10-23-2019, 01:42 AM
<link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Pinyon+Script|Source+Sans+Pro' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'> <style type="text/css"> .ryatah_container { position: relative; z-index: 1; background: url('https://i.postimg.cc/YS7QJVgs/ryatah-bg.png'); width: 600px; min-height: 600px; border: solid 1px #92a09b; box-shadow: 0px 0px 15px 1px #000; } .ryatah_container p { margin: 0; } .ryatah_image { position: relative; z-index: 5; width: 600px; } .ryatah_text { position: relative; z-index: 8; width: 530px; margin-top: 35px; margin-bottom: -300px; border: solid 1px #000; border-bottom: none; background: url('https://i.postimg.cc/gkTKxNhM/lace-bg3.png'); } .ryatah_message { z-index: 8; position: relative; font: 12px 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; color: #21200d; padding: 30px; } .ryatah_name { position: absolute; z-index: 10; font: 80px 'Pinyon Script', sans-serif; color: #6f8a8a; bottom: 10px; right: 40px; opacity: 0.6; } .ryatah_quote { position: absolute; z-index: 10; text-align: center; font: 10px 'Source Sans Pro', sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; color: #000; letter-spacing: 1px; opacity: 0.7; bottom: 27px; right: 45px; } </style> <center> <div class="ryatah_container"> <div class="ryatah_text"> <p class="ryatah_message">She doesn’t think about him the way that she used to.
He had been her sun, the thing her entire universe revolved around even before they had ever come here. She has never been taken with anyone the way that she was with him, and maybe that is why she doesn’t think about him. Because to think about him was to remember what she lost; to think about him was to remember what she was never getting back.
How strange, that he was what she measures <i>love</i> against, because he certainly had never showed her any. Their love was solitude in a jungle an entire world away from here, where she survived off any miniscule amount of acknowledgment he showed her. Their love was coming to a new place together, and her remaining quiet and out of his way while he succeeded and took the Valley for his own. Their love was her slowly fading away because she was not as smart and pretty and ambitious as the other women, and it felt like someone was edging a serrated blade further into the cavity of her ribs every time someone else caught his eye.
Their love was her trying to let go, because who was she to expect him to stay interested in someone like her, when he could have someone like them – like Sage, like Kennedy, like Charlemagne. They were fighters, they were queens – everything she wasn’t.
But their love – their love is what she wants back. Their love is what twisted her into the mess that she was today, into this awful, desperate, wretched creature that selfishly took what she could even if it meant being hurt.
Even if it meant burning, drowning, and being left and forgotten, even if it meant knowing in the back of her mind she was just a game to them, just a tool to amuse them when they felt <i>bored</i>.
Even if it meant spending almost every night alone, which was an open invitation for a dream she’d rather not have.
Most nights it was Skellig that came to her, and she would awake with a hollow ache behind her breastbone. He would be here if she wasn’t the way that she was, she would remind herself. She deserved to be alone, because she didn’t deserve him.
But tonight it is a different face that startles her awake, that makes her wake up gasping and trembling. No matter how she tries to steady her pulse her heart refuses to stop racing, and this driving, unforgiving presence of <i>him</i> just won’t go away.<i> “Leave me alone, Dhumin,”</i> she whispers to herself, her heart curling inside her chest as though it was trying to hide. It’s unrelenting, though, the way he tries to pull her towards the beach. The last place she would ever want to go. She has rotted on that beach, she was recently drowned in a magicked version of it, but the feeling is <i>demanding</i>, and obediently, she caves.
Still bending to his whims, even though he was a dream.
She shakes the leaves and bramble from her mane, blinking her nearly black eyes into the darkness. The pale light of the moon strains through the tops of Tephra’s trees, and it glints off something nestled in the mossy undergrowth. Even though the magnetic pull of the beach was dragging at her she steps closer to examine the object, and she is surprised to find a small, oddly pale red piece of seaglass. Red, like the color of his eyes. Though Tephra sported a coastline she was nowhere near it, and it was too much of a coincidence for her to have found it with all that was happening; she couldn’t ignore it. She was used to nothing making sense anymore, and so she collects the red stone and follows the too familiar path to the beach, wondering if she was going to even return.
