09-03-2015, 11:43 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-03-2015, 11:44 PM by Tatter.)
a constellation of tears on your lashes
burn everything you love, then burn the ashes
“Fuck.”
He hates this place. It’s lonely as hell and he feels more alone here than he ever did when he was alive--and oh, how he was alone oh so very often. He spent days, months, years ruling his kingdom by himself and he refused to let go of the Chamber until the very last breath left his body. He was their King up until the final day of his life and it is his crowning achievement. The Painted King of the Chamber. He knows that his name, even after all of these years, has not been forgotten. He was a cruel and perhaps mad King; such is his legacy.
If he were still alive today... well, he’d be old as fuck. He was not an old man by any means when he was brutally slaughtered (which, let’s be honest; it was no less than he deserved), but he’s been dead now for nearly two entire decades. Might be more, might be less. Time is different here in the afterlife (Heaven, Hell, whichever you want to call it). He’d certainly be old and decrepit if he were still living in Beqanna. He had no immortality, nor any taste for it; instead of living to a ripe old age, he’d died in battle. It was a death suitable for a king such as himself. He doesn’t regret his life at all.
Except maybe the plethora of children.
There are a few he truly cherishes--Karson, his firstborn; Eliska, his angel, Lyanna and Malekith, his lovely twins; and Nocturnal, his little dragon. His strong, beautiful dragon girl. As a parent, he is not supposed to pick favorites, but when it comes to Nocturnal there was never any competition. They’d been close since the day he found her, bloody and sobbing in the Chamber after her mother had been slaughtered. He never did avenge his little Fey. She deserved more than just a brutal death and a quiet goodbye. So did they all, he supposes.
Nocturnal is here, somewhere. He had been keeping a watchful eye on her on the days before her death, hoping--praying--that she would come to her senses. He knew what was coming and he knew that he could do nothing to stop it; he has no powers to reach out of the afterlife and touch a living soul. But he should have stopped her. Someone should have stopped her. Someone should have known. They should have realized and they should have protected her.
He would give up even this afterlife to see his little dragon girl alive and well again. He would let his soul fade away into nothing if he could bring her back to life. She didn’t deserve to die like that.
She should be alive and well.
Does anyone think of him in that way? Does anyone miss him or wish that he was still among the living? Probably not. He was not a well-loved stallion or King by any means and most of them were glad to see him go. He had a few that were near and dear to his heart, but they are all either dead or vanished. He is not missed in Beqanna. He learned that long ago. The only sway he still holds are his children and grandchildren, and many of them have long since vanished. Noct’s progeny persists, though, and he catches glimpses of himself in all of them; in Anni’s mischievous mannerisms and in Gendry’s fiery (quite literally) spirit. There is a warrior in each of them and he hopes they know their heritage, dating all the way back to the great Chain and the Alliance-winner, Set. Of course Nocturnal’s children were the strongest and most capable of them all.
The Blood Alliance may have been destroyed decades ago, but the remnants are still around. Their family is still extraordinarily powerful. Some of them are cruel and ambitious; some are thoughtful and calculating. They all have the potential to be great, if only he could be a mentor to them.
Yes, he’s arrogant.
He’s also dead, though. Hardly a threat.
tatter
my childhood spat back out the monster that you see
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Preferably someone he knew in life. 
STRANGELET
nocturnal and quark's imaginary girl
It wasn’t the fireflies that called to her today. Those lonely flickering stillborn soul-lights had gotten a whole lot less lonely lately since a girl named Wrynn had befriended them. They still visited Strange now and then, but when they called it was playful instead of desperate. No, today someone else was stirring, a presence somewhere between pensive and frustrated. Someone familiar, someone family.
She wasn’t quite so little anymore. Younger than she should have been by a long shot, sure, spending too much time drifting around in other worlds for her body to grow and develop at a natural pace. So she still looked little older than a yearling, black with white feathering growing in on her lower legs, deep blue eyes, a bright yellow crescent moon on her side, curving along her ribcage like a permanent embrace from her mothers, both living and dead.
And speaking of the dead. Noctem had been awfully quiet lately. Hadn’t been talking or visiting or being his playful self, and it had her a little…concerned. Perhaps the pensive, frustrated presence was him? He might be…she’d gotten the feeling lately that he was tired of being the invisible third wheel in the realm of the living. He’d been keeping to himself more, and answering her gentle prodding less. Thankfully, the afterlife had gotten a great deal easier to access lately. Not that it was ever out of reach, not exactly, but it used to take more effort to find her way there. Now it was as easy as taking a deep breath and a step to the side.
When she did, though, it was not her twin she felt drawing her forward. Someone else, someone she had never met in anything but her mother’s stories. Blue eyes wide with excitement, she followed that gentle pull until she met a stranger who looked an awful lot like Momma Luna, both in image and in force of personality. There was something regal about him – which made sense, since he had been king of the Chamber in life. And a damn fine king, if Momma’s stories were any indication.
“Oh! Hello, Grandfather! Um, my name is Strangelet, but people mostly call me Strange. It’s very nice to meet you! Momma speaks very highly of you. She loves you a lot, you know.”
Come with me and you'll be in a world of pure imagination
living there you'll be free if you truly wish to be.
Tatter knows that he has a plethora of grandchildren; gods above, it makes the dead man feel old. There had been a few before he died—Gendry and Kyran and Araby—but over the years more and more have appeared. Several of them had been rulers—Oxytocin of the Valley and Straia, who still holds the Chamber’s throne with an iron fist. He knows his lines will live on through them and the others, but it makes him feel ancient. Don’t even get him started on great-grandchildren. There are plenty of them as well. He has always had a soft spot for children, but good lord they know how to reproduce.
He still remembers the day Karson was born; Frost had been grumpy for weeks leading up to her birth, though she had been as excited as him for their first child’s birth. The little pinto girl hadn’t been his first, but she had been the one that mattered. The woman in the slave pens never mattered, and even in death she still does not matter to him. He had punished her for killing his twin brother; it was a loss he had never gotten over. Even in the afterlife, he has not been able to see him again. Perhaps he had been too wretched in life to deserve a good afterlife. Maybe his twin’s soul had been too destroyed to make t all of the way here. Maybe he’s trapped in limbo somewhere.
The death of his twin has haunted him since the day he was murdered, nearly four decades ago. How could anyone be so cruel to a child?
No pain is comparable to that, not even when Felidae had cut him open and bled him nearly dry.
He would bear that pain tenfold rather than deal with losing his brother again.
He knows all of Nocturnal’s children, even if he never got to interact with any of them. Even little Noctem, who never got a chance to live, holds a portion of the old man’s heart. The others he does not know—he can hardly remember their names or their faces—but they are still precious to him as well, just in a smaller way. Nocturnal and her children will always be the most precious, diamonds in a sea of sapphires and rubies. You aren’t supposed to have favorites as a father, but he cannot help it. He is so proud of Nocturnal.
He is not alone for long, today; suddenly there is a yearling bounding around him, one who is very much alive and very bubbly. He cannot help but smile as Strange gushes excitedly. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, little Strangelet,” he says, taking in the girl who should, physically, be much older than a yearling. Gods, she looks so much like Nocturnal that it takes his breath away. There is a fair bit of her other mother there, too—Quark—but all Tatter can see are the similarities to his late daughter. “I love your mother very much, sweetheart. You should tell her to come see me sometime.”
He knows about her ability and though he was never found of traits, he is curious about her. “Tell me about you, Strangelet. I know that you know a lot about me, but I know almost nothing about you.”
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Tatter