"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
08-10-2021, 03:03 PM (This post was last modified: 08-10-2021, 03:56 PM by Leokadia.)
she got blood cold as ice
and a heart made of stone
Ciri’s departure had been sudden, and were it not for the trust built between the two women over their few hours together Leokadia might have understood the hurried farewell to be a brush-off tactic. As it was, she believed Ciri, but doubt would set in over time. She had watched her dash away, a crease drawing across her smooth pale brow. In distraction she lowers her vast wings slowly, feathers just brushing the earth once more as she turns over their last seconds together. Leokadia is cursed to see the moment exactly as it was but does not have the gift of interpreting it, so she twists it this way and that like something washed up from the sea. Beautiful, even if she cannot be certain of what it really was.
She looks over her shoulder in the direction Ciri had gone, watches the empty horizon for a minute--her features growing dark, closed off.
When she leaps into the sky, she climbs far up into the cold cloud cover. The chill distracts a little from the familiar hollowing feeling of rejection that tries to edge away the lingering warmth of their connection. The wind’s cold rasp in her ears cannot push away the sound of Ciri’s whispers, but a part of her wishes it would. It had all been too clean and simple in retrospect, and that Leokadia cannot trust.
The isle lies to the northeast, beyond Nerine’s peninsula. The sky is clear and the sun will dip down to the western sea in a few hours. Far beneath her the sea appears calm, bejeweled with white caps that betray its true ferocity. She keeps herself well out of the airspace of the east instinctively, descending only once well over the waters beyond Nerine.
A great deal of time has passed since she originally began this journey north, too long maybe, but long enough for her to sort herself out and grow curious enough to look for Ciri on the isle. Normally she would circle a territory, take a mental picture of it and any present occupants but not today. She lands a short way inland, folds her wings down onto her short back, and waits.
She could cast her voice into the biting northern wind and call Ciri but decides not to. Who else might come first? Nashua? Leilen? She knows their names but they will not know her, or why she has come. There is an appeal in this for Lo, in catching others off-guard, but she shouldn’t be thinking that way. Not about people who are important to Ciri. She must try not to play her games here. This isle, this is a place to be only Leokadia.
Her coat is clean and creamy white, feathers the same but wind ruffled. At her feet the ground is a little charred, she does not know why and resists the impulse to lie down and roll around in the smudging black that clings to earth and stone. Only looks, neck arched as she studies the ground around her toes.
but she keeps me alive
she's the beast in my bones
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
If she had known when she had turned away from Lo that she had been sprinting to her death then she would have turned around. Would have turned right back around into the white mare’s feathery embrace and would have shown her each and every star in the brilliant Northern night sky, would have explained each constellation to her until she lost her voice.
But she hadn’t known.
So death was what she had found.
And anger.
So much anger.
She had spent long months in the Isle simply trying to heal. Not her legs, which both Nash and the black and gold stallion had seemed to fix almost instantly. No, it was her pride that had suffered terribly as well as her dignity. Gale.. No… The Curse (she still has to correct herself of this) had seemed to strip her instantly of both in that moment when she been broken and bleeding on the ground before him. He had left her with many other things too, besides broken legs. She had been attacked before, she had known pain. But this had been different.
All those fights before had been pure survival. This had been intimate.
This time she had died.
She had thought of Lo often in the many sleepless nights that had followed. She had regretted leaving her that day, now more than ever, but was relieved that at least she hadn’t stupidly brought the pegasus with her. At least Lo had been spared. She doesn’t doubt that when the Curse discovers how actively her and Nash are trying to find a way to stop it (once and for all), he will come for her. He had already made it clear that she was more than just her stars. It’s that thought, that sobering knowledge, that had kept her from seeking out the mare who talked in a strange way that she liked.
But she comes anyways.
The invitation had always been there and today Lo has taken it. She spots the incoming white blur in the twilight distance and immediately had taken to the air to discover what it was. The other hadn’t spotted her, the dark mare on her starlit wings, as she came up from behind her. And slowed when she had realized who it was. Falling back as Lo’s beautiful long feathery wings (clean this time, she notices) seem to stretch out around her despite the rapidly growing distance between them as she comes closer to her destination.
