endings and beginnings

[Time]

In the end, the path never mattered. The path was only a means to an end. To this place.
 
Slowly, your eyes adjust to the bright, white room. There is something familiar about this place of nothing (or is it a place of everything)? Like you have been here before. Or like you will be here again. The walls flash now and again, the white breaking with images of worlds you do not know. Other worlds, each one coming slowly to the end of the year in their turn. This is where Time has brought you. To the place of endings and beginnings.
 
“Oh, look at you,” a soft, kind voice says, and finally you notice Her. In the middle of the room sits a girl, a large glowing sphere around Her. It grows smaller as you watch, tightening the noose. The girl is a beautiful thing, her hair white and glowing, cascading down her back and onto the floor. She is slight, with two legs like Time and blue eyes with that same cat-like slit, though she does not have the tail. She wears a white dress that glows as everything about her glows. She waves a hand, and your injuries heal. Skin sews shut, broken bones mend, bruises fade. “Every year, he tries, you know.”
 
It is no wonder Time loves Her. She is beautiful and kind and sad. She is not screaming now, but you know without hearing it that it was always her screaming. That is was always her dying. Again and again. She is endings and beginnings. She is nothing and everything. There’s no one word for Her.
 
She turns back to the images on the walls, waving her hands as they flash before her. In some, more two-legged creatures cheer and shout and celebrate. In others, animals pass the change without notice or care. “He cannot come here. I am a fixed point in time, a place that even he cannot touch. So every year, he sends a handful of chosen ones to save me. Most don’t make it this far.” She waves a hand at the far wall, and you see the exit now. It glows, rimmed in promise and safety. Nothing lies in your way.
 
“You can take me from here,” she says, though it is obvious you have to get her out of the strange bubble that both protects and damns her, “but if you do, there will be repercussions. I must come, every year, you see. You must end one year and begin the next. Time must have some meaning.” She pauses, her eyes turning a moment from her work to you, and they are beautiful and endless and filled with sorrow. “Or you can leave me, and face Time’s wrath. But the world will progress as it should, and in the end, we all face Time wrath anyway, do we not?”
 
***
 
Decide if you take or leave Her. Detail your thought process, your experience in the white room, etc. You quest ends when you exit the door.
 
Iasan, Briske, and Lucrezia have been eliminated. For the next BQ Year you will have randomly incorrect sense of time. Morning will seem like night, night like day. You also won’t always be able to tell a child from an adult, or vice versa.
 
The 1,500 word maximum is still in effect. You have until Thursday, January 12th at 9am EST to reply.

[hawke]

And suddenly everything—everything—that had happened does not seem to matter at all anymore.

The room glows, but as magnificent as everything is, her attention is focused solely and wholly on the girl who rises and comes over to her. She looks like Time and although she is smiling, Hawke thinks that she can see the residual effects of death still washing from her features, the way it claims and releases her, the way that it is a prison for her life. Hawke wonders at the scream that still seems to hang tangible in the air.

She murmurs her thanks as the wounds heal, her mane regrowing rapidly to replace the bald spot, the flesh of her flank knitting back together again, the scar puckering and turning pink and then fading to be covered by fresh hide. Within seconds, she is as fresh and clean as if she had never left her mother’s side.

Her hazel gaze moves to follow along the images as they shift along the wall, more two legged creatures shrieking with joy, other animals living peacefully. She thinks that she understands, at least that is what she tells herself, but the truth is she has no firm grasp on it. She is young and the intricate complexities of Beqanna is still unknown to her; she has no ability to sink into and navigate the tides of other worlds.

So she turns back toward Her, mouth turning slightly into a frown.

“Repercussions?”

The word is foreign to her. Life has no repercussions—not for her, not yet. She lives freely, blossoming beneath the sun and watchful eyes of her parents. She lives joyfully as all wild things do, and until this journey, this quest, she had lived filled to the brim with trust. Those she had met in Tephra all had her best interests at heart. They all cared for and looked after her and she could trust the weight of their words.

All of those beliefs had been challenged during this trip, but still, repercussions are foreign.

Her brow furrows and she glances down in thought before looking up, catching Her eye and holding it, doing her best to study Her expression to find some hint of an answer, some clue as to what she is to do. “My father was, is, a great warrior,” she says finally, softly, encouraged by the kind smile She gives.

