[open] my mother told me some day i would buy galleys with good oars, sail to distant shores

[Tatter]

Burn everything you love then burn the ashes.
In the end everything collides;
My childhood spat back out the monster that you see.

Nocturnal is one that he had rarely seen in the Afterlife, despite their closeness in life. There were so many circumstances that had pulled them apart - war and revivals and new love and new children and so many other things, but perhaps the one thing that had been their downfall in the end was the idea of eternity. The thought that all of time had remained spread before them, to be united as a family for as long as the universe continued to exist. Life had separated them, but Death had reunited them, and it is all too possible that Tatter had taken that for granted.

It’s been years since the last time that they had spoken, each of them drawn back to the world of the living for separate reasons. It had been a brief conversation as the day had been ending, and they had parted with a swift embrace and a promise to meet up again soon, to properly catch up on all that life had offered them.

He hasn’t seen her since.

He hopes that maybe the return of the Chamber would draw her from hiding, that the electric pull of her birthplace would summon her to reappear. In his mind she will simply always exist, always be the only constant in his life, no matter where this life drags him. Though his death so many years ago had come before hers, her death had almost been too much for him to bear; his soul had threatened to rip open the gates of the Underworld alone, and it had nearly destroyed him.

The idea that she could be gone, erased from existence?
Inconceivable.

The soft hooting of an owl startles him from his thoughts, and the stallion huffs out a breath as dusk begins to gather around him. The birch forest is where he has always felt most at home, though he had once called the cliffside caverns his favorite. That had been another time, another age, nearly. He is turning to head deeper into the forest when the bleating of a child catches his attention, and his dark head swivels toward the noise.

The scene is achingly familiar as the filly comes into view, and he swears he knows the exact shade the girl’s adult coat will come in, and when he sees her golden eye he wants to crash to the ground. “What is your name, child?” he asks her, possibly more gruffly than he intended, but his throat feels thick, and his vision seems to be swimming before him.

“Where is your mother, girl? Who is your mother?”

Tatter.

@ Sol