"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
11-17-2019, 07:14 AM (This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 07:15 AM by Moselle.)
The veil is thinning; no - has thinned. She can feel it, like a pinprick against her skin except that she is ethereal, like a breath of wind. It has been eons (so it has felt like) since she has been corporeal and flushed with life, hot and bursting like a fevered pustule.
Filaments of awareness and life burst all around her, snatching ghosts forth from the depths of the afterlife. She hangs back, lingering, not bothering to shove the magic inside her into action. That magic could catapult her across the boundary of death and back into life.
She is reluctant and not certain as to why that is so. It swirls inside her, pulsing like a star that has no constellation to call home. Isn’t this what she has always wanted? After so cruel a sacrifice as hers to ensure that her one and only child could live free of him? To quest for life but have her magic restrict her this, looking on from outside the barrier?
I am.. it doesn’t come to her. Not the name she knew herself by, but her position - her stature amongst them, despite how small and demure she was - still is. Queen. It breathes along her side, and she turns her head to it, acknowledging the truth of that in the crumpled dust of her bones.
Moselle. She names herself again, summoning it from the dark of the afterlife around her, amidst all the starbursts of others crossing back over. Childlike and small, she begins to drift closer to that edge and she notes how easily they pass through. She can feel no reluctance now, no refusal to yield her up to that same journey that others are taking. One last glimpse at the stars and planets and things that exist for her in the afterlife, and she blinks out like a candle snuffed into darkness.
Only to blink back into existence in the meadow near a mound of earth that feels entirely too familiar. She knows it is her grave, or was because she is now outside it and there are no bones in there - just moldering dirt. But crossing over has changed her somewhat; she is still small and frail, a child-sized queen by the imperial carriage of her head, a descendant of stars and this land’s past rulers, but her magic is limited.
Moselle frowns; the earth moves at her feet, small granules of dirt that gather around her hooves like anthills. Yes, limited but not terribly so. Changed, because she was allowed to come back and there is always a price to pay. Has she not paid such prices before? Her frown morphs into a smile and the silver bay takes one delicate step forward, only to what, she is uncertain.
( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
How strange it is to be a dead thing.
Or, a dead thing returned to life.
But he is not like the rest of them, Kensley. He had thrust himself into the afterlife, fit himself neatly through the rift the ghost had drawn in the veil. And he had been dead and the things he’d carried with him no longer seemed so heavy. There had been a kind of peace in his heart, to know that he was dead and that it was his own doing and that there was some semblance of hope that he might find his sister and cast himself at her feet. And he had. And she had forgiven him and then it had been time to go.
They had walked in silence back to the threshold between life and death. How desperately he had not wanted to go. How fiercely he had wanted her to take his place. Because she deserved to live and he? He deserved to pay.
But she had thrust him back to the other side. And he had fallen, fallen, fallen and the pain had been unbearable. He had staggered onto the beach and the ghost had told them to run. The dead were coming. He had not realized then, as he’d torn across the hard-packed sand, kicking up bones and rot, that the heart had not pounded in its ribbed cage. His lungs had not seized with their want for air.
Because the heart did not beat and the lungs did not breathe.
He has wandered for days now and he has yearned for hunger. He has dipped his mouth into rives and streams and the water has tasted like acid on his tongue. He has felt no relief. He has cut himself on sharp branches and he has not bled.
He is a ghost, he thinks. Or at least something like it.
He finds her and he knows. Knows that she, too, was a dead thing. But he does not ask her when she came or where she came from. Instead, he watches the earth rise up to greet her. How it seems to long to kiss her.
“Hello,” he says without looking her in the eye, his focus shackled still to the dirt that gathers around her. “I’m Kensley.” He thinks that, now more than ever, the name does not belong to him.
11-17-2019, 02:13 PM (This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 02:14 PM by Moselle.)
