“Ashamin,” the ocean mare murmurs with a voice that is broken, anguished, and lost in its weakness, fraying and desolate, “I’m so sorry.” She presses her muzzle against the stallion’s frozen cheek, stroking his cold skin softly, her movements slow and robotic. Tiamat doesn’t know what to do—what happens now? What will become of her? She has failed. Apologies of woe and grief stumble from her lips until she can no longer count their number, knowing now that her are confessions are futile. Perhaps somewhere inside of her there had been a part still clinging to hope, to a miracle, that somehow—somehow—he would not be gone. That she had not failed herself. That she had not failed him.
But that hope is fading, slipping away from her fingers and she doesn’t try to hold it back. She watches as it falls, the last flickering ember of light, until it is smothered completely by the despair and heartache that thrash and howl inside of her. The longer she stares through weeping eyes at the face of her dear friend, so peaceful and somehow unfamiliar now, the more Tiamat feels herself coming apart. Her mind, body, and heart are breaking—cracking and tearing at the seams. Physically she is still healthy and strong, or so her mind tells her, but she feels like she is crumbling…slowly, but all too quickly, she is falling apart.
Almost instinctively, the blue mare tries to swallow it, quell it, anything that will make this agony and sorrow leave her and release the knots that have tightened her chest, heaving and awful—that it will just leave her alone. But she is naïve to such practices…always she has been so open and accepting of others, of the world, of herself. She doesn’t know how to push it away. She can’t swallow this. It won’t be buried. This…it is festering, blistering and painful. So much pain.
Why?
That is the question, the plea that continues to resonate through her thoughts, repeating its echoing, forsaken cry through the hollows of her body. Why? Why him? What has she done to deserve this? What had he done? Why would anyone deserve something like this? In her grief and confusion all she knows to do is plead, beg, and implore for forgiveness, as if it could somehow make all of this go away and right this horrible wrong. What else could there be but to beseech whatever has done this?
“I’m so sorry…”
Consumed in her harrowing grief, the ocean mare hadn’t noticed the changing that had begun around her. Only when she lowers her cheek again to Ashamin’s does she recognize that something is strange, something is different—the warmth of her skin is met not by his frozen flesh, but a cold and hard surface. Rocklike. Snapping her head back, she looks down too see that the stallion, her friend, has turned to stone, cracking and spreading, changing. “Ashamin!?” Tiamat cries in horror, reaching out with her nose to touch him, but by the time her head is lowered it sinks into something that gives beneath her force, grainy and fine. Drawing back, her eyes wide with both fear and confusion, she looks around to the Secret Grove, only it is not the Grove at all anymore.
The woods and lake have given way to an endless blue, its shores gentle and comforting as they lick at her little island. She is alone now—Ashamin is gone, his body has disappeared, disintegrating into the soft sands. “Ashamin!” His name is a gasp, a hitch of breath as she lurches to her feet—she can’t lose him again—but as she steps to the shores, a light breaks away from the heavens, descending to kiss the ocean as it rises with a strong swell of water, far more controlled and graceful than what she is used to seeing of the ocean.
Two figures emerge from this, the most gentle and careful of collisions, and she can only watch silently while they surface from their entities. They are the most beautiful and most majestic beings that she has ever seen, and somehow, something inside of her tells her something, knows something: they are hers, and she is theirs. She is not alone after all. Taking a step forward, she looks to the lady, the sky, the light, and everything beautiful. “Mama?” Tiamat dares to whisper, her voice barely audible, hoping against all hope that fortune has found her at last, that it has not abandoned her completely. Tears sting her eyes and she shifts her gaze to the king, the powerful, the merciful, and the protector. “Papa?” Her voice is strained from the tightness of her throat, happiness and relief swelling to mingle with the weight of the grief, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself.
Tears begin to fall again, streaming slowly after one another down her cheeks. “I thought…I thought they would help me…I thought they were supposed to help us,” the young mare tucks her head in towards her chest, shame blistering again to darken her mind and clutch painfully at her heart, “he’s…he’s gone. I couldn’t help him.” There are sobs now that shudder her slender body, sad and anguished, lightening her eyes with a different emotion—a fire of agony. I have failed you, she cries despairingly to herself, to them, to the world.
I have failed.
Her father’s language is foreign but in some way familiar as it rolls across the cool air, seeming to crash against her ears like his waves do to her body. He is powerful and mighty, rage and shadows—but he is also security, strength, and familiarity in this wild thrashing of emotions that she has found herself drowning in. “I have missed you!” Tiamat chokes out breathlessly, suddenly running forward to meet them, to be held, to be comforted. She doesn’t want this pain anymore, and from the hiccups of lingering sobs, she manages one selfish plea.
“Please don’t leave me!”
notes; sorry this took so long!
tag; @[Ashamin]
“Speech.”
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