We wound for a while through the trees in silence, her normally voluptuous figure slanted and sharp in all the ways she was supposed to be round and full. I think I’d even joked once that she and Zunden were both fatties, and seeing her like this makes the ruthlessness of such a joke seem that much less funny than it had at the time. Trotting to catch up to her, I let the sounds of voices fade into silence, and the soft song of the branches high overhead. Stopping in a clearing that smells like no ones been through but birds in ages, I clear my throat, and prepare to unleash whatever crazy, female horror show is about to engage (I did have a little sister and mother, after all; I know about these things). A check list flies through my thoughts:
"So…" I stall, not really knowing what to say that won’t immediately ignite the fuse on either her shouting or weeping armory of explosives. I clear my throat again, as if to announce that the topic of “feelings” may not be my area of expertise. "obviously you’re not okay." Oh yeah, smooth (said no one ever). "Maybe it’s none of my business and you can tell me so," I ramble onward, avoiding eye contact as if a single touch of her crystal eyes would make me burst into flames, "but you really look like shit." [ Continuation of so I cover my eyes ] |
@Glacia
Aurora Basin Medic atk: 4.0 | def: 8.0 | dam: 6.5 |
Mare :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 Years HP: 62.5 | Buff: NOVICE |
Name :: Snowy Owl :: None Nessie |
but the queen has been overthrown |
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5 |
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT |
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie |
When she laughs, my ears lift swiftly, glancing over at her with a wonder as to whether or not her mind has broken. She quickly negates that possibility, brushing off my concern, and elaborating on the laughter, by stating she had thought she looked “better.” I frown. How bad had she looked last week? Silence keeps my tongue, because I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t know what she looked like last week. Compared to the broad no-longer-maiden daughter of the Frostheart I’d last met with, she looks a mere ghost of herself. Her sigh is full of those ghosts, the tossing, tangled sound of innocence fled, and while I don’t know her pain, in particular, I do know that sigh. Regret. Every person felt it at least once or twice. It was sad that her regret was an entire life, however; her story starts slow, and it starts with a dead kid. Two, she says, two which became one. She had named them both. It seems weird to me to have named something which had been born lifeless. It seems even weirder to know that loss and to give the other away, but one look at her says it was probably best. A foal couldn’t get a lot of nourishment from a mother who looked like a walking skeleton, draped in midnight. She says she’s miserable, and that she’s perhaps crazy. It probably doesn’t help that I think by gender alone she is cursed to madness, so I keep my mouth shut. I meet her eyes when they rise to mine with a golden light that still ponders just what to make of something so terribly tragic. This whole topic is something which has nothing to do with me, and which I have no experience in dealing with. I fumble about in my brain for something to say that might make it less horrible than it is. I am still a virgin, by Time’s Beard. What do I know about kids, about giving them away, or keeping them, of burying their small bones in soft earth? "Everyone is shit at parenting," is where I start, because as I’ve seen, they are; example A: "even the Sun. Didn’t lift a wing to spare his daughter from abandonment or death when her mother left her to starve in a meadow." My brows drop down into golden orbs of anger, of misunderstanding, the memories of that day flooding to me like they always do. They are clear, like most of my memories, easily viewed in the cinema of my thought. I see her small, shriveled, barely able to stand as she stumbles eagerly towards mother’s side. Her parents had left her to die, and she had gone back to him. She even called him father, stood beside him with love in her eyes. Girls are stupid. They lead their lives with love. It’s why Glacia is in this situation she is in now. If anyone ever abandons me and takes my heart with them, I’d just beat them into a senseless pulp and carry on with a winner’s smile. I certainly wouldn’t be ghosting around like Glacia, and I definitely won’t forgive them for stabbing me in the back, like the sister who will not be named. You’re supposed to be being supportive, I reprimand myself. A smile is forced over the emotional upheaval at the thought of Aithniel and her asshole dad. I continue with my previous train of thought as if a few really awkward seconds hadn’t just stretched between what I said first, and what I say now. "If a God can’t do it, I don’t know why you think they’re all so disappointed in you," I finish with a shrug, my face blooming into a true smile as my humor overrides the dark thoughts that had captured me only moments before. I finish it all with a chuckle, one which I hope helps cheer her up. "Besides, if you carry on like this, you’ll never get to make it up to them. Dying makes it hard to do that, you know." [ OOC: Hey, you've got an extra div close in that table that was mussing up the bottom of the signature/edit format! I fixed it in the one above so you should be able to just copy/paste that code into your table trackers and it'll be okay now. <3 ] |
Aurora Basin Medic atk: 4.0 | def: 8.0 | dam: 6.5 |
Mare :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 Years HP: 62.5 | Buff: NOVICE |
Name :: Snowy Owl :: None Nessie |
but the queen has been overthrown |
Aurora Basin Lord atk: 7.5 | def: 11.5 | dam: 4.5 |
Stallion :: Unicorn :: 16.3 :: 4 HP: 70 | Buff: SWIFT |
Duir :: Royal Cerndyr :: Earth Spirit Bunnie |
Something in the combination of words works; silent thanks are sent along the wind to the mother who’d taught me the art of such things. Still, her silence until she does speak leaves me feeling a bit nervous, because of all the emotional disturbances likely to be coursing through her female body, and so my smile is much more genuine when she thanks me. It’s the sort of combination of words and emotion that mean she means it, and maybe that I’ve made up for taunting her all those whiles ago, when I’d run into her, wide as a bear. Despite my impish, jealous, and morally lack luster life style, I do have certain honorable characteristics within me, including the concern for those who had been a part of my life for as long as Glacia has. I’d have spent the afternoon talking with just about anyone who I considered to be part of the family, the family that had mostly unraveled in the passing of time. So I’ll hold the end of her trailing tethers; I’ll try to tuck them up neatly in a row. I Her lips kiss my shoulder again in time with her thanks, and I meet her gaze with my own rather than returning a physical embrace, not the sort to be overly touchy feely like mother, or so many others I’ve met. She’s wearing a smile for the first time, and I feel a swelling of pride in my chest (that is quickly doused when she talks about going to the Edge). I’d been twice, though I hadn’t seen dad. The first time, some angry lady with throwing knives had chased me away, and the next, I’d almost been skewered by a mare before d’Arcy had spared me their violence. The thought of Tembovu’s face as I walked through the Edge with yet another of the young ladies of his herd brings a genuine, near laughing grin to my face, the smile of doing something devious, and daring. I think I’ll tell Glacia about all my adventures on the way, do some catching up that doesn’t involve sad things like dead foals, or abandoned sons. "Sure," I say, lion’s tail playfully swaying behind me in a wide, eager arc, "I’ve snuck in a couple of times… unsuccessfully, of course. Having an escort is certainly a change of pace." Taking a few cheerful steps forward, I glance back at her with some of my impish cheer faded. I’ve been much less brazen about my adventures since Gaucho had nearly put me down like a wormy dog, and the sudden memory of the behemoth man who guards those lands comes to mind. "That Tembovu guy won’t mind so long as you’re with me, right?" |
@Glacia