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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


    everyone I know goes away in the end, Skellig - birthing
    #1
    “What have I become, my sweetest friend?
    Everyone I know goes away in the end."


    Over a hundred years of life, over a hundred mistakes and life lessons, and still she is a fool. 

    Something has come over her, something insatiable and unquenchable, and not even the promise of Tephra’s safety could keep her here. She had left, caving to her need to wander, to brush with danger. But as the time grew nearer, as she grew restless with labor and the sickness rooted itself into her veins, she knew she had to come back. She was a fool, but she would not drag her unborn child with her. She would not risk their baby being ill with this plague, like she was. 

    Back in the safety of Tephra, she paces near Skellig, her face tight with agitation as each contraction ripples over her. Her lips are still stained from the blood that sprayed from her mouth with nearly every cough, the plight of her sickness making the ordeal all the more miserable. Her bones and muscles ached, her body already warm from fever, and now her neck and sides glisten with sweat as she is forced to the ground with a low groan. 

    She is not new to child birth, but the fatigue from the illness has worn on her, and what should have been normal and easy by birthing standards is instead long and exhausting. Her breathing rattles in her throat from the fluid built up in her lungs, as her sides heave and she weakly strains. Her only source of relief is knowing that Skellig is nearby, and that she doesn’t have to fear for her safety in this vulnerable state. She is too weak to utter a sound as she completes the arduous birth, but relief washes over her as the baby finally is free. 

    Despite her weakness she is quick to rise, gathering her trembling legs beneath her so that her soft tongue can find the newborn filly’s face. She can’t see that as she dries the tiny body off that their new daughter looks just like them — that her body is a lovely jade green and her mane and tail will be a brilliant white, and there, on the center of her tiny forehead, is a white four-point star. ”What should we name her?” She murmurs to Skellig, her heart swelling in her chest as she listens to the sound of the little girl beginning to struggle to her feet. It has been so long since they had Liseli, and she didn’t think she would feel this way again. 
    RYATAH
    you could have it all, my empire of dirt


    @[Skellig]

    Hi I know you said you were working on a post but I really wanted to do a birthing post for Evenstar, so (:
    #2
    There are benefits to having a blind girlfriend.

    She does not see how concerned you are when you look at the way the sickness ravages her beautiful body. She does not see the way you struggle for composure as you step closer and the smell of her reminds you of a graveyard, of things already dead. Perhaps most importantly she does not see how your lips curl when you kiss her shoulder and taste feathers and something else you cannot place, something like smoke.

    But some of these benefits are neutralized by how well she knows you. You try and try to bury your sadness, but when you murmur her name--- "Ryatah. I'm here--" with all the tenderness you can muster, you think she still might hear the words that go unspoken-  "Why did you leave?

    "... Was it me?"

    Those words hang on you like her sickness does her, and neither of you knows how to hide or burn or bury your ghosts. So you pretend they're not there, and you whittle away at the inside of yourself where she could never see, even if she had eyes. And if your ghosts keep you up at night, well, that's your burden to bear as best you can.

    But now is not the time for that.

    Now is the time for strength, and life, and all else will follow later.

    Frankly, it terrifies him to see Ryatah like this-- lips stained red with blood, porcelain skin darkened with sweat. But he swallows his fear (just one more hidden thing to add to the hidden collection) so he may lend her what strength he has. Not knowing what else to do, he trails loving kisses down her neck and across her bulging belly. It is agony to watch her struggle in labor, but then it is over and she pops right back up on her feet and their daughter attempts to do the same. If it wasn't for the haggard look in Ryatah's eyes and the tremble in her legs, and obviously the wet bundle at her hooves, he would have no clue she had just brought a new life into the world. 

    The benefits of a blind girlfriend come back again-- he is beyond grateful that she cannot see the dumbstruck look that crosses his face at the request for a name. "Uh... Max?" The name sounded better in his head, somehow... a strong name for a girl he wants to be strong-- but he can't help but to laugh sheepishly at hearing it spoken aloud. "You should name her, you know I'm no good at these things."

    "If it helps, she's green," it is obvious by the tone in his voice that he is proud of this, "and there's a perfect white star, right in the middle of her head," he reaches out gently to place his lips against child's forehead and he breathes in her baby smell, and then he draws back to look his daughter in the eye. It is like looking into a memory from so long ago that it takes him a moment to place it. "Oh! You have your mother's eyes."

    Evenstar, not impressed with her green papa, takes a shaky step forward to nurse and he worries the milk will infect her, if the womb did not-- but what choice do they have?  With every exhale Ryatah's chest rattles and Skellig's heart sinks. But he moves closer, of course, instead of away, and offers his love a shoulder to lean on.

    "How are we going to keep her safe in this world?" He preens gently at Ryatah's forelock and tries to keep his voice neutral. He sounds worried, yes, but not panicked-- not yet.


