”Jah-Lilah and I.”
”Jah-Lilah & I.”
It doesn’t sink in right away, the meaning behind the words. Then the betrayal worms itself into her heart and begins to bloom. Horror dawns through the pain followed by revulsion and disgust. And the hurt, how she had thought her heart couldn’t break more then it already had. She would take Gale ripping her open again and again over this. Anything but this.
“She was like a mother to us.” Comes her horrified whisper as the weight of those words pulls back and then begins to crash like a tsunami. The spinning threads of silver seep with blotted ink as she hears the snap of his wing, the crunch of bone, and it’s not enough. It will
never be enough. Her own fluted ears pinned beneath the wild windswept tangles of her raven mane, the stars around her the bloodiest they had ever been as she rises on her own starlit wings and finally unleashes the unyielding sinister storm of rage that had eclipsed her.
She looks at the stallion she had once loved and sees only a monster.
Beneath the cloud of corruption that seeps into her mind, a faint memory calls from the dark. A white mare looks down at her daughter and nudges her gently.
“How do we deal with monsters Ciri?”
The filly looks up with eyes as ancient as the heavens and smiles as she calmly says back,
“We fight them, of course.” Amet’s voice is a muffled thing against the electric ringing in her ears. It doesn’t matter, whatever he says. She doesn’t need his encouragement.
“She was like a mother to ME!” A shriek of fury and pain that cracks like lighting in the tainted shield of her connection just before she explodes into a brilliant blinding white light.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Centuries ago, a star had twinkled in the sky and observed the stories that unraveled on earth below with fascination. The star watched (a sentient guardian) over births and deaths, wars and peace. There was nothing but time in endless amounts and so the stars became invested in the lives they supervised, trying to understand. They could not feel emotions like the subjects of their soap operas but they were invested nonetheless. This star in particular, though, wondered what it WOULD be like to feel. What would a hug feel like? What would it mean to smell a flower or taste a strawberry? What did it truly mean to mourn, to fight, to breathe, to love?
The star desperately wanted to know and developed curiosity. It’s interest only grew as it tried to make sense of things like monsters and defenders, good and evil. The other stars warned this one that such a thing was dangerous. Other stars had tried before and been destroyed in the process. There was no guarantee that the star would make it, if the star could even come back. The warning did little to dissuade the curious star. It continued to marvel and wonder until one night the star could wait no longer. Despite the protests of the others, this star streaked across the sky and plummeted towards the earth.
There had been a white mare with kind eyes and the star sensed a child in her belly. To the mare it fell, inside the child it landed. In a blink of an eye, the star had given up immortality for a mortal life.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Just as she had in the Underneath when facing the Siren (and under extreme duress) the smoky mare erupts into blinding starlight. It seeps from her scars, her nose and mouth, it erupts from her eyes as she screams. It is not just the pain of Amet anymore, it is the memories that come flooding back in. The stories that had played out in her time in the sky, all the things that she had forgotten when she had become mortal. In the Underneath, she had only gotten a small taste of remembrance. Now… Now it overtakes her. Overwhelms her as the white-hot fire of star power sweeps through her and chases out all the rotten sludge that had found residence there.
The tainted black that stains her connection, that unrelenting anger, is blasted from the ravaged mare as the powers of the stars pushes through and reclaims what had always been theirs. Reminds her that, through all the doubt and uncertainty, that she had always been
right.
She realizes, ironically, that the Curse had been right as well. She was more than just her stars.
She
was one.
”Technically we can all heal ourselves, some of us are just faster than others.” Kestrell’s voice somehow finds her through the excruciating pain, slips past the onslaught of ancient stories and memories that press into her brain. She was a star that had forgotten who and what she was... Why she had come down here to begin with. She remembers now. Amongst the darkness, she finally finds her light. This is the first step in healing. The first step in forgiveness. She may never be able to forgive Amet for what he had done, but maybe... Maybe she could start to forgive herself. For not remembering, for not always making the right choices, for the decision to become mortal and therefore make mortal mistakes.
The black hole begins to close, drawing all that darkness that had been trapped inside her with it. It pulls and sucks against the blinding star that screams in a mixture of joy, grief, and agony. The inky blackness swirls towards the golden scaled stallion, avoiding the blinding brilliance streaming in from the now cleared celestial connection. With one last scream, she rises away from her corrupted aura of stars (the last remnants of what she had been) as it begins to collapse on itself.
Despite the sun in the sky, the stars around her suddenly pulse with energy as that powerful white light severs the last remaining darkness that had desperately clung to her. With a sharp gasp, she falls and collapses in the long-stemmed grass.
When she finally opens her eyes, straining against the sunlight, her pupils are sill hidden beneath the shooting stars of silver that now streak wildly there. Endlessly falling, just as she had once done. Her body aches, faint light still flickering behind the puckered skin of her many scars, the throbbing unrelenting against her temples as the memories continue to flit across her bewildered mind. It's the intensity of emotions that makes it hard to breathe, the empty space where all that anger had once resided beginning to fill with so much more. Remnants of her excruciating fury linger, whispers of old hurts and stubborn residue of trauma that keep the stars around her in their eerie crimson color. Out of the corner of her silver eye, she glances at the small swell of her barrel with worry as something else pushes through the stacking of recollection. Amongst the onslaught of old lives, the stars had also whispered to her one new piece of information. The gift that Carnage had left inside of her.
Slowly, she raises her head. It takes her a minute to realize that she is alone.
"Amet?" She whispers, uncertain as she looks around her, standing on unsteady limbs.
"Amet?" Panic now rising in her throat. Her heart, though shattered, flutters anxiously as a feeling of doom begins to crawl in her belly. She calls his name over and over, each time her voice rising with the increasing inflation of her emotions.
Of Hyaline's once Dragon-King, there is no sign.
-- Ciri
