"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
It was so easy to get lost in the fog of time and space and what not. Beqanna had been angry, angry at them all it seemed for things that they had done, would do, and might have done. She remembered the way the world seemed to be angry, when she had felt the magic slipping from her bones and her blood back into the ground. She remembered when she had tried to shift, just once and had not been able to. She remembered, but she shied away from the past, away from remembering how her mother and- No. A shake of her head and she pushes it back, pushes back the memories she doesn’t wish to remember.
Time...Time was a fluid thing. She didn’t remember how long ago it had happened. It had seemed only yesterday, days ago maybe, but opening those dark eyes and blinking awake, seeing the world around her and how it had changed made her feel ageless and ancient all at once. It was a struggle to raise her head, to blink her eyes clear so she could see. A colorful array of leaves. Green grass turning yellow. The sound of the river. The warm sun. She lays her head back down, closing her eyes and listens to the sound of her breathing. She feels the air go into her lungs and then back up and out as she exhales. She concentrates on her heart beating in her chest and the way the steady thump-thump-thump grounds her.
The world aligns. And Roma wakes up.
It’s easier to roll up, to take a long lingering look at where she was. She studies it all, recognizes none. The meadow she would know. As would the little land where Fa-. Maybe it’s easier that way. She’s grown now, not a filly hanging on every word her parents had said. Nor following her older brother around. She gets to her feet, the long tendrils of her black mane falling across her face as she takes another long steadying look. A wobbly step on her hooves and then another, and another until she brushes her lips against the river. Careful steps down the bank until she could. Another step allows the water to wash upon her legs just over her hooves and she takes another step and watches the water rush past her legs, changing the sky blue coloring darker.
And she waits. Because if she allows herself to remember anything, it’s that someone always comes.
06-18-2017, 07:14 PM (This post was last modified: 06-18-2017, 08:44 PM by Kerberos.)
“Daddy, can we please go explore again?” That’s all it ever takes, isn’t it? Kali bats those big brown eyes at me and asks for an adventure - a ‘venture, she used to call it, and it melted my damn heart every time - and I’m putty in her adorable hands.
“Sure, angel eyes. Where to today?”
She lit right up, my baby girl, and snuggled right up against my chest. “Oh, thank you, thank you! Can we go play on the river today? I love the way the water rushes under my feet, the way it flutters and wiggles and dances and makes my whole body move!”
I grin down at her. “You know you can steady that, right? Stand on a solid surface? I know I taught you how.”
“I know, but it’s so much more fun this way!” Her tail waggles, and her butt wiggles, and her whole body shimmies with excitement as she grins up at me.
“Okay. Let’s go then, kiddo.”
And just like that, we’re off on another adventure. We check in with Lacey, of course, making sure Kali tops up her belly and that her momma doesn’t mind us going on a little trip, and then away we go across the waves. How on earth she doesn’t get exhausted racing across the ocean, leaping from wave to wave, I have no idea. She used to need to curl up for a bit after we made it that far, but she’s grown enough that she can manage the trip no problem. Shit, when did that even happen?
Anyhow. Scampers right up the river, and I chase on after her, grinning like an idiot and revelling in the feeling of the sun on my shiny iron skin and playing with my happy little girl. Right up ‘til she skids to a halt about two feet away from someone standing a fair bit lower in the water than we are. “Ohhhh, you’re pretty!” she says, her eyes going wide as she stares at the not-so-stranger. Soft sky blue framed in black, with fierce gold eyes. I’ve never actually seen her without her brother, and for a moment I glance around, expecting to see him standing on the shore watching over her.
Nope. No sign of Ty. Maybe that’s for the best.
“Hello, Roma. Kali, this is Roma. She’s...” Daddy’s ex-boyfriend’s sister? “She’s an old friend of mine. Roma, this is my daughter Kali.”
Of course, Kali’s eyes light up even more at the word ‘friend.’ “Daddy, you have a friend? Oh that’s good! Everybody should have friends. Hi, Miss Roma! I’m Kali, and I like your pretty blue! It’s like the opposite of my purple I got from my daddy, ‘cause my purple’s just my hair, and your blue’s everywhere else! Ohhhh and your eyes are cool! They’re like sunshine! Doesn’t she have eyes like sunshine, Daddy?”
I grin and nuzzle Kali, and step a little closer to tuck her up against my chest, then smile and take a look. “Why yeah, you’re right, baby girl. She does have eyes like sunshine.”
It never takes long. She did remember that much. A smile curls her lips when she hears the sound of others, of a child, from the the way that the voice carried on. Or the way the sound of their laughter echoed beneath the boughs of the trees. A pain slides through her heart, a pain from those that were still lost before she manages to not remember them right now too. She pulls her gaze from the way the water washed around her legs and blinks a look at the little girl with lavender touches on her skin. A smile curls her lips again. “Thank you. You’re awfully pretty yourself.” A spark of something old, of something easier to remember flashes in those golden eyes of hers.
