who could ever leave me, darling,
but who could stay?
but who could stay?
She should be used to changing by now.
Hundreds of years of existence, and never has she stayed the same. Everyone—everything—changes eventually; even the stone cannot withstand an eternity of water without transforming in some way.
But change is never quite so slow for her. Always it comes to her suddenly and violently, never giving her the option to try and sidestep it, or at least take some semblance of control of it. This change is different, though, and she finds it unsettling. Outwardly, she had not changed — still the same porcelain-white skin, the same wings trailing the same stardust, the same halo illuminating the same impossibly dark eyes.
The same, except it feels like there is something alive just beneath her skin, something both alien and familiar, something that is never should be hers yet belongs solely to her all the same. She knows magic—she has been killed and healed and destroyed and loved by it—but she cannot recognize it when it is her own. She was never meant to hold any kind of power, and always there would be a part of herself that is hard-wired to reject having it.
The change feeds the restlessness, lets it fester into recklessness, and she finds herself in the Dale.
She had told herself there would be nothing for her here. The Dale was a part of her past that she had left behind—bloodied crown and all—and there was little reason to come here again. Her love for the Valley had always been stronger than what she had felt for the Dale, and she knows herself well enough to accept that really the only reason any kind of fondness for this place had survived all these years is because it reminds her of him; he had given her the crown, and here he had started their game that didn’t appear to have an end.
But when she finds herself surrounded by mountains and staring at a mirror-glass lake it is not being in the Dale that makes her heart twist painfully in her chest, but the similarities that it bears to Hyaline instead.
She stands there staring at the lake—the same lake? She can’t be sure—as the sun sinks lower in the sky, unsure whether to leave or stay.
Hundreds of years of existence, and never has she stayed the same. Everyone—everything—changes eventually; even the stone cannot withstand an eternity of water without transforming in some way.
But change is never quite so slow for her. Always it comes to her suddenly and violently, never giving her the option to try and sidestep it, or at least take some semblance of control of it. This change is different, though, and she finds it unsettling. Outwardly, she had not changed — still the same porcelain-white skin, the same wings trailing the same stardust, the same halo illuminating the same impossibly dark eyes.
The same, except it feels like there is something alive just beneath her skin, something both alien and familiar, something that is never should be hers yet belongs solely to her all the same. She knows magic—she has been killed and healed and destroyed and loved by it—but she cannot recognize it when it is her own. She was never meant to hold any kind of power, and always there would be a part of herself that is hard-wired to reject having it.
The change feeds the restlessness, lets it fester into recklessness, and she finds herself in the Dale.
She had told herself there would be nothing for her here. The Dale was a part of her past that she had left behind—bloodied crown and all—and there was little reason to come here again. Her love for the Valley had always been stronger than what she had felt for the Dale, and she knows herself well enough to accept that really the only reason any kind of fondness for this place had survived all these years is because it reminds her of him; he had given her the crown, and here he had started their game that didn’t appear to have an end.
But when she finds herself surrounded by mountains and staring at a mirror-glass lake it is not being in the Dale that makes her heart twist painfully in her chest, but the similarities that it bears to Hyaline instead.
She stands there staring at the lake—the same lake? She can’t be sure—as the sun sinks lower in the sky, unsure whether to leave or stay.
Ryatah
@
Beyza