Lo lands on one of her favorite places, Castile’s burnt beach, and she watches the way the amber glass beneath her catches the darkening sunlight and casts colorful balls of light across her snowy figure. It is better if she doesn’t find her, that she leaves disappointed instead of finding her and eventually getting herself cut open. Dying a pointless empty death.
But she can’t.
These long months of silence and reflection, these long months of knowing that there was nothing waiting for her beyond death. Some might find it freeing but she feels suffocated with the knowledge that no other can understand. Lo is looking at the beach around her when she lands lightly beside her. Her swirling silver eyes are wary and the smile she gives doesn’t quite warm the ice in her gaze but it is there and it is real. Despite her fears, she is pleased to see her. “Lo.” She greets quietly as she stretches her stardusted feathers, glancing up at them and the stars that now begin to shine brightly around her in the approaching dark. “I liked yours so much I got myself a pair.” She tries to joke but her chuckle feels harsh and her worries are soon pressing in like knives. She suddenly feels hyper aware of the new scar carved into her chest, the many ones that littered her legs and marked each spot where her bones had pierced through skin. Of Lo wearing something similar. “It’s good to see you.” She states softly and extends her muzzle to the others cheek, briefly. “But it is not safe here. You need to go.”
she got blood cold as ice
and a heart made of stone
Preoccupied with thoughts of meeting Ciri again she does not notice that she is tailed to the isle, despite her caution in choosing her flight path.
On the ground, contemplating the burned coast, she lifts her light eyes slowly to Ciri at the sound of her own name. Ciri, who glitters in the twilight in such a breathtaking way that Leokadia notices nothing else at first. Nothing but how beautiful she is, she has thought of her and yet the picture in her mind was not this one. In the meadow the attraction had been a gentle tug, teased out by kind words, and the stars that burned against the bright of day. Now dark wings are perched upon the mare's back and a field of stars wink from among the feathers. "You are lucky they grew so quickly." It is a tease at her own expense but Lo is distracted by the changes in her new friend. She is different, but even Leokadia's perfect memories do not show her all the ways that is true. Except for the scars, cruel puckered things that carve new jagged rows in the taller mare's skin. Lo looks at them and her features, often so devoid the fine subtleties of emotion, cannot conceal her alarm.
"I am not going."
She replies abruptly, there is a jagged toothed feeling crawling beneath her skin, unfamiliar. Leokadia is now the answer to a question she has previously only been able to ask. She is needed, even if Ciri does not want her. The latter she is accustomed to, only now she decides where she may go and stay. "You can't send me away." Leokadia's chest heaves, why? The hollowness inside her roars to life but the other newer feeling keeps it at bay. "Who did this? What is not safe?"
The cremello moves nearer, touches Ciri's neck briefly and speaks in a slower and more careful way. "You are different. A pause, a tilt of her head. "I want you to tell me why." Can Ciri feel her reluctance to put distance back between them? Leokadia feels like she too is one of the small suns raging just at the edge of the star-woman's orbit, unable to pull away.
but she keeps me alive
she's the beast in my bones
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
Perhaps she fell in love with her then. Not because of Lo’s bravado (which stirs something in her, something raw and fierce and as hot as the flames of her anger) or the emotion that she can see storm through the pale clouds of her eyes and the way her chest heaves with distress. It’s not even the touch to her neck although she feels that strange tingling sensation she had once felt when Amet or Castile did the same thing. It’s what she says that grounds her to reality, that makes her look at Lo with sudden understanding.
She’s the only one that’s noticed she is different. The only one to voice it at least.
She doesn’t want to love Leokadia. Not if it means sending her to the same meaningless void that she had found in death.
She is quiet despite the grilling of questions and growing concern expressed on Lo’s face, choosing to break away her own starlit gaze to look up at the ones hovering around her. The ones that now seem tinged in a bloody hue of red. They hadn’t returned to their bright whiteness since her argument with Nashua on this very beach. She wonders if they ever will, if she will ever pull down her shield again. She doesn’t care if they don’t or if she never touches that oily source once more. She remains silent but it’s not because she is avoiding her questions, not exactly. She’s just not sure how much she wants to share, not wanting to alarm the white feathered mare anymore than she already was.
