the Rift


[PRIVATE] Beyond Harm

Knox Posts: 262
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 7.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Equine :: 17hh :: 7 Years [Tallsun] HP: 67.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Jen
#1

image by deadair @ flickr.com</style>

round all the pieces up, but they just don't fit the same.</style>


I walked into his room and said
"How are you," and he said, "I love you
too." From then on,
I had that word to lose.

--"Beyond Harm", Sharon Olds


___


He is walking away, just under his cloak, when the pain starts.

First, it is slow. It tugs at him gently the way that morning does after a particularly restful sleep. But then it grows deeper, and the tug becomes a pull, then a shredding, and it wrenches him from what he has come to know as reality and into something darker. Beside him, his son immediately senses something is wrong.

The cloak falls away to reveal the black stallion that so few remember or see. It is Knox, now, all disguises withheld as the ground rushes up to meet him. It is Knox, beginning the part of his journey that he must take on his own. He has fallen in the greenery, he feels his heart beating but its echo and shadow is gone.

He can't remember the last time his heart beat with no response. He can't... he can't...

Life has never really existed for him, not like this. Before that answering heartbeat there was nothing, always nothing. Now, nothing returns like an old enemy.

Milo is weak but strong enough to turn and run from his father, run back to the dying fires, and find help. A hollow thought comes to Knox with a stark clarity: he will return with nothing. From this point on, there will always be nothing.

He can't see Milo because he can't see anything. His second gaze is shut, nothing but fluttering shadows of black and flame in his tortured mind. The heart with no answer pounds loudly as if to make up for the emptiness in his breast. He feels adrenaline and confronts it with first laziness, then dejected sorrow, and then at last the energy it is meant to provide.

He has stumbled and now he must rise again. He drags himself, broken blade of the mind in tow, and seeks the fading echo.

He has to find her.

It can't all end, not before he finds her.

He can feel, faintly, the weight of a body upon her and the pressure of thorns in her throat. He tries to call her name but the beckoning is uttered as nothing but a hoarse whisper, something so insignificant it is not even worth writing, here. His every act is futile, his every past memory nothing but a haunting reminder of days he spent with her. And as if in solemn recognition, not a single voice of the many in his mind has risen to contest his sorrow.

He picks his way across the battlefield without care. He crushes embers beneath his hooves, coats his feathers with blood and tar, and breathes with intense effort. He kicks aside the vial of goddess' blood that falls at his hooves without realizing, sending it towards the son that follows anxiously in his wake. Everything, just existing, is a labor. His presence is taxed, his being is compromised, and he has to find her.

But it is not until the Earth God pulls the curtain of the tigress from the bloody scene that she is revealed: Manhattan, the love of his life.

Kn...Knox?

The message is a mere murmur, the soft echo in his chest struggling even to exist. There she lies, dark holes gaping in her neck from where a goddess dragged her down to mortality. She speaks in his mind as if the blood is filling her senses, garbling her words, but he knows what she is saying to him.

When he finally finds her, she is exactly as he expected her to be. She is dying, and there is nothing he can do.

He thinks he must be to blame, for not turning back to protect her when she was so clearly struggling on her own. He left his packmate alone, he abandoned her, and surely he must be to blame.

N...N..N-o... Kn-ox.

Confident whispers.

I... I... said...

Go, he recalls to her. She blinks, as if in steady affirmation, and her tongue drips out from between her parted and poisonous jaws. He doesn't know if it's an order or a memory, but she is leaving and he knows it. Slowly, the echo in his chest falls into almost nothing. He thinks he feels his bridle--grown now into his face after so many years of aging into it--tighten. Its pale glow is faint, casting a pallor upon her that is almost deathly. He has to take it off, he can't watch her--he chokes--can't watch her die like this, not in this light.

He doesn't remember asking his son to wrench the white chains from his face and reveal the scars beneath, but when he looks next at Milo he will see the colt with useless white straps hanging from his parted infant lips and know that everything has changed.

As if aware of her master's new freedom from the shackles impressed upon him since his birth and the magic that lingers in their fibers, her eyes spark open. They are blue, pure, and perfectly at peace. Care for... ca-are.... for... them. l-l-l-- she is too weak to finish the words, the thought. He knows, though, what she has asked him.

