though lovers be lost, love shall not; tarnished

[Tarnished]

We were young and wild and free,

fightin' in a love we couldn't leave.

It will be noted that I was not present for the Valley mutiny.

As Demian’s newly-appointed Righthand Man, one might think I should be off somewhere kissing his ass every hour of every day of every week—but that isn’t the way things work in the Valley, or, rather, it’s not how I work. Position means nothing to me. It never has, it probably never will; I come from a family that’s highly respected already, I’m capable of more than half of the population will ever be in their lifetime—power has no appeal to me because I already have so much of it. I do nothing with this power of mine, of course. But I can, if I want to. I can bring all of Beqanna to its knees with a mere sneeze and only the magicians would be able to stop me. Healers can only heal for so long, after all.

Disease tends to linger for much longer.

I smile, jagged teeth and jagged edges; I have no idea why I chose this form, besides secretly hoping to run into one of my wayward little nieces and maybe scaring the shit out of them. I’m nine feet tall on two tree stump-like legs, I have long bony arms that end in even longer, bonier fingers—the tips of which graze the ground. I have the ugliest dark gray pelt I have ever seen, and a long, thin stem with a bright bulbous light at the end protrudes from my forehead; I think I’m somewhere between bat, ape, and angler fish but I’m not exactly sure. I’m not even sure where the idea came from—but it’s amusing when I run into someone in the dark and they run blindly into the woods, screaming their heads off.

There’s no method to my madness, I have nowhere to go and nothing to do. But somehow, as always, I end up back at our place—the lake spreads out before me, glistening, filled with distorted stars and a rippling moon all its own. The willows reach for their reflections in the water and their reflections reach back, but they never quite touch one another; I think of her, then. I think of Dominion.

She came and went without word, with a promise to come back after she got her head clear.

It’s been years since I saw her last, I have long since given up hope that she will come back—they never come back. Another smile pulls at the corner of my lips, wistful but bitter; I think of the things we used to do, things that might have been had I not left and come back and then left her again. It might’ve been my family instead and I wince when the thought crosses my mind, remembering the earthquake and that girl’s broken little body. No, that wouldn’t have been my family.

I would’ve saved mine.

(I would have saved hers, if I could….)

I shift, slipping back into my old skin the way a lesser being changes back into their favorite shirt. Roan and scarred and golden-eyed. I flick my ears back, too captivated by the lake to notice the portal and swirl of stars opening up behind me; I don’t see it until the last second and I whip my head around, confused, because she’s there—she’s there and looks the same as she did three years ago. “Dominion?” I ask, blinking repeatedly, as if that might make her disappear. As if I am seeing things.

“Dom…” I don’t know what I want to say, if I should say anything. She looks so happy, so calm… peaceful. I bristle, inwardly, at least, I’m still too shocked to actually express my anger outwards; if she were going on a space adventure, she could have at least let me know instead of letting me wait around for her for an entire fucking month.

tarnished

vanquish x nocturnal

Even on the way down, even on the way down.