And then there is another voice, one that is familiar, but one that she cannot place quite off-hand. One that was associated with those memories she wasn’t ready to remember yet. But she could remember him, remember who he had been. Her smile fades away some, not everything she remembered about him had been good.
“Kerberos.” A small pause. “Kirby.” Only Tycho had ever called him Kerberos. A glance from Kali and then back again, seemed to ask the question, since when did he care? But she doesn’t speak it aloud, it was there in her eyes, that gleaming yellow that stared at him for a moment longer. Kali’s voice pulled her away and the smile that she flashed at the darling little girl was absolutely real. “It is very nice to meet you Miss Kali.” Her words just coming and when she did finally pause it was to ask her Daddy a question, with that stupid, dopey look on his face.
This Kirby was not who I remembered. This was someone different.
Her eyes fall on him once more before she turns back to Kali, deciding she would be easier, and much more happier to dwell on. “So, little miss, what are you and your Daddy out doing today?” Meanwhile, the water still rushes around her legs as she stands in the water, her head tilted up towards them.
Of course she smiles at Kali. Who could do anything but? Such a cute, charming little thing, my Kali. “Thank you. You’re awfully pretty yourself,” she answers, and if pride creeps into my smile, well, how could she blame me? Yeah, but then she looks at me, and that smile fades. Shit. Right. Doesn’t exactly sound delighted to remember me, does she, and she glances at Kali, then back to me.
Been a long while since I saw that look on anyone’s face. That what the fuck look of surprise and doubt that someone as scum of the earth as yours truly could give a shit about his kid. I try damn hard not to let hurt flash across my face, and to be fair, she’s not wrong to think it. The man I was when I met her probably wouldn’t have given half that. Hell, didn’t. I’d had Min back then, and I’d hardly done right by her, after all. Hard to find a shittier father, really.
So I shrug it off and brush my cheek against Kali’s shoulder. Can’t exactly just blurt out that loving Ty, even for a little while, changed me. And words are just words anyhow. So I just nod. “Kirby.” Because the only one who ever used my name was Ty, and coming from him it had always felt like something of an honorific, like he saw more in me than I showed most people, or maybe more than I let myself see. Like he saw my potential and he called me out on wasting it.
The asshole.
I still miss him sometimes.
“It’s very nice to meet you, too, Miss Roma. Me an’ Daddy, we’re having a frolic. We like to play on the water together, sometimes with my big brother and sister too. They’re pretty like Daddy, except not all shiny. Kinda like me, but purple where I’m greys. But today, it’s just the two of us. Or I guess now the three of us, huh? But that’s good too, especially if you’re Daddy’s friend.” Thank goodness she’s feeling chatty in the face of a stranger today instead of hiding behind me and peeking her nose around to see if it’s safe. Means I don’t have to talk, and can let her do a little shining. Like she should.
She’s about at eye level with Roma, but I’m towering a bit too much above, so I sink gently into the water, nuzzling Kali when she turns with wide eyes to watch me. No big deal, baby girl. Carry on. Her spine tenses a bit and her head comes up as she flares her nostrils and dances nervously on top of the water, trying to figure out how she can tuck herself up against me when I’m too short. I touch my nose to hers and just breathe, and she steadies. Presses against the solid wall of my neck briefly, and then smiles tentatively at Roma again. One more nervous glance back at me, and she takes a deep breath and sinks just a little ways into the water.
Kali takes a step closer to Roma, her face scrunching up at the feel of pulling her foot through the water instead of gliding over the top. I can’t help but grin. “You’ve got this, angel eyes. You can stay up if you want, though.”
“Uh-uh, I’m comin’ in, the cuddling’s better when I’m my height. Just gimme a minute.” With each step closer to Roma, she sinks a little more, ‘til she’s almost at her normal height relative to the two of us. “Hi,” she says cheerily, cuddling up to Roma for a quick little moment, rubbing her face on Roma’s shoulder. For maybe the first time, it occurs to me that Kali’s got exactly two settings: stranger-no-touchy and best-friend-cuddles. Oops. Maybe something we should work on a little when we get home, huh? My lips twitch a little in a barely-restrained grin as she beams up at her new best friend.