“I have heard some stories of him. How he fought in wars. Led kingdoms. Rebelled against those things he saw were wrong. He was, is, magnificent.” He is her hero, and she frames him as such in her memories of him—standing, silhouetted against Tephra’s majestic sunrise. “But he told me once that for all he had done and lived, the only thing that made it worthwhile was the love that permeated his years.”

Like the love of her mother, golden and fierce and unbreakable. Ellyse is as much a soldier as Magnus, as strong and intimidating as her father, but Hawke has seen the way that they melt into one another’s sides, the way walls came down in each other’s presence. Even if they do not use the word, she know that their love is what created Canaan and what created her in turn. It is what made her.

But what if someone had stopped that?

What if someone (something) had told them ‘no’?

Her expression grows dark at the thought, and although she realizes she has been silent for perhaps far too long, she doesn’t bother to speak yet, comfortable to let the silence between them reign as she works her way through the problem. She doesn’t know what repercussions she will face if she takes Her (she does not understand Time and its power, its purpose, its inevitability), but she can grasp what will happen if she is too cowardly to face them. There was nothing worse than turning your back on love.

And so her resolve hardens.

“You must come with me. We must leave this place.” She steps forward, placing her head beneath Her kind hand and closes her eyes, heart tripping with unwanted fear at the idea of making this journey every year. “If you need to come back, I will protect you. I will guide you here and then take you back to Time.”

Then, as if in response to her acceptance, her decision, the bubble begins to shift and warp, the edges of it sparking with electricity and then dissolving, coming undone and melting around them. Hawke's insides jerk with that familiar fear and she does not hide from it; instead, she embraces it, holds it close as a reminder of what she is doing, a reminder of the importance of it. She looks to Her, she who has tears in Her eyes. She who reaches over, wraps Her arms around Hawke's neck and cries into Hawke's mane. "Thank you," she whispers, and Hawke knows she has made the right decision.

"I have waited so long to see him again."

Hawke doesn't fully understand what is needed, what needs to happen, but if She needs to come back to do something important, then Hawke will make the journey. She will walk through the cold, and she will face the Griffen, and she will rip herself apart to make sure that Her duty is done and Time can have his love. If that is to be her lot in life, then she supposes that there are worse things to do.

Magnus would accept this burden—that much she knew.

Hawke nudges Her gently with the velvet of her nose, motioning toward the doorway that opens before them. “It might be scary out there,” she says under her breath, thinking of all that she has faced to get here, “but you must be brave.” She takes a step toward it, making sure that She is there by her side, following along. “I am here with you, and, besides, Time waits for no man.”

And then, side by side, they walk through the door and into the great beyond waiting for them.

hawke

I’m a princess cut from marble

{ smoother than a storm }

[Druid]

Maybe it was the fall that woke him, knocked consciousness back into his body, struck him hard enough to make him suck in a desperate breath.

It hurt that first breath, like razors taking to his insides, ripping through his lungs with a burning sensation. His eyes hurt too, really, blinking to adjust to a blinding light that is ceaseless and unavoidable. Heaven, he tells himself before his sight clears, acclimates to the brightness of the room. There is something familiar about this place, like he has been here before, a distant memory, a dream. Something he recalls in the very depths of his subconscious but he can not place a finger on when or how or why.

The walls around him flash as he shakily stands, images of places, worlds, people he does not know surround him. Each one slowly comes to an end of the year, a stopping point, a starting point. This is both an end and a beginning.

“Oh, look at you,” a voice says, a girl’s voice, and on baited breath Druid turns to take Her in, because with every fiber of his being he knows it is Her. She sits in the center of the room, surrounded by a glowing sphere, one which he notices is pulsing, is shrinking as the minutes tick by. It is something both magnificent and frightening because it is quite obvious what is happening to the sweet girl in the middle- the angel if ever he had seen one. She doesn’t scream now, not yet, but she doesn’t need to- Druid understands.

