a dead and dying thing

[Iris]

all things are poisons

for there is nothing without poisonous qualities.

So this was The Chamber, the place her mother had tried to tear Beqanna apart for. It had almost worked - almost. Iris hadn’t understood at the time why her mother had loved this land so, and part of her still didn’t. It was just a land, though it was an appealing land if nothing else from her first tour. It’s not like anyone lived here at the moment, in this land so long gone from Beqanna, so she hadn’t stopped at the border but rather moved into the forest, the mist clinging to the trees in the early morning. The land was cool and the dead were loud and vibrant here. Many of the ghosts seemed to have lived here once, having decided to stay in their next life for their love of the land. Other’s had been killed here, in senseless wars. They were trapped here, looking for resolution that would never come.

It seems like her kind of place.

The magic of the land that her mother spoke of is long gone. There’s no heartbeat beneath the land now, though Iris can sense a phantom of it. There’s the remnant of her mother’s burning tree, though it no longer burns. It’s just a charred thing, dying but never dead. She sees it as she comes into the center of the kingdom, the ghosts telling her their stories as she goes. Some of the stories she already knows from her mother, stories of the wars she’d created, the heart manipulation she’d gained from the kingdom and used to crush hearts beneath her will. From what the ghosts tell her, her mother was not the worst of those who ruled and called the Chamber home, and Iris finds herself grinning.

Perhaps she’d give this a try. Maybe staying put might be fun for a while.

it is only the dose that matters

iris

photo by cottonbro


@Affirmative here's a bad starter for you