Hesitation does not become her. It might have in her former existence but now it paints a garish look on her face that seems at odds with the still-young features out of which eyes older than the dirt at her feet peer out of. So then, why does she hesitate to take one more step further than the grave she used to occupy? She blames it on some residual reluctance to leave the earthen crypt that has housed her bones for so long. Or perhaps a shard of such has been left behind and she must figure out how to retrieve it?
Moselle laughs; the sound is soft and delicate, like the chime of a small handbell or the chirp of some adored songbird. Silliness! She could not stand as thus - fleshed and fevered - if a single bone had been left behind. The mere idea was preposterous! Perhaps it had to do with the tears and blood spilled here, and that she might not be more than a residual haunt that has come back. No, that’s not it either. She is too real and the thick red meat throbs in her breast once more for this to be a shade of a dream.
The dirt slithers at her feet, rises up to curl around her fetlocks and she peers down at it. She is unconscious of having urged it to move - the magic does that, mutating into something smaller as she crossed over. Moselle has not thought to find someone to ask about how all this is possible, and perhaps doesn’t care. It seems like such a minor detail now that she is back and breathing again. Small miracle, that. If she is grateful, it also doesn’t show because she is too much a queen of old to bother with gratitude.
She looks up, amber-eyed and suspicious because she does not recognize him. Recognition, ha! Who is there left to remember? She is still as much of a ghost as he feels for all that she can feel organs working and blood rushing through her extremities. He seems to recognize that she was a dead thing moments ago but makes no comment about it. Just as she makes no comment on how he is an undead thing, mutant and impossible but she knows better - Beqanna likes to make the possible impossible and the impossible possible.
Moselle should cease to be surprised but she is not, even as the truth of their unique situation hits her full force. She is alive and he is not, though he is not a true ghost in that sense because he stands there, fleshed before her but then she has a thought - is his skin cold? Would she find a pulse in him if her lips were to explore all that lovely skin the color of despair? Oh Moselle! These are thoughts never had before despite the fact that she holds the shape of a yearling but the eyes of a much older mare.
He refuses to meet her gaze, or it might not be so much as a refusal but because the dirt dancing around her lower legs is a distraction. She bids it to settle and small corpse plants bloom instead, pale and waxen. There, she decides, much better and she smiles. “Greetings Kensley, I am…” oh dear! She was about to introduce herself as queen but she hasn’t been that in a long time. It is refreshing to finish on a note of freedom that spills out of her in a rush, “Moselle.” Queen she is no longer, but old manners and queenly decorum is hard to forget.
Curious, ever her downfall, she reaches out to him to confirm if he is hot as a horse should be or as cold as a corpse looks.
( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
He had been bold once. Unfettered.
He had been warm and kind and honest.
He had not been particularly brave.
But, then, he’d never had reason to be.
And now?
Kensley had been drained of all of his warmth even before he’d flung himself into the jaws of death and came back something that was neither alive nor dead. He had smiled still, because the kindness had been bred into the very marrow of his bones and had not been so easy to lose, but no smile he offered ever reached his eyes. Because he had come home to Beqanna a crippled thing. Crippled by grief and a despair so potent that sometimes he could not breathe around it.
But he does not need to now.
Because he does not breathe at all.
Not even out of habit. Not even when he had found such comfort in dragging in breaths that shuddered and spasmed as they moved swiftly across his tongue. He does not bother with them now. The ribcage does not stir, neither with a pulse nor with a breath.
He smiles now, when she shares her name. Moselle. She is small and young but he can see the history in her eyes. He wonders if he’d recognize it if he were not also a dead thing. He wonders if all of the other dead came back as younger versions of themselves, as if born again. Or if they came back just as they had gone. He could ask, he supposes, but maybe she does not know she is a dead thing.
“Moselle,” he echoes and then nods, commits it to memory. The name is not familiar and he makes no effort to remember if they’d known each other, before.
He has opened his mouth to say something – it’s good to meet you, perhaps, or something similar – but the words catch in the column of his throat when she reaches out to touch him. It is not difficult for him to go absolutely still, his gaze now fastened securely to her face. If he had breath, he might have held it.
