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    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


    I will find you across every universe - Kavi
    #1



    He moves the way the dead should – a phantom of shadow dust and obliteration. His mane (brushed by the hands of shadows – and not his mother’s loving touch) had grown longer since I last saw him. No longer the long-legged kid of night-terrors and self-doubt but a young adult; haughty and brash. But his eyes, ink-black and dispassionate were the same as always. I can still see the fear there in their turgid depths, the fear he has buried behind wolf-teeth and shadow and filigrees of steely resolution.

    “Mother” comes that husky-soft voice – too many years inhaling smoke. Too many years standing in the fire and trying to die –

    I wish I hadn´t failed him.

    “Son” I answer, a trembling old thing, too full of fears and regret to be of use to him. “How have you been? I haven´t seen you in a while”

    I wonder if he hears the fear in my voice, if he notices the diffidence in the downward cast of my gaze.
      
    “There´s something you should know” he deadpans – for when did he ever care enough to return my concerns?


    In my old age, I have grown selfish - made brittle and weary by sick interims of time. I have been a selfish gardener – tending to my flowers of serenity and peace without noticing how the lands around them started to rot and wither away. What have we done.
    All I ever wanted was to live out my days in ignorant bliss. I deserve this, I told myself; deserve the layers of love and peace and rest that I have so carefully wrapped around myself. I wanted to lay in quiet contemplation under sunlit skies, next to my beloved.

    And so I had – and things were quiet for some time. Oh, there had been the children; the daughter I had not born but was mine all the same, and our peculiar son of nightmares and shadows – but I had paid them little attention after the first year. I told myself that children grow – they must learn to fend for themselves, must try to fly far from the nest. And I had let them go – with a sigh of relief and a whispered “good luck.”

    We had kept to ourselves; Kavi and I. So complacent in each other’s company that I felt no need to interact with the rest of Hyaline’s inhabitants. I had never expressed the hope that I was meant to live out the rest of my days here; for it was not a hope but a certainty and a certainty which seemed all too obvious for words – I could not be denied it, for I always intended to come here (or so it seems to me now.)

    Yet, there is no regret boiling in my blood as I return to my beloved. The peace he has brought me is a hard thing to fracture – even now, as I fight the darkness of our son with my own steady, pulsing light. Oh, he is the thing in my soul that glitters and glimmers like stars on cloudless nights, boundless loyalty and blind faith. Faith – the belief of justice, the religion which I follow solely with my heart and soul; was this the divine justice that had been promised to us? Was this the reason why I felt so secure even when death and destruction were just a fact of our lives, another turn in the road that seemed never-ending, unfaltering to no end.

    My eyes were alive and alight with longing as I traipsed through the boughs of Hyaline. The soft breath of wind that seemed to follow me these days gently rolled up my side and passed through my unkempt mane. I call to him as I reach the small copse of trees I know he likes to rest under, and there is hope etched within my eyes, unbound and vibrant as I find my place in his embrace. He is always there with me; running his fingers through my hair as if he was standing right next to me in another form; showing me a passion and love that was undying, that was unyielding even when I am undeserving of such emotions. I smiled, oh how softly my lips formed into that content smile that spoke a thousand words – the very passion and love that was this world, the very music that filtered through the trees, the requiem that the doves sung so beautifully in tune with. It was as if he had returned for one reason, like a ghost that only I could see, like a soft light which shone through the darkness to guide my steps, like a soft touch against my skin, placed there with such serenity and adoration that I always came to believe nothing would ever come to harm me again.

    ”I missed you” I whisper, so silly in my mud-brown triviality and old age. How long have we been apart this time, minutes, hours if not less? But it is always too long for me.

    Yet, our perfect moment was to be shattered by the news I come bearing, and my brow turns solemn again.

    ”I just spoke with our son”
    #2
    Do you believe you're missin' out?
    That everything good is happening somewhere else?



    I am, at best, the a forgotten pair of honeyed lips that crack and bleed for old age. My children are grown now, or at least mostly, and off making brilliant names for themselves in a political landscape that no longer begs of me any attention whatsoever. Kagerus may come and whisper her stories to me, but I don't listen when it's about land or kings or queens - well, except one queen. I do listen, when she speaks of Solace - and when I realize that she is as in love with her golden queen as I am with my tawny one, I urge her to speak to Solace's father, to ask for his blessing - for I gave mine long ago, but his must be given, too.

    Khaedrik, however... He has been elusive. He is his mother's child, and what I know of him, I hear through her. Ahh, her... I smile to remember her (though in truth we needn't remember each other save for a glance to our side), wondering where she has gone off to this windy autumn day. The sweet grass of this small forest keeps me busy while I think upon her, and upon our family too - the only important things in my life anymore, the only ones tethering me to existence at all.

    When her call comes to me, I forget my meal and am running on old bones born anew to meet her, a light glimmering in my eyes that she had placed there with the simplicity of her presence. As my eyes take her in, I notice the age that has settled on her shoulders, and wonder at how I must look in comparison; but our bodies are nothing more than harbingers for our wandering, aching souls, and in each other's we have found a place to rest and lick our wounds. She is my solace, and in her, I find no fault - not even for the wounds, nor for the way her skin turns grey.

    "Darling," I murmur into the warmth of her tangled mane, breathing in her scent as if it alone is what keeps me from falling where I stand. She smells like a life well lived and the serenity of a moonlit garden, plentiful in well tended shadows and pure despite the inky darkness. To pluck her flowers I would never dare, but instead to bring my garden alongside hers so that we may admire that handiness of our work for the rest of eternity, a smiling moon beaming its approval down upon us until the end of time: this is how I would have it. And in truth, this is how it is - how it shall always be.

    "I missed you too."

    But in the next phrase she pulls away, frowning - but even this show of somberness does not sour my mood, for I know of that which she shall speak. I reach for her, gently kissing her eyes until the crease in her brow lessens, and then disappears altogether. "I know, love, but you needn't worry. Not for that, anyhow."

    I do my own kind of pulling away now, with a pensive look, not frowning, but not smiling, either. "Sweetheart, we are grandparents." My words come as if they are a prayer, reverent of them, but also slightly fearful. I watch for her reaction, hoping that it might guide my own. "Kagerus survived childbirth - she had a son, named Abysm... But his coming about was unnatural, and I'm afraid that she has all but abandoned him." I'll go see him every day until he is weaned, father, but I cannot be a mother to something I did not birth, I can't, I'm not strong enough, please daddy don't be angry, and I hadn't been, but now, in the presence of one whose judgement I do not fear, I allow the emotions I suppressed before Kagerus to come through.

    "But of Khaedrik, too, I am worried - our children's demons are at each others throats, and I feel utterly helpless..."


    KAVI
    Kagerou x Rhaego


    @[Insignificance] HI THIS IS THREE MONTHS LATE AND I SCREWED WITH THE CHRONOLOGY BUT I SAW THAT YOU'RE BACK AND GOT SO EXCITED BYE




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