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twisting on racks when sinews give way; any (one) - Dominion - 04-11-2015 and death shall have no DOMINION A few days’ distance didn’t make much difference to tragedy, as it turned out. Dom was sore all over, her cracked ribs aching with every breath. Bruises had formed where she’d been struck by falling rocks. The gashes had scabbed over, but it would be a few weeks before she was in fighting form again. Worse than all of that was the way her body reminded her more with every passing day that she didn’t have a baby to nurse anymore. Like losing her whole world wasn’t enough, she had to be reminded of it with every step she took. And it would get worse before it got better. Not that any of it would ever be better. She ran, heavy hooves pounding the earth even though it hurt, even though it pulled on torn skin and aching bones and made her pant and grit her teeth against the pain of engorged mammary glands and the stretch of bruised muscles. Pain was good. Pain chased away flashes of memory, kept her from looking back at what was gone forever. And maybe she ran to punish the earth too, beating out her anger and her fury and her desolation with every strike of hoof against ground. There were no new stars in the sky to mark the passing of her happy little family, no dancing soul-lights twinkling up above to show they’d made it safely into the next world. All stupid stories from her father’s lying tongue, spun of liquid silver and the cruelty of hope. Vicious, insidious hope that sank into hearts and minds and told tiny ears life was something sweet and beautiful, full of endless potential even when darkness loomed on the horizon. All lies. Life was always only ever ending. She wouldn’t forget again. Dom ran for miles, far from the lake that had once again become her landmark at the end of the world, the one familiar place when everything else was in ruins. She ran until the pain twisted into something sweet, and then she ground to a halt, tossing her head and snorting her frustration. Didn’t matter how hard she pushed her body. It wouldn’t change what was true. Sadly, she wasn’t quite stupid enough to stand still after a run like that. It would certainly accomplish the goal of making her body hurt in ways that didn’t remind her of earthquakes and falling rocks and dead bodies, didn’t remind her of bright green eyes dulled by agony, and two words that haunted her sleep. “Hurts, Momma.” Even now, she wasn’t about to cripple herself to chase away a few more ghosts. So she walked until her breathing slowed, her heartbeat came back down, and the burning in her muscles faded before she finally stopped and took stock of her surroundings. Almost dawn, the sky just starting to lighten on the horizon. Another cloudless night full of the same old stars was drawing to a close. Still cool and damp after the violent storm a few nights past, and the grass was rich and green from the rain. A few trees looked newly fallen, like the willow by her lake where Tarnished had found her, scorched and split by lightning, half of it crashing to the ground while the other half stood. Dom blew out a bitter breath at the symbolism, shook her head, and followed the curve of the land to a stream so she could quench her thirst, maybe grab a mouthful of grass before she set out again. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; RE: twisting on racks when sinews give way; any (one) - Camrynn - 04-11-2015
RE: twisting on racks when sinews give way; any (one) - Dominion - 04-12-2015 and death shall have no DOMINION “Though they go mad, they shall be sane.” The words echoed through the air with a familiar cadence, jolting through Dom like lightning striking straight through to her bones. Spoken in a stranger’s voice, the words were soft and warm, heavy with curious consideration as though they were conjured from the ether. Or from the collective memory of her dead people. Her words rang with truth, and Dom felt them sink into her, wrap around her like she’d wrapped around her children, holding them close and cradling them next to her warmth. She felt that madness, shivering up her spine and lingering in the back of her mind, a road she could throw herself down if she wanted. If she clung to the ghosts that traced phantom touches along her sides, bumped against her flanks, murmured words of love and longing in her ears. But the words were right. Madness was not her path. Not today. “Though they sink through the sea, they shall rise again.” She was drowning in the cold, bitter sea, the last of her people sinking beneath the waves rather than waiting to be slaughtered. Choosing defiance instead of surrendering to the hungry hounds closing in on a dying race. All of them, sinking through the sea. She