Ruffling her new wings behind her, she finally turns her cold silver gaze back to Lo. “You won’t want to stay after what I tell you.” She finally says, a tinge of regret in the tone of her voice. Because if things were different then she would want nothing more than for Lo to resist her. She would love nothing more than to encourage the creamy pegasus to stay on the Isle with her forever, to meet her Isle brothers, to see what this could be. She considers the other mare, a wry smile finding her dark lips briefly as she thinks of Lo’s blunt request. “I like the way you speak Lo. I appreciate how you approach things in such an analytical way. It makes me look at things in a different perspective.”
Even if she cannot keep her for herself, she would not deny the mare the compliment that she deserved.
However this is one perspective she can’t seem to change.
That hollowness behind her anger, the emptiness she had seen when Gale’s hooves had connected with her temple.
“When I went to meet my friend he had been… changed. Into something terrible.” Grief threatens to overwhelm her but the blaze of her anger quickly evaporates it, flames licking behind the cool silver of her eyes. “He hurt me. He’s hurt all of us here in some way.” Nashua whose child had been abducted. Leilan for having to halt his personal quest. And she wouldn’t doubt there were countless others in the mix and more to come, just as Nash had predicted. “This is a long battle Lo. And I would not see you be a casualty in it.” Not because of me, she almost says but bites back at the last second.
”You’re more than just your stars, Ciri.”
The Curses’s echo rings through her head as she reluctantly steps away from Lo’s touch. “He will be back. It’s just a matter of when. So it’s not safe here for you.” She realizes that she hasn’t fully answered Lo’s question. Why exactly she was different. She had shouted it at Nashua in the heat of her temper but she can’t seem to say it now, unwilling to share this dark knowledge with Lo. Unwilling to bring her down with her.
08-15-2021, 10:03 PM (This post was last modified: 08-16-2021, 11:41 AM by Leokadia.)
she got blood cold as ice
and a heart made of stone
By many, Leokadia could be described as a blank page, a beach washed clean and smooth, wind-blown northern snow. She could be empty of everything, every emotional response. To her the things that drift across the faces, darken the eyes, or vibrate on the skins of others are loud, exaggerated cries. Meanwhile she is that empty beach, that untouched cold tundra. What she feels she feels in a small, buried, quiet way. She does not have to show it.
Not until now.
When the void first opened up in Leokadia she had been so small. Too small, too early. It had been winter still and the inconvenience of her birth was her very first offense. She does not remember her beautiful mother well, not like she remembers everything else. There are glimpses mostly: blood on cream colored thighs, perfect feathers on strong wings, being shoved away into the snow, the taste of her dam's unpredictable implacable rage.
Rejection had gotten louder each time she felt it until it was crippling, until she could barely breathe around it. It felt like dying, her heart crushed against her breastbone by the black hole that was spreading inside of her. She fought to live, to keep up, to grow but it meant nothing. Nothing but renewed agony. The winter did not lessen, her wings were just grotesque down and small soft bones. At last her mother finally left, flown away from her on pristine angelic wings.
Leokadia had lain down beneath the cedars and turned it all off.
Survival had meant learning to manipulate and pretend, to wear the mask required to be like all the others.
For Ciri she had not put on the mask. What had she really recognized in the dark mare? That might remain a mystery, but it could not be as simple as the changeable nature of her stars. Leokadia seeks out changeable things, things that she cannot ever fully memorize. Ciri is one such thing, but not just because of the stars that drift around her or the liquid silver flash of her eyes. Ciri pays compliments at times like these, confusing and disarming her once again.
As much as Leokadia can, she has left herself exposed to Ciri. She has told her about the wings. Has come to her even though it might hurt.
She will not leave now, just because the pain might also be physical. She hears what Ciri is telling her, that her friend has become a monster. Ciri is the only friend Leokadia has ever had but to imagine her becoming something like that… the scars are only an outside representation of the pain inflicted on her friend. Lo holds Ciri's furious gaze, seeing grief flash there as well. She doesn't care about the others but knows that the kind mare she'd walked north with would feel the pain of her friends. Anger rolls off of Ciri, Leokadia lingers in it's corona. The jagged feeling: protectiveness and fury is further stoked by that anger. "You will need help. I will help you. I cannot just leave knowing you could be hurt this way again. Let me help you and Nashua, and Leilan." She has not forgotten their names, perhaps her knowing them still will help Ciri see that she means to stay, not just a visit but to be here with her.
