• Logout
  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  all I know is we're going home; Tiberios
    #3

    all I know is you're here with me

    Being here puts her at a sort of tempered peace she hasn’t felt in ages.  Just standing on familiar soil brings some semblance of comfort she hasn’t found since she left.  It isn’t the same and never will be again, but she is closer, and that is all she can ask for anymore.

    The sun is glorious as it warms her smooth, unyielding skin.  She is fortunate to be alone, for any that would touch her now would likely shy away from the heat she gathers.  It is not the first time the elements have worked against her; in the winter, the effect is the opposite.  She becomes almost impossible to touch for the cold air that makes her skin feel like ice.  With few exceptions, she has never minded the oddity of her existence overmuch, never truly wished for supple, warm flesh in lieu of metal.  It is her own brand of armor against the world.  It is her way of keeping others out unless expressly invited in – even at their own peril.  Those she has loved have not minded, anyway.

    Talulah lets the turbulence of the river carry away her most troubling thoughts.  There is the potential to start over, she muses.  If this world is changed then maybe she can adapt herself to it.  Maybe she can look for a place, if not to call home, then to settle in.  Maybe there will be some sort of happiness, too. 

    With her eyes still closed, her ears become in tune to the movement of the water.  She learns its pattern of ebb and flow unconsciously, where it scoots around a jutting rock or flows under a half-submerged log.  So when it becomes disrupted by something, when its’ journey is impeded, she knows it right away.  Her amber eyes open so slowly.  She is loath to leave the serenity she has just surrendered herself to. 

    So it doesn’t register at first what she finds there in the river obstructing its progression.

    Or who.

    It is only when he is beside her there on the riverbank that realization crashes down like a thunderbolt.  It can’t be, but somehow it is.  War rages inside of her and on her face as she takes him in, strange and familiar all at once.  It is the young man she had accosted as a young woman as he found the Dale for the first time, traveling deep past their borders before she could stop him.  It is the burnt man who had come back after a quest, who had cut her with his sharp words and she had lashed right back.  It is the once-king of the Falls coming home to her for the final time, leaving it all behind him to be with her forever.  It is the life that had been stolen from her, the white-hot fire that burned her and made her whole all the same that had been snuffed out before its time.

    It is Tiberios.  Impossibly, perfectly, so. 

    It is him, despite the new parts that are brushed aside in favor of drinking in the whole of him.  Talulah rushes into him with her entire weight, not caring about the water rolling off or the possibility that they might both end up back in the river.  She buries her face in the crook of his neck, finding a home in the familiar line where his ruined, puckered skin met dark hair.  Of all the time that has passed since she left, she has not been physically this close to another.  And this, coupled with the fact that it is him, is intoxicating.  She loses herself as the moments pass, afraid that if she pulls back, he will be gone like the morning dew on the grass.  She can’t question why he is here or how.  Even that seems like a betrayal, like an invitation to take him back to his final resting place far away from her embrace.

    If it is real, she is not sure she will ever be able to let him go lest he slip away on a passing current.

    “You are here,” she says instead, not sure herself if it is a question for him or an answer for her, and praying that it will not anger whatever gods have brought him back.  When he feels solid enough around her, when she is sure her mind is not conjuring him up from memories, she pulls back enough to look into his eyes.  “You idiot,” she frowns, missing the contact already and throwing herself forward to wrap her head around his broad shoulders.  “How dare you.  Don’t you ever do that again.” 

    And if he feels more water running down his neck, it is warmer from where it leaves the corners of her eyes.

    Talulah

    Photo by Joanna Nix


    @ Tiberios  ughh stoppp.  I missed them and your beautiful words so very much <333
    Reply


    Messages In This Thread
    RE: all I know is we're going home; Tiberios - by Talulah - 03-19-2023, 04:33 PM



    Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)