    @[Ryatah] Oops I'm sorry this is so long x_x
    #3
    “What have I become, my sweetest friend?
    Everyone I know goes away in the end."


    He is there, and she doesn’t mean to take him for granted the way she has been.  She knows he didn’t have to be. He could leave, like she does, but for some reason they have never played that game with each other. She holds nothing against him when he leaves altogether, just as he buries his questions for her beneath reassuring kisses and gentle touches. But, she knows his heart better than she knows her own, and she can feel the way it quivers in his chest, wondering what he did to deserve the way she seemingly punishes him.

    But she cannot tell him. Not right now. She has to fix it first.

    Her mistakes are not at the forefront of her mind, however, as their newest daughter has finally found her legs and was currently wavering uncertainly. Even without sight, she has done this enough times to recognize the sound of a newborn’s stumbling, staggering steps. Ryatah places her muzzle alongside the girl’s slender rib cage, offering gentle but firm support as she guides her to nurse. His name suggestion brings a smile to her face, and how quickly he rejects himself, turning to lip at his emerald green mane. ”I love your name suggestions,” her voice is hoarse from coughing, but even still there is a tenderness that will always be reserved only for him, as she nuzzles lightly against his neck.

    She turns her attention back to their daughter, her blood-stained lips trailing carefully along the length of her jade-colored spine, feeling almost guilty for even touching her. Her throat burns with tears that can’t be shed, the sorrow of this — and everything else — shadowing the joy that had previously been on her face. But when the filly stumbles her way to the front of her parents, warm milk dripping from her lips, Ryatah cannot help but to smile and press her lips to the vibrant, white star on her forehead. ”Evenstar,” She says quietly, before tilting her head in Skellig’s direction and adding teasingly, “But Max for short.”

    She sidles alongside of him then, shuddering even though the spring air, especially in Tephra, is not cold. His skin feels cool in comparison to her fever-hot own, and a sigh rattles in her chest. ”I don’t know. Keep her in Tephra, I suppose.” With her shoulder resting against his, she does not have to see his face to know he is worried. She can hear it in his voice, and can feel it in his lips against her forehead. Curling against him, and placing a kiss against his jaw, she murmurs reassuringly, ”She’ll be okay, love. We won’t let anything happen to her.”

    Evenstar, meanwhile, has decided to press herself against her father’s chest. She stretches her delicate muzzle to touch his, and then her mother’s, her doe-like eyes bright as she smiles happily up at them. In this land of turmoil and heartache, she doesn’t even realize how lucky she was to be born to two parents that love her. Her short white tail flicks at her green haunches, nibbling lightly at her father’s similarly colored coat, before carefully squeezing herself between both parents, and promptly curling up on the ground below.
    RYATAH
    you could have it all, my empire of dirt


    @[Skellig]

    Um it’s okay cause there’s no such thing as too long of a Skellig post and also they are way too cute, even being tainted by what a terrible creature Ryatah is hahaha
    #4
    It's become normal, really, all the things they're thinking but not saying. They fall apart, they come back together. Even when it's bad, even when it's really bad-- They've built a house out of heartache and love, ruin and desire, and at the end of the day(, or year, or decade) they crawl inside together and they call it home.

    So even when the deep blues roll over him, even when his heart bleeds so much that he would have it cauterized, he wouldn't have it any other way. The sight of his newborn daughter reminds him of that. He smiles, a little sadly, and he knows that all this sorrow and all this joy, this is exactly what he deserves. But Evenstar deserves better.

    Maybe it's noble, the burdens they carry. Maybe it's unhealthy. It seems to him that he doesn't have a choice in the matter, anyway. His soul is hopelessly drawn to hers, it always has, and he thinks hers is drawn to his as well. Otherwise she would have left, really left, long ago.

    "I love your name suggestions," she says in that tone that feels like its just for him.

    "Evenstar," the name rests like a crown on her lips, and then it is passed with a kiss to their daughter and the green stallion hums his agreement. "Max for short," she says next, and he laughs. He laughs like he hasn't laughed in a while, and his belly hurts afterwards. "What have I done? I'm so sorry, child," he reaches down to lip at at Evenstar's white forelock.

    Ryatah probably knows, because she knows him better than he does himself, sometimes, that he is still a little proud to call his daughter Max, almost as proud as he is to call her Evenstar. It seems a good thing to give a child two names, so that when they're old enough they can pick whichever one suits them.

    Ryatah presses against him, fever-hot, and the worry comes back even though she tries to kiss it away, even though she tries to reassure him. He wants to say "I won't let her out of my sight," but that seems like a promise he can't keep. He wants his daughter safe, but he wants her free, and these two things seem at odds in times like this. "Okay," he says simply, and he knows she'll hear the uncertainty in his voice but he hopes she'll hear the commitment in it too, the effort. The will to be, truly, okay. He mostly just believes in the sentiment because of the wayRyatah calls him love.