Yet Ciri pulls away, and it hurts more than it should. Leokadia could follow, could press but does not. She adjusts her wings, and stills herself. If she is quiet on the outside maybe the vice-grip of rejection will release her frantic heart. "I am not going." She replies in an even voice. Ciri has not answered her original question and Lo, who does not understand why others do not make direct answers is frustrated by that but does not ask again. A moment ago she had been agitated, now she pushes that all away. "I am going to live here. You can tell me to leave every day if that does something for you but for tonight please shut the hell up." Pallid lashes drift down to brush her cheeks and she exhales before speaking again. "Are you well enough to run with me? I will go alone, but I would rather have you beside me." It was a long flight here, but she wants to break the tension she feels, to bleed off some of Ciri's anger as well. After being told to shut the hell up some of that anger may be directed at Lo, but the cremello mare does not give the appearance of caring.
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
She doesn’t feel the cold anymore. Even in the deepest snowiest parts of the Isle, the heat of her anger seems to protect her from the icy bite of the tundra. Every feeling seems to feed into the flame of her rage as it spreads like a wildfire, intensified by each shredded emotion and each flicker of thought. It doesn’t even stop for Lo, not even as she comes to realize certain emotions wrapped around her heart before they too become consumed by the flames. However her presence does soften some of the hard edges that had built around her since she had awoken in the blood-stained meadow. It makes her think of her argument with Nashua and feel the pinpricks of regret, makes her think of the Curse and still hope that Gale could be recovered. And then the tidal wave of rage crashes back over her and she has to glance away from the lovely white mare and her beautiful downy wings.
Ciri glances away from her statement of help before she actually takes her up on it. Before she becomes incredibly selfish and signs Lo’s death warrant in the process. It makes it worse that Lo remembers her friends, remembers the names of those that are important to her. Slowly the dark mare shakes her head and still the other refuses to leave. Ciri could threaten her, could scare her off, could be mean to her and drive her away for good. She could lie to herself by saying afterwards it was for the greater good, that she had spared Lo from things she was better off not knowing.
But she can’t.
Reluctantly, she looks back at Lo’s earnest pale gaze as she firmly states her intention to live on the Isle and knows that she can never be intentionally cruel to her, even if it saves her life. Surprise registers on her face as Lo tells her to shut the hell up and then for the first time in almost a year, she laughs. A true laugh, one not fueled by anger and hate. One that's not so cold and harsh. It startles her and there is confusion for a moment amongst the swirling silver before the rage comes rushing back in. “Am I suppose to answer you or should I still shut up?” She finally manages as she tries to sort through the conflicted feelings vying for her attention. Before Lo can answer her sarcastic question (as she’s certain Lo might takes her literally) she takes a step forward, fluttering her own feathers as the reddish aura from her stars glows around them. “Nashua and another healed me well enough. Come, I’ll show you the Isle.” She states and before the other can respond she breaks into a trot, beginning to lengthen her stride as she heads from the wreckage of the beach towards the infamous heart-shaped lake and it’s burning tree.
she got blood cold as ice
and a heart made of stone
Ciri’s laughter comes in a bright peal, shocked and beautiful and it surprises Leokadia. It interrupts the anger she can feel rolling off of Ciri but not for long, not long at all. The anger bothers Leokadia, but in a distant way, like a small razorblade tucked deep up into her innards. Uncomfortable, inescapable, incomprehensible. Ignoring this discomfort she frowns at Ciri who has retorted quickly to her invitation for a run after being told very abruptly to shut up. “Do not--”but Ciri is speaking again already, putting herself to motion as she does so. Healed well enough, and likely not about to shut the hell up any time soon.
