03-04-2022, 01:27 AM
all of time and space, everywhere and anywhere, every star that ever was
She might have laughed, a raw startling sound that hadn’t come from her mouth in years, if she had an inkling to what about her had worried him. In the state she was in, malnourished and weak, patches of gray fur that was slowly growing over into smoky black… She was the one who would be the underdog in this fight. He doesn’t know that she hadn’t touched her connection to the stars in years. Not since the day she had died.
She feels that to an outsider looking in, it would be obvious her disadvantage to him. Yet she still pushes, snaps, and snarls, egged on by that unrelenting storm of red and black that swirls around her chest. A tornado of pure fury with no release. Ciri was a mare who had nothing left to lose. After spending a year in the ice, she thinks that perhaps even the terrifying nothingness she had found in death might have been better than that cold hell she had been trapped in.
She hated being alive. She feared death. Her world on this plane was a purgatory now.
Perhaps the thing about Kestrell that gets under her torn skin the most isn’t that irritating grin or his stubborn enthusiasm. It’s the reminder of a life that she had once lived before, signs of a simpler time as a wanderer. She had been a rogue too, in her younger years. Before the Underneath. Before Amet. The scars she had earned in those years had been few and far between. She had been sharper, quicker, wrapped in the wild joy of freedom.
The Underneath had stolen her carefree innocence, had shaken the core of her being, had shown her exactly what she was. What she still could be, perhaps. A dream that seemed to grow further and further away from ever actually happening. But she sees them in him for some reason. Those small glimpses of a past she had tried to forget, reminding her what she had loved doing. Helping others, protecting them. She senses that in some way, he is sensing that in her… That she’s the one that needs saving.
Her anger roars in protest and her stars turn as dark as the stained blood she had once woken up to in this very meadow.
That was what had brought her from the Heavens to begin with, what had sent her into the body of a small foal warm in the womb. A child of time and space. The swirling of her eyes churns with an emotion she hadn’t felt in awhile. Something like sadness, or regret. It’s washed away by the flames of her temper, her injustice, but like the lightning pains that she sometimes still feels in her chest… This sensation lingers slightly too.
She is sick of him, sick of looking at the freedom he carries so easily compared to the weight she carries across her scarred stardust shoulders. ”I need no-one.” She challenges him and its true. She doesn’t. She had been living a very lonely life for a very long time. She had accepted it. She was starting to believe that stars could never understand a mortal life, would never be able to navigate such intense emotions.
Turning from him, she is only a few steps from him when his voice washes over her hazy red backside. And she freezes, her muscles visibly tensing as she stares straight ahead of her. Hesitating and trying to reason why.
”What if I need you?”
Nobody had ever said that to her before. Amet had once said ”I need to find who hurt you.” It hadn’t been what she needed to hear. It had never been I need you. And little did she know that soon she would know just exactly how fine the dragon-king had been without her. She knew what it was to be wanted, desired, hunted, tortured. How it felt to be rejected, forgotten, spurned, betrayed. What would it feel like to be needed? For nobody had ever truly needed her before. Neither dragons, the North, even in her struggle with Gale there were far more opponents than herself that had the abilities to truly take him down.
Nobody needed her. So why was he claiming he did?
Why, for a split-second, did her stars turn from bloody red to tarnished gold as the weight of his words found her?
A dark laugh spills from her smoky mouth, slowly turning back to him, her swirling silver never slowing despite the sliver of emotion that had managed to slip beneath her rage. She forces the sneer but her heart isn’t in it despite the heated storm that battles within her. “Your better off without me.” She says quietly, her face turned up to the tall stallion. “And that’s the best advice I can give you.”
The further away from her, the better their chance of survival. Of a happy life, of hopes and dreams. Of a purpose that she had long lost the summer night she had died for nothing. Truly nothing.
The best protection she can give anyone, especially to him, is by making sure she couldn’t take anyone else down with her.
Carefully she moves away from him and stretches out her shimmering black wings. Without the cover of feathers, her weathered figure becomes much clearer when illuminated against the little moonlight that lingers. She pauses only for a second, glancing over her shoulder at him. Hesitating. “It's Ciri, by the way. Thane of the Isle.” ”Should you truly need me” hinted at the corner of the uncertain thin smile if he manages to catch it. And then she is forcing her tired wings into the chill of the night, her mind racing as her heart beats frantically from something more confusing, for once, than her unrelenting anger.