Somehow, he knows why she’s done it. Because she can tell that he is a dead thing, too.
“How does it feel?” he asks. There is no teasing in his tone, only a certain despair. Because he does not know. And he’s not absolutely convinced he wants to.
11-17-2019, 06:18 PM (This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 06:19 PM by Moselle.)
Can she remember her life before?
Bits and pieces, that come like flashes in the dark —
Queen.
Victim.
Mother.
Victim, again and for the final time.
Mostly, her mind blocks out the rape and the murder. Even now, she ignores how it chokes her throat to think of him - he who should not be named. She knows now that he had ears all over and a hoof or two in all things. The land and him, they had a communion; one that was often dark and bloodstained, and she understood her part in it - her sacrifice. Then she cast it into starry tides of the afterlife and now, she draws a shawl of ivy across her shoulders in comfort as she turns such dark thoughts aside.
Moselle is frozen in her reach by the realization that he takes no breath as her neck moves by his nose in torturous inches until at last, her lips press to his gray skin. Soft, like neglected velvet but there is no heat to him and so, he is a dead thing and she is sorry for that. Before, she might have tried to animate him again. Before her magic shrank into itself and became earth-centered. Strange, that she thinks to help him as he is but a stranger to her.
“Do you miss it?” She asks, not privy to his thoughts about her childlike status. Moselle has always chosen to represent herself as this, disarming her opposition by appearing as an inept child. If she had ever been petulant or thrown a tantrum, she cannot remember it but thinks not as those actions are not becoming of a queen. No, she is far more curious about his lack of life but continued animation. If his heart doesn’t beat and his skin is cold, why is he not on the other side?
His despair tugs at her heart.
She could have taken that once, too.
Eaten it right up and left him glowing with life and happiness. Now, she can only make daisies sprout along his back and around his feet as if he was the sun, the center of their universe. She plants one more kiss on his skin before pulling back to look at him, “Cold but not unpleasant. Just sad, as if sadness could leak out of your skin like rain from a cloud. Do you miss it?”
Moselle should not have to explain what it is. She thinks he’ll know, from once-dead to newly-dead; she thinks he’ll know.
@[kensley] yes I repeated the same question over and didn’t even realize it!
( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
Does he miss it?
It is a simple enough question, certainly.
There is nothing cruel in it, nothing malicious. And yet. And yet, it drives a stake through his useless heart because perhaps he had not fully accepted that there was anything to miss. He had undoubtedly been foolish enough to convince himself that the lack of a pulse, the lack of a want for air, didn’t mean anything at all.
Maybe he has convinced himself that it’s only a dream.
He will wake up soon, lightyears away from here.
He will wake up grateful and warm and whole.
He will wake up in a world that makes sense.
But he is not dreaming. Every inch of him knows it. He swallows thickly, though there’s no reason for it. This is perhaps the one habit from his life that he is unwilling to give up. It is the one thing that allows him to believe that he is like the rest of them. He belongs here. Or he did once and that has to be enough to keep him.
Sad, she says. As if all of his grief is leaching out of his pores. He closes his eyes, the mouth pressed into a thin, thoughtful line. Though the warmth had been drained from his face and his heart before, it had still remained in his skin. And now? Now he is nothing more than a dead thing, shackled to earth on this side of the veil.
But the flowers spring up around him and he can feel them flicker to life along the ladder of his spine. And he smiles. Because it is a kindness he does not deserve, certainly. What he deserves, he knows, is to suffer. Someday, he thinks, he will collapse beneath the weight of his misery, and he’ll be dragged back to his feet and spurred back into action. Because a dead thing cannot die again.
He lowers his head, brushes his nose through the flowers, barely registers the way they tickle the soft skin of his mouth. Dead things cannot feel. There is a sharp twinge in the cavern of his chest as the realization settles over him, heavy.
