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Sabra · 02-23-2020, 08:28 PM

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<p class="sabra_name">Sabra</p>
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Can you imagine the anguish of touching freedom, only to have it ripped away at the last moment? Only to watch it fade, vanish, leaving nothing but the taste growing bitter on your tongue. Even as I dashed away, hooves clattering impossibly loud against uneven stone, my only goal the brightness that hangs so inviting at the tunnel's end, hope flutters in my too thin chest as I leave behind the nightmare scene.

Faith snaps like a brittle femur. The light that drew me forward does not resolve into stars and sky. It is not clean, clear air that flows on too-quick breaths. Instead, all I taste is my own gore stinking sweat, the fetid damp of the deepest caves. And the light! If I have barreled into a new death, I would not be surprised. Not when my vision fills with empty brilliance. No shadow, no reflection penetrates it. I cannot even make out my own form. Light or dark or the absence of either, it makes no difference when the eye cannot begin to process it.

The only input my senses are given is the thunder of my pulse. The rotting meat and sour fear-sweat odor that I am drenched in. Two senses of five still accounted for in the blinding nothing light.

My throat spasms against the acid climbing it. More than half convinced that I have ceased to exist at all, my head swings wildly when the first shadow blurs across my vision.

Hardly anything at all. The merest suggestion of motion, and gone again. A memory surfaces, the endless stampede of the Afterlife. Souls that rush by in a turbulent river with no beginning and no end. Am I caught in it once again? Another blur, bare shades darker against the depthless light. A shadow puppet made of glass, there and gone.

"Hello?"

My voice, cracked and weak with disuse and still a painful loudness on ears straining to hear. A soft noise at my back, and I all but trip over my own legs to catch the glimpse of grey that imprints on my eyes like sunlight stains.

"Who's there!"

A demand, not a question. I have been toyed with before, and it was never a sensation I enjoyed. Anger bubbles beneath my fear, the rage of one too long denied. Another shade rushes the edges of my sight, gone as quickly as I turn to see. Tricks of the mind. Eyes wishing for something, anything, to see.

"You really are one crazy bitch, aren't you?"

The blood drains from my head. I know that voice. I'd know it anywhere.

"Klaudius," I hiss, turning with stiff legs and bristling wings. He's emerging like a creature fog-bound, shining and proud. The sardonic smile that so often found itself on his lips sits as naturally as the set of his wings. Lover, friend, destroyer. "You're dead." I state, the knowledge a thing I had clung to once. But I had been dead then, too. My skin crawls with memory as the broad chested stallion stepped closer, the careless toss of his head a show of his endless confidence.

"Miss me?" He is smiling, broad and guiless. Then he shoves with all his strength, one broad shoulder into my chest and I am falling, falling...

Fallen.

My landing is a soft one. Sand, hot and golden glitters beneath my feet, the sky an open, endless blue. Before me sits an oasis that lies still amid spreading date palms and shades the flat water that pools beneath them. A girlish giggle breaks the silence.

They break cover then. A milk-pale girl and her lover who shines as brightly as burnished copper. Their wings mingle with their closeness, eyes fixed only on each other. A pity, that. They do not see the approaching battalion, the faces hard with their grim purpose. One stands out from the herd, a stallion cut from gold and marble, face scarred and blazing. Her father. My father. King and conquerer.

I can only watch.

She screams enough for both of us as we watch the events of a lifetime ago, the death of a boy we loved and lost because we thought we could beat the odds. Blood, dark where it soaks the sand, where it stains our skin. I remember the metallic scent, even after all these years.

The first death I had caused.

With sickening speed, the scene whirls and shifts. I stand on sand still, but it is white and endless water laps nearby. In a tripping montage the next scene plays, meeting Klaudius, meeting Krone, my ill fated bid for leadership and my underhanded occupation of a land where I knew I wasn't wanted. No one wants a snake in their garden.

Letting him take me, because I was young and foolish and thought it would bind us. My fear when his darkness showed, and I fled.

Sylva, sanctuary and solace. A bright, shining happiness that I threw away on my own ignorance. Let down the few who felt any kindness towards me, cut each of us loose to wander the world. The spite that drowned me then, the paranoia, the fear. The beginning of my mind's unravelling. I watch it all with a churning gut, knowning each new chapter and wishing I could turn it back.

Castile, doing his best to control himself even as he tries to beat me. A battle-game. I lost then, and I wish I'd known it to be the prophecy that it proved to be. Nothing ever changed between us. Always, it was battle and always, he would win. I had struggled and struggled to hold on to what was never mine.

Klaudius again. Time had changed us both for the worse. Ragged around the edges, aimless and angry. So easy it was for him, to erupt with a fury I had only glimpsed before, and had finally fallen to. Watched my own ravishment and murder. The panicked light fading from my eyes as help arrived just too late.

Weak.

Waking up, only to find myself trapped and imprisoned, out of love he said. While he found love elsewhere.

Angry.

The images flow faster, an endless river that displays my every fault and flaw. Every moment of bad judgment, each decision that had brought me to where I am now. Alone. Utterly, completely, unforgivingly alone.

"You know, I don't think there's anything we could say that you're not already thinking."

Throat tight with tears I refuse to shed, I turn dream-like to the fluting voice. Miela. Of course it's her. Properly this time, pert nosed and beautiful. There's a cruel turn to her jaw though, and I don't know if it's me she got it from or her father. He stands beside her, proud as can be, and a twist in my gut tugs harder at the besotted look he gives the girl. That was why I had left, wasn't it? He'd loved his sister as he'd loved me. A daughter couldn't be any worse a choice to such a one as he was. Is.

"Clever girl. Too bad you let her die before she could show it." Klaudius chides, as if I were a child stepping on ants and not a mare who'd abandoned her own daughter. A different voice chimes in, rich with smoke and thunder.

"And after you fought me so hard to keep her," Castile drawled, jagged as a mountain peak and twice as beautiful. Predatory and feline, he circles, and the old feeling of being hunted claws at my chest. It had thrilled me once. Now it's just another knife in my heart, the blood of an old wound seeping around the edges. "I should have known. You were always the weakest of them. Pretty, but weak. A diversion, until I found a worthy mate."

Even after all this time, it hurt to hear the words. I want to rage at him like I had before. But I am nothing but a nuisance to the dragon any more. I had borne him sons, and that was all the use he'd had for me. Some kind of retort sits on my tongue unformed. Stillborn. Dies as I am drowned out. Others speak, faces I had not noticed til now and some I recognize only from distant corners of my memory.

"Useless girl. I should have had your head smashed in at birth. Was it worth it, watching him die?"

"You only loved us because we're his. And even that wasn't enough. Why couldn't you love us?"

"You really thought you would be a worthy queen? Stupid and arrogant, what a combination. You brought us to ruin."

"I don't know why I wasted my time trying to help such a pathetic creature. You might as well have died in the creek for all the good it would have done!"

"Why can't you stay dead!"

You, you, you!

Me.

It was my fault, every last bit of it. I am being crushed beneath the weight of their accusation, and every stone thrown hits its mark. Every face I see knows the truth. They are angry, and why shouldn't they be? What would their lives have been if only I hadn't gotten in the way?

There is no kindness in any of them, no mercy, no way out, and my ears are ringing with their blame.

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<p class="sabra_quote">I wanna be Immortal, like a God in the sky
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I wanna be a silk flower, like I'm never gonna die
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<a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-dress-shirt-lying-on-bed-3373401/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="padding-top:10px">Photo by Kareva Margarita</a>
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