Love them, he says through their bond. He knows Milo is nearby and soon he will love that boy like he should have before. He knows Aylin is home, waiting for her family, and he will tell her all the things he should have in the heart caves. He will love them, but first he must love her.

Love them like I love you.

She sighs quietly, her burned and shaking side settling into stillness. Do.... reme...remember... A broken image flashes in his mind of the day her magic to terrorize first manifested and, in a confused state, she fought with her sister--and he, as a colt, with his brother.

Yes, he says to her quietly. Without realizing, he has let his figure drop to her side. His knees are covered in the red of her blood, his eyes are brimming with tears. Tears from joyful memories--tears for every day they'd spent as a pair.

Can... like... l-like... th-th-then...

He puts his face to her wound and lets his hindquarters land so he is wrapped gently around her. As her eyes flutter shut for the last time, he casts silver smoke to cover them.

She is too good for this world, too good to see it at the end. And he, not good enough for her, must do all that he can. He has to love, because that is what she wants. That is all she has ever wanted him to do. So now, her request is clearer than anything Knox has ever known, and quietly he hums to her in the way that he taught her when they had both known so much less. He hums her name, the same short tune she was taught when she had to follow her master but could not see--could not see, lest she be haunted by her own terrors. He hums his own, like he taught her so she would always know who to return to.

And he hums the song of their bond--a long, quivering note--as his body slowly starts to shake with broken sobs. She breathes her last and the last echo dies with brilliance. His own unaccompanied breath catches and the hum, her gentle final lullaby, falters.

Manhattan? he asks, his heart falling to pieces.

Silence.

Manhattan?

Nothing.

"MANHATTAN!"

The whole world falls apart.


knox</style>
& manhattan</style>



[[OOC: @Archibald. I will be posting with Milo when I'm not sobbing. Skype me if you are interested in talking about joining this but please be considerate if I decide to not open it to many, this is very emotional for me.]]

Archibald the Dauntless Posts: 386
Absent Abyss atk: 6.0 | def: 9.5 | dam: 8
Stallion :: Equine :: 18.3 hh :: 10 years HP: 80 | Buff: SHIELD
Loretta :: Alaskan Malamute :: Time Slip Time
#2

In a warm sweep of air and a collossal crash, everything was finished. The Dauntless raised his head, armor collapsing across his body and resting against his blackened breast. His body ached with the burns he sustained, but the pain was a mere pebble compared to the pain of dragonfire licking across his skin. Golden eyes narrow some, but concern laces his mind (mind faintly throbbing with the reconnection to his lost companion, whimpering in the distance). Turning, Archibald went to reach forward and down and touch the shoulder of the demigod, praying within his heart that she was not dead. Ophelia, Ophelia. His mind whispers some, a dull thought of the one who should be standing guard over the hybrid filly. Before his pale nose can reach her, however, Roskuld is up and charging and screaming. The massive warlord lifted his head quickly, snorting as he watched her run off toward the shore. "ROSKULD!" He called after her, taking two or three steps in her direction. He watched with curious, concerned eyes as the demigod closed the distance to a spotted figure, one Archibald recognized as Mauja. Archibald could not tell what was happening in the distance, and as he moved his massive hooves forward to follow the Child of Spark, a quick and awkward, dark movement caught his eye. Turning his head, Archibald draped his gaze over his panicked nephew.

In the time it took the behemoth's concentration to be moved from Roskuld to Milo, Loretta had found his side. Her body shook with the joy of their returning bond, and she licked at his left canon happily. "Milo!" Archibald demands, confusion claiming territory on his face. Why was the child running, why was the child here alone, why...why...KNOX! Golden eyes, narrowed with the thoughts racing through his warrior's mind, suddenly widened and scanned hurriedly over the once-battleground. "KNOX!" Archibald called out, his body leaping toward where the tiger's body disappeared. Loretta reached down to pick up their gifted treasure of death, a claw, before bounding after her bondmate. Knox's body materialized from where the tigress once lay, and Archibald was frozen in his tracks in an instant.

