04-14-2023, 07:02 PM
who could ever leave me, darling,
but who could stay?
but who could stay?
She had not intended on staying here, yet despite everything, she found herself drawn back.
It was difficult to let go of something that felt so familiar. It was impossible to not walk the edge of the lake and seek out the similarities to Hyaline, just as it was impossible to not walk the hidden paths that wended through the steep-sided hills and not wonder if these were exactly the same paths as a hundred or so years ago. Her dreams here were strange, as if her past was doing its best to permanently seat itself at the forefront of her mind, and it appeared to be working. Each time she left, she eventually made her way back.
This had not been her chosen home, but she could not deny that it was some kind of fate that had brought her here—the first stone cast that created the unending ripple effect that continuously led her back to Carnage.
Like so many other aspects of her life, she had always known she was undeserving of the crown; a crown that came to her already bloodied even if it was not by her own hand, but she had been so foolishly naive back then that she had taken it. She did not know Carnage as well back then as she does now, but she can freely admit it would not change things—hindsight may be perfect, but her heart is viciously flawed, and she has never been one to deny its wants.
So she drifts in the Dale, letting herself be haunted by ghosts she had thought were long-gone; lets herself think of Fenrir and Alaunus, of Ashley and Charlemagne. She remembers how the kingdom had hated their false queen until they watched her bleed for them, how it had cemented the idea in her mind that she was only worth anything if she was breaking for someone else.
When twilight falls she is alone, a prisoner to her memories, but the presence of someone else slowly rouses her back to the present. She blinks away the fog from her eyes, and with a turn of her head she finds herself staring at a stranger just down the path. The smile that finds her lips is automatic, an action as involuntary as breathing or her heart beating. “Hello,” she says in the fading light, her eyes searching his face with a practiced ease, as if she might find someone familiar hidden in the shape of it.
She does not know if it is her magic—still so unfamiliar with it, mostly afraid to fully test the limits of it—or an innate sense she has honed over the years, but there is something in him that immediately strikes her. Something ancient, a fading thread of the old Beqanna that seemingly ties a select group of them together—like her and Carnage, but also Atrox, Agetta Larva, and even Ashhal all shared it. “I don’t think I know you,” she says, contemplative, seemingly oblivious to the way the statement, when spoken aloud, sounds strange when disconnected from her thoughts. “Where are you from?”
It was difficult to let go of something that felt so familiar. It was impossible to not walk the edge of the lake and seek out the similarities to Hyaline, just as it was impossible to not walk the hidden paths that wended through the steep-sided hills and not wonder if these were exactly the same paths as a hundred or so years ago. Her dreams here were strange, as if her past was doing its best to permanently seat itself at the forefront of her mind, and it appeared to be working. Each time she left, she eventually made her way back.
This had not been her chosen home, but she could not deny that it was some kind of fate that had brought her here—the first stone cast that created the unending ripple effect that continuously led her back to Carnage.
Like so many other aspects of her life, she had always known she was undeserving of the crown; a crown that came to her already bloodied even if it was not by her own hand, but she had been so foolishly naive back then that she had taken it. She did not know Carnage as well back then as she does now, but she can freely admit it would not change things—hindsight may be perfect, but her heart is viciously flawed, and she has never been one to deny its wants.
So she drifts in the Dale, letting herself be haunted by ghosts she had thought were long-gone; lets herself think of Fenrir and Alaunus, of Ashley and Charlemagne. She remembers how the kingdom had hated their false queen until they watched her bleed for them, how it had cemented the idea in her mind that she was only worth anything if she was breaking for someone else.
When twilight falls she is alone, a prisoner to her memories, but the presence of someone else slowly rouses her back to the present. She blinks away the fog from her eyes, and with a turn of her head she finds herself staring at a stranger just down the path. The smile that finds her lips is automatic, an action as involuntary as breathing or her heart beating. “Hello,” she says in the fading light, her eyes searching his face with a practiced ease, as if she might find someone familiar hidden in the shape of it.
She does not know if it is her magic—still so unfamiliar with it, mostly afraid to fully test the limits of it—or an innate sense she has honed over the years, but there is something in him that immediately strikes her. Something ancient, a fading thread of the old Beqanna that seemingly ties a select group of them together—like her and Carnage, but also Atrox, Agetta Larva, and even Ashhal all shared it. “I don’t think I know you,” she says, contemplative, seemingly oblivious to the way the statement, when spoken aloud, sounds strange when disconnected from her thoughts. “Where are you from?”
Ryatah
@assailant