“Every year, he tries, you know,” she tells him as she waves a dainty hand and his ailments heal. The sharp, bloody, pain at his chest fades away, the burning in his sides, the ache of his legs and lungs- they all end. She is so very beautiful, he thinks, admiring her glowing white hair and vivid blue eyes. It is no wonder Time loves her, Druid finds that he too loves this girl, it is so very hard not to. “He cannot come here. I am a fixed point in time, a place that even he cannot touch. So every year, he sends a handful of chosen ones to save me. Most don’t make it this far.”

There is a sadness in her words, a sadness but an understanding, an acceptance. She knew she was to die, over and over again. Like clockwork she ticked, ever so slowly inside that glowing sphere, a rhythm, a heartbeat- consistent and alone. She had probably died more times than Druid could count and it was her duty to do so, a sad but necessary truth. The girl turns to the wall, waving her hands as images flash by, two-leggers, horses, critters. The people jump and shout, they cheer with happiness and excitement and it is a wonder to observe. Animals simply sniff the air, shiver as though they have goose bumps and that’s only when they react at all.

As he stands transfixed by the sights before him she is busy building an exit, waving her hand to the far wall where it glows, rimmed in promise and safety. “You can take me from here,” her words pull him back, gather his attention and he looks at her confused at first and then his boggy eyes settle on the doorway. “There will be repercussions. I must come every year. You must end one year and begin the next. Time must have some meaning.” She pauses, her eyes turning a moment from her work, and they are beautiful and endless and filled with sorrow.  “Or you can leave me, and face Time’s wrath. But the world will progress as it should.”

In his chest his heart races, he gulps down that breath he’d just been inhaling, and his eyes race around the stark white room. How could she so calmly place her life in his hands, leave her fate to his decision? Who was he to decide?

He doesn’t realize he is shaking, quivering there in silence as she waits for him to speak. Maybe she waits for him to act and that triggers his thoughts back to the Curupira, of how he had never taken part in something much bigger than himself. So many times he had failed to take action, standing on the sidelines angry and distraught at the world. Yet, this girl wasn’t angry. Sad, yes, but she didn’t seem angry that her fate sent her to her death time and time again. It feels like hours pass as he stands there, considering what he might do, though in all reality it may have been only moments. If he took Her to Time, surely Time would be pleased, his quest complete. Then again, if he did take Her, what would happen to the world? Would there be any change, would everyone and everything hang suspended, never changing, never moving forward?  Sacrifice one to save many, would that end justify the means? How would he even get her out of the sphere, he had no extraordinary gifts, he had nothing but himself.

Himself..

I have me, he thinks, setting his jaw and pacing towards the sphere.

Blood for blood, life for life. Take Her or leave Her, it wasn’t that simple, it never is. There is always a price to be paid.

“You go, I will stay,” the words leave him as calmly and evenly as he can manage. Does it hurt to die? he wonders and surely it must because the shrill of her screaming will haunt him to his end, all of them. “The year needs an end, let it have mine now.” The livered man’s face fell, he owed Mother so much more than one life but he would gladly give it again and again. Without much thought he pressed into the sphere, the burning was electric, intense beyond all feeling. He shouted once, loud, and it rang in his ears like the tolling of a bell. “Go,” he told her, “take the exit and go to Time.” It was the first time he had ever commanded anyone to do anything and as he passed the barrier it allowed her release.

He watched her go, slip away into the safety of the exit. For a moment he imagined he left too, was not imprisoned and awaiting last call. The pictures danced across the walls, life and joy and happiness. Purpose. How beautiful it would be to be born again and again

In the end, the path never mattered. The path was only a means to an end.

druid

words: 1132 points:  HTML by Call

[Cerva]

Cerva’s eyes narrow against the brightness of the room. She had been bold to venture through the open doorway; she didn’t even consider repercussions or what next obstacle may be lying in wait the second she entered. All she knew was that her heart was guiding her here. It seemed right. It seemed safe.

A breath catches when her nutmeg eyes adjust and see the playing of worlds on the barren walls. Images flash of scenery, of lives ending and beginning, of worlds that she never knew to exist. There are newborns gasping for their first breath and elders sighing their last. To see this, to witness the beginnings and endings of life, overwhelms Cerva. Her heart wrenches in her chest and her gaze widens to drink in every sight she can before a honeyed voice pulls her from the runnings of the world. Swerving sharply, she prepares to run. Her muscles quiver as her heart jumps to her throat, afraid of what is to come. After all that she has been through, all the pain and distress she has experienced, she can’t bring herself to so easily settle down. Quietly, she inches away from the girl whose sapphire eyes burn through her soul. Fortunately, Cerva’s fear isn’t enough to dull the sounds surrounding her; she still hears the girl and listens to her reassurances.