The pain of the burns across his body fell away into the darkness as ice and blood grasped his heart. The Dauntless choked silently on his own breath, Loretta whining as she waited beneath his body. Not Knox she whispered faintly, body shaking now from a switch from joy to sorrow, my sister. The red and white malamute finds the ability to move before her bonded does, and she drops the claw before Milo on her way over to where the broken coltstallion lays crumpled, body huddled around the body of Loretta's last sister--the sister she wrestled with, taught, dominated, hunted alongside--gone. The bitch whines, tail tucking against her belly between her legs as she lowers herself to the ground to crawl toward the twin black bodies. Archibald, in all of his glory and might, wanted to move forward but could not move his own, shod hooves. In his mind, he remembered the faintest touch of an odd, Orangemoon snow, the death-defeated filly his body curled around, and the gentle touch of Knox's cannons against his shoulder.

When the gargantuan finally moves, it is only to stand above his brother silently. Thick, tree-like legs press against Knox's muscled body. I am here, his mind speaks the words his mouth cannot form, cannot utter in these circumstances. Archibald knows well what it is like to have a silent mind, a silent heart from the broken tethers of companionship. He and Loretta had battled in the seasons of their silent bond, in the seasons of Archibald's broken magic. The memories are pale in comparison to the pain Archibald can reiterate for his brother--for Archibald's pain was temporary, and Knox's pain was perpetual. As Archibald the Dauntless stood over his brother--always his guardian, his guidance, his leader--he reached down to touch his muzzle to his now freed poll, breathing carefully into the locks of his tangled mane. I am here, Knox, I love you. I am here.

Archibald knew, however, it was not only Manhattan that had died today. Knox was dead too.



Through the ages of time
I've been known for my hate,
but I'm a dealer of simple choices;
for me it's never too late.


please tag me

Isopia the Mountain That Knows Posts: 780
Dragon's Throat Apostle atk: 6.5 | def: 10 | dam: 8.0
Mare :: Tribrid :: 18hh :: 3 - is now aging slowly HP: 90 | Buff: NUMB
Hubris :: Royal Bronze Dragon :: Shock Breath & Frost Breath & Babel :: Royal Gold Dragon :: Fire Breath Odd
#3
Isopia
[Joining with Jen's permission. feel free to post around Iso, who is just watching.]

Perhaps it was the weight of her new-found obligation that drew her to the strained and pained cries of another. Perhaps it was some horrific foreshadowing. Perhaps it was simply her disconnected and unsympathetic academic interest, but from Isopia's place in the tree, she watched.

Her own soon-to-be companion lay nestled in a circle of stone with a few of her feathers scattered about. The raven-girl was about to depart, but Knox's cries and Archibald's presence drew down her cold golden gaze. She wasn't quite sure what it was she was seeing - wasn't entirely aware of why the air reverberated with weighty sadness. Isopia knew from Ampere's many lectures, that companions were tethered to their bonded via the soul. Although the girl contemplated death often, never before had she considered that a part of the soul could die, while the husk lingered. Her eyes cascaded over the unknown stallion - for she had never seen Knox before as he truly was - and she tried to discern what part of him had died with the black and life-faded canine. Was it an important part? Or just an emotional one? What were the ramifications? Could the life-tear be healed?

Hesitantly she looked towards the green and bronze egg at her side, studying it with her golden raven-eyes. Would such a fate befall her? Would this small and yet-unknown creature have the power to mortally wound her soul, just through an act of carelessness? That her soul was so contingently fixed to another seemed dark and horrifying.

Pulling her gaze back below, she watched distractedly. She assumed some sort of non-verbal communication was taking place - Loretta inching forward, Archibald standing like a sentinel - but of course her emotionally stunted mind couldn't fathom what was being communicated.



Image Credits

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

Milo Posts: 60
Outcast
Stallion :: Equine :: 16.2 hh :: 2 years [Birdsong]
Jen
#4

Milo

You left and I never came back


The whole world fell apart.

You left, and I never came back. I knew everything, and that was too much. It was too much Manhattan, it was... it was... just too much.

I watched father and I followed him and he fell and I watched and he cried and I watched and he begged and I tugged and I pulled and chains snapped and he fell and he cried and I watched and you died, Manhattan. Right before my eyes, you died.

I knew, too, that you weren't coming back. You whined like a child and your eyes blurred into nothing because mine were filled with tears and wet. There was nothing like watching you die to teach me about love and mortality and my very small place in this infinite world.

