08-31-2021, 09:12 PM
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
How many more meaningless deaths? How much more of her blood, sweat, and tears would she have to shed before this was over? She had seen wars before, as a child before the Reckoning. In the other worlds she had traveled when the portal had sucked her from this land the first time. She does not doubt that’s where all this is headed. And for what? What was the point when there was only nothing at the end of it…waiting for them all. Even the Curse must go to that endless void in its various deaths before.
How does it keep coming back? Somewhere in that question lays the key to ending this long game she has somehow been forced to play. She knows it as surely as she knows each and every name to all the stars in the sky. But the answer always feels just out of reach, just on the periphery of what she can really see. And so she keeps trying to reach for it and becomes more and more frustrated.
Until she has that answer, the Curse will continue to bend and break her bones. He will continue to terrorize the only world she’s ever truly cared about, will continue to shatter the pieces of herself until she no longer knew who (or what) she was. She vaguely remembers all the lives she had watched before when she had hung high in the sky, the visions and memories that had been shown to her in the Underneath. Had she ever truly been a star or had that been a massive manipulated lie as well?
She doesn’t know anymore.
All she does know is that she hadn’t touched her connection to the heavens in months. She had no desire to when it all felt so pointless, since the Curse had muddied it with its dark hand. All she knows is that the friends that hover around her seem just as angry as she is as they glare their obvious rage through their soft blood-red hue that covers her like a crimson shawl.
Betrayed.
Brutalized.
Hopeless.
She can’t recall ever feeling this angry before. She had been furious with Amet and Castile all those many years ago when they had each grabbed a piece of her heart and pulled, fracturing it right at the middle. She had thought to break time itself when she had been snatched from her son. But that fury was nothing compared to the hurricane that swirls and spirals in her now.
For a moment she raises her head and simply stares, not really seeing what’s in front of her. The swirls of her silver eyes still spin so ferociously in her iris’s that they blend and glow in the dark. She can feel the water against her broken wings, against the shattered tailbones, against all the places where the Curse had inflicted his dark magic this time. She thinks she sees a bright star hovering above her own crimson ones and wonders blearily if this was just another nightmare. Maybe she had never left the Underneath after all.
And then there is a voice through the darkness and it sounds kind. Startalker, it asks her and her ears pin back against her disarrayed mane despite that kind voice because for someone who has never felt more disconnected from where they come from, it sounds like an insult. There is a long pause before she finally answers, her voice sharp from the mix of pain and anger that run rampant inside her scarred body. “Yes. No.” She flares her nostrils and turns her head down to the blurry black and reddish reflection she can barely make out in the murky water before her. “I don’t know anymore.”
She pauses again before she looks for that face in the dark. "I don't know if this is working." She finally says stupidly, too proud and too angry to truly ask for help properly, as she shrugs a shoulder and visibly flinches, pain coursing through the wing she hadn't meant to move.
How does it keep coming back? Somewhere in that question lays the key to ending this long game she has somehow been forced to play. She knows it as surely as she knows each and every name to all the stars in the sky. But the answer always feels just out of reach, just on the periphery of what she can really see. And so she keeps trying to reach for it and becomes more and more frustrated.
Until she has that answer, the Curse will continue to bend and break her bones. He will continue to terrorize the only world she’s ever truly cared about, will continue to shatter the pieces of herself until she no longer knew who (or what) she was. She vaguely remembers all the lives she had watched before when she had hung high in the sky, the visions and memories that had been shown to her in the Underneath. Had she ever truly been a star or had that been a massive manipulated lie as well?
She doesn’t know anymore.
All she does know is that she hadn’t touched her connection to the heavens in months. She had no desire to when it all felt so pointless, since the Curse had muddied it with its dark hand. All she knows is that the friends that hover around her seem just as angry as she is as they glare their obvious rage through their soft blood-red hue that covers her like a crimson shawl.
Betrayed.
Brutalized.
Hopeless.
She can’t recall ever feeling this angry before. She had been furious with Amet and Castile all those many years ago when they had each grabbed a piece of her heart and pulled, fracturing it right at the middle. She had thought to break time itself when she had been snatched from her son. But that fury was nothing compared to the hurricane that swirls and spirals in her now.
For a moment she raises her head and simply stares, not really seeing what’s in front of her. The swirls of her silver eyes still spin so ferociously in her iris’s that they blend and glow in the dark. She can feel the water against her broken wings, against the shattered tailbones, against all the places where the Curse had inflicted his dark magic this time. She thinks she sees a bright star hovering above her own crimson ones and wonders blearily if this was just another nightmare. Maybe she had never left the Underneath after all.
And then there is a voice through the darkness and it sounds kind. Startalker, it asks her and her ears pin back against her disarrayed mane despite that kind voice because for someone who has never felt more disconnected from where they come from, it sounds like an insult. There is a long pause before she finally answers, her voice sharp from the mix of pain and anger that run rampant inside her scarred body. “Yes. No.” She flares her nostrils and turns her head down to the blurry black and reddish reflection she can barely make out in the murky water before her. “I don’t know anymore.”
She pauses again before she looks for that face in the dark. "I don't know if this is working." She finally says stupidly, too proud and too angry to truly ask for help properly, as she shrugs a shoulder and visibly flinches, pain coursing through the wing she hadn't meant to move.
-- Ciri
@lilliana