The kindness that emanates from her nestles across Cerva like a balm, healing her wounds as they burn and throb. ”Thank you,” she whispers into the cool air between them while the pain of her travels subsides. Her eyes watch with fascination as her open wounds close and disappear altogether. To heal her is to ease her racing pulse, but Cerva’s muscles remain coiled and ever prepared while in this strange place.

With hushed footsteps, Cerva takes a submissive place near Her in order to watch more of the reeling images. The girl continues to offer information about her predicament as well as Time’s role in it all. Hesitant, Cerva bites her lip and heavily sighs. ”I can only imagine what it’s like to never see someone you love,” why else would he want to rescue her unless he felt otherwise? There’s a purpose, a motive, behind all that he does. It isn’t malicious, but it is perhaps selfish. Time wants Her all to himself despite the role she plays in life and in the world. Cerva turns her head to observe the beautiful girl, taking careful notice of the bubble surrounding – imprisoning – her. Again, her heart wrenches.

”What matters most,” she whispers painfully, ”is what you want. Do you want to leave, to be with Time, or do your duties keep you here? Would you be willing to throw away everything to be with Time?” Who is she to keep them apart, but then again, who is she to force them together if their feelings aren’t mutual?

”Where does your happiness lie?” She finally asks as her heart leaps. ”Time can be a beautiful or dreadful thing; there is no escaping it no matter what.” Cerva pauses to look toward the gleaming door. There is still a sense of hope outside that door, whether it’s solely for herself or for the both of them. ”Time wants you, loves you,” she can only hope his means for wanting Her aren’t malicious (but Cerva’s mind is far too illustrated with love and compassion to consider anything but), ”and I can see the despair in your eyes.” A lungful of air is drawn in as she calculates the weight of her upcoming offer as it tingles the tip of her tongue. ”I can’t leave you here; we both have someone that wants – needs – us. We will go together and I will share the burdens with you. I will help you,” her eyes glisten underneath her forelock as she feebly smiles, ”and everyone deserves happiness and love.” Those things cannot be found tethered to a room, alone.

”Now, for this little shield around you,” Cerva reaches forward to touch Her, but rather than the softness of flesh, there is first a wave of heat followed by a zap of electricity. Stumbling back with wide eyes she half expects an explanation, but She only shrugs. This is both her protection and her prison; of course, it wouldn’t be easy.

Tendrils of poison ivy sprout and weave, intertwining around Her like an egg. ”Maybe enough pressure will shatter it,” the vines tighten like the grip of an anaconda, layering across each other and weaving more and more thoroughly. ”Almost,” Cerva grunts with exertion until there is a crack. What begins as a sense of hope quickly dives into foreboding. There is a sonic boom that’s almost deafening as though an alarm has been sounded. Afraid, Cerva continues to thread her poison ivy in hopes to further crack and release Her, but the images begin to flash faster and the walls begin to crumble. ”The room is falling apart,” she finds herself still whispering as pieces of the ceiling crash down around her. Through a small gap in her poison ivy she can see Her staring back with her sorrowful blue eyes.

Then there’s a blinding white light.

The poison ivy is scalded. It shrivels as it’s scorched by a raging fire. Cerva immediately unlatches herself from her woven magic and watches her work melt away in the face of the inferno, but it all hasn’t been in vain. There, as the flames settle, is the porcelain girl standing with a smile on her face. ”Thank you,” the girl’s voice is serene as her eyes dance along the tumbling walls and Cerva’s frightened expression. ”Let’s go!” Cerva takes to Her side and the girl quickly hoists herself onto Cerva’s back. With coiled muscles, Cerva lurches forward and runs toward the door. A large fragment of the ceiling crashes down in front of them, but she veers sharply to the side and dodges around it.

All she can hear is the roar of the alarm and the destruction of the room.

