11-12-2019, 09:35 PM
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At first, all that she can hear is her breath. Her lungs sit heavy in her chest, water-logged yet still bubbling with every <i>inhale</i>, <i>exhale</i>. Her body aches with the numb of her watery grave and she is not sure if the violent tremblling that overtakes her is from the cold that was her death or the uncertainty she now faces. She grinds her teeth together, a physical attempt to muster the audacious, brazen creature that she once was, though she still holds her eyes tightly closed, nostrils flaring wide with every gurgling inhale.
She can feel him, right away. <i>Tatter</i>. He is not the manifestation of her pain-soaked deaths, not the fevered imaginings of a soul condemned. He is <i>here</i>. She had spent the first years searching the perpetual scenes of her suicide for some hint of his presence, hoping that she had not followed him across the veil in vain. Day after day, she woke, she walked, she died. Alone. Always alone. Now, though, now she finds his presence like the dandelions find the sun, her longing emanating from her clammy skin as if it were a tangible thing for him to reach out and grasp.
After Tatter, she hears the river. She takes a deep breath (though it’s not enough; there’s never enough air in death) and slowly opens her eyes. His presence is a powerful force - it beckons her gaze, but she resists it with every bit of defiance she can muster. Still shivering, instead she looks to her left and then to her right. The old and broken are all around her – she was never a warrior, and though she had taken her own life, it had not been violent demise …
The middle water roils with otherwordly danger and her grey eyes track the path of a tree branch as it is overcome by the riot and swept downstream. Her attention snags on the grulla mare just before she’s drug beneath the surface. The air is thick with longing as the dead on both sides have realized that the shore opposing them holds their dearest. The water’s surface stirs and produces two strange mares, carbon copies of one another. An ear swivels forward, the other joining it a moment before she draws them back and down, pinning then tightly to her neck.
Did she want to live again? She had lived again once, and three lives were wasted.
The strain of ignoring him, acting as if he were not the irresistible center of her world, is draining. Finally, agonizingly, she meets his burning gaze. Suddenly, somehow, she is standing knee deep in the river, though her eyes have not left his form now that it has found him. Something heavy bumps at her legs and at first she ignores it. As wildly handsome as their father, Tatter smiles at her, his mother’s cunning caught up in the corners of his eyes. He is just as he was, before they tore one another’s worlds apart, before they had tried to patch together what once was and could never be again.
The heavy thing bumps her again and she looks down. Perhaps it is the already surreal reality she finds herself in, or a numbing effect that decades of her personal hell has had on her, but she does not gasp in abject horror when the bloated corpse of one of <i>their</i> daughters stares unseeing up at her. She reaches down, brushing her muzzle gently across the mare’s eyelid, closing Lyanna’s eyes. At that same moment, another heavy thing bumps into her legs and before she even looks, Frostreaver knows it is Eliska. Precious Eliska, who had given up her life so that Frost might live … only for her mother to drown their lives beneath the gray waters of the Beach. A single tear tracks down the side of her face as she tucks her chin over her - <i>their</i> - daughter’s ear and whispers her aching apology. It had not been life without him.
The other dead stir around her, all of them clamoring to claim the prize that the grulla mare has promised. Frostreaver basks in their presence, whispering to Tatter so far across the river she knows he cannot hear her but still, she revels. A blink, another … and they are now stirring at her feet, beyond that of the push and tug of the current. Now she steps back, watching as her daughters give her equally winsome smiles and murmur their acceptances of her apologies. They roll off their sides and sink into the water up to their necks, sides pressed close together, and offer her their banks. She does not hesitate to step out onto them, finding purchase in the hollows of their backs and meat of their rumps. In life, her perch would be precarious, at best. In death … the well-matched mares surge forward, surging across and down the current, milk-white eyes trained on their father’s form.
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She can feel him, right away. <i>Tatter</i>. He is not the manifestation of her pain-soaked deaths, not the fevered imaginings of a soul condemned. He is <i>here</i>. She had spent the first years searching the perpetual scenes of her suicide for some hint of his presence, hoping that she had not followed him across the veil in vain. Day after day, she woke, she walked, she died. Alone. Always alone. Now, though, now she finds his presence like the dandelions find the sun, her longing emanating from her clammy skin as if it were a tangible thing for him to reach out and grasp.
After Tatter, she hears the river. She takes a deep breath (though it’s not enough; there’s never enough air in death) and slowly opens her eyes. His presence is a powerful force - it beckons her gaze, but she resists it with every bit of defiance she can muster. Still shivering, instead she looks to her left and then to her right. The old and broken are all around her – she was never a warrior, and though she had taken her own life, it had not been violent demise …
The middle water roils with otherwordly danger and her grey eyes track the path of a tree branch as it is overcome by the riot and swept downstream. Her attention snags on the grulla mare just before she’s drug beneath the surface. The air is thick with longing as the dead on both sides have realized that the shore opposing them holds their dearest. The water’s surface stirs and produces two strange mares, carbon copies of one another. An ear swivels forward, the other joining it a moment before she draws them back and down, pinning then tightly to her neck.
Did she want to live again? She had lived again once, and three lives were wasted.
The strain of ignoring him, acting as if he were not the irresistible center of her world, is draining. Finally, agonizingly, she meets his burning gaze. Suddenly, somehow, she is standing knee deep in the river, though her eyes have not left his form now that it has found him. Something heavy bumps at her legs and at first she ignores it. As wildly handsome as their father, Tatter smiles at her, his mother’s cunning caught up in the corners of his eyes. He is just as he was, before they tore one another’s worlds apart, before they had tried to patch together what once was and could never be again.
The heavy thing bumps her again and she looks down. Perhaps it is the already surreal reality she finds herself in, or a numbing effect that decades of her personal hell has had on her, but she does not gasp in abject horror when the bloated corpse of one of <i>their</i> daughters stares unseeing up at her. She reaches down, brushing her muzzle gently across the mare’s eyelid, closing Lyanna’s eyes. At that same moment, another heavy thing bumps into her legs and before she even looks, Frostreaver knows it is Eliska. Precious Eliska, who had given up her life so that Frost might live … only for her mother to drown their lives beneath the gray waters of the Beach. A single tear tracks down the side of her face as she tucks her chin over her - <i>their</i> - daughter’s ear and whispers her aching apology. It had not been life without him.
The other dead stir around her, all of them clamoring to claim the prize that the grulla mare has promised. Frostreaver basks in their presence, whispering to Tatter so far across the river she knows he cannot hear her but still, she revels. A blink, another … and they are now stirring at her feet, beyond that of the push and tug of the current. Now she steps back, watching as her daughters give her equally winsome smiles and murmur their acceptances of her apologies. They roll off their sides and sink into the water up to their necks, sides pressed close together, and offer her their banks. She does not hesitate to step out onto them, finding purchase in the hollows of their backs and meat of their rumps. In life, her perch would be precarious, at best. In death … the well-matched mares surge forward, surging across and down the current, milk-white eyes trained on their father’s form.