haunted by the ghost of you; abysm

[leliana]

I don't know what I'm supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you

She has felt sorrow before.

She has felt it eat away at her, has felt the way that it can demolish the very pillars that are designed to support. She has danced with her grief, mourned with her own heart, watched the sun rise and set on the chapters of her life crafted to inflict as much damage as possible onto her.

But this is different.

This is a final straw, a final ending, and she feels her resolve shatter beneath it. She does not ache or rage or implode. Instead, she is an empty house, the dust barely settling along her edges, the sun no longer reaching the core of her. She is cold, hollowed out, and the rest of the world seems to fade away, peeling away like old paint. She leaves the Pampas the morning, a land where she lives and yet no longer feels like home, but she doesn’t go to the Island. Not today. She cannot bring herself to face them today.

Instead, she turns to the other lands.

The ones rearranged and yet wholly the same, the ones that house so many memories, both good and bad. The memories of a bone-armored boy coming to curl around her. Of him chasing a golden stallion away. Of having love crumble in her hand. Of finding the scaled stallion and standing chest to chest. Of waking next to a roaring river to the chaos and the din of the fight, of the bone-armored stallion washing away.

It almost reaches her, the memories almost break through the numbness, but they don’t. Instead, she just walks until she reaches the river, until the rapids wash over her hooves, grabbing at the feathers of her legs and pulling. Today, her wings are just simple red down and they press to her sides. Her elegant neck drops her neck down and she drops her nose into the water, the currents slapping and rushing around.

She lifts her darkened head up and closes her eyes, feels a heavy weight in her chest, and tries to breathe.

Even that feels like too much.

@[abysm]