively, I feel better. It's a wonder how colourful the world can be. The flowered fields and forested hills remind me of the wilderness outside of Beqanna where I'd been raised -- and I think of mother and father, a small hope in my heart as I wonder when I'll see them again.
A sudden flash across the horizon startles me. I look up. The skies are clear and cloudless. That can't be a storm. Yet a second bolt follows, and though my once-winged heart remains still, deep inside I feel an old twinge -- one that will never completely fade for as long as I live. Years ago, I wouldn't have dared to walk toward the lightning. The fear would have taken control. But now that I have powers of my own, I recognize this for what it is: someone, or something is influencing the weather.
Maybe it's Rhy.
So I walk toward the lightning.
It's uncanny to have found each other like this, but isn't that always how it is? When I see her across the meadow, I let the snowfall that follows me melt away. “Rhy,” I say with a smile as we come face to face. The heat makes the ice of my armour glisten as I gesture to the stormless skies. “I had a feeling that was you.” While sisterhood might not come as naturally to us, I am happy to see her -- until I notice that something's missing. “Your tattoos,” I murmur, a mixture of concern and confusion furrowing my brow. My eyes glow light-blue as I inspect her a little more closely. I don't see the red slash of a traitor across her chest, but why else were they gone? “What happened?”
They would never be sisters in the traditional sense. Not the kind that played together, that told each other of boys and giggled into the night. No, Rhy has never told Kora of Kratos. She would, of course, if it ever came up in conversation. But it has been Lagertha that had teased her about Kratos, about a horde of electric babies in the future. It would be Lagertha or Scorch that Rhy will run to if or when that ever happens. Not Kora. She’d find Kora, of course. But never first.
They don’t even bicker like sisters. They don’t claw and scream. They don’t make up and then start fighting all over again. No. They simply never had a relationship at all. Just snippets of one fragmented with fear and running and emptiness. Rhy couldn’t be herself, and Kora couldn’t look at her. The ice that covers her sister’s skin and runs in her veins may be the only reason they have formed any sort of bond at all. And despite the cold that follows her sister like a plague, Rhy has come to love it.
This time though, when Kora finds her, the flurries die and its just Kora (and her ice armor, but Rhy wouldn’t expect that to be gone). She grins slightly, though the grin is pained, because nothing about this conversation is going to fun. One day they will have a conversation where they embrace and talk about love and life and their grown up children and how far they have come. One day.
Today is not that day, but the promise of it keeps Rhy from dissolving into tears right then and there. Kora is quick to notice the lack of tattoo’s on Rhy’s skin and is already asking what happened. Oh. So much Kora. Rhy’s smile fades, and she shakes her head slightly. “You really have been living in a snow mound, haven’t you?”
She tries to chuckle, tries to lighten the mood. But it’s impossible. “Beqanna has changed, Kora. The magic was stripped from the kingdoms and spread out equally. There are no more divisions. Not because mythics and non-mythics. Not because dark and light. Our tattoos were stripped, but will return in time as the magic settles and grows. In our case, the spirit of the Amazon roams the Jungle as a jaguar cub.” At this, she does smile a bit, thinking of the time she spends playing with the cub. Being a lion gives her a different approach to the cub than most of the other sisters.
But her smile is shortlived as she looks at her sister. So bright and hopeful and untouched. Maybe her life of solitude is perfect for her. Maybe it’s best not to know. But Rhy has to tell her. She can’t keep this secret. Her sister deserves the truth, no matter how painful. “The tattoos are the least of it, though.” She disappears from view then, in the blink of an eye. She doesn’t stay gone long, but when she comes back her coat is speckled gray and she’s not entirely corporeal. “Carnage called us to the end of the world. We had to bring Gail back from the end, and we did. But Beqanna wouldn’t return her.”
She takes a breath, the sound of the langoliers in her ears. They will always be there, in the back of her mind. “We were sent to Beqanna’s afterlife. I saw so many of the dead there.” She pauses again, because she doesn’t know how to say it. Doesn’t want to say it. Telling Lagertha and Kratos and Scorch made it feel real, but only somewhat. Telling Kora makes it impossible to take back. So she just takes a breath and starts. It comes out as a waterfall, because if she stops, she may never start again.