Leokadia moves after the red glow, the crimson light of the stars reflecting in her eyes. Beneath them, the outline of Ciri’s body and wings is dark but highlighted strangely in red. The light clings to the point of her hip or the curve of her neck as it might a horizon just after sunset but so much dimmer so that Leokadia almost doesn’t see it if she actually looks. Ciri’s stride extends, Leokadia tosses her shapely head up and joins her. When they move ever more quickly, side by side, the edge of her pale wing brushes the edge of Ciri’s dark one. A chill travels along Leokadias nerve endings, tingling away to leave only the cold wind that cuts against her thin southern hide. Clever eyes check the black mare’s stride, and the inside ear listens to the even sound of her breath. When she is satisfied that Ciri has been honest with her about the sufficiency of the healing she’d received, she speaks. ”I want to really run Ciri, stay with me this time.” Her words harken back to a previous run when Ciri misunderstood her, to a request that Leokadia herself stay, and last of all that Ciri stay with her this time and not go away. Leokadia is not sure she intends to be so vulnerable but the words come out unbridled and then she runs.
It is a dangerous, breakneck run, heedless even though it has grown dark and she does not know the isle. She is not particularly fond of running or races, not at all really, but she wants to run with Ciri and wants to make Ciri run.
And run.
She knows Ciri can catch her, stop her but she reaches out to nip her, to drive her forward and push herself further to keep Ciri from cutting her off. When the burning three comes into clear view Leokadia is sweating, steam rising from her skin. She avoids the blue light, slowing, until she trots a circle that carries her back to Ciri, for whom the tree is likely a familiar sight. There’s water nearby, fresh and clean, the scent of it brought in on the cold air she can’t seem to pull down to her lungs fast enough. She would ask about the tree, but she is breathless when she touches Ciri’s shoulder. “Hi.” She manages, and settles beside Ciri, closer than she has in the past, their wings inches apart. Lo is dizzy with endorphins and a little bit of oxygen deprivation. ”You can stop shutting up and tell me what’s wrong with that tree.” She manages what she thinks will land like a joke. Another breath, another touch. “Are you less angry” A breath. “now?”
No one needs to kill her, she might be about to die right now from trying to outrun Ciri. Next time they fly, now that they can.
Leokadia doesn’t expect Ciri to stop being angry and so as she catches her breath she reaches out again, more slowly, more gently. Now that the giddiness is fading she worries about Ciri moving away, but still tries to touch her anyway, to press her muzzle to the mare’s neck and nip very gently. “If you want to be angry, I want you to talk to me. I can read you, anybody, pretty well but I don’t always… understand.” Leokadia tucks her chin, pulling back into herself. “I want to be able to understand you.”
but she keeps me alive
she's the beast in my bones
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
The movement is a welcomed distraction. All the pent up aggression she had been carrying for the last year seems to spew out of her, trailing behind her in the reddish glow of her stars. The anger still lingers even when she can feel the soft touch of Lo’s feathery wings caressing the tips of her own. She grits her teeth as Lo takes the lead, as she tells Ciri to stay with her. Something dark flashes in her swirling eyes but she is obedient to her commands and soon she is pelting through the tundra as if her life depended on it. There is nothing but the cold wind stinging her eyes, whipping against her face and disturbing the starlit feathers across her back. Nothing but the aurora shining brilliantly above them and the endless snow and ice.
Nothing. All there is... Nothing.
For a long time she doesn’t think and only reacts on instinct. Lo does not know this land like she does and so she cuts in front of her when needed to put them back on the right path (despite Lo trying to keep her from doing so), becomes a glowing barrier between Lo and a particularly nasty breach in the ground that keeps the white mare from almost tumbling into it. Not once does she think to use her powers to guide and protect her, it had been months since she had pulled her star shield from the sky and she had almost forgotten that magic within her. Magic that lay dormant and quiet within the black ink of whatever Gale had done.
Lo nips her neck and drives her back as her muscles start screaming for rest but she doesn’t heed them. That anger still fuels her, still burns hot in her chest and despite the rather thick layer of sweat building on her scarred coat, she continues to run. Her thoughts blur with the white surroundings as they hit the snowiest part of the Isle, forcing them to slow that break-neck speed. Steam spirals around her stars as she finally slows, her sides heaving as her companion heads towards the lake. She is thirsty but her gaze is focused on the blue flames of the burning tree, flames that reflect in the silvery glow of her own eyes. She is lost in the burn and it takes her a moment to realize that Lo is speaking to her.
