"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
Kora doesn’t need to say I love you, Rhy hears the words anyway. Inside the spoken I trust you, but even more so as Kora closes the distance between them. She pauses, her muzzle so close to Rhy’s, both golden but one electric and one made of ice. Even when you can’t see it, those things flow through their veins. The words practically scream into the air with them hovering so near. They have never been this close. Rhy has never even dreamed that they will ever be this close. She’s only ever dreamed they could stand together and talk.
And then Kora closes the distance completely, and the feeling is so impossibly wonderful. It’s not like Kratos (the only other horse Rhy has ever really touched). Even in their one quiet embrace, there was something fiery and alive and wanting. But with Kora? It’s just love. Love that pulls them together, love that overcomes the fear, and Rhy presses back just slightly.
There’s no flash, no electric. Just joy, that they have gotten to this place, tinged with sorrow at the realization of what had finally, finally, pulled them together. But at least, they are together.
Eventually, she murmurs “It’s okay Kora. Really, it is.” And though she’s sad, though she will always be sad, over the childhood and the family she never really had, it is finally okay. She’s has Lagertha, and Scorch, and Kratos, and the Jungle. Now she has Kora. And maybe they could find their brother, and then Rhy would have a brother too.
“Let’s go see them,” she breathes the words out slowly, reluctant to break this very tentative and beautiful moment, but she does finally pull away. They leave the snow covered meadow behind for the beach, because Rhy thinks she needs to be among the dead to get there. When they arrive, she shifts, visible but ethereal. And then she just concentrates. She remembers the rip between the realms. The one that she flew through to return home once. The one that she could now traverse with ease.
And it really is that easy. They cross to the other side without hassle, and the ghosts of Beqanna’s dead mill around them now. Rhy doesn’t feel the cold here, and for her, the colors of this world are alive. But she is dead. For Kora, this place will be muted and slightly farther away, the way it was when Rhy first visited. The way it is for all the living.
“We can’t stay that long, or this place will kill you too. So let me know as soon as you need to go.” She remembers that feeling. Kora has no power here, no ice in her veins, and Rhy knows how awful that feeling is. She’d had no electric, no claws, when she had come. And it’s only made worse as the afterlife slowly sucks away the souls of the living as well. There are gray patches on her coat in this ghostly form as proof of her near death.
She begins walking forward, though she knows they won’t have to look long. Their parents will find them, because they will have been watching.
10-04-2015, 09:04 PM (This post was last modified: 10-04-2015, 09:04 PM by Kora.)
look at the stars,
look how they shine for you
It takes a tragedy to finally bring us together -- and though our parents are dead, with one gentle embrace Rhy and I become more of a family than we've ever been with one another before. And despite the shock and sadness, despite the aching pain of loss, we have each other now.
They would have been so happy...
No. They are happy.
And we will see them again.
I follow my sister to the shores, the cold waves whispering as she shifts and becomes translucent, shimmering like smoke. It gives me an uneasy feeling -- she looks so impermanent like this, and I find I don't want her to slip away. Yet, with a breath, that is what Rhy does next. She slips away.
And I slip with her.
It is grey here. Grey, like the slate of an unfeeling winter sky. Winter. I can feel it's absence from my veins, replaced instead by a slow trickle of grey -- and with every beat of my living heart, the grey ticks, ticks, ticks away. Rhy's voice startles me (so close in this muffled existence) but I find I can only nod, my eyes flitting across shadowy figures in the distance. I start to walk toward them, but the steps I take don't seem to bring me any nearer and I can't make out anything more than their wispy shapes.
How would we ever find them like this?
But then --
"My girls," she breathes behind me. "My darling girls." And when I turn, she is there -- and dad is right beside her. Together, like they've always been.
They come forward, their eyes shining like starlight through the grey. Rayelle is smiling that sunbeam smile, the one Riagan had loved from the very start. She steps close, looking from one daughter to the next with such love and pride and joy shining from her gaze that I forget what it means to see them here. I forget that this isn't the way it was supposed to be.
(Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be.)
And I rush to them -- headlong.
Fearless.
kora
the winter girl of riagan and rayelle
so originally I planned to have more happen..? but then I kinda got stuck. :/ feel free to take the reigns and powerplay a little if need be, as you know best what all has 'happened' lol. if you end up posting riagan separately then I will likely do a real rayelle post because RAYRI YAY.
He has always been watching. Perhaps it wasn’t supposed to be this way. They had always planned to come back, once Leander was old enough. But somehow, old age had crept up on him and Rayelle. It had turned them gray, had made their bones tired and brittle. He hardly even noticed then. It hadn’t really seemed to matter. They still had Leander. Kora was home in Beqanna and Rhy, certainly, was doing well. She was his electric girl, after all, and he had never doubted that she’d be fine.
It hadn’t matter, until one day, they simply didn’t wake up. So no, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. But maybe that was okay. Look what happened, after all.
They are waiting when the girls arrive. This time, Rhy looks alive and happy and well, of course he knows this is because she’s half dead now. She can cross from one world to the next. He’s been watching her (he loves them both, yes, but Rhy was always his electric girl). He can see the struggle, her daily trudge through a life she once loved so much. Life wasn’t the same for her now. But how could it be? She had one foot in each realm.
Still, he cannot help but smile, despite what he knows. Kora is the first to rush to them both, and he wraps her tightly in an embrace. His butterfly-hearted girl was anything but now, strengthened by the ice in her veins, through the trials she has lived through. She was still his quiet girl, but she’d be all right. Though he can’t help it, sometimes he still worries about her.
But hell, he worries about all his children. Even in death, that’s what parents do.
Rhy is next, coming to them slower, but of course, this isn’t the first time she’s been here. She’s giving Kora her moment first, but Riagan lifts his head from Kora and wraps himself around Rhy. He holds her there for a moment, and she buries into him, a little girl for just a second.
Eventually, he steps back, still smiling, taking his place by Rayelle. There was never any place for him. Not in life, and not in death. He’d cross the world, the universe, every realm imaginable, just to find her. ”Tell us everything,” he says simply, and then waits for his girls to speak.
There’s a horrible part of her that simply wants to stay. It’s the same part that wonders what it would be like to side with the Chamber. The same part that wonders what it would be like to actually be as deadly as her traits might allow. Because imagine what she could be. What she could do.
But then their parents find them, and the sound of Rayelle’s voice, the sight of her father’s smile, brings her back to herself. The thought of them always has.
Kora runs to them first, and Rhy lets her. She’s been here, seen them, not all that long ago. So she gives her sister a moment alone, a moment with their necks wrapped around their golden girl. After a moment, Rhy joins them, and Riagan wraps her in a tight hug. And she swears he knows everything that’s jumbling around in her head. All her thoughts. The deepest, darkest part of her heart that she keeps so well hidden.
But it’s Riagan, and he’s always known.
She nearly cries into his chest like a little girl. She’s so tempted just to stay there, in that very position, for as long as she possibly can. But she knows that’s not an option. Even if they weren’t dead, that wouldn’t be an option. Riagan would make her go live her life, and she would. Always for him.
She laughs at his question, sticking her nose out to poke him slightly. “You already know everything. Don’t tell me you haven’t been watching us. Constantly.” Ha. Which means they know all about Kratos too, but thankfully, horses can’t blush. She doesn’t really want to think about that.
