[open] we're not meant to stay forever; any

[Agnieszka]

Agnieszka

She is unraveled again without him. It was always temporary, she knows now, that feeling of wholeness that came with being --maybe-- loved. Without Wane and with the child they had made now grown she is once more unmoored. A lotus bloom that has lost its anchor and drifts slowly away. Now that the plague has burned off leaving the isle comes first but it takes her days to summon the courage (was she brave once?) and to say goodbye to her strange and beautiful daughter who is old enough now to choose a life for herself. They are so different, but in the girl’s amethyst eyes tears well like gemstones on her waterline and Agnieszka knows that at least between them there is love, something full and alive that will not be undone. It almost makes her stay but all the empty yesterdays that preceded the daughter and the lover, and the sea monster echo in her mind and the need to move is like the moon’s pull on the tide. 

That plunge into the icy sea makes her curse and swear an oath to never repeat it. Nerine’s shore takes too long to appear but when it does and she stumbles up into rock and sand she wonders why she ever entertained any idea that she could return here. Stillwater tried to drown her foolish wanton body here. Wane had played in the surf with her...bedded her with the furious passion of a guilty man among these tumbled stones and ribbons of drying kelp. She is breathless from recalling these things as much as from the swim and her countenance darkens as she wonders how she could ever have lived here with the cold and wind, and the caves everywhere gaping at her. 

Knowing that moving further inland will take her to the border of the Taiga, she turns her dappled frame to instead follow Nerine’s northern shore and then use the beaches and redwood shadowed cliffs  of the northernmost edge of the Taiga to avoid passing directly amongst the trees. Still it is difficult to be so near that densely wooded place and the tongues of fog that swirl around its boundaries. By the time she stands in the shadow of the volcano her amethyst eyes are ringed in white and a foamy sweat clings to her neck and flanks. The tide is low enough that she can wade into the water alongside rivulets of lava that steam and hiss as they meet the sea, rinsing herself clean of fear for now. Tephra is foreign to her and to the dark thing that paces in her mind. She feels nothing but a quiet curiosity when she looks inland from where she stands dripping alongside skeletons made of charred driftwood.

an unequaled gift for disaster

[leliana]

I rise from my scars. nothing hurts me now.

There is something in the woman’s brokenness that calls to something within Leliana.

It is a buried thing, strange and quiet, that is nestled in her breast. Something that cries quietly in the middle of the night as she stands amongst the flowers blooming in the Tephran winter. Something that is an echo of years past, of the hurt and heartache that has so consistently plagued her. The her that came before. The her that has since been remade, reshaped and reborn into something terrifying and alone.

Still, it is a thing that she can still feel and she responds to the call, to the gentle pull in her belly that takes her to the beach where the lava meets the seawater. The woman that stands there—upright and strong despite the ache in her eyes—is both what she expected and not. In some ways, Leliana feels like she is looking into a mirror of her past and it makes a strange twisting in her heart that she cannot name.

Without a word, she moves forward, stepping through the magma without pause, letting the heat of it rise and flow around her crimson feathered legs and feeling nothing. She merely continues forward, stepping out further into the beach and feeling the heat splatter out and sizzle into the sand.

Her eyes glow golden and orange today, reflecting the mouth of the behemoth volcano behind her, and her face is impassive but not unkind. There is a warmth that still lights her features from within, a warmth that has blossomed into rage and a thirst for justice and an inexplicable need to protect.

“Hello,” she says softly, her voice carrying further than its quietness should normal allow. “My name is Leliana.” She glances away at the rest of the land for a second before bringing her attention to the woman in the water. She studies her quietly, pupiless eyes quiet and thoughtful, but says nothing more.

@[Agnieszka]