01-17-2019, 01:19 AM
our demons are all around us and they don't come from hell
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves
every single one of them reminds us of ourselves
Scorch has long since been engraved into Brunhild’s dark and wandering heart. She is part of her—a sister, her successor, a woman who looked her in the eye and somehow saw within the shadows. She feels an ease standing next to her even as her nerves are drawn taut, even as instinct rattles in her veins and the heavy premonition of what is to come blows like smoke across her back. It winds her tight even as she relaxes, the juxtaposition of the two emotions at war and conflicting even as she finds stability.
“Does it matter what I’m doing here?” her smoke voice rises to meet the dragon woman’s and she feels the space between them like a physical thing—a barrier, a wall. Is she no longer to be accepted as a fellow sister? She has never doubted herself before, not truly, but the shame of her weakness at the end of her reign has haunted her. She had spun apart beneath her injuries. She had barely held it together long enough to announce the change of crowns. And when it had been done, when she had forfeit it, she had been lost to the shadows.
Her body had spun apart in the darkness, pulled thin.
It had taken months to pull herself back together.
Months of breaking and agony and healing. Months of rebuilding.
And when the kingdom’s magic had finally dripped from her, when her body had been forced back together again, it had been too late. She was no longer Queen. She was barely herself.
So in the shadows, in the belly of the jungle, she had stayed.
Brunhild doesn’t waver beneath Scorch’s gaze, doesn’t falter or crumble. She stands strong, holding the mare’s studying look. “I am here now. For however long this is to last.” It still feels like a dream, the fog of the forest slowly crawling around her shoulders as her precious shadows used to do.
“Would you send me away if I don’t have answers?”
Her breath plumes in front of her, steady as she has always been.
And yet—and yet—she wonders at the way it threatens to catch in her throat.
@[Scorch]