bury my heart on the coals; ramiel - Printable Version +- Beqanna (https://beqanna.com/forum) +-- Forum: Explore (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: The Mythical (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=80) +---- Forum: Afterlife (https://beqanna.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=64) +---- Thread: bury my heart on the coals; ramiel (/showthread.php?tid=8707) |
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bury my heart on the coals; ramiel - gail - 05-26-2016
this is Not Very Good but I am trying to knock out all my posts before my four day weekend with no computer access. RE: bury my heart on the coals; ramiel - Ramiel - 05-31-2016 They may be indefinable. Stars may part for Carnage and Gail, galaxies may swirl and time may twist at their whim (his whim). The world might be shaped by their separation, by the methods they employ to be rid of the divide between them. Hell may freeze and ghosts may rise to walk alien shores when they are together. Their bond is unique, legendary - indefinable. But he and Gail are inevitable. Ramiel. Her voice calls to him in his sleep, long after he’s tucked his little family into the protected space between himself and the mountains. He had watched Sela fade with the sunset, her eyelids like masts falling more and rising less with each star that blinked to life. Ea, too, had eventually succumbed to her weariness. The simultaneous weight of new motherhood and a new crown could not be easy to bear; Ramiel only hopes he has helped share the burden as best as he can. The sight of Ea and Sela finding sleep together soothes him as much as it sets his heart to race. Most nights, it is hard to let his own exhaustion steal the picture of mother and daughter from his greedy eyes. Most nights, he spends hours watching the rise and fall of their ribs with breath, watching their lips twitch with dreams, watching the culmination of his life and his greatest success in their hours of absolute peace. Some nights, he even sleeps himself. But this night, she calls to him as drowsiness is just beginning to pull him under like the waves of the ocean. Immediately, he is awake. Immediately, he disappears from the Dale and pops back into existence on the shores of the dead. It is too simple to come here, his mastery of his gift finally final. But even easier, even more instinctual is his response to the black woman. Answering her call (even as it carries over the line dividing those with heartbeats from those without) is like a reflex he cannot help, cannot ignore. He is powerless against her voice. Carnage had trained them well. “Gail?” The nearly-white stallion asks unnecessarily when he finds her. She stands out, somehow, as if she is untouchable to the same force that drains everyone else of their color. She is still pitch black, as he had been the first time they had met. But that is not what he thinks of as he stands before her. He isn’t reminded of monsters that had puckered the skin at his thigh or the quickness of time as it flashed in the wormholes (though oddly, the heat of the six plus one pressed together warms him now as he looks at Gail, a shiver he cannot place). Instead, Ramiel remembers the last time he was here, remembers the deep well of ache at his brother’s murder. Like before (like forever?), she had guided him through his sorrow. He wonders if this is why she has called him now, to do the same for her. But he doesn’t ask anymore. He is sure she already knows he will do whatever she requires of him. He has done enough, but he will always do more. For her. For his black light transplanted from the end of the universe. R A M I E L this is a man pulling at his iron chains RE: bury my heart on the coals; ramiel - gail - 06-01-2016
RE: bury my heart on the coals; ramiel - Ramiel - 06-06-2016 For what it’s worth, he’s not sorry she’s called him, either. He’s not sorry, but he should be. Because the family that he leaves behind when he heeds Gail’s call is everything to him (or almost everything). The black woman is a light here, in the everlasting dusk of death, guiding him like the tireless beacon she is. But she cannot help him out there. She cannot take the reins from him like Ea, directing when his soul grows too weary of the responsibilities it carries. She cannot make him a child again like Sela. She isn’t wide-eyed with questions or ready to take off in chase at any given moment. Gail is a light, but not the same yellow sunshine of his little girl or the sensible, silver sheen of his queen. She is the absence of shadows, despite her dreary location. She is a place he must return to long after the mission has ended; he comes back like a soldier reliving the days of glory, full of his own life but unable to forget the past. She is unlike either of them in so many ways, but somehow, she still means as much. She is a part of his family kept away from the rest. Ramiel studies her even as he thinks it. He is lost in the word secret for a moment. He knows he shouldn’t have them, shouldn’t keep anything from his family on the Other Side. But when he looks at the woman who has lost so much in her life (peace, love, time), he thinks he is only protecting her. If he stopped coming here, who would she have left? If Ea knew of their hidden rendezvous, what would she say? Would she sense anything nefarious about the way they seemed to call each other at their times of greatest need? Would she suspect that his admiration for the black mare’s strength lied deeper within him, down passed the muscles that held his posture straighter when he stood before her, down between his lungs, squeezed but beating faster with each breath? Even