[P] past and present - Printable Version +- HELOVIA || The Way to the Sun (http://helovia.com) +-- Forum: Out of Character (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: Archives (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=11) +--- Thread: [P] past and present (/showthread.php?tid=18853) |
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past and present - Ophelia - 03-31-2015
RE: past and present - Mauja - 03-31-2015
He was always out there, somewhere, haunting Helovia underneath star-cast skies. Ever roaming, like the waves rolling in to different shores, and while he had some kind of home it wasn't.. it wasn't home in the sense that he returned to it every night. It was just a safe harbor, a free pass across fractured glass walls, a means to be able to find her without having to go through the hassle of border guards.
To be fair, the only reason he didn't have to put up with that shit was that he knew too many cross-country paths in. That, and the fact that he'd gone there like, what, once? Twice? In the past months. When she'd first brought him back to that place, he'd stuck around a bit more, but in the time since he'd seen less of her and it had had him straying. She was the magnetic pull anchoring him, and without it, he drifted. Night had come again to relieve them from the day's sweltering heat; moonlight glowed gently along the edges of his pale frame, touching and reflecting, creating a ghost in an otherwise shadowy world. It was the curse of being a white horse—you were a torch in the darkness, an easy mark, but also, he found, intimidating. Some didn't know what to make of those who were so visible. For isn't it those who are so, who are unafraid to hide, have reason to be? Mauja was dangerous. From the tip of his horn to the furnace in his soul, all of him spelled destruction. And even in his heart, liquid gold passing through flame-sheathed veins, there was danger, sharp knives protruding from the frostbitten mess. But they were all tip-in.. left there by others. Little things to remember them by. And some, he had probably punted in there himself. Like this one, its ivory handle inlaid with the finest of red, the name tag covered up in rose petals. It had grown brittle and fragile, as brittle as his voice as he whispered, "Ophelia,", and he felt the remnants of its spine dig a little deeper. At first, it was just a slap in the face to stop him in his tracks, that quiet way your heart beats just before the ground erupts and tries to shake you off, something so deadly and calm and quiet you're not at all sure the world is about to end. Then, it was everything else—a feeling like falling, the desire to fall to his knees and cry, sweats and shakes and cold, clammy fear, everything crawling over his body like ants on a corpse, tiny feet tap-dancing for the devil. And his voice formed whispers but nothing made it past his teeth, because he didn't know what was truth, and what was lies anymore. It had been so long, those years he had spent hunting and running and agonizing, that final secret laid out in his blood and trapping him—his own perfect device, jaws closed and holding him still. It had been so long and then it had all gone wrong, there had been blood and murder and a shadow and something in him had died a little. Given up. And something else had bloomed in its ashes. Mauja's blue eyes slid to the side for just a moment, the moonlight tracing sorrow in the white rims. He had dreamed and wished for so much else, for so many different things from this, but here they stood, after all this time; she bedraggled and exhausted in her pitiful, dogged march, and he, as cold and distant as ever. But he was tired of turning away. Just because things had changed within, his fragile, delicate hope shattered like glass on a marble floor, it did not mean that he had forgotten, or that he somehow cared less, or.. or that he wanted to see her in this state; what had even happened to put her in this place..? Just dare. "Ophelia!" he cried, but it was still hushed in a way, and his hooves thundered over the night-damp earth. Uncertainty had his heart hammering in sync with his feet, because.. because... He set his jaw. He didn't care about the risk of some black mongrel barreling in between them yelling filth. He didn't care about what he felt or not felt anymore. All he wanted to do was wrap himself around the slivers of her heart and hold them together long enough for her to heal. I swear I won't let you down again. You lie expressionless
face set like the Old Testament
silence always your best defense
I bet you guess I came to settle debts
They tell me you'll get better
I don't know what to say
'Cause they could sew your hands together
but they can't make you pray. RE: past and present - Ophelia - 03-31-2015
RE: past and present - Mauja - 03-31-2015
The closer he came, the deeper the concern settled in his stomach. This wasn't the cold porcelain figure staring at him with cracks in her soul and the paint frozen on her vivid eyes—this wasn't a creature with her heart's cracks rimed together with ice. This was.. this was a creature worn out and down, to the point of something awful. Breaking? Going mad? He didn't know her well enough anymore.