”Hi.” She says as she settles close to her, close enough to feel the heat radiating off the creamy mare in waves. At the news that she can stop shutting up, Ciri only snorts but she keeps her gaze trained on the tree. Easier to do that to distract herself from how close Lo was, that soft brush against her shoulder. “It never goes out. I honestly don’t know why.” She falls silent as she recalls the entities in Hyaline that the Curse had shown her. Had he been Gale then? It’s still a question that weighs heavy in her head, what had been real in that friendship or if it had always been a lie. She shakes her head violently to shake Gale’s smiling face from her head and focuses back on the blue flames. Was this also an entity? She makes a mental note to speak to Nash about it. If the Curse already had three perhaps he might want another and she will be damned if she will let the Curse take something else from them. Not when it had already taken so much.
She hadn’t realized that her anger had died down to smoldering coals in the run but as Lo tentatively asks her about it (mixed with these new thoughts about the Curse) she feels it lick against her insides again. And sighs softly as she escapes from Lo’s touch towards the lake. The water is exceptionally cold but she doesn’t care as she slips into its icy grip, the shock of it making her gasp sharply as her red stars burn angrily around her. “No. I don’t know.” She finally murmurs from her spot in the lake, noticing how the ice was beginning to form around the corners of the shore. Soon it would be entirely frozen except for the parts where the tree loomed overhead. She drags her wings through the arctic darkness, already shivering but refusing to leave the water. It’s here that her mind feels most clear, its here that her anger seems to hold back, too distracted by the cold.
She finally removes herself from the lake, shivering but cleansed from the slick sheen that had covered her on their run. Lo moves towards her and this time she doesn’t move away when the mare’s muzzle makes contact with her neck. Instead she finally raises her head to look directly into the strange pale gaze of the one that had refused to leave. “I don’t think you can understand. I can’t really understand it myself.” She says to her, the swirls of her eyes slowing slightly as Lo pulls back into herself. She turns her head back towards the tree behind her as she finally whispers her dark secret that wasn’t really a secret at all. “He killed me Lo. I died and he brought me back. And there was nothing..” Muscles work in her jaw as she grits her teeth, as she feels something mix with that simmering rage. That same something she had felt calling her from the beyond ever since she had fallen with unseeing eyes to the meadow floor. It almost tastes like regret. “I always thought I would go back.” She laughs bitterly as she raises her head up to the night sky, watching the winding colors playing across a midnight canvas. Watching the stars above twinkling down at her, mocking her from above. “But all I saw… All I found… All that waits for us…” And she pauses as she finally looks at Lo, shivering with both the biting cold and the realization that she couldn’t escape from. “There’s nothing Lo. We live for nothing.”
Her confession lays in ribbons before the other mare, tattered and ugly and stained. The truth of what she had discovered. Could Lo understand now why she was so angry? Why she hadn't wanted to tell her, why she hadn't wanted her to stay here? Wasn't it better to live in ignorance and believe that their lives amounted to something special? Wasn't it better to pretend that it all amounted to something, that every decision and feeling mattered? She glances away from the cream mare and her elongated wings to the heart-shaped lake beside them. There was nothing she could do, nothing that could be done to protect the other from what waited for all of them. If Lo hated her for it, she wouldn't blame her. She expected it. But she couldn't lie to Leokadia. Not to her.
she got blood cold as ice
and a heart made of stone
Ciri protects her on that mad run across the isle and Leokadia is surprised. She runs harder because it confuses her, she has images in her mind of how one is meant to react when they are aided or rescued but she has never been the one receiving that aid.. No one has ever redirected her, or stood between her body and any danger at all. She has only ever been left to the wolves and has learned to get herself out of trouble or suffer through it. A pitched fall into a crevasse would not have been something to just “suffer through”. Pale eyes flick hard to Ciri when the mare sends her around the danger and Leokadia runs harder, her lungs burning against the cold.