But then She speaks as they reach the closed doorway. ”I need to open it,” She doesn’t need to shout to be heard. Despite the chaos ensuing around them, the girl slides off casually and jiggles the doorknob. All Cerva can see through the exit is lush grass. ”Hop back on!” She yells fervently as another piece of the room collapses behind her, but the girl shakes her head. ”Come on! I’m helping you out of here!” And again, She shakes her head in denial. ”Thank you, Cerva,” wind thrashes through her porcelain hair, but somehow she still looks peaceful. She smiles then, and with a wave of her hand, Cerva is forced through the doorway.

Cerva’s legs buckle underneath her, but the tall grass is eager to greet her. It tickles her skin as she lies there for a long moment. When Cerva looks back over her shoulder, there is nothing there – only an empty field dotted with wildflower.

But the girl is still alive, still smiling, in her white room. Another block of the wall starts to tumble down, but she waves her hand and pauses it in midair. With a flick of her other hand, the white room restores itself and she calmly takes her seat. ”Checkmate, Time.” Another year, another of his failed - her victorious - attempts.

Cerva

1227 words

[Rora]

You need never feel broken again.

Oh goodness. I feel...funny. Like maybe I know this place. Which is weird, because I have never been away from Mommy before, not for more than a very little while anyhow, and not away from the grass and the trees and the snow and the everything outside. Maybe it is the light? All bright and glowing and warm, it feels kind of like a sunshiney hug for my heart. I don’t mind the dark, but the light...it’s Mommy and family and safety and home, and maybe that’s why it feels so familiar.

It flashes, the white parting to reveal glimpses of else. Elsewhere and other, strange places and strange creatures, and I take a step closer to the walls to get a better look. More of the strange monkey things, howling and hooting and kissing, ew. Well I mean maybe not so ew. Mommy and Daddy kiss me, and it is a nice cozy feeling in my chest, and all warm and happy where their lips touch my skin. Wrapped up in love. So maybe not so ew.

Then the white is back and the scene is gone, but that’s okay. The light is lovely too. I stare at it, and sadness wells up inside my body, and in my eyes too. It’s been a long long time, practically forever, since I saw Mommy. More than five whole minutes for sure, and much much longer still. Way longer than when she left me with Auntie Zin and Pumpkin-friend so she could go talk about Sylva things, and I missed her so so much then too. I wonder if she is still stuck, all frozen solid like icicles but warm. Staring at Uncle Kade, all sass and smiles and scary not-movingness.

“Oh, look at you.” My eyes get big, big, big, and I turn to look where that pretty voice came from. I got so distracted I didn’t even notice her, but how could I not have noticed? She is so pretty, all glowy white like the light made into a person. Ohhh. Oh I want to cuddle her more than I’ve ever wanted to cuddle anybody, almost. I bet she’d feel like the biggest hug, like the light itself wrapped around me and holding me close. I take a step closer, because how could I possibly not?

She waves her delicate hand through the air, and I feel brand new again. Not tired or dried out or crispy, not tummy-growly hungry, even all the achy muscles from so very, very much running and walking and go go going don’t hurt anymore. My lips make a smile all by themselves, slow and soft and happy. “Oh, thank you!” I take another step closer, and the glowy sphere I thought was kind of part of her? It gets smaller. I take a step back, but it doesn’t get bigger. In fact, it’s shrinking bit by bit, and I do not like the way it makes my chest feel tight and fluttery, not for me but for her.

“Every year, he tries, you know,” she says, sounding so sweet and so so sad. I take another step closer. I didn’t mean to, but I can’t seem to make my feet stay put when she’s...I don’t have words yet big enough to say it prettily, but she’s the light, and it pulls at something in my chest, and my feet just follow the pull, one little step at a time. Her voice is soft, but I can still hear the screams echoing in the air, ringing in my ears, and somehow I know they were hers. And somehow I know she’s dying. “He cannot come here. I am a fixed point in time, a place that even he cannot touch,” she explains, though I don’t quite understand what she means. “So every year, he sends a handful of chosen ones to save me. Most don’t make it this far.”

She waves her hand again, and I can almost see light twinkling in its wake. Gosh, she’s pretty. “You can take me from here,” she continues, and I notice the door she was pointing toward. It must be the way out but she’s all stuck inside that glowy bubble, and it’s getting smaller and smaller. Leaving sounds like a good idea, and taking her with me sounds even better.