“I thought I hadn’t been without it long enough to miss it,” he says, quiet. It has only been a matter of days. He has watched the sun rise and set four times since he fell through the rift and landed in the sea an undead thing, tracked its progression across the sky because undead things do not need sleep. “But I think I do,” he finally adds. The words hitch and catch in his throat and he swallows again. “I do.”
11-22-2019, 05:20 PM (This post was last modified: 11-22-2019, 05:20 PM by Moselle.)
Quiet ensues; she cannot guess at how her question has pierced the heart of him. Had she known that could be possible, she’d not have asked it to spare him even that moment of painful thoughtfulness. Moselle is not cruel and does not think that her question - innocent enough - could be unintentionally so. She is the kind to take the aches and pains away, not cause them but she does not know him and so, cannot guess at what this quiet means.
It gives her time to look him over more. To coast along the gray peaks of his hip bones and the smooth expanse of his back as it dips. Dead or not, he didn’t look it. Not like how some of them could, nightmarish and odd. But he also comes to life more now that she had decorated him daisies, the dead’s best friend as far as flowers go. Better to grow them this way than push them up between his bones and from the decomposed matter he md otherwise be.
Such a lovely picture but bones don’t scare her. Not after having been dead for so long. But here he looks so lovely, graveyard gray and daisyed up. A faint smile touches her lips as she admires her handiwork. Roses might have worked just as well but roses are so cliche, thorns and all. Daffodils seemed too bright and cheerful, not that she begrudged him his gloom at all. Rather, it attracted her to him because she had always been the kind to want to make others smile no matter the cost to her.
Moselle has always been bold too; she takes a step forward, almost into him, like coming in for a hug but it’s just a kiss. A firm but kind press of her lips to his cold dead cheek and her mouth lingers there, expelling breath after warm breath on his skin. She’d find a spark in him if she could - and once, she might have, bringing him back to life but now, she can only decorate him in daisies or bury him in earth. It is a grim thought that pulls her back from him, still close enough to touch but so that she can look him in the eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she says, moved by his inarticulate but powerful admission that he does indeed miss it. “Once, I could have given it back to you…” she trails off, not bothering to finish or offer him an explanation. She thinks this must be what failure feels like and it makes her uncomfortable. Enough so, that she squirms in place before him but brings her nose back to his to share a breath. He might be dead and he might not be breathing, but the action comforts her nonetheless.
No, she realizes, he comforts her because he is a dead thing. “Do dead things make plans once they come back?” She offers him the brief bright curl of a smile on her lips, trying to lighten the mood from one so defeatist and gloomy.
Moselle feels like she doesn’t have to tell him that she was a once-dead thing; she believes he knows it.
( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
He had always been quiet, Kensley.
But the quiet is different now.
He had once simply been content to let the world happen around him.
And now? Now the quiet comes from not knowing what to say.
Not knowing how to translate the ache at the center of him.
She ventures closer still and he feels no overwhelming need to cast himself out of her reach. Instead, his eyes drift heavy closed as she presses a firm kiss to the meat of his cheek. He wonders, briefly, distractedly, if he will begin to decay. If the place where she kisses him will someday begin to rot. If this close she can smell the death on him. Or if she can only smell the sadness. He wonders if the heart would stir in its ribbed cage if it still beat. Would the pulse flutter if the heart was not a dead and useless thing?
But he feels nothing at all, at least nothing physical. It puts a vicious ache in his throat and he sucks in a breath he does not need in an effort to quell it. It offers little relief and he closes his eyes a little harder, until they wrinkle at the corners. He grits his teeth and the muscle in his jaw pulses and he swallows down her apology.
When he opens his eyes again, she has removed herself just enough to look him in the eye. She speaks of magic, he’s sure of it, and he offers up a sad, slanted smirk. Rueful. He shakes his head then, looks beyond her to the horizon. Where the sunlight puckers and pulses. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, “I don’t know that I deserved to have it in the first place.”
In the end what had he done with it except for destroy? Even if she still had the ability to give it back to him, he would not have allowed her to.