“Our parents were there, Kora, with the dead. Happy and together. But we won’t see them again. Well, not here, anyway. I can get back there, Kora. I can take you. And they told me we have a brother. His name is Leander, and he’s gold and white too. They said we should find him.” And then she falls silent finally. It’s too much all at once, she knows, so she lets the silence spread as long as Kora needs.
rhy
the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle
@[Kora] - think I took longer than you to reply. Sorry lady :/
Though she grins when she first sees me, there's something in my sister's expression that makes me wonder. It isn't like before -- the uneasiness that flutters against my ribcage isn't fear, exactly -- but something is bothering Rhy, and that in itself is unusual. Even as children, I would cower and tremble and hide (from her, from the electric), whereas she had always worn her strength with ease.
Her comment about the snow mound almost makes me forget her faltering nerves, and if she had really laughed, I would have laughed with her. “I guess you could say that,” I say with a soft smile instead, though the lakelight blue of my eyes search her own after I glimpse the set of her curved jaw. Had a muscle just jumped there? Why are you so nervous, Rhy? And then I listen, my eyes widening at the implications of everything my sister tells me.
When I'd first returned to Beqanna, I'd gone to the Chamber to stay with our uncles, Rodrik and Kavi. I was afraid to be on my own, then -- I still needed the reassurance of family. But after the battle of the Seasons (after everything had changed), a conversation with cousin Straia had helped me realize that I couldn't stay forever -- not if I wanted to keep the ice in my veins. And for that reason I'd never ventured to the Falls, where most of father's family once lived, either. Now, with the dissolution of magic across Beqanna, things could be different.
When Rhy mentions the Jungle's jaguar-spirit, I can't help the light that momentarily dances in my eyes. “Grandmother Kagerou would like that, I think. Mom said grandfather used to call her his jaguar, because of her tattoos.” And for a moment, we're smiling together -- each with bright memories (separate, yet whole in a way) shining from our gaze. But then I feel the shift in conversation that some part of me had been dreading, though I don't know why.
But soon (oh, too soon) I will.
For a moment, Rhy disappears before my very eyes. It startles me; a cold wind lashes through the grass as I search for her, the ice in my veins flaring reflexively. And when she returns again, greyed somehow, the wind of winter begins to frost the green blades as I try to grasp all that she tells me about the afterlife at the end of the world. All of this might have been hard to believe for some, but I myself am proof of the impossible -- so I don’t doubt. Not for a moment.
‘Our parents were there, Kora.’ What?
‘With the dead.’ No.
‘We won’t see them again.’ No, no, no, no, no.
The tears freeze on my cheeks before they can fall -- streaks of ice across gold-and-silver skin. And I can’t help the snow, not now, not when they’re dead, not when this is the impossible that I have to believe, no, no, no, please, no…
‘I can get back there.’ This can’t be happening.
‘I can take you.’
I blink hard and Rhy comes back into focus, her figure a blur in the winter storm that’s risen. We’re surrounded in a cloud of white -- hail and sleet and snow.
‘We have a brother.’
Despite the raging storm inside, I call the whiteness back to me.
‘Leander.’
The hail and sleet and snow vortex into nothingness, sucked away to vaporize in the sky.
‘They said we should find him.’
The tears are the only evidence of my emotion I allow to remain, jagged and crisscrossed and stark, frozen in place against a hollowed expression. A brother? I think blearily. And then, They’re gone. I can hardly bear the weight of a world where Rayelle and Riagan no longer exist. My knees tremble, but I can’t move. I look at my sister, and I feel that weight grow heavier still. They were going to come back for her -- for us. They should have come back.
