04-29-2020, 07:01 AM
(100 years ago)
She is walking down to the edge of the sea, seashells crumbling underfoot. It is twilight, her favourite time of day, when the light of the sun and the moon dance together and paint the sky in colour. The ocean calls to her, a gentle rumble as the tide flows through the sand. She breathes salty air deep into her lungs, and she smiles, for life is calm and beautiful.
Until the hunter finds his prey.
Atoms and particles fall like stardust and materialise before her as a champagne stallion. She approaches cautiously, but there is no need for fear. They are merely kindred travellers who happened upon this quiet seaside.
She tells him of the waterfalls she once reigned over, of the magical lands that are Beqanna. He speaks of other worlds and universes. Galaxies thousands of light years away, waterfalls pouring into oceans made of stars.
He is charming, full of promises and dreams. She is drawn to him. Awed by the places he has seen.
He can take her there, he says, to visit the waterfalls made from the night’s sky. It will be easy.
‘Want me to show you?’
She hesitates, turning to look for her dear-heart who waits beyond the dunes. She hesitates, and that is her mistake.
His demeanour changes almost as quickly as his sudden appearance on the quiet beach. It is subtle, the curl of his lip, the glint in his eye. She feels the warmth and promises pour from him and wash away with the tide.
And then he touches her and the beach is gone.
***
Chasity stands beneath the shade of a wide old oak, her muscles tense, ears pricked and alert. It is a beautiful autumn’s day, but she barely notices the warmth of the afternoon sun, or the way the breeze scatters auburn leaves through the grass. She keeps her eye trained on the open meadow and the surrounding forest, searching between the trees for the shape of him.
Elektrum.
The memory of him haunts her. She sees him in the shadows, in her dreams.
He did not show her the ocean of stars when he stole her from the beach that day. He took her to terrible places (she closes her eyes, shudders, trying to erase the cities of bones and the desolate wastelands of darkness from her mind). He taunted her: didn’t she realise how powerful he was? He could take her anywhere, show her incredible things. She should have fallen to her knees before him, worshipped him.
He was a God, and she was his puppet, and when he tired of pulling her strings, he cut them loose in the middle of a forest and disappeared into stardust.
She awoke disoriented and confused. In the weeks that followed she wandered the foreign Beqanna that he left her in, her memory blurred, his existence buried beneath layers of swirling darkness. She searched for the Dazzling Waterfalls but her beloved kingdom was no longer. She was fortunate to find the comfort of old friends, Ryatah and Nikkai, and for a time she suspected that perhaps like them, she had died and returned through the gates of the afterlife.
But then he found her again.
As he materialised before her it came flooding back. The layers of fog and darkness reared up and the memories hit her like a tidal wave; Elektrum, the cosmic traveller with the charming smile. He bought her here to punish her, knew that it would hurt her to be so close, yet so far away from her old kingdom and all that she ever knew.
His visit was brief when he returned that day. He didn’t steal her away again; he didn’t need to. He bought the horror to her in that very meadow.
The memories haunt her now, circle through her mind, each time more raw and painful than the last. There is a gentle swell to her belly, and she knows that she is with child. His child. She is in turmoil; part of her prays never to see him again, but she also knows that he is her only hope of returning to the life she knew. He can take her anywhere, to galaxies and universes thousands of light years away. He can take her through time. He can take her home.
She shudders, shifting closer to the base of the oak tree, seeking comfort beneath its shady branches.
She needs him now. And that, perhaps, frightens her most of all.
CHASITY
listen to the birds sing softly.
[@Elektrum] just tagging you in case the muse strikes hehe.