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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    within your darkest memories; daddy
    #1
    You need never feel broken again.
    It’s done.

    I felt the dying of the year, the way time thrummed and vibrated against my skin, writhing and screaming in protest as the noose tightened again. Squeezing, constricting, choking the life out of a glowing white girl in a glowing white room, the light I’ve loved so much only serving to illuminate her features as the clock ticked away, counting down the seconds ‘til her death.

    Ten.
    Nine.
    Eight.
    Seven.
    Six.
    Five.
    Four.
    Three.
    Two.

    She had sent me away before the countdown reached One, before that final moment of her life, before that glowing white had faded into nothingness. But I have dreamed it a hundred times, each more vivid than the last. Each more desperate, weighed down with more sorrow, more resignation. Thank you for staying with her. She so rarely has company, Time had said. But she was still alone in the end.

    Maybe we all are.

    I wonder if Time sent anyone this year, on a hopeless quest to try and save her. Maybe someone else would have made a different choice, would have fought to spare her, but the year passes, and in the end it doesn’t matter. Whether no one tried or they tried and failed, the old year dies and a new one begins. I feel its passing like a ship wrecking on the shore of inevitability, crashing into jagged rocks beneath the surface of a raging sea. Pounded by waves over and over, capsizing beneath the onslaught, tossed about and shattered, broken into so much wreckage floating on the water.

    I can’t catch my breath, drowning beneath wave after wave of sorrow, tears running down cheeks long-since striped of their mousy baby grey and now slick black as the midnight sky on a night without stars. Even curled up beneath my favorite tree, my breath comes in desperate, shaky gasps as I give in to a year’s worth of doubt and guilt and sorrow, pulled under like so much flotsam caught in a riptide instead of washing ashore.
    Sometimes darkness can show you the light.

    pic by Qinni
    Reply
    #2
    I have died every day waiting for you.
    Darling, don't be afraid. I have loved you for a thousand years.

    Time is weighing heavily on him these days.

    He’s been growing steadily weaker over the past year. Despite his best efforts to both rest and stay fit, old age, and previous years of self-neglect are finally beginning to catch up with him.

    He hasn’t been able to hide it from Arrya of course - he’s never been able to hide anything from her in the long run after all - but he still worries about little Rora. Their little princess is approaching two years old now - not quite an adult, but not far from leaving childhood behind. She hasn’t yet noticed her father’s condition, but he knows that he cannot hide it from her forever. Sooner or later, she will figure it out … and what then?

    She's already changed so much lately, what will it do to her to learn that her father is approaching the end of his life?

    The thought dwells on his mind as he tracks his daughter’s scent through the trees. He knows she’s been having a tough time lately (so quiet, so sad - whatever's going on, she can't completely hide it from her parents). Though she won’t give him details, he knows that whatever happened still weighs on her heart (god, when did she get old enough to start keeping secrets from her parents?).

    When he finally finds her he’s glad he sought her out. His beautiful little girl is curled up at the base of a thick, overhanging tree, and even from a distance he can see the shaking wracking her little body. No time for thought, he rushes to her. “Rora!” As he reaches her, he stretches out his neck and tries to brush a few tears off of her damp cheeks. “What’s wrong darling?”


    Rhory
    I'll love you for a thousand more.
    Reply
    #3
    You need never feel broken again.
    Drowning, drowning, drowning. I can’t breathe for the sorrow washing over me, crashing down in endless waves, pulling me under--and then he is there, brushing the tears from my cheeks, an island in this vast ocean, a solid place to stand if only for a little while. “Daddy,” I whisper, raising red-rimmed blue eyes to meet his, silently beseeching...but what can he do, what can anyone do to fix what I’ve done?

    It’s no good.

    I look away, closing my eyes and lowering my face to tuck it up against my chest. There’s no fixing this, no saving the shining white girl who looked like the embodiment of Mom’s light, no bringing back the moment and making a different choice. “I think I made a really big mistake, Daddy,” I say quietly. My tears have stopped, at least, though whether because of his presence or because I’ve just run out, I couldn’t say. “And I can’t take it back. And it hurts, Daddy, sometimes it hurts so bad I can hardly breathe, but I can’t make it right. It’s too late.”

    I sigh, shoulders slumping, head drooping, so heavy it’s hard to hold up.

    “I don’t know what to do.”
    Sometimes darkness can show you the light.

    pic by Qinni
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