I felt useless. I knew everything and I felt as if I meant nothing. How could I, if you had died saving my and father's lives? Protecting us, at least. Caught under a deadly claw and dragged to the earth.

I can't decide, not even now, if you put up all resistance or if you chose to die. I want to think you tried to stay alive, but I don't think that's true. I think you looked at father and you looked at the end of your life and you realized you'd done him all you could--that staying alive would only hurt him.

You were teaching him a lesson, I know that. You were teaching him about what you could and couldn't take for granted, but...

...but what about me, Manhattan?

Why? Why couldn't you have stayed for me? Do you remember how you taught me all the few things that I knew and I thought that you'd been given to father by mistake? That you should have been made for me, and some accident had happened that put you on earth too early? Don't you remember it? Don't you have to?

I can't forget it. I can't forget it. So how could you? How could you leave like that, when I was just finding out what love was, and thrust it on me with your final breath so I could feel its pain completely?

Father shook and cried and I understood his pain and his emotion and his need to speak, to cry out your name. But that was the day I learned everything. My mind filled itself out completely and I knew everything I would ever need was in my head, and that to speak would only be to form bonds like the one my father was dying for.

I made a vow to keep silent. After only speaking a handful of words, before I could even say my own name, I gave up on speech. Things would be easier, that way. For everyone. I held the bridle in my mouth and watched silently. Barely shaking, shutting soft lids to dampen tears, and letting my father and uncle openly mourn a tragedy I fought with silently inside.

No, there were no words for this sort of sadness at all. Just thoughts, and knowing, and pain.


""

image credits


@Archibald @Isopia (feel free to post whenever you have muse, even if it's before I come in again with Knox.)

Knox Posts: 262
Outcast atk: 4 | def: 7.5 | dam: 6.5
Stallion :: Equine :: 17hh :: 7 Years [Tallsun] HP: 67.5 | Buff: NOVICE
Jen
#5

image by deadair @ flickr.com</style>

round all the pieces up, but they just don't fit the same.</style>



What was it that Knox had done?

I, yes I, would say that he is thinking now that when his brother's child died, he felt a tug at his heart that was his only preparation for this. But what he did then, it's difficult to say. I'm trying to remember. Trying...

His eyes had been wet with Aylin's affections. His body had been heavy. He had been filled with love. Now, there is nothing but fear turning into it. Fear of being alone, love leaving the body like pain.

He shows weakness. He bears it openly, letting it soak through his chest like blood. He is no longer a hunter, he is a bleeding heart. I watch the way he crumbles and cries. His face does not move, his gaze is fixed still on my death with a broken horror. How long will his jaws be parted with sobs, his eyes fluttering to clear away sorrow? His body falls to the side, thudding against the comfort of Archibald's heavy legs.

Nothing, he thinks, will ever tear my older brother down. But by god, by god, she was stronger than us all.

"You were stronger than us all," he whispers, softly. I loved you, I loved you, I love you still and I always will.

Being above everything, now, I understand his grief. I feel it, too. The absence of the bond and the tug and the connection but the overflow of the love. This love that cannot be contained, this understanding that without each other, neither of us can be whole...

He has let his whole body collapse on top of the remains. He covers them and looks into his son's gold eyes. I didn't love you, I didn't love you, I didn't love you and now I will.

"Milo?"

He asks, speaking his son's name for the first time. Is it really the first time? Has he really gone so long without saying his own son's name?

Knox beckons the little one, his child. Watches as Milo stumbles forward. "Archibald," he says, his voice firm and certain. His brother's name is no longer a question, Archibald is a steady beacon, a presence. Archibald cannot be felled. Knox will respect this, he must respect this, he must learn.

"My brother," he murmurs, "my son," he echoes. But he isn't sure of who they are to him, Mandrake's old confusing roles are returning to muddle his thoughts--aren't they both his brothers?

Wasn't she his brother?

No, he is reminded by some deep memory of hers. No, I try to remind him. She was more.

His eyes are wet and at last he can lift his head. He has to move on, he has to keep going. This is what she asked of him. Her dying wish was for him to love them.

"Help me take her home."

...but I will wait for him.


knox</style>
& manhattan</style>



@Archibald @Isopia


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