.svg/2000px-Google_Chrome_icon_(2011).svg.png){kind=icon}
02-05-2016, 11:46 PM
the aurelight
This land holds no question or judgement to it, no hidden crevices that he has not anointed himself upon and made into his own. Though the faces within swim with gaping memories at times, he no longer feels the need to run. This is where he belongs. This is why he chose to forget, he thinks. Other Kaj is so drastically different from him that he cannot properly understand any of the thoughts that hypothetically went through his head when he asked Miykael to block his memories, but he hopes that in the end, he'd been smart enough - selfless enough - to realize that Kaj now, how he is standing at the edge of the waterfall, was worth more to their herd than Other Kaj was.
Pale tawny wings lift from his sides, opening and stretching languidly, embracing the peppering of cold water thrown in chaotic spray off the tumultuous waterfall. He surveys his land with a critical eye, dissatisfied, yearning. He feels the restlessness in his blood, knows that soon he must call a meeting. The family has wandered across the seasons, but he will unite them once more. There would be no more tolerance for the slacking Other Kaj had seemed idiotically enamored with. Peace times never lasted, and Kaj had not forgotten that. How Other Kaj ever had was beyond him. How could he forget Aniela's twisted, pained face as she struggled through day after day on his desperate will and love alone? How could he forget the excruciating pain of magic, the shield he had unwillingly crafted with his own skin and bone? War is inherent in all of us. The more lax we grow, the more likely we are to fall to ruin.
Disgruntled by his inability to fix it all immediately, the stallion tipped himself off the perch of the waterfall, wings catching the updraft of wind with ease. These lands were made for flight, unlike the heavily treed terrain of the Edge. Sharp blues cast themselves across the earth, scouring, every color and deviant object investigated. Perhaps it would soothe his restlessness, to feel the wind beneath the boughs of his wings, the knowledge that he was keeping his herd safe from any outside sources.
But it didn't.
Other Kaj had failed entirely as a leader, and it fell now upon his head to fix it. It seemed Other Kaj's list of failings only grew larger the more he found out, and it pissed him off. Who had let him fall that far? How had he let himself fall that far?
There is a catch of blue against the snow, a scent that tickled against his nose - how did it carry this far? - far too familiar to be a coincidence. The golden bird tucked his wing to his breast and dove sharply beneath the clawed fingers of branches, landing in a shower of snow. He stood across from her, a face with indistinct features, heart pounding furiously against his ribcage as if demanding to be set free to fly with this storm maiden once more. And while Brisa could say that he'd become heartless, Kaj had forgotten only the memories that scalded and cut, the ones that had twisted and broken him until he had become too weak to fight against a world that was ever intent on destroying him. But she had only ever hurt him in her constant departures, a kindred soul he'd wanted to tie down to himself as much as he'd wanted to set free. And he didn't know how to feel to see her standing her, his feather still ostentatiously woven into her mane. And he didn't need to look, to cast his chin over his shoulder, to know that her own dark feather remained in his.
He felt a kind of ownership over her. He wanted to force her from the skies and ground her, see her willful battle concave into submission. He wanted to ask her why she kept leaving him, why he'd learned to love the ground but she could not even bear to touch it for more than a moment. If she could not stay for the bonds he presented...how was she any better than Kahlua? Would he ever measure up, in someone's eyes?
He had, in Brisa's. Maybe he still did. But he had shattered the bond he'd forged between them, and he still didn't know why.
Eventually he had to face her, if not as Kaj, then as Czar of the Falls. Legs moved forward mechanically, wings a soft rustle as they arched round his belly, not sure what stance to assume around the femme. Paused only when she lay a few strides from him, seeing only the dip of her lashes and the hurricane teased mess of her hair, the way she'd laughed and cried and made him feel like for once, he could make someone happy with just his presence.
But she had not stayed.
They never stayed.
"Cirrus," he rumbled softly, as if the word alone could somehow mend the distance between them that it crossed to alight upon her ears. "What do you seek?" And he could say nothing else, because she had left. And maybe he could be good enough, but he could not go through what he'd suffered with Kahlua. Kaj could not remember her, only vaguely - some people cannot be wholly forgotten, Kaj he heard Miykael murmuring regretfully in his head - but he knew that she had been the one to break him the most. He could not risk that, not a second time.
credit bronzehalo
Please only tag starting posts, spars, and threads collecting dust!
Plot with me here!
