where are you now that i need you? { any }

[Virgo]

there’s no part of scripture that ever prepared you for his hands - hands that map
a communion in the cradle of your hips. hands that kiss hymns up your sides.

Her breath quivers when she’s transported and yet no air leaves her lungs here. Her hooves sink lightly into sand and yet she leaves no hoofprints behind her as she begins to walk forward. How could she even begin to look for her child here in the land of the dead? Where would a sweet child like Quiet hide when her world came tumbling apart? Before she knows it, Virgo is running as fast as these legs will carry her but it feels like running in a dream. Her body is so heavy and she cannot will it to go any faster.

In her frantic hurry, she doesn’t even stop to admire the way the ocean ebbs and flows ink black across tired gray sands. Sleepy blue clouds float neither toward or away from this beach but rather twist and warp right in place. An occasional fracture of lightning illuminates the clouds and shows a brief scene of Virgo’s life across them: meeting her father, rebelling against Everclear, and falling in love with Eerie. She doesn’t see her first kiss with Caw or her happy tears after giving birth to their twins. Her heart is screaming for justice, for Quiet to come home safe.

She can’t feel the tears running down her face as she slows to a stop, chest heaving mostly out of habit. Still, the ocean brings its waves in and out without much concern for her dilemma. The clouds rearrange themselves, entirely disinterested in her affairs.

Virgo hangs her head, racking her brain for some idea. How dismal she looks, thin enough for her ribs to show through while the angles of her hips have gone from smooth and round to jagged. The barbs along her spine seem more pronounced in this sickly state. Slowly, she lifts her head to the sky like someone is listening. “Someone.. please..” she mumbles softly in that quivering voice. But the rest of the undead continue to trudge along without even looking her way. They’ve lost their fire and their fight after too many miles of endless beach to roam without end, it seems.

Virgo

he confesses how long he’s looked for a place to worship
and, oh, you put him on his knees.

Virgo needs to talk to someone dead to help her find her baby, so bring out your dead.

[Rhy]

and when i breathed

my breath was lightning

It is not unpleasant here. If you are ready for it, the afterlife is welcoming and warm, full of color and light and a different sort of life. Rhy has been here many times, both before her time and, arguably still before her time. She was young when she passed, but mostly she had been ready. Life was a lightning storm for Rhy – brief and beautiful and over. If it wasn’t for her children, her twins, she would have been entirely ready to go. Death is not an ending though, and she has watched her children, has had the pleasure of meeting her brother even now. In her conversation with him, she realized that her gift to travel between life and death may give her the ability to do so in reverse.

Rhy has yet to try it though. She’s been busier still trying to figure out if there’s some sort of magic in Beqanna that might allow more to converse. The power to walk between life and death is a limited thing, and she wonders if she can find a way to connect more families. There must be something and so she’s been doing her research, asking anyone and everyone about the magic of Beqanna. There are generations upon generations here with knowledge to spare, and her hopes are high.

Electric sparks dance along her skin as they did in life. She is not any different here, really, though perhaps slightly more peaceful. Her life had been wars and death and destruction; her death was peace and quiet and, in its way, life.  After all, almost everyone ends up here eventually.

Today though she is distracted by a mare, head low, ribs and hips threatening to rip through her skin. Rhy turns her course, making her way to the mare with a nicker. “Are you okay?” she asks softly, stopping in front of the mare with concern etched onto her face. It was always hard, at first, but this seemed like more than just dying, more than just getting accustomed to a new way of life. So she waits to see if perhaps her hunch is true.

rhy

the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle

@[Virgo]