he does not understand himself when it comes to Gail. The grey ghost shakes his head dismissively when she apologizes, but she continues on. Her words are as uncertain as the monochrome sand shifting under his feet is unsteady. “Changing…” he echoes, his voice carrying out over the waves that rise like the dead on the horizon. Ramiel remembers changing himself. He can recall the exact panic that had gripped him as he become less alive and more dead with each second (even if most of his worry had stemmed from his need to escape the Other Side at the time, rather than his newfound ability). He wonders if she is experiencing the opposite effect, if she is growing more alive instead with each passing day. In some smaller way, she plays Sela’s role, then. Because he can feel the careless hope of his younger self slipping through, despite her fears. He is a fool, a dreamer; he can’t help but ask. “Can you come home now? Back to the Other Side, with me?” The matured, greyed part of him knows it is not the root of her change – he knows that life is not so perfect, knows that she will never again walk the grounds of Beqanna – but as he also knows, it is hard for him to let go (Gail is proof enough). The grown stallion moves to her because she says she is scared and he knows she should be. He knows what to say, but he means it, too. “I am only a call away. Always.” He touches her neck like before, his muzzle brushing firmly against skin that should long ago have turned to dust. “What can I do? What needs to be done?” He speaks like a man, like that same old soldier willing to take up arms again to whatever end he will meet. When his eyes meet her’s, though, they are still like a child’s. His hope is immortal, even here on this plane of expiration. But a thought occurs to him then and a dark wariness supersedes his optimism. “Is it Him?” Ramiel doesn’t have to name him for her to know. Something like jealousy flashes through him and once again, he becomes a stranger to himself. Carnage had failed all of them in so many ways (his sister, the other acolytes) but no one more than the woman who stood beside him now. R A M I E L this is a man pulling at his iron chains RE: bury my heart on the coals; ramiel - gail - 06-15-2016
RE: bury my heart on the coals; ramiel - Ramiel - 06-30-2016 Even he is not sure that he meant to keep his original promise. It had been convenient then. Not a lie, but not a whole truth, either. I won’t leave you, he’d said, knowing that he couldn’t leave her even if he wanted to. Knowing that if he did, he would be struck down in the end, anyway – their dark god would never allow total failure to go unpunished. His quick loyalty to the black light at the end of the universe had been gallant, chivalrous, self-preserving. But he had been a boy caught up in the thrill of it all. He had agreed to something bigger than he could have ever anticipated, tugged on a thread with no thought to what waited for him at the end of it. He had found himself precariously perched above waters that would swallow him up and never spit him back out again. He had said what he needed to say to keep from slipping under. But Ramiel has always had a golden heart beneath his dark mind. He will do what is best for Gail for her own sake, as long as it aligns with his own safety. Fortunately, for the both of them, crossroads have never come between them. Even here, in a land that should separate them quite permanently, he answers her call because no harm will come to him. She needs him, and he won’t leave her. Yet. Because he will always have to walk away. No matter how great her crisis or loneliness or desire otherwise, he will always have to fade back into the Other Side. And each time he leaves her, he will feel that same thread being pulled taut in his shining heart. Like the distance from his anchor is far too much to allow for more movement apart. He hates failing her, hates breaking that same promises time and again. She doesn’t know words that were once mere convenience have become more, multiplied into a million more sentences he can’t find in his dark brain. She touches him back and the words flee him again. Ramiel can feel her, even though he knows he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t be able to feel her, a ghost, a relic, but he does. He shouldn’t feel her at all, anyway. Ea swims in his eyes so he closes them and breathes Gail in instead. But there is nothing there (there is so much there) to smell. When she pulls away, the shifter feels the smallest tug in his chest but it is from her reply, rather than the distance she puts between them. So Carnage is not responsible this time. Possibly. He can’t say he isn’t pleased to hear the mage is leaving his once-lover to a well-deserved peace. But she doesn’t tell him what to do. He cannot combat her fear by doing anything like he had done before. There is only so much comfort he can provide before he fades away, before he waits in the Dale for her next call, whenever that may be. If she has no answers, he will have to find a solution himself. “I will do anything, I hope you know that.” Ram reaches for her again, so instinctual to pull her close, to soothe her. She is no wall of iron like Ea… But just as he thinks it, he remembers himself and stops. “You are the bravest woman I’ve ever known, Gail. But if you want me to stay with you, for a while, I will. We can face this together.” His eyes draw up to slowly meet her gaze. He doesn’t know the implications of lingering too long in this place, doesn’t know how time moves compared to on the Other Side. But if she needs him, he imagines he will soon learn. R A M I E L this is a man pulling at his iron chains |