“Where do you live? We live on Ischia, it’s this really pretty island, and my daddy’s the boss. Him and Papa Reilly, of course, who is...um…” She glances over at me, and her brow’s all wrinkled as she tries to figure out what to call him. “He’s Mommy and Daddy’s friend, but um...kind of like another daddy ‘cause he watches us sometimes and plays with us sometimes, and he cuddles with Mommy sometimes, an’ he’s real nice. He talks kinda funny, but a good kinda funny that makes the words dance kinda like this water does. An’ we’ve got Mommy of course, and Daddy, and Khari and Kylie, and Baddie, who Daddy found in a cave the day I was borned, and he’s got purple even though he’s not Daddy’s baby like me, but he’s my brother too, he just didn’t grow in Mommy like I did. And Khari said there’s other people to play with too, but I haven’t met them, but I bet you’d like them too probably, if Daddy and Papa Reilly let them live there.”
Also maybe a talk about over-sharing. Oh well. That, at least, is almost never a problem. I snort and smile indulgently, and Kali wriggles a little and smiles back at me before turning back to look up at Roma. “We’ve got birdies, too, all the colors of the rainbow, and our island’s really pretty, d’you wanna come see?”
There’s a moment there where I realize that the man he had been so long ago is lost, blown away on the winds of change and mayhem. Kali clearly loves him, and he clearly is smitten with her. Loves her. I can see the way his eyes follow her, remind me a bit of-. I shake my head slightly, brushing the thought away, not wanting to think or remember or hurt while I talked to this darling child. Almost as if I was worried it might rub off on her. “That sounds delightful and if your daddy loves you a whole lot to let you go on all kinds of adventures like that.” A small look towards him as he sinks down into the water, his eyes much closer to my own now. It seems though, that Kali is not as keen on the idea. Her body almost vibrating with anxiety for the moment before he steadies her.
“My daddy..” A small pause, where those golden eyes of mine find Kerberos’s and he steadies me a moment as well, just with that look. I turn back towards her. “My daddy used to tell me all kinds of stories too. I had stories before I was even born.” A smile curls my lips. “He told me all kinds of things about all the family that loved me and all the fun things we would do together. The things that he would teach me.” And he had, as much as he could before he lost his magic and lost a bit of himself.
She cuddles up to me and I brush my lips against her forehead. I do it again as she beams up at me, with a smile I can’t help but match. “Hi.” She doesn’t wander away, even if she continues to tell me all kinds of things that make me smile. So I touch my lips lightly against her shoulder and huff softly into her hair. “I don’t live anywhere, little one. I come and go everywhere.” I try to keep that bit of sadness out of my eyes for her. To keep it from touching her. I smile a bit. “That is it’s own bit of adventure.”
“…d’you wanna come see?”
I turn those golden eyes on Kerberos. “Well, I expect that would be up to your Daddy, if he is the Boss, wouldn’t it beautiful?” A small smile curls my lips. “The boss, huh? Kirby would have never been the boss.” I say, a bit off-handedly, tilting my head a bit to the side. “Kerberos, though, he most certainly could have been.” I’m sorry, I almost say, but I don’t. Not now, now with Kali. I’m sorry I thought you were the same, when even I wasn’t. When nothing was.
Yeah, thank god for Kali. She smiles and snuggles a little closer, not quite seeing the hint of pain in Roma’s eyes, not quite hearing the bittersweetness in her tone as she talks about her own daddy. “Ohhhh that sounds nice!” Kali replies, resting her head on Roma’s shoulder and looking up at her. “My daddy doesn’t tell many stories, but he takes me allllllll over the place. We went to this pretty lake once, that’s all clear like crystals and you can see all the way down to the bottom, even when you’re standing in the middle at the deepest part! And we met Uncle Roo and he showed us his pretty Taiga, and sometimes we just go run around on the ocean too! We have lots of ‘ventures--” God, I melt every time she slips and does that. Thought she outgrew it, but she’s pretty excited, and I guess maybe her mouth’s getting away from her.
What a shock, right?
Clearly she’s my daughter.
Roma kisses her forehead, brushes her lips against Kali’s shoulder, won over by her irresistible charm and her innocent wonder. Plus she’s just damn cute. And when she answers Kali’s question, I realize how much things must have changed for her too. Echo Trails had been her family’s home before the Reckoning, but that had been a damn long time ago. Before the world devoured itself, before it drained the magic away from everyone and spit us all back out on a mountaintop to find our way in some strange new world. It was only a stroke of luck that I’d gotten hit by a bit of fairy magic and came away with my mojo back. And another that left me with the first real home I’d ever known.
Not everyone had been so lucky.
“Of course. Your family welcomed me into your home, even...well, even with who I was in those days.” For Ty’s sake, even if maybe they thought he was a bit crazy seeing anything worthwhile in me. I didn’t give them much reason to think otherwise. “You and yours will always be welcome in my home too. Whether to visit, or to stay.”
And for the first time, she seems to see a bit of what Ty saw. Because she tilts her head and calls me by my name. I smile, just a tiny curving of one corner of my lips, and I look down at Kali. “What do you think, baby girl? Had enough adventure for one day? You want to go show off our pretty home to your new friend?”
