"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
He doesn’t give himself the luxury of falling apart.
Not when his magic finds his mother and that heartbeat of hers is so still. Not when he takes his father to her and he watches him breakdown in a way he had never thought possible. Not when he has to watch his father sob over her lifeless body, her chest cracked open clean in two. Not when he takes her home, when he leaves the panther broken and still and hollow on that riverbank, staring into the abyss of nothing.
He holds it together.
He feels nothing but numbness.
Even when he brings her to Hyaline. When his golden light covers her and brings her home. When he takes her to the mountains—not far from where Sochi and Breach lie. A mausoleum of the cliffs. He washes her clean. Sews her chest back together again. Leaves her serene and peaceful. He can nearly convince himself that she is sleeping, the way she looks like this, and even then, he does not break.
He just wraps her with a magical barrier and turns to leave, face dry and eyes unseeing.
He swallows hard and then teleports back to the river, although far away from where he knows his father remains. It is only then that a sound comes from him and it is a broken thing. A keening wail that is only barely covered by the sound of the river that rushes by him. It cracks through him like lightning and thunder and he wonders if he will survive the pain that follows—the fury that nips on its heels.
Because he knows.
He knows.
The smell on her. The magical imprint. It was not an accidental death. It was not a predator gone astray. It was intentional. It was cruel. It meant there was another magician out there who had taken his mother from him and the shadows ripple out from him in an explosion of darkness, shaking the leaves from the nearby trees and splintering one so that it crashes to the ground. There was a magician out there who had taken something from him that was his own—that was his to protect.
And the only thing that swallows the pain is anger.
And the hunger for revenge that follows.
The hunger that comes.
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
10-03-2021, 08:18 PM (This post was last modified: 10-03-2021, 08:41 PM by Divest.)
don't come find me, I won't be here waiting
She has kept quiet in the humid jungle for far too long. It has been six months since she has returned back to Beqanna, finding herself in the humid jungle of Tephra, and finding Gale. It was shocking to find him there out of all the places, her childhood friend, but he had been there, trying to restore Tephra once more.
Now he was gone.
And she was the new queen.
It was strange to think of her leading a kingdom, to be given such power without a word from Gale. When the brindle stallion had been king, he had asked for her help. Divest had accepted without a thought—she had nowhere to go, nowhere she had called home at the time. Tephra then had become her home, and without Gale leading the kingdom she knew she had to step up.
At least with what remained to be called a kingdom.
Tephra had been too quiet in the last few months. There had been nightmares lurking within the shadows, and she wonders if that had caused many to leave. Yet, she had not left. The nightmares did not creep into her slumber in the dark hours of the night—at least Gale had told her she would be safe with him.
But Divest grows restless of the quietness in Tephra eventually. If she is going to rule, she knew she needed to learn fast about the other kingdoms. It was not wise for her to remain unaware. There were others who would take her crown without question, hungry to have the power themselves. Her reigning would not be a short one she decided.
Her steps are delicate as she moves with grace through the tall grasses that surround the river. She licks her dry lips, feeling parched as the summer sun beats heavily on her today. It has been a long journey, and she has not stopped since she left Tephra. The sound of the rushing water in the distance draws her towards it.
A wail, a sound of great despair slices through the rushing river suddenly. Divest stops in her tracks, silver eyes darting around as a startled expression quickly appears on her features. She glances up towards the river where the keening wail had come from. Her ears flicked forward in caution and uncertainty. She has never heard something like it before, but it is gone quickly as the sound of the river comes back.
Blinking again, the mint mare turns her gaze back towards the river, feeling her body groan for a cool drink. She then notices the gold and jaguar spotted stallion, surrounded by rippling shadows and then followed by an explosion of darkness. It happens so quickly and she shields her face out of an instinct for the aftermath that comes.
It isn’t until she hears the crashing of a tree that she looks up, startled by the sound it makes as it hits the ground. Her gaze turns back towards the stallion with apprehension. For a moment she thinks it might be best to leave, but something tugs on her mind, and she takes a step forward.
