03-15-2020, 08:26 PM
<link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto Condensed' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'> <style type="text/css"> .sochi2_container { position: relative; z-index: 1; background: #000; width: 600px; padding: 0 0 0 0; border: solid 1px #1b1a1a; box-shadow: 0px 0px 10px 1px #000; } .sochi2_container p { margin: 0; } .sochi2_image { position: relative; z-index: 4; width: 600px; } .sochi2_text { position: relative; z-index: 6; width: 580px; margin-top: -250px; background: #1b1a1a; border: solid 1px #65605f; border-bottom: none; } .sochi2_message { position: relative; font: 12px 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify; color: #65605f; padding: 30px; } .sochi2_name { position: absolute; z-index: 10; color: #65605f; font: 15px 'Roboto Condensed', sans-serif; letter-spacing: 10px; top: 500px; left: 90px; } .sochi2_quote { font: 10px 'Roboto Condensed', sans-serif; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 3px; color: #918889; padding-bottom: 30px; } </style> <center> <div class="sochi2_container"> <div class="sochi2_name">SOCHI</b></div> <img class="sochi2_image" src="https://i.postimg.cc/gjjqMQ1y/sochi3.png"> <div class="sochi2_text"> <p class="sochi2_message"> It isn’t easy. Of course it isn’t. Sochi knows enough of the world to know that to take what she wants, to carve out her own path, will be a damning road—a lonely one. She knows that to accomplish it, she must sacrifice the things she once held dear, she once held sacred, so she is not surprised when the time comes.
Nikolaus grows increasingly distant from her and the pack, until he refuses to see her altogether—choosing, instead, a life of peace outside of the battles and the bloodshed and the anger.
Reia joins her own pack, or leads it. Sochi isn’t sure because she never sees her first borne.
Sochi never does know where Villanelle goes and Spirit follows his father when it all becomes too much.
It leaves her, as she has been so much of her life, alone.
There is a part of her that aches underneath the loneliness of it. That fractures when she goes to lie her head down at night and feels the separation like a fault line that splits her open. That threatens to tear her asunder when she reaches for the tiger and finds nothing in return—nothing but emptiness.
There is a part of her that breaks every time her pack comes colliding with the force of dragons. When she must face them down, leading them into the fray against beasts who hold so much power that it seems unfair to pit her group of shifters against them. There is a part of her that howls with anguish when she sees the familiar bronze and onyx face off against her, when her heart pounds against her chest.
There are pieces of her that splinter and shed and bury in her like daggers.
There are pieces that solidify like stones in her chest.
But she doesn’t falter.
It is a mix of arrogance, of stubbornness, of a resolute need to see it through, that keeps her on the path. She gives herself time to grieve at night, to mourn a simpler life that she may have led, and then she turns her silvery gaze to the next day. The pack shifts around her. Atrox eventually leaves. Risk too. But she wakes each morning and sees more faces, new ones—and they look to her to forge the way forward.
She does not disappoint.
She leads them into battle after battle. She carves out a different way, even if it wasn’t what she had first thought when this all started. She watches from afar as the wild things, the ones like her, are given a chance to lead a life different than the one she had been given as a child—when she had been but a pawn traded between kingdoms. It is enough. Enough to soothe the grief and the sorrow and the loneliness.
Enough to let her know she has done the right thing.
She rises one day, older in everything but appearance, to face the magician once more. Her face is no less resolute than the first day they met and the scars she has allowed to stay give her an air of gravity that she has come to appreciate. Like the first time they met, she doesn’t say anything at first, but instead chooses to stand quietly, mulling over the words. Her gaze turns to the horizon for a second—to the things that she knows lie beyond it. The love she has lost. The children she has abandoned. The life she never led.
And then, it moves to the pack and the wildness and freedom they represent.
When she feels certain, she looks back to Straia and nods.
“It was.”
It always would be. </p> <p class="sochi2_quote">she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed</p> </div> </div> </center>
Nikolaus grows increasingly distant from her and the pack, until he refuses to see her altogether—choosing, instead, a life of peace outside of the battles and the bloodshed and the anger.
Reia joins her own pack, or leads it. Sochi isn’t sure because she never sees her first borne.
Sochi never does know where Villanelle goes and Spirit follows his father when it all becomes too much.
It leaves her, as she has been so much of her life, alone.
There is a part of her that aches underneath the loneliness of it. That fractures when she goes to lie her head down at night and feels the separation like a fault line that splits her open. That threatens to tear her asunder when she reaches for the tiger and finds nothing in return—nothing but emptiness.
There is a part of her that breaks every time her pack comes colliding with the force of dragons. When she must face them down, leading them into the fray against beasts who hold so much power that it seems unfair to pit her group of shifters against them. There is a part of her that howls with anguish when she sees the familiar bronze and onyx face off against her, when her heart pounds against her chest.
There are pieces of her that splinter and shed and bury in her like daggers.
There are pieces that solidify like stones in her chest.
But she doesn’t falter.
It is a mix of arrogance, of stubbornness, of a resolute need to see it through, that keeps her on the path. She gives herself time to grieve at night, to mourn a simpler life that she may have led, and then she turns her silvery gaze to the next day. The pack shifts around her. Atrox eventually leaves. Risk too. But she wakes each morning and sees more faces, new ones—and they look to her to forge the way forward.
She does not disappoint.
She leads them into battle after battle. She carves out a different way, even if it wasn’t what she had first thought when this all started. She watches from afar as the wild things, the ones like her, are given a chance to lead a life different than the one she had been given as a child—when she had been but a pawn traded between kingdoms. It is enough. Enough to soothe the grief and the sorrow and the loneliness.
Enough to let her know she has done the right thing.
She rises one day, older in everything but appearance, to face the magician once more. Her face is no less resolute than the first day they met and the scars she has allowed to stay give her an air of gravity that she has come to appreciate. Like the first time they met, she doesn’t say anything at first, but instead chooses to stand quietly, mulling over the words. Her gaze turns to the horizon for a second—to the things that she knows lie beyond it. The love she has lost. The children she has abandoned. The life she never led.
And then, it moves to the pack and the wildness and freedom they represent.
When she feels certain, she looks back to Straia and nods.
“It was.”
It always would be. </p> <p class="sochi2_quote">she said a war ain't a war before both sides bleed</p> </div> </div> </center>
![[Image: sochi.png]](https://i.postimg.cc/rs3xFJR0/sochi.png)
I was less than graceful, I was not kind
be out watching other lovers lose their spine