My voice is ragged. “How?” She can’t possibly know all the answers I need -- how did this happen, how did they die, how can you go back, how are we going to find him? -- but I can’t help asking. It burns in me, a cold fire that rages inside, though my eyes are dim and bleak as I try to keep focus on my twin sister -- the one who’d found them at the edge of the universe.
kora
the winter girl of riagan and rayelle
you know I would never mind how long or short a reply takes bb <3
She doesn’t blame Kora for the storm that rages around them. It’s how Rhy feels every day, and if the electric inside her weren’t so deadly, the storm would never end. The sky would crack and bleed with lightning if she let her emotions out. But while winter is cold and painful, Rhy in this moment is dead, and she can’t feel the cold. Can’t feel the icy winds that howl around them, or the snow that doesn’t settle on her back but passes through. She would simply be crying too, if ghosts had any tears to cry.
She knows it’s safer in this form, safer to stay a ghost. Not just because she’s safe from the bitter winter of her sister’s pain, but because if she weren’t ghost, the tears would roll down her face. As it is, its all Rhy can do to keep from wrapping her sister in a hug, but for her sister and for herself. She wants, desperately, in that moment for them to be fully normal. She wants them to be able to comfort each other, and where comfort fails, to simply crumble together. Because life is always easier when there’s someone to share the pain with.
Lagertha had no sympathy, nor Scorch. Not really, anyway. Scorch had too much of her own pain to bear, and Lagertha no reference to what life is like with loving parents. Rhy didn’t blame them. And Kratos? She could have broken down and cried, and he would have let her. But with him, she is stronger, capable of staying together even as the world threatens to split open beneath her feet. With him, she cannot imagine crying. But as the blades of grass freeze around her, she wishes more than anything she could simply stop being strong, for just a minute.
But that has never been an option for Rhy. That will never be an option.
But she understands her sister’s pain. Rhy had dreamed of the day they would return, had dreamed of a life where her parents saw what she had become, saw how far Kora and she had come. They were supposed to come back. They were supposed to find the girl they left so many years ago, and maybe then, they could be a family again. Maybe finally, she could have the family she mostly remembered in dreams.
Her sister reigns the storm back in, with only one question. Though that one question, that one word, is a million questions all at once. And in this, Rhy will fail her. “I don’t know,” she says, because it’s true. There had been no time to ask her parents how. There had been no time for them to catch up on everything that had happened. But she also knew they didn’t need her to tell them. They’d been watching, keeping an eye on their girls from their place in the afterlife. Their parents had never forgotten their children. They simply never said goodbye.
Maybe that was the part that hurt the most.
“All I know is I can get back. I’m not entirely sure how I know this, or how I’m supposed to do it. But I can. They will be there, and we can see them. We can ask them.” They can ask their parents how.
The snow passes through Rhy as though it doesn't exist -- or maybe as though she doesn't exist. But she's still here; it's mom and dad who are gone. They're gone, and we are all that's left. Us, and a brother we've never even met.
Once the snow has stopped (the world made painfully stark again), a part of me clings to Rhy's words like a lifeline -- not for myself, but for them. Like the fact that we could see them again meant that they weren't actually dead. But they are, another part of me whispers. I shudder. “Then we need to go back.” My chin lifts a fraction of an inch, the ice pulsing through me and replacing my heartbeat.
I step close, perhaps the closest we've ever been -- because right now, we need each other like never before. I search her face, where I glimpse things both familiar and unknown. “You'll get us there.” And although it had never been a question of whether or not she could bring us back across the divide, I find myself murmuring, “I trust you.” Maybe what I'd meant to say was, I love you -- maybe she'd know.
With tears threatening to resurface, I break our gaze with a shake of my dished head. “They were going to come back to Beqanna, Rhy, I swear. I — I'm so sorry they never did.” My voice wavers and I stop, turning to her. She looked so much like them. Slowly, I find myself reaching for her with my muzzle, though I pause when I'm quite close to her own -- I'll always remember the Flash. But then I press forward. I close the distance between us. For the first time since we were born, I choose contact with my sister. In that moment, all I know is that I want to forget the fear. I want to comfort her, and I want to be comforted.
More than anything, I don't want this to be something we have to bear alone.
kora
the winter girl of riagan and rayelle
sorry it took so long >_< if you want to continue this in afterlife then I'm game!
