[mature] Stained White - any

[Kagerus]

kagerus

and in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times

Come on Ilma, don't do this, c'mon c'mon c'mon --

The words are muttered beneath my breath as I careen down the mountain adjacent to the once she's descended from, wishing for all I'm worth that I'd have dreamt of wings this morning. I slip more than once but catch myself every time, except once when a rock trips me in my haste. I don't notice the blood that drips down my right shoulder from the impact with the scraggly mountainside, too sickly mesmerized by the spot in the lake where I'd last scene Ilma softly drift beneath.

(Two suicide attempts in less than a year, both by two of Hyaline's most known representatives. Both of us returning from a trauma that could almost not be spoken; returning to the cool embrace of the lake that tenderly promised a euphoric death and then the black silence of the afterlife. I remember the sensation well, the loose drifting and relaxing of muscles as the air bubbled from my nose; I remember thinking how lovely it would be to reverse the process, to suck in a chestful of water and to cough and choke and die. I remember trying. But what I remember most is Solace - coming up beneath me and forcing me to live. And now, she is what I choose to remember whenever the darkness comes.)

But I won't make it down this mountain in time to be Ilma's Solace. Just as I'm giving up hope, barely able to breathe as I finally hit flat earth and gallop towards the lake, she resurfaces. Surrounded by gore, she rises from the crystalline depths as if she is a pure white angel - but a moment later, the blood has returned, coursing down her body with the help of the water droplets left behind from her swim. I want to cry at the sight of her, to collapse beside her and give up too - but that's the last thing she needs.

With a heaving chest, I splash into the shallows, coming up around to the mare's side and coaxing her back to the shoreline. I don't say anything yet, only pressing the dark tip of my nose to her over and over again, silently reminding her that I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, thanking the gods as I we slowly make our way that she'd been stronger than I. She pulled herself out, where I needed another to do so; she wants to live, where I wanted to die.

"Lay down, Ilma," I murmur when we come to the first of the trees, knowing that when I'd come out of the waters, the reassurance of having commands to follow re-centered my free-floating mind. It's a shaded spot we've come to, but the true darkness lies in the depths of Ilma's mind; I struggle with deciding whether to ask what happened or to respect her, but in the end I settle with a statement that represented neither option.

"I'll kill the bastard who did this to you. Your pain will be a grain of sand in the desert of his suffering."

Someone plz come be better at comforting ppl than Kag