shattered into ash [Ledger]

[Cress]

all that we have amassed sits before us, shattered into ash

Is she lucky to have loved and lost? Honestly, she isn't sure. She's had the chance to fall into passionate love and birth children, but having that love torn from her has been almost too much for her to bear. Her children have all grown and left her side, so she doesn't even have that familial love to keep her company. She is completely, entirely alone, and she doesn't know if it's worse to have lost Flamevein, or the idea of never falling into love at all. Without her lover, she would never have had two wonderful foals, but where are they now? Where are the ones who helped her when she was a husk of her former cheerful self? Why has everyone left?

When she thinks back on her family, it is only worse. Kindling had thought of her as a disappointment and nothing more. Both of her parents had abandoned her as a child, and she still remembers the earthquakes ripping through the Valley and her foreleg snapping nearly in half as she wandered, lost and afraid, through the ruins of the kingdom. She had discovered her powers then, but she had lost everything else.

Both her parents and her self-built family had abandoned her, and she'd be lying if she said her heart wasn't breaking on a daily basis.

She cannot stop.

She is alone when her fire returns to her, and she squirms at first as she feels the burn in her chest. It is something that she has not felt in several years, and at first, the sensation is uncomfortable. Smoke curls skyward from her lips as she lets out a deep breath, surprise written all over her face. What is happening? Why has her fire suddenly returned? Is her healing back as well? Silently she reaches for her other ability, but there is nothing that can be physically healed, and her attempt falls flat.

She trembles as she sucks in a breath, close to tears as she lets out a small tongue of flame. Her flames have been returned to her and the feeling is entirely overwhelming, for hers is not a curse in her eyes. It is a gift, freely given for surviving the Dark God's lair, and though years ago the power frightened her, she has learned to embrace it. She has not been herself without her fire breathing, and all of a sudden she has been mended.

Still broken, but better.

She watches the flaxen stallion as he approaches, and she utters a small gasp as recognition spreads over both of their faces. She takes in his scarred eye socket and his entirely beaten down frame and more emotion sweeps through her than she cares to admit. "You," she murmurs, taking a step closer to him to breathe in his scent—familiar, but long lost. "I remember you, too."

They are broken glass, the pair of them. Perhaps they are the only two survivors of Carnage's wrath, and Cress wants to reminisce while at the same time she never wants to bring it up ever again. "I tried to chase you down, after escaping," she tells him, pulling her wings even closer to her sides. "You ran. I couldn't keep up... you were terrified. As was I." What would have happened if she had caught him that day? Would he have shunned her, or would they have been friends, bonded over a shared experience? She cannot say—it was so long ago.

"I could never forget your screams, either," she whispers, and her eyes find the ground between his hooves. "Though I am glad I am not the only one who made it out alive. I've not found any of the others."

cress

oxytocin x kindling