She feels that to an outsider looking in, it would be obvious her disadvantage to him. Yet she still pushes, snaps, and snarls, egged on by that unrelenting storm of red and black that swirls around her chest. A tornado of pure fury with no release. Ciri was a mare who had nothing left to lose. After spending a year in the ice, she thinks that perhaps even the terrifying nothingness she had found in death might have been better than that cold hell she had been trapped in.
She hated being alive. She feared death. Her world on this plane was a purgatory now.
Perhaps the thing about Kestrell that gets under her torn skin the most isn’t that irritating grin or his stubborn enthusiasm. It’s the reminder of a life that she had once lived before, signs of a simpler time as a wanderer. She had been a rogue too, in her younger years. Before the Underneath. Before Amet. The scars she had earned in those years had been few and far between. She had been sharper, quicker, wrapped in the wild joy of freedom.
The Underneath had stolen her carefree innocence, had shaken the core of her being, had shown her exactly what she was. What she still could be, perhaps. A dream that seemed to grow further and further away from ever actually happening. But she sees them in him for some reason. Those small glimpses of a past she had tried to forget, reminding her what she had loved doing. Helping others, protecting them. She senses that in some way, he is sensing that in her… That she’s the one that needs saving.
Her anger roars in protest and her stars turn as dark as the stained blood she had once woken up to in this very meadow.
That was what had brought her from the Heavens to begin with, what had sent her into the body of a small foal warm in the womb. A child of time and space. The swirling of her eyes churns with an emotion she hadn’t felt in awhile. Something like sadness, or regret. It’s washed away by the flames of her temper, her injustice, but like the lightning pains that she sometimes still feels in her chest… This sensation lingers slightly too.
She is sick of him, sick of looking at the freedom he carries so easily compared to the weight she carries across her scarred stardust shoulders. ”I need no-one.” She challenges him and its true. She doesn’t. She had been living a very lonely life for a very long time. She had accepted it. She was starting to believe that stars could never understand a mortal life, would never be able to navigate such intense emotions.
Turning from him, she is only a few steps from him when his voice washes over her hazy red backside. And she freezes, her muscles visibly tensing as she stares straight ahead of her. Hesitating and trying to reason why.
”What if I need you?”
Nobody had ever said that to her before. Amet had once said ”I need to find who hurt you.” It hadn’t been what she needed to hear. It had never been I need you. And little did she know that soon she would know just exactly how fine the dragon-king had been without her. She knew what it was to be wanted, desired, hunted, tortured. How it felt to be rejected, forgotten, spurned, betrayed. What would it feel like to be needed? For nobody had ever truly needed her before. Neither dragons, the North, even in her struggle with Gale there were far more opponents than herself that had the abilities to truly take him down.
Nobody needed her. So why was he claiming he did?
Why, for a split-second, did her stars turn from bloody red to tarnished gold as the weight of his words found her?
A dark laugh spills from her smoky mouth, slowly turning back to him, her swirling silver never slowing despite the sliver of emotion that had managed to slip beneath her rage. She forces the sneer but her heart isn’t in it despite the heated storm that battles within her. “Your better off without me.” She says quietly, her face turned up to the tall stallion. “And that’s the best advice I can give you.”
The further away from her, the better their chance of survival. Of a happy life, of hopes and dreams. Of a purpose that she had long lost the summer night she had died for nothing. Truly nothing.
The best protection she can give anyone, especially to him, is by making sure she couldn’t take anyone else down with her.
Carefully she moves away from him and stretches out her shimmering black wings. Without the cover of feathers, her weathered figure becomes much clearer when illuminated against the little moonlight that lingers. She pauses only for a second, glancing over her shoulder at him. Hesitating. “It's Ciri, by the way. Thane of the Isle.” ”Should you truly need me” hinted at the corner of the uncertain thin smile if he manages to catch it. And then she is forcing her tired wings into the chill of the night, her mind racing as her heart beats frantically from something more confusing, for once, than her unrelenting anger.
-- Ciri
@Kestrell