had died that day, saying goodbye to the woman she had been and claiming a new name and a new life as she rose to the shore. The words are a caress, something deeper than that of a lover, reaching past her skin and into her soul, into her past, and capturing a truth only two others had seen. Dom turned her head, her heart racing, her lips moving along with the next line as a stranger spoke words she’d thought lost forever. Words she’d almost forgotten. Words so goddamn appropriate it made her shake. “Though lovers be lost, love shall not.” Three lovers lost, and now three new lives stolen from her by a world too heartless to hold them. Ayita, the gentle dancer who had won her heart so long ago, soft and fragile in a world that only had room for the strong. Ben had coaxed her into giving their daughter the name of someone who had touched her soul, and the moment she was born Dom could see echoes of that dancer’s soul in her. Derian, fire and hope and passion untamed by heartache in their youth, hardened and twisted into defiant determination by the time they threw themselves into the sea. She’d lost them both long ago, and held onto those words each time, taking strength from the truth of seven short words uttered time and again by her people as they bid their loves goodbye and searched for their new stars in the sky. She’d forgotten them with Ben. She’d forgotten so many painful lessons of her youth while he held her. He’d made her believe the world was safe and she had nothing to fear. She’d forgotten about lovers lost, about lives in constant danger, about hunger and thirst and sickness and death. And she’d forgotten those seven precious words. Her grief-stained green eyes met the incarnation of the raging, bitter sea, and she remembered. The stranger’s voice was soft and compassionate as she spoke the last line, but Dom raised her head proudly, drawing strength from familiar words she had claimed as her own. Her voice was sharp with resolve, determination, as she spoke in time with the stranger who saw into her soul. “And death shall have no Dominion.” Her grief broke, shattering on those words and falling to the ground at her feet, and for the first time since she’d ended her daughter’s suffering she felt…free. The ghosts that haunted her started to fade, and though they would linger in her memory they were no longer shards of glass slicing into her with every breath, every step, every beat of her aching heart. “Thank you,” she said to the raging sea made manifest, standing tall for the first time since the earthquake that had ended the lives of everyone she’d loved. “I needed the reminder.” The wounds to her body would heal in time. Her soul was slowly starting to, helped along by words from her childhood and a lifetime of surviving no matter who else did not. She would not forget again. "Seems you already know who I am, and I won't ask how." Probably only be baffled by the explanation anyhow. "I can't say the same about you. So. Who are you, then?" She half expected to hear the name she'd once shared with the cold, bitter sea that had swallowed her and spit her back up again. A name she hadn't heard in a lifetime. Mara. Of course not. Of course not. But there was something haunting, something utterly supernatural about the strange woman who had appeared out of nowhere with words Dom hadn't heard since she'd crawled out of the sea to collapse on a strange shore over four years ago. A reminder just when she'd needed it most. And death shall have no Dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; RE: twisting on racks when sinews give way; any (one) - Camrynn - 04-12-2015
RE: twisting on racks when sinews give way; any (one) - Dominion - 04-18-2015 and death shall have no DOMINION "Those words follow you, Dominion.” Dom tilted her head, considering what the goddess of the raging sea had said. More than that, she thought. They more than followed her. They flowed in her veins. They fused into every breath she took. Murmured into growing ears, uttered like a vow when tragedy struck time and again, screamed into the void as her people looked death in the face, those words were her heart, her soul, her name. “Anyone can hear them, they just need to know how to listen correctly." Her soul, laid bare for anyone to see. Anyone with the eyes to look upon it could see her whole world, her life, her deepest truth. Good. Let them look. The corners of her lips tilted upward, just the barest hint of a teeth-baring grin that had stared down death and come out the other side every time. Let them see. She had nothing to hide. “It’s a pleasure to…encounter you, then, Camrynn. Maybe we’ll meet in the future.” The sea shifted and changed, gentle one day and raging the next. Soft and blue and inviting, stormy grey and crashing