Maybe he never had, either. The thought hits him like a thousand blocks of ice through his heart. She had come, elegant and curious and spitfire, sun-worship dripping from dark lips onto a scorched and ravaged ground (scorched and ravaged soul); vindictive, and young, her emotional storm witness to words that should've fallen on deaf ears, kill-command stops and laments of.. of... He didn't want to remember that day, and the startling white-and-crimson mare who had blasted her way into his life, subtle as a ray of sunlight and ferocious as a storm. She was poetry in motion in his life. He had watched her grow into something else, something more, those traits of youth diminishing but staying alive still, somewhere in the depths of her glittering eyes, and her presence had given him wings. Even when she had been bloodied in the aftermath of a war there had been something of that girl in her—something of the young, brash and headstrong woman who had come to the Edge that day, great enough to ask forgiveness for her transgressions and aggression. It had been humbling. But then the darkness had come, and eventually, Mauja had disappeared. The last time he'd seen her had been at the Veins, blue flowers glowing in the absolute night, hope written in silent words across their hearts. That time, they had still been friends. Words had fallen freely from her tongue, some kind of concern written in her eyes and voice—he had factioned into her life then, somehow, been a part of it. But who was she now? He had seen her confidence shatter in the face of his arrival back onto the stage of her life, he had seen her moment of weakness when she sought support against a black stallion's side, and he had felt the cold emptiness as she had turned away from him—there had been nothing of friendship there, just strings of memory, ethereal and fragile, slowly coming apart just like the knife in his heart did. "It cannot be easy having to remember me," he rumbled quietly to her distant eyes, sorrow lacing his voice, his face. He still wasn't sure of all he had done wrong, just knew that it had been years when he'd found her again on that sand-swept arena (that place is destroyed, just as your hopes of a shared future; blown apart, a fine dust blown away by the wind).. years, and something had changed, and he wasn't sure if he was strong enough to fix them, or if he even could, or if it even was right anymore. Maybe she wasn't his to fix. Maybe she never had been. ”I cannot linger…” she said into the heavy silence, the words as awkward as their reunion, drifting out from an empty soul. Was this even real anymore? She shimmered in the moonlight, the unfamiliar contour of silver armor cold and sort of menacing in the bleak light. It felt more like he had stumbled upon the ghost of her. "Then let us go," he urged her gently, not knowing where she was going or why, but he would follow her regardless. You lie expressionless
face set like the Old Testament
silence always your best defense
I bet you guess I came to settle debts
They tell me you'll get better
I don't know what to say
'Cause they could sew your hands together
but they can't make you pray. RE: past and present - Ophelia - 03-31-2015
RE: past and present - Mauja - 03-31-2015
Mauja was not blessed by the god of time, and yet he had a particular, natural skill with it—the creation of pauses, of silence, of deep and detached moments of contemplation. They were in his hushed breathing, in the lull of conversation, in the words he weighed before giving voice. For him, those moments of infinity interspersed into everything were natural, and he never noticed how his presence seemed to slow the world down.. much as it did when preparing for the long, long sleep of winter.
”I see more sides to you than I can reconcile, and I do not forget.” And yet, he thought into the icy stillness of his mind, thoughts running like air through crystalline corridors, perhaps it is to you I have been the most honest. From the detached, practical mind, to those boyish grins she used to draw from him, to the way it had once been easy—the words never weighed so heavily in his mind before they found their place in the world, because.. because she had understood. Because she had responded with much the same ease, and it had just buried her deeper within his heart. She was still there, somewhere, glass fragments and splinters buried beneath so many layers of ice, and.. and part of him desperately wanted to feel that flame again; to love her still with the nearly worshipful devotion he had once felt. For many years, it had been the flame scouring his soul clean, but just as it had kept him alive, it had also been his downfall. He had burned up in it, and now, there were just.. ashes. He swallowed, not sure what he could tell her; that all she had seen of him was still, him? But that he had also changed? That he would still consider it cumbersome to move a dead, or unconscious, horse? Because he'd thought much the same thing when finding Shadow washed up on the beach? So there was nothing he could say—more than he already had. She wasn't easy to remember, either, nails hammered deeper into the coffin with each beat of his heart. He did not have her memory, so pristine and pure, but he doubted he would ever forget her reaction upon that sandy arena. His ears flicked back uncertainly and he moved beside her, half a step behind. He had buried himself out of fear of everything, pain and death and life, and then.. and then, he hadn't been strong enough. And now... Now.. now... Now was now, still playing out before his eyes, washed in the silver light of a distant moon. And the world, was about to change, lines eradicated and borders re-written. History was about to be made. ”The World’s Edge is invading the Hidden Falls,” but he barely heard the rest for the sick pounding starting in his chest. Kahlua. War. He wasn't afraid for her (shit that's a lie), it was, uhm, it was— Things were being set in motion. Things were changing again after eons of stagnancy, and.. and he, the blade, would find a home in flesh again. Someone's grasping, fumbling hand had found the dusty hilt of his mercenary mind, lifted the sword and found it notched and rusty but still whole; the gore dried on it simply testament to what it could do. She asked, some kind of life back in her eyes or maybe it was just that she was coherent now, and he knew what his answer was. "I will be there," he promised the ghost of his love. War. It was time.. to go back to war. And maybe, he had thought he would be left alone at that point, with the promise of blood written in the words between them, and the curiosity of one owl and the deep, primal satisfaction of the other. But no. Her eyes were flat and angry and he had the time to think oh shit what have I done now? before her voice came out in a thick, ragged growl. And her words hit him like a brick in the face. Daughter. Roskuld. Your presence, intentions are pure, bury you, her daughter, a name he had heard before, once, vaguely, remembered only because it had been she who had said it, Roskuld and Mesec are safe..., —intentions are pure— and suddenly he was two yards behind her, cross-eyed and trembling, staring vacantly ahead. “I thought my Ma left me the first time ‘cuz she hated the daughter she had...” She's a hurricane and she's lightning. Spark. His mind was straining, trying to connect dots, spindly hands reaching out to form a spiderweb he wanted to no part of but was caught up in all the same. He had thought it then, feared it as the kind of wicked irony the world would play on him— It can't be. "Roskuld," he said, for the first time, weakly and kind of pathetic in his confusion, legs moving to catch up and fall back in by her side. "Roskuld," he said again, mind reeling, heart and voice trembling. It... He didn't know why it mattered. Didn't want it to matter. And it didn't. Except that.. that... That he hadn't know. Or, well, he'd known, but he hadn't known and he still wasn't sure because he just called her lightning anyway and— "Spark?" he blurted, graceless and inelegant, voice and mind stumbling like his heart. You lie expressionless
face set like the Old Testament
silence always your best defense
I bet you guess I came to settle debts
They tell me you'll get better
I don't know what to say
'Cause they could sew your hands together
but they can't make you pray. |