[private] scattered into so many pieces, chasity

[Ryatah]

she fell for the idea of him
and ideas were a dangerous thing to love

There was a time when she was so hung up on the Beqanna of old that it was all she could think about. She would linger on the outskirts of the meadow or drift through the shadows of the forest just hoping and praying for a familiar voice, though she knew she would never hear it. Her nights were haunted by thoughts of kingdoms long since turned to dust, and romances and loves that may as well have died with them. Her days, back when her face bore scarred, empty sockets and she knew nothing but darkness, stretched just as endlessly as the nights, and she thinks she would have rather been dead than to keep living as the shell she had turned into.

She was alive, she knew because her heart would still twinge in her chest when she missed Skellig, but the numbness that gripped her mind led her to believe otherwise.

She has always been foolishly full of hope, though, and so she stayed.

She stayed until one by one they began to trickle back to her, lovers and friends alike. And she twined herself around every single one of them, greedy and selfish and too wanting for any kind of love and affection to know when she should stop. She sees her reflection on the glass-like lake of Hyaline almost daily and her throat tightens, because it is not just the outward changes (her impossibly dark eyes that Carnage had given back and the mark he left on her hip, and the soft glow of her halo and the gold-tipped wings that had been granted after that strange journey in the afterlife) but she is so certain that if she could see her heart, she would be disgusted by that, too.

How many times, she wonders, can she break it until it shatters – until she damages herself beyond repair, until she is no longer fulfilled by anyone or anything? Would she know just before she delivers that final blow, to give herself time to stop herself, or would she only realize it after the fact?

Lost in thought she walks through the forest, hardly paying attention to where she’s going. It’s not until she sees a flicker of pale gray that her mind diverts back to reality, blinking to peer through the sun-dappled shadows, until her eyes lock with hers and her pale lips lift into a smile. “You seem like you’re looking for someone, or, something,” she observes kindly as she draws closer, studying her face for a moment, though she knows it’s unlikely that she would look familiar – she spent well over half her life completely blind, and there were few left where she had ever known their faces. Still, it was a habit; Beqanna had such a strange way of drawing you back, after all.

ryatah