Except she keeps talking. “But if you do, there will be repercussions. I must come, every year, you see. You must end one year and begin the next. Time must have some meaning.” Oh. Oh goodness. It can’t be two years at once. One has to end for the next to begin. Time can’t stand still. Oh goodness, what would happen if it did? Would everybody be stuck frozen in place like Mommy and Uncle Kade? Or even if everybody could move, would we get older? If time didn’t pass, would I stay little forever and ever?

I like being little right now. But I do not think I would like to never grow up. And what about the babies that aren’t born yet? The ones still in their mommies’ tummies? Would they be there forever and always, never getting to come out and see the way the sky lights up as the sun comes awake, the way it paints the whole world in pretty colors? Would they never get to fill their lungs with sweet, earthy forest air or frolic in crunchy fall leaves or watch snow fall or trees burst back into life after months and months of looking bare and dead?

Oh goodness. I bite my lip, fretting over bigger things than I’ve ever fretted over before as she ends with, “Or you can leave me, and face Time’s wrath. But the world will progress as it should, and in the end, we all face Time’s wrath anyway, do we not?” Oh my heavens. It feels wrong, to leave somebody to die. But it feels wronger to break the whole world, and maybe leave so many somebodies to never live. Or. Or whatever will happen if I save her. I want to help the cat-eyed naked monkey friends. I do, so much it hurts inside my chest, where my heart thump thump thumps away frantically. I don’t want to let the pretty glowy lady die.

But it feels like a worse wrong to save her.

Tears fill my eyes, blurring her face and her glow and the still-shrinking sphere all together ‘til they’re one and the same. “I’m so sorry, pretty light friend. But I think you’re right. Time has to have meaning. Time has to keep moving. What would happen if it didn’t? And my mommy said the world has already seen so much change and chaos in the last few years, I don’t think I can break it like that again. I wish I could help you, my friend. More than almost anything, I wish I could help you, so your beautiful light never goes out. I’m so, so sorry, and I hope you can forgive me. Can...can I stay with you? Not for always, just...I don't want you to be alone.”

If she lets me, I stay with her until the end. If she says no, I leave right away. But either way, I walk out that door alone. Just before I step through the door, I look back over my shoulder and whisper, “Goodbye, new friend. I’m sorry.”

Sometimes darkness can show you the light.

pic by Qinni

[Divide]

all of my devils are free at last
all my secrets revealed

She has never gotten to be the hero before. Never been anyone’s savior or reason for living. She has merely existed, simply another cog in the wheel of Time. In this place, with worlds flashing about her and the end of years before her, she can see it as clearly as a cloudless blue sky.

She is so kind and soft, this white woman at the very ends of time. Her voice alone heals ragged parts of her soul she hadn’t known existed, much like the simple wave of her hand heals bruised flesh and seals bleeding wounds.

It is no wonder that Time loves her as he does.

Her words cause a frown to tug at purple lips as eyes of deep gray consider the haloed girl resting before her. She does not know how she had made it and so many others had not (she is truly nothing special), but her heart breaks for the star-crossed lovers.

She opens her mouth to make a response, but no words come out. She is, for once, at a loss for words. She does not know what to do.

She has no one waiting for her on the other side (she has never met her father, her mother had left long ago, and she has always wandered too much to develop any true friendships), but that does not mean she can simply ignore the plight of the thousands of others that inhabit her homeland (and what of the other worlds? The ones with strange beasts she has never before seen?). It is not in her to doom them to a life of misery.

But really, what would happen should the end of years cease to exist? Would the day simply continue on into eternity? Would the world crumble and fall apart?

Impossible questions with equally impossible answers.

But we already know that Divide is a sucker for a good love story. So, in the end, there is really only one question that matters. ”Do you love him?”

As though she senses the puce mare is looking for a simple solution, she gives her the simplest answer possible, ”Yes.”

Divide offers her the faintest of smiles. ”Then let’s go.” She would take her place if she must, but she could not abide the thought that this beautiful creature must suffer eternally at the very ends of the universe. She would happily suffer in her place, would take the burden upon herself. She has no one or nothing anyway. Perhaps it would give her life some purpose.