waves, it didn’t matter. The sea was still the sea. No matter her moods, she still rose and fell with the tides, ebbing and flowing but always the sea. And Dom had another friend who could make himself hard to recognize. She would learn, given the chance. Or she would not. "Tell me, Dominion, do you have any idea where you are?" The question had Dom tilting her head again, glancing around with idle curiosity. “A meadow,” she replied with a shrug. “Somewhere in Beqanna. In the shadow’s-edge of mountains, as it seems most of this whole world is.” A few hours’ run from a lake surrounded by sheltering willow trees. Farther still from a fresh graveyard filled with so many familiar bodies. So much farther still from the cold, bitter sea and a world that had ended four years ago. “Does it matter where I am?” No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; RE: twisting on racks when sinews give way; any (one) - Camrynn - 04-18-2015 so you wanna play with magic? Does it matter where I am? To Camrynn, of course it doesn't matter. She is everywhere and nowhere, everything and nothing, a beautiful contradiction writ large across Beqanna and even larger across the world. But to a mare for whom everything boils down to a single point of existence traveling along a linear timeline, why yes, she thinks it matters. Or at least, she thinks it should. "It always matters." she speaks gently, still smiling. "At least, until you can change it in a heartbeat." and in that heartbeat they are back at the willow, back in the storm, back almost in the moments just before Tarnished had found her, before she'd even met Camrynn. They are viewing it together, Dominion distinctly aware of what is happening, looking at the scene as though on a movie screen. Another heartbeat, and they're back where they were, returned to the Meadow as they had been just a moment before, as though they'd never left. Was it an illusion? Had they traveled through time? Does it really matter? That's the beauty of it – whether she weaves dreams in their heads or drags them along through gloriously warped time, it all turns out the same in the end. "It's a pleasure to encounter you as well, Dominion." she says, her eyes shifting to a gold as the seaweed falls from her mane and tail, disappearing before it hits the ground. She is just herself, just a black-coated magician once more. "And I do hope we shall meet in the future." It is an offhand comment, but she knows that it will come to pass. Both because she can see it and because she knows that she will make it so. In fact, it occurs to her to make it so right now. A blink of the eye, and the world has turned. She has always been one to manipulate time, to split it, rejoin it, twist it and re-make it as she wants it to be. For her, time is a plaything; she exists outside of it, fully capable of batting it around like a cat with a ball of yarn. But at the moment, she isn't playing with it capriciously. She's moving it deliberately, shifting things around so that Dominion's experiences with Nish, her decision to return to Beqanna with him, are all folded into her consciousness. The timelines are woven together brilliantly, artistically – she is a painter, reshaping things to suit her whim. She deposits them at the end of summer. And she smiles. Perhaps Dominion would see it as a new conversation. After all, the setting is dramatically different; the warmth of summer has given way to autumn, the leaves are falling from the trees and the fading sun brings with it a bite of chill. But perhaps she would also know, somehow, what had happened. Perhaps she would feel as though they were just talking, but would also command all of her memories. Perhaps it would feel like a strange cousin of déjà vu. Perhaps she would sense that something has been done, that the VCR has been put on fast forward, that the DVD skipped ahead a bit. But Dominion is the movie, and Camrynn is the one holding the remote – and watching with great interest. Today, Camrynn is a sky goddess. Tiny wings flicker at her fetlocks, feathers weave themselves though her mane and tail, and a great pair of white wings shaped entirely out of clouds arcs above her back. She is black still, recognizable as the sea-mare still, the same and yet different. "Dominion." she says with a gentle smile, as though it were an entirely normal conversation, as though they had simply encountered each other in the Meadow after an absence. "You seem to be healing nicely." she says with her velvet-voice, wrapped today in a tiny whisper of cloud. Her eyes are a bright blue, the sky to her clouds. Perhaps she means healing physically. Perhaps she means healing mentally. Perhaps she means both. Perhaps she means neither. CAMRYNN co-queen of the deserts, magical, mother of badassery |