let the dream pull you below; Vulgaris

[vulgaris]

VulgariS

take me, take me back to your bed. i love you so much that it hurts my head.
say, i don't mind you under my skin. oh, let the bad parts in, the bad parts in.

Sometimes he tries to remember what he was like before the curse found a home in him. Was he kind? Was he genuine when he smiled, back then? Or has he always been a monster, since his formation in the womb? His parents certainly greeted his birth as the Arctic Circle greets the sun after months of night, with light and hope and joy. He was the embodiment of their love for one another, back then. He had surrendered to the night only because he had no other options with this body. It craved blood in order to survive and so he fed on the weak, the young and old alike. Such is the nature of a monster.

He can only shake his head when Yidhra says that creatures such as they will be the ones to pluck Beqanna from its tribulations. No, not him. There is no duty, no sense of obligation within him to cleanse the sickness from the heart and so he will not rise to the call. But Leliana, the bright burning star around which every piece of him orbits, she is the tender heart who flourishes in the face of the challenge. Vulgaris believes it will be the people like her who tear their bleeding hearts open to find the cure, the salvation of their people.

“If it were up to monsters like me, then we would all be doomed,” he says with a dry laugh as he watches her tentacles fold across her chest so strangely. “My wife is the one who will save us all.”

His voice goes soft around the mention of her, relaxes against the memory of her kind face. This makes it easier for him to shrug when she says they’ve gotten off to a bad start. Vulgaris shifts his weight and looks back at the waters from which she rose up. If he was a wildfire, then Leliana was a cleansing rain sent to calm him down to weakened embers. Her love is peaceful as a winter morning after a long blizzard, perfectly quiet with untouched miles of snow, pristine. And yet she is the warmth of a hearth to keep him content in the longest nights.

“It’s alright. I suppose I’m on edge whenever I’m away from my home.”

He smiles faintly now, a sign that all is well in the world with them now. Or, at least as well as it can be, given the plague and death surrounding them.

@[Yidhra]