She pushes her nose into his space and he forces his lungs to receive air, air that tastes heavy and acrid, and then he exhales and tries to find the warmth in her breath.
“I don’t know, Moselle,” he says and the sweet curl of her smile coaxes one out of him, as well, “you tell me.”
12-17-2019, 08:50 AM (This post was last modified: 12-17-2019, 08:50 AM by Moselle.)
She cannot ever remember a time when she had been so quiet. Not a loud thing, but full of presence and command because she had been nothing but a queen. It has defined her as much as being a mother has, or as much as death has and she’s not sure who or what she is now. Maybe that doesn’t even matter any more.
Looking at him, though, she realizes that he matters. That she wants to fix what’s wrong and missing in him, and once she could have done that. But her magic has mutated just enough in coming back to this side of life that she can make the earth tremble and move for them but she cannot give him back his own life.
She is earth magic, fecund and vibrant but even she has her limits and this - it is beyond her ability to restore him fully. Moselle isn’t even sure if he yearns for a complete restoration… sadness and death might define him as much as her queenship had defined her. It is like the loss of a limb, phantom pain and memory but it’s all that they’ve got to hold on to.
He looks beyond her, somewhere far away, and she understands that as he says to her what he says. She understands that too, even if she doesn’t agree and doesn’t believe that’s the truth. “Everyone deserves a chance to live, to really live and feel despite how beautifully painful it can be.”
Moselle thinks it is odd to like a stranger so quickly but she has always been a brash soul. He is likable, dead or alive or caught somewhere in between, that she finds she’d gravitate to him no matter what. The daisies retreat from his spine to weave themselves into a daisy chain crown around his ears and head. That suits him more, like a sad prince risen from the grave.
This then, might be the extent of her magic - parlor tricks and flowers but it makes her happy enough. She has always delighted in small mercies, maybe even whims, like this. Smiling still, now that he’s smiling too, she laughs just a little and the sound is musical and sweet and girlish. All the things that she hasn’t been in such a very long time.
“I don’t know either… guess we make it up as we go along?” It seemed silly to not have a plan for going forward but she’d been dead for far longer than she’d ever been alive, so it’s not surprising that neither of them know what is to happen next. Mystery is the spice of life apparently.
@[kensley] pfft! the delay is worth it for your words! ❤️
( i swore the days were over of courting empty dreams
i worshipped at the altar of losing everything )
All of that blood was never once beautiful, he’d heard once, it was just red.
Is his pain beautiful?
Had it ever been beautiful?
He appreciates her sentiment, the kindness in it. A kindness he still does not deserve. He shakes his head and a rueful smile ties up the furthest corner of his mouth as he goes on studying the horizon. It strikes him that he does not remember what the world looked like the last time he’d seen it alive. He hadn’t even registered the weather before he’d ventured down to the beach and stepped through the rift. Would he have paid more attention to the exact way the sun lit up the sky if he’d known that it was the last sunset he’d ever gaze upon with a beating heart?
And this sunset is unremarkable. But he has no way of knowing if it is truly unremarkable or if there is something his lack of a pulse that makes it lackluster. If being a dead thing has somehow drained the world of its color, its splendor.
He wants to tell her that she’s wrong. Sometimes lives are wasted, like his. Because he did nothing worthwhile with his except love someone who would never be his and watch his family die. But he doesn’t. He affords her this kindness, his forfeit.
He is absolutely still, studying the way the sun slips steady toward the horizon, when he feels the daisies stir. He feels them creep up the length of his neck, tips back his head as if he might see them settle around his poll. The sensation coaxes a deeper smile out of him. And then she laughs and, were he alive, it certainly would have knocked the air out of him. What a sound it is.
He turns his gaze back to her face then, studies the way it lights up with the sound of that laughter. He swallows – a habit, still – and tilts his head. Careful not to disturb his crown. They’ll make it up as they go along. Of course they will, he thinks.
“Where do you think you’ll go from here?” he asks then.
