[private] oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream... [sabra]

[Kagerus]

K

oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

The afterlife claims me without hesitation tonight. Solace's aura disintegrates from my peripheral metaphysical vision and I am left for a moment panicked: forcible removal of my wife has become something of a trigger for me in the recent months. Years now, I suppose. After a brief struggle with the shifting dimensions around me, I manage to get back to her for a moment; with a press of my heart to hers, I tell her that I'll be back soon. I love you.

I submit to the dream.

Around me, the beach materializes. Despite having been here a few times before (to visit my Grandmother, my daughter, Panthera, and a few other dear friends), it's ghast and intangible nature still leaves my skin goose-ridden. A bump of my nose to my own chest leaves me feeling papery and insubstantial, not to mention cold and worried. My semi grey-scaled eyes flash to the figures around me as they waft too and fro, aimless; someone must have wanted me here to have shaped my dream with such force. My nostrils wiggle as a snort billows into the thin air, quieter than it ought to be.

None of the folk I expect to see across from me materialize. Whoever summoned me plays coy, or else I am still groggy from the astral travel.

After a stretch of my neck and a shake of my coat (as though a shake might rid my skin of its discomfort here where I do not belong), I begin to walk with purpose through the crowd of ghosts. The thickness of their number reduces my speed sooner than later. Frustrated and somewhat uneasy, I halt with a stamp of my right hind hoof. Whoever asked me here will have to find me themselves, I decide. My sides quiver; I try to settle in and fail. Hopefully they get here soon...

@[Sabra] I hope this is okay!

[Sabra]

Chaos.

That was all that the afterlife was. Thousands upon thousands of bodiless souls meeting and parting, spinning in an endless stampede that stretched in all directions at once. I had become part of that, the day I died. 

Death was no hard thing for me. In fact, I asked for it. Even if I didn't know precisely what it was I asked at the time. Still, it had been a relief to feel my lifeblood pour out at last, watching it whirl and mingle with the cold river. How much blood had I spilled over the years? All of it, several times over, I think. Enough that it no longer surprised me to see the crimson soak my hide. Enough that it was a relief when life no longer called me back. 

I'm safe here. My splintered mind feels healed, no longer threatening to tear me apart. To tear apart the ones who dared come near. I know I did that. When things got bad, and I lost my will to fight, it was all too easy to give in to the violence that always seemed to bubble beneath my surface. 

For all the chaos of the afterlife, it was a healing kind of turbulence. To surrender to the insanity seemed to sooth whatever personal insanity I'd been clinging to. Control meant nothing when there was nothing left to be controlled. For a brief time the world solidified, and I found the souls of the one's I've lost around me. Love that healed when their souls ran along mine, and the newest soul a brilliant light among us. Saphris, my last child, summoned for greater things than I'd ever done in my own life. I hope he's doing well. 

I've been satisfied with my new existence. It demands nothing of me save that I once was. Good or evil, kind or cruel, it does not matter. Our souls exist in the same shades of grey. They run endlessly, and what we did in life is only distant memory. Memory is what feeds us, and it is memory where I dwell when I feel that old tugging. 

Saphris again? But no, the feeling is not so stuttering, not so vibrant. Who had I been thinking on, when the feeling began? It feels like so long ago. Focus, I must focus. Yes, there it is. An image, or impression. The night, dreams. Shadow dappled skin that covered an elegant body. Horns, spread wide as if they could hold up the sky. And a name, at last. 

Kagerus. 

There, amid the chaos I am suddenly made real. The name is a link that brings my essence to a point, and I am facing her. I blink, remembering the action only as it happens. "You found me." I say, and it startles me to hear my own voice. We are the quiet eye in the hurricane of rushing souls, and it feels as dreamlike as anything I'd ever experienced with the crowned woman. 

All is grey here, even her, but she glows with the light of life. Not dead, then. But still here. A faint smile lifts my lips, and I notice that I am pleased to see her. How funny. I had forgotten that there were horses who did not despise me. She had not known me at the end, of course. But she had seen me at another. Had brought me back despite myself. I am glad she sees me now. My spirit is not weak and thin, moulting and deranged. I look like myself when I was new. Washed of color, but whole, mind and body. 

"How are you?" A silly, insubstantial question, all things considered. Still, as good a place to start as any. 

@[Kagerus]

[Kagerus]

K

oh me oh my, i thought it was a dream...