Stepping forward, she eyes the bubble protecting the white-haired girl. She has no particular gifts, nothing that could defeat such a powerful element, but damned if she wouldn’t try anyway. Stretching her nose forward, she touches the shield gingerly, flinching back sharply at the sudden surge of power that sizzles through her veins. It is both painful and frightening all at once.

Unfortunately, she has nothing else. She does not wish to die, but she knows no other way to defeat such a thing. And though her mind races at a thousand miles per hour, attempting to find an alternate solution, she can think of nothing. Besides, she is so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps this is the one way her life could have true meaning, a true impact. So, taking a deep, fortifying breath, she pushes forward, placing the entirety of her body into that immense power, giving herself over as a sacrifice.

For a moment, she glows, much like the lovely lady she is trying to save. Miraculously, she does not die, nor does she blink out of existence. Instead, as that wall of energy drains into her small frame, she seizes, her body going stiff, eyes wide at the shock of pain pulsing through her with the surge of power. After a moment, she is able to gasp out a wheezing, ”Go,” to the woman now freed from her lonely bubble.

Divide had drawn enough of the power into her with her act to allow the cat-eyed girl to escape, but she can feel the way it wants to stay with her. The way it draws from the purple mare towards the creature Time loves. Gritting her teeth, she steps forward to follow it. She would do whatever she must to give her the chance to escape, even if her legs tremble with the effort of keeping herself firmly inside that energy.

It wants her out, gone, so that it can return to its keeper, return to imprison the girl. She could not allow that. Through slitted eyes, Divide watches the white-haired woman slip through the door, where she glances back only once to offer her a small, sweet smile.

Releasing a breath, she bursts forward after Time’s beloved. She does not know if she will be able to exit with the keeper of year’s end gone, but she would try. Even if it meant having to make that trip all over again every year, she would try. She would see Time reunited with his love. So, as the painful energy siphons away, released by whatever mysterious forces control this room, Divide steps through the door.

divide

---

Word count: 874

[Nyxia]

my friend makes rings, she swirls and sings
she’s a mystic in the sense that she’s still mystified by things

Time comes back around.

Sometimes.

Sometimes, it is linear, like the paths between stars that map out a bounded constellation. She has felt this – this lineal undertow – many times since the moment she was plucked out of time and placed into a world just as strange as this one. Though even more hostile, she thinks, because at least this place is not, she has decided, a mother’s mind. 

(Slumber’s desire to bury her in a brine; the manticore’s hunger for more light in that darkness… these things were distant. Cold. Unfamiliar. 

That had been the cruelest cut of all – mother’s had been a violent excision, borne out of betrayal, twice-over.)

This place is, it seems to her, self-contained – as mother’s world had been. The in-betweens of vast space and the docks of here and now, sitting on stale lakes in their separate universes. The phantoms of choice belied by the singular navigational pull.

But times comes back around, now. 

Even here, without Time, the stark, blinding whiteness of this place untangles memories from her mind. Memories made in Time’s presence – set with a Before and After – so even without him, the moorings are still there. Real things. Not islands or in-betweens! But junctures of an existence that twists and weaves and is not linear, but wily! Devious! Odd, and at times, exquisitely sad.

A thing hewn in tandem, by her and Time.

‘We’re home?’ She remembers muttering through her thick, dry, blue-lipped mouth. She had been lying, as she is now, on her side – then, on the hard, packed dirt of a meadow; now, on the solid, unearthly plain of nothing-but-white. She had, as she does now, blinked up at a world of unkind brightness. It had been the sun, then. Now, it is simply the absence of anything to temper the blankness that surrounds her on all sides. Now, just as it had been then, the damaged side of her face is flat to the ground, hiding the hideous mess that had managed, haphazardly, to mend itself in her absence.

Unlike then, she knows she is not home. She cannot hear the soft flow of a river over its rocky bed. She cannot hear her mother fretting over the disintegration of her and Irisa’s island. She can neither hear the grass growing beneath her ear or smell it's earthy scent. She can only sense the sour vacancy of time. It takes but a moment for the calmness of familiarity to sink in. It is curious, like being force-fed recollections from a time in suspension, before her brain had tightened together and hardened. The pain, oozing from the marks left by the manticore's paws, presses against her temples – but still she tucks her hooves under her. Bending her shaky knees to test her own strength she raises her head from the ground, no longer a sterile womb, but a bloodied one.