Once they stop near the lake and she is uninhibited she is no longer thinking about what she’d felt as Ciri kept her safe on their run. She pulls in oxygen in deep gulps and heeds the impulse to be nearer the dark mare. While she gazes at the blue tree, Ciri drifts away and into the cold water. Leokadia does not follow, only moves nearer to the edge, breaking the lacework of ice near the bank to take a drink, pale eyes watching starlit wings stretch themselves. There is some of the Ciri who had first attracted--drawn--Leokadia there again, but the anger is there too. That anger is not something the little mare welcomes, but she will not say so nor explain why resolving instead to make room for it as she will not expect Ciri to leave it behind. Not after she comes ashore and tells more of the story.
“He killed you?” Whispers the little cremello, nausea and anger a confusing muddle in her tired frame.
Leokadia listens, once she almost says something else but stops, trying to fathom the power to bring someone back from death and what the motivation would be in this case. She is glad of it, glad Ciri lives, and still silent, Lo presses her forehead to the widest point on the scarred woman’s neck. She has killed before, driven to join in murder at the bidding of a dark god. Is it a similar madness that has taken this friend of Ciri’s? When she withdraws it is not far, her breath fogs in the space between them. “I have never thought there was anything else. Why did you think there would be?” She wonders what it must be like to hope for something beyond this, perhaps some kind of rewarded afterlife… but Leokadia has seen the way others live, and she does not think that anything that waits would be any different from what is here in this world.
They both shiver in the cold night, the darkness endless beyond the auroras that cast blue rivers across the surface of the star-strewn lake. This northern place is beautiful and savage, it is the first home she’s had, even if it’s only been home for an hour. “I can’t imagine how you are feeling… but I do not think you live for nothing.” Leokadia dips her muzzle to touch Ciri’s shoulder. She does not know how to do this, how to be a friend to anyone, how to navigate the feeling of wanting to be nearer still to Ciri. She does not know how to use words honestly, they feel wrong in her mouth, painful in her throat. It is easier to pretend and twist a story than to live as herself, out in the open. Yet Ciri waits in that world of discomfort and so she tries, struggling against a current that wants to send her safely back into her solitary life.
but she keeps me alive
she's the beast in my bones
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
When she had said it to Nashua, she had almost felt that it had been her fault. That she should have known better, that she had been the foolish one to expect nothing less in the first place. Those weren’t words that had actually come from his mouth but he had barely batted an eye to her confession, hadn’t seemed surprised or shocked. He had been so angry, they both still were, and she knew his mind was distracted by the loss of his son, the return of something he had thought long gone.
It had still hurt though. A painful barb that had dug its way deep into her chest.
Leokadia however does not look at her as if she should have known better. What she does is even more unexpected as the smaller mare presses her head to her neck and rests it there. Every muscle tenses but then slowly begins to relax and for a moment she feels the stirring of a different feeling beneath all that white-hot fire inside of her. For a moment she remembers that there are other emotions beside grief and rage. There is a part of her that flinches when Lo finally pulls away, an inclination to bring her back beside her. But she doesn’t reach for the cream mare, focusing on what she says instead.
There is a flare of temper at the question but she bites her tongue, it’s not meant for her. Instead she takes a slow breath, the red stars around her flickering, and begins to tell Lo about the Underneath. It’s a story she has told many times before but there is an extra heaviness to it this time. Because the last time she had told this tale had been to Nashua when she had first come to the Isle and had seen nothing but a beautiful new future for herself. And before that, she had told it to Gale. After recounting what had happened in that nightmare fueled place, Ciri begins to explain how her fight with the siren had unlocked memories of worlds and places and lives she had forgotten. How something had clicked her connection back into place with powers she hadn't known she could wield. How she had once been something other, a star much like the ones that hang watchfully amongst the dancing light of the aurora now. “I thought I would go back.” She says again and realizes just how drained she really is.
Lo speaks again and she says nothing. Instead she leans into the touch of her shoulder, finding the warmth of Lo’s steady breath against the pale scars on her skin to be much more comforting than words. And when it seems the silence would spread forever, she finally looks at Lo and there is something like desperation in her eyes. “I don’t know how to turn this off. All this anger, I can’t make it stop.” She whispers to her friend, hesitating on the rest of what she wants to say. “I’m so tired, Lo.”