“Hey,” She calls out with uncertainty. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t expect anyone to find him—not here, not like this. His emotions are too wild and untamed and he has no idea how to reel them back in successfully. It catches in his throat and the darkness swarms around him in wild, bucking waves. The magic is unspooled from him, the trees still vibrating with the shock wave that he had sent through them, and he grits his teeth as he tries to gain control.
But whatever little ground he gains is fleeting.
The sorrow spears through him, sizzling like lightning struck, and he can only look toward her with wide eyes, the gold flooding until the irises disappear in its churning depths. “No,” he manages finally, his voice as raw as he feels, the sound as roughened as if he had been screaming for hours. Had he? He doesn’t know, but he knows enough to recognize the startled expression on her face.
Had he made her fear him?
“I won’t hurt you,” his voice is lower now, but still just as pained, each syllable pulled from him with great effort. “I just…” he looks around him to the radius of the blast, the grass flattened and the trees groaning from standing up to the force. “I don’t know,” he drops his head and the shadows begin to stop their frantic movement, crawling slowly back to him and winding up his legs again.
They remain, in part, the area around him still darker than the rest of the river. But it is a less angry darkness now, and part of it detaches from the rest to curl on his back like a small cat—doing its best to comfort him. He glances back up to her and he knows that he should introduce himself or do anything that would be normal in this moment, but he has no words and nothing to say to make this okay.
So he just stares, as devastated as the plant life around him.
so as our grief falls flat and hollow upon a billion blooded seas all our worst ideas are borrowed (you do and don't belong to me)
I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
Once there was only the sea, she painted horizons and danced with only the sun and moon as her partners. She mothered the creatures within her depths, she bore no religion, no politics, nor enemies, nor friends. She lived a beautiful life.
But a lonely one too.
From her depths she created islands, sculpted its sands, sprouted its trees, and birthed its inhabitants. She caed for them, nourished them, loved them. And they betrayed her, they captured the children she so carefully guarded. They tried to tame her waves and
“And that, Elli, is why the sea is such an angry thing, be weary.” The kelpie told him, even as his breath smelled of salt and seaweed tangled itself in his hair. “It will swallow you the first chance it gets. From the sea and back.” It was that day that Elli thinks his tutors may have lied. Stories had no beginning, middle, end, but a wildly turning maelstrom dragging you to the bottom of the ocean.
As men have done perhaps since time began, Elliana went down to the river to wash herself clean. The golden sunlight is a weight on her back when she moves. Elliana blinks and she knows that her eyes are nothing more than a smear of blue skies on shadows of her face when she does.
She is not one who is usually enamored with pretty lights or beautiful lay outs. But they—they were something to admire. She couldn’t help the delicate smile that bloomed like silk-petaled carnations at the sight of them. Even in the sorrow, the anguish, the fear, the curiosity. It is raw. There was something that happened here, she knows it more than she feels it.
(It is the feeling of somewhere distant, across the veil, a dry wind rolls dust across warm glass windows. A lonesome whistle blows and the trees gasp for fresh air; everything here and there is in a race for survival)
And Elliana reaches them like drops of rain sliding down.
She had wanted to go to the river today.
To wash herself clean.
And thinks shadows may be more purifying than water ever could be.
(You cannot wash away sin—only hide it, and shadows are far better at keeping secrets than water ever could be.)
She is silent as she stands there, not welcomed, but not yet turned away. She wants to hold her breath, but her lungs suddenly feel like fire with smoke that needs to be exhaled. The dead flowers, they remind her of Aeneas and she remembers the silent screams they all uttered when he stole the energy from them. Elliana finds herself sliding closer to the girl of color and shine, but her blue eyes are trapped within the obsidian spot splashed against gold. “Is it agony?” She asks him. “Is that what you are feeling?” She has to ask because she remembers feeling it once, remembers placing the word to the feeling, but she cannot recall the bone splitting, raw, nerve burning emotion of it. She wonders, is this what she looked like? She wonders if this is what her mother always feels, and if it was—Elliana swallows the sympathy as easily as water flows down a river.
![[Image: Wi3xi5K.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Wi3xi5K.png)