Her golden eyes find the girl just before she speaks – drawn into her grace. “H-hel–” she tries to smile, it quavers on her lips, salty with sweat and tears. It is you! she thinks. It is hard to feel any sense of victory. Not while the girl is enclosed inside a magic that Nyxia cannot fathom – not while each inhale feels, as it had then, as if being drawn through iron lungs. ...we have met before. 

When she speaks again, raising her porcelain hands, she resets the cycle of Nyxia’s body – binding the skin, smoothing out the furrows.

The left side of her face remains a testament to Time; her body, the revelation of dawn and dusk in one breath.

She hauls herself to her feet, watching the images dance across the walls like so many cave paintings in motion, riding the slipstream of time in jubilation and banality. How strange, she thinks, to see it from this angle. She steps closer, watching them in awe – ‘most don’t make it this far,’ Nyxia turns her eyes to her and wonders if her time spent on stale islands and dark in-between had aided her adventure here. “I… simply keep moving, that is all,” she replies, softly. Her eyes follow those graceful, pale hands to the far-most wall, watching the shimmer of another doorframe, unhinging (she hopes) the walls between this world and her own.

‘You can take me from here.’

Her chest clenches. Memory comes again, this time with its anchor sunk deep in a place beyond the hands of any clock. She stares at the girl, her heart beginning to pound impossibly loud in her ears. Yes, she has been here before. Another rescue mission, in another world, dreamed-up by another creator – except, she supposes, Irisa had never asked to be taken. She had been – all three of them had been – expelled like a virus from the gut in one dry, horrid heave of mother’s subconscious. Her ears pin back, and all that the girl says thereafter is lost in a haze of nightmare,

(A world shudders. Quakes. Heaves.
Animals scream – they have lost their tongues, their languages. They are panicked!
They look at her with fierce, threatening eyes – they, like leukocytes of her mother’s mind closing in on her, a foreign body.

It collapses. Everything. In one terrifying, thunderous moment, she looks only for the many-coloured hints of her sister in the whirl of awakening. She feels the squeeze, as if being passed through the eye of a needle, and out into an uncertainty lorded over by dead planets—)

Her heart is not the native habitat of courage.
It is an unkind, barren place.

“I-I…” she frowns, stepping backward, tears had never stopped coming so she barely notices that hot trail down her throat. “I’m sorry.” She sobs, sucking in air.

(In the corner of her eyes, jeweled-toned panthers slip like shadows.
For some time after Beqanna reset itself, she swore she could hear them mock her day and night – ‘Father! Irisa!’ – with their toothy voices.)

She staggers towards the opening, unaware of the girl’s warning because, in her fear, she had chosen not to listen. Time’s wrath. Something she has felt only in the way it seems desperate to separate her from her family for eternity. Time had healed her body, as best it could, when she was stuck in transit. Time had given her friends. Time had taken them, too. Time had brought war – that war had brought death so close that her left eye had not managed to survive the proximity.

Time, they both know, is unavoidable.
Time’s wrath, at least, would be faced in a place whose physics and nature makes sense. Death, perhaps, might come. But death, she thinks, it a better fate than aimlessness.

“I am so ver-ry s-sorry,” she lingers, blinking down at the ground. Time had isolated her. Time had poisoned the memories of her girlhood – made them silly and sorrowful in equal measure. “I… I have s-seen this before.” Yet, she yearns for him – for the feeling of forward motion; for the caresses and the whips – but somewhere along the way, she lost her instinct to please him. Not to destabilize another world, to let loose the things that live in it – it takes over her mind like something that cannot be so easily shook: the instinct for survival.

“M-maybe, you are s-safer here,” a thought she had not given to Irisa, of course. “It is s-so cruel out there.” If she had screamed and wailed, it might have been easier. But the girl remains, as ever, quiet and melancholy, watching.

“I am... too scared,” it comes out heavy and the release brings no relief. “Goodbye,” she turns, does not look back, and passes through the door in defiance of Time.

and I pray to blades of grass to find forgiveness in the weeds.