Her eyes widen and she squeaks with delight, snuggling into Roma’s side and nodding. “Uh-huh! Not enough adventure, never that, but I would love love love to show you Ischia. The water’s maybe too high for you to cross right now, ‘cause high tide covers the land bridge to get there, but Daddy could carry you! He carried Khari and Kylie one time when Khari almost drowned even though he can walk on the water like me an’ Daddy. I still don’t know how he did that, but he fell into the water, and he couldn’t get back out again, and that’s why Daddy’s teaching me so little, so I don’t every almost drown or all the way drown even if I’m out on the ocean all by myself, which I should definitely absolutely not be ever ‘til I’m lots bigger at least. Even if I did maybe sneak one time--oops.” She glances at me out of the corner of her eye and then hides her face against Roma’s shoulder.
Sneaky little imp.
“Did you now?” I ask, my brows raised and my eyes narrowing.
“Ummmm.”
“Kali.”
“Okay maybe while you were with Khari, and Mommy thought I was with Papa Reilly, and Papa Reilly thought I was with Mommy, I might’ve possibly sneaked away just for a little bit, but I made a friend, and I didn’t drown or die or get eaten by anything or even get hurt at all, and you didn’t even know it, so it’s okay, right?”
“It most certainly is not okay.” Oh god she’s going to give me a heart attack, isn’t she? Not even one, and she’s sneaking away to god knows where, with some stranger who could be anyone, she calls everyone who isn’t scary anymore her friend. “You and I are going to have a little talk about this, miss. Maybe your mommy too. Sneaking and lying--”
“No, no, not lie! I just maybeeee stretched the truth a little bit so I could fit in a sneak before I reached Papa Reilly to play with him is all! I still went to play with him! Just not right away, see?” She looked up at me with those big, sad brown eyes, and I sighed.
“Not fair, kid. You know I’m helpless against that.”
“Yeah, but you said fighting fair’s dumb, ‘member? That sometimes you gotta fight dirty, ‘cause coming out alive’s more important than some high-handed notion of honor?”
“...you gotta stop listening so well.”
“See, so I can sneak just a little!”
“Dammit. No, imp. Listen to that part.” Kali just grins and wriggles a little, and hell if she doesn’t already know she managed to squirm her way out of trouble. Rolling my eyes a bit, I look over at Roma with a rueful grin of my own. “She wasn’t wrong. I can give you a ride across the water if you like, or we can hang out here ‘til the tide’s low enough that we can hoof it.”
“Of course. Your family welcomed me into your home, even...well, even with who I was in those days.”
I smile a bit at that, a wry corner of my lips curling upwards. A small bob of my head telling him my thanks since I am sure welcoming was only a word that he used for Kali’s benefit. I can’t help but smiling at him, a spark of amusement lighting up those eyes of mine. My Father had most certainly not welcomed him into our home. He had let him in because Tycho had wanted him there, not because any of us used to feel an attachment to him. Cocky. Arrogant. Sleaze. Those were all words that I would have used to describe him so long ago. Asshole. Bastard. Those were words Father liked to use when Tycho wasn’t in hearing. And a whole lot of grumbling. Usually followed by…’If he hits on me one more fucking time…’ And a whole lot of Mom doing some soothing.
Especially when Papa and Dad got into it too. Hot damn. It was always fun to see what kind of nicknames they had come up with that day.
Well, that remembering didn’t hurt too bad. Kali’s face presses into my shoulder and I can only smile a small smile as I watch them. She clearly knew how to play her father, but I feel like he is easily played by his daughter. A small head tilt once they were done and I nudge Kali lightly. My head lowering so that I could look steadily into her eye. “Can you promise me that you won’t go back out on the ocean water like that?” My face is appropriately solemn. “When I was little I had a friend who played too deep in the water and a big fish came and ate him. I would sure feel better if you stayed with your Daddy who can stomp those fish big time if they tried. At least not until you are much bigger and can stomp them yourself.” I sigh softly. “I would sure hate to loose my new best friend right after meeting her.”
A nudge of my nose against her. I didn’t have any such friend and there was a good chance that Kerberos knew it. Here was hoping that I didn’t terrify her or her Dad didn’t call me out on it. “The fish was definitely not big enough to eat a big horse, like me or your dad, but a small thing like you? Yeah, I think my friend was just a bit bigger than you are now. So you promise me you will be careful?”
I wait until she promises or I get called out on it before I smile a smile as I look at Kerberos. “Hands on, huh? I see that hasn’t changed much.” But there is no bite to my words, nothing that says I am anything other than teasing him. “Sure Kerberos, I’ll let you give me a ride while Kali tells me all if her favorite things.” A glance from him and then back to her. “Right Kali?”
(You can post the next one in Ischia if you want too love. <3<3)