    Their daughter is stupidly cute. He doesn't usually like children but he can't help but smile as she presses her baby-soft muzzle to his and then settles down beneath them. "She's special," he says softly to Ryatah. They all are, of course, but Evenstar is somehow different.

    They stand for a few minutes in sleepy silence. His heart still feels too heavy for sleep, his ears too focused on the rasp of Ryatah's breathing. It sounds thin and wet and he can tell by its lightness that she is not sleeping yet. "How are you feeling?" He asks very quietly, not wanting to disrupt the drowsy, peaceful hush they rest in.


    @[Ryatah] <3
    #5
    “What have I become, my sweetest friend?
    Everyone I know goes away in the end."


    She doesn’t know why they are always meant to be broken, as though they are perpetually destined to always be repairing the ruin of their hearts. They were both made up of patchwork stitches and scars, and even though they most often inflicted the injuries on each other, they never left. She is not sure if this is an indicator of the strength of their love, but it’s what she has chosen to see it as. To imagine a life without him in it, where he is not the place her heart comes to rest, is unbearable.

    Still, there is a part of her that always wonders what kind of resentment he must harbor towards her. When he can smell them (what did it say of her, that there had been more than one over the years?) on her skin, when she births children that are clearly not his — how can he possibly still touch her so softly, how can his tongue still form words that carry only tenderness, and none of the bitterness that hers would hold if he did the same? She destroys him with her selfishness, and then tries to heal the wounds with those same lips. She didn’t deserve him, and it was slowly eating away at her on the inside.

    With her porcelain head resting against his chest, she drowns out the negative thoughts with the sound of his heart — the heart she is supposed to protect and instead only manages to break — and allows a faint smile when he says their daughter is special. ”Is it because she looks mainly like you?” Her tone is light, the words meant in jest, but even she knows that something about Evenstar is different. Eadoin, Caliph, and Liseli had all been special to her too, because they were his. Her only children born of pure, untainted love, and no other motive behind them. She doesn’t know why Evenstar stands out, why her birth seemed to hold so much significance. She only knows that the sound of the little girl’s sleepy breathing as she rests in the shadow of both her parents makes her heart swell, and how she would give anything for this moment - just the three of them – to last forever.

    But the sound of her own breathing is almost intrusive on the quiet moment, and she pulls away to succumb to the cough that had been building in her lungs. The flecks of blood that dot her lips rest like crimson beads on top of her pale skin, before they absorb and stain to a deeper blush color. ”I’ll be okay,” and even though her voice is weak and cracked from soreness she does her best to sound sure of herself. Her plague is the least of her worries; the outwardly sickness that she showed only seemed to mask the way she was being torn apart on the inside, and she knew she had no right for self-pity, because she had brought it upon herself. Laying her head against him once more, and breathing in his familiar scent as her stained lips brush against his skin, she cannot help but to whisper softly, ”I love you, Skellig.” And I’m so, so sorry, are the words that she keeps to herself, letting them echo inside her head, because she knows that even if she said them out loud, they wouldn’t fix what she kept breaking.
    RYATAH
    you could have it all, my empire of dirt


    @[Skellig]
     
    <333
    #6
    "Well, she does have my perfect skin tone," he admits, and for a moment he feels like a boy king again, grinning cheekily at the girl who arrived in his kingdom. "But it's also... something more than that too..." his smile falls as he trails off, and he wants to say "she gives me hope" but he doesn't-- because when he looks in Evenstar's eyes anything seems possible... but he's looking at his lover now and hope feels like it is very far away.

    (The porcelain queen is good at living with sin. It slowly drips down her perfect white neck, waiting to be licked away. Skellig was too, once. He wonders if he could bring himself to do it again. He wonders if he needs to.)

    If he was angry, it would probably be easier for both of them. He thinks that maybe what Ryatah wants, even if she doesn't know it, is an explosion. How easily he could give that to her. Rage and violence and pain... he has not known these things for years, yet they are not easily forgotten. But he doesn't want to explode. It would feel too much like forgiveness.

    By embracing the knife she digs into her heart, by pulling it deeper into his chest-- maybe that is the cruelest punishment for her.

    "I love you," she says, and it sounds less like a statement and more like a plead. The words sit there heavily between them (he is weighing them, those three words, against the last time he heard them. He is wondering what's different, if anything at all) and at first he doesn't say a word but he leans deeper into her. He can feel her ragged breath heaving through her chest, he can smell her sickness, and her betrayal. She is weak and wretched and he is still ravenous for her, despite it all. "I know," he murmurs into her ear. "I love you too."

    Love truly is madness.

    <3 should we end this thread here or soonish and start another soon? Or we can continue this one, totally up to you! also can we please have a thread with skellig and max <33




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