Ah. Sabra. I sense her spirit before she materializes before me -- and why wouldn't I? Was it not I who saved her from her fatal despondence many moons ago? I know the fabric of her being well, despite having a minimalist relationship with her in the corporeal realm. Well, perhaps more than minimalist; I'd go as far as to call her my friend, a title not held by many during my Caretaker ship... Not held out of obligation or duty, anyway. Plus the whole drama with Castile and Solace and the children on both sides, etcetera etcetera...

It's easier to consider her spiritual place in my life than her real place in my real life.

You found me.

I smile at the way the mare flinches to hear her own voice. I see myself reflected in the newness of her grey-scale flesh; I myself woke up from a death-like state not long ago. Had it not been for the kindness of a stranger (Lilliana, whom I grew to love dearly) I would have died for real.

And I suppose that Sabra suffered that last fate, if she's here, which she is. Curiosity snaps near my skull in little lightning bolts. For now, however, I ignore their sizzling insistence.

How are you?

"I am... newly alive, and finding my feet in the land of the living again." My shoulders shake, as though to rid myself of the idea of having been dead at all. Blinking once, I lend my eyes to Sabra's opalescent form, it which gleams still despite the blue-grey of this realm. "I've also reunited with Solace since then. We are hermits compared to our prior political fame, but the change is nice. More than nice. It's what we've needed for a long, long time."

A quick, automatic shake of my Arabic head brings my monologue to an end. "But enough about me... Sabra, what are you doing here?" Genuine concern rings in the upturn of my voice. I step closer to her. "And... Why am I here, too?" The memory of mine and Heartfire's most recent encounter causes me to interject one last time (my PTSD-driven dream-teleportation of the mare to my side hadn't boded well with her when I couldn't explain myself). "If you don't know why, that's fine, too..."

[Sabra]

It's strange, thinking in linear ways again. There's no need for it in death. When all you are is thought, they tend to spin in unusual ways, and at times they overlap with others'. The individual is lost for the masses. To be a singular being again is disconcerting, as is speaking to another individual. A conversation. My thoughts are slow to return to they must run for such a thing, but I do what I can to marshal them. Kagerus deserves that much. 

I can see the rush of questions that slip across her face, but queen that she is, they aren't spoken. Not yet. When she opens her mouth, it is first to answer my own query. The answer is not one I'd expected. She had died, and returned to life. Much as I once had, long ago. Reunited with Solace. I blinked in surprise at this revelation, but I suppose much has happened in my absence. Even before true death, my mind had long forsaken the world around me. 

"You've found peace. I'm happy to hear it. I hope your family is doing well." I reply, ignoring her question for a moment. The well worn line of worry between my eyes creased as I wondered how to shape the words that would explain things, but came up empty. Words wouldn't be enough. 

So I draw on the strangeness that is the afterlife. The fact that dreams and memory are so very closely tied. The rushing souls fade as my mind takes over, the scene of my death projected in muted light for the bone crowned woman to see. 

Myself stumbling through the woods in evasion of that last child, coming to the river where the dragonkin stallion, Leilan, stood. I've never had much luck with dragons, have I? 

I'm babbling, easy enough to see even if the memory is soundless. A ragged, bone-thin mare with glassy eyes, the roan stallion's mixture of pity and amusement as I expose my throat to the sharpness of his maw. Then it's spilled blood and icy water filling my lungs, a brief, weak resistance. And darkness as my body is hauled away. An ignoble death, to be sure. 

There is enough of me left to feel shame as the memory fades, a shrug of apology to my companion. "I was tired, Kag. Please do not think too harshly of me for it, but my mind was not strong enough to fight harder." I had struggled for so long with my mind, with the bone deep weight that never seemed to lift for long. 

That part of me that could resist had fallen away when the plague had taken my then youngest, my first daughter from me. Amid other things. That I had gone so feral did not surprise me from this distant vantage. I could look on my life with clinical eyes now, every misstep and wrong move. A lifetime of bad decisions. There had been good points too, to be sure, but I'd had a knack for wreaking havoc on them. It was nothing to be proud of. 

I tilted my head in consideration, almost as confused at her presence as she seemed to be. "I suppose I was lonely? Or perhaps just needed someone to know. I think my children will not have come looking for me, I did a pretty through job of driving them off." I admitted regretfully. I'd become a monster, towards the end. "I don't know what Leilan has done with my body. I would like to believe he wouldn't eat it, but..." I grinned darkly. You never knew with dragons. 

@[Kagerus]