When she arrives she is surprised to see two incredibly familiar faces; Atrox and Agetta, and that sight is so ironic she almost laughs. Situating herself purposefully between them, she glances to each of them in turn, a look that clearly says <i>please don’t try to kill each other right now.</i>
There are others, too, a dapple gray that she does not even realize is a descendant of hers, and then a pale stallion that she does not recognize. Her attention is not on any of them, though; it is forward, on the spectral force that had brought them here.</div> <div class="ryatah_name">Ryatah</div> <div class="ryatah_quote">even angels have their wicked schemes</div> <img class="ryatah_image" src="https://i.postimg.cc/9FSpNJJ6/ryatah.png"> </div> </center>
He had been her sun, the thing her entire universe revolved around even before they had ever come here. She has never been taken with anyone the way that she was with him, and maybe that is why she doesn’t think about him. Because to think about him was to remember what she lost; to think about him was to remember what she was never getting back.
How strange, that he was what she measures <i>love</i> against, because he certainly had never showed her any. Their love was solitude in a jungle an entire world away from here, where she survived off any miniscule amount of acknowledgment he showed her. Their love was coming to a new place together, and her remaining quiet and out of his way while he succeeded and took the Valley for his own. Their love was her slowly fading away because she was not as smart and pretty and ambitious as the other women, and it felt like someone was edging a serrated blade further into the cavity of her ribs every time someone else caught his eye.
Their love was her trying to let go, because who was she to expect him to stay interested in someone like her, when he could have someone like them – like Sage, like Kennedy, like Charlemagne. They were fighters, they were queens – everything she wasn’t.
But their love – their love is what she wants back. Their love is what twisted her into the mess that she was today, into this awful, desperate, wretched creature that selfishly took what she could even if it meant being hurt.
Even if it meant burning, drowning, and being left and forgotten, even if it meant knowing in the back of her mind she was just a game to them, just a tool to amuse them when they felt <i>bored</i>.
Even if it meant spending almost every night alone, which was an open invitation for a dream she’d rather not have.
Most nights it was Skellig that came to her, and she would awake with a hollow ache behind her breastbone. He would be here if she wasn’t the way that she was, she would remind herself. She deserved to be alone, because she didn’t deserve him.
But tonight it is a different face that startles her awake, that makes her wake up gasping and trembling. No matter how she tries to steady her pulse her heart refuses to stop racing, and this driving, unforgiving presence of <i>him</i> just won’t go away.<i> “Leave me alone, Dhumin,”</i> she whispers to herself, her heart curling inside her chest as though it was trying to hide. It’s unrelenting, though, the way he tries to pull her towards the beach. The last place she would ever want to go. She has rotted on that beach, she was recently drowned in a magicked version of it, but the feeling is <i>demanding</i>, and obediently, she caves.
Still bending to his whims, even though he was a dream.
She shakes the leaves and bramble from her mane, blinking her nearly black eyes into the darkness. The pale light of the moon strains through the tops of Tephra’s trees, and it glints off something nestled in the mossy undergrowth. Even though the magnetic pull of the beach was dragging at her she steps closer to examine the object, and she is surprised to find a small, oddly pale red piece of seaglass. Red, like the color of his eyes. Though Tephra sported a coastline she was nowhere near it, and it was too much of a coincidence for her to have found it with all that was happening; she couldn’t ignore it. She was used to nothing making sense anymore, and so she collects the red stone and follows the too familiar path to the beach, wondering if she was going to even return.
When she arrives she is surprised to see two incredibly familiar faces; Atrox and Agetta, and that sight is so ironic she almost laughs. Situating herself purposefully between them, she glances to each of them in turn, a look that clearly says <i>please don’t try to kill each other right now.</i>
There are others, too, a dapple gray that she does not even realize is a descendant of hers, and then a pale stallion that she does not recognize. Her attention is not on any of them, though; it is forward, on the spectral force that had brought them here.</div> <div class="ryatah_name">Ryatah</div> <div class="ryatah_quote">even angels have their wicked schemes</div> <img class="ryatah_image" src="https://i.postimg.cc/9FSpNJJ6/ryatah.png"> </div> </center>