03-30-2021, 08:06 AM
it's a mystery to me
we have a greed with which we have agreed. you think you have to want more than you need; until you have it all you won't be free. and when you think more than you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.
When she had first woken in that long black body, Wishbone had assumed a new life had started. She spent six years trying to decide if a new body was enough to change her entire existence. She could have lived in Beqanna with a different name, with a different personality, with a different past. Yet all of these reinventions would have been fake. Wishbone knows she would have felt like a ghost of her old self if she had chosen that path and that she wouldn’t have been happy.
The memories she carries with her from her days as a bay mare are essential pieces to who Wishbone is. And she has learned that each new body — from mahogany to obsidian to purple — paints a new layer of life on her skin. It is not that the changes are wiping her clean or forcing her to decide whether she truly wants to be Wishbone. Instead, they are pulling the vibrancy of her life closer to the surface, so she can tell her stories to those who are willing to listen.
She is grateful Lilliana will listen. Wishbone hopes the red woman will hear her with an open heart and that their conversation will knot them together even closer. It has been a long time since she has had a close friend that does not share her blood.
“It started with my daughters.” Despite the years since she has last seen Rivuline and Delphi, Wishbone’s heart twists in her chest. “I carried and delivered twin daughters during the Plague, and it nearly killed me. The girls’ father actually did kill me, though. He drowned me in the ocean.” Hadn’t she been warned about Ivar’s nature when she was growing from a child to a woman? Shouldn’t she have recognized he honestly didn’t care for her, that she was just another Leviathan queen he could mark off his list? “I experienced several strange things at the end of my time in the Afterlife, and then a portal opened between here and there, and I jumped through it.” She didn’t even have to think about whether she wanted to remain dead or not; the burning passion of a mother’s need for her children had fueled her endless pacing near that rift, and she had willingly followed it back into Beqanna.
“When I woke up, I was tall and black, like how you met me. But before I died, I was closer to this height, and I was bay.” Her knees crisscrossed with scars from trying to climb the volcano before her first birthday, her heels patchy with burn markings from lava, her mane knotted with paraphernalia from her adventures. “It took me a long time to realize that a new body wasn’t the end of my story, but a part of it. And at first, I didn’t understand why I was different. I thought maybe the experiences in the Afterlife had changed me, or maybe the fairies were trying to show me something. But I was just in the Forest with someone named Mazikeen.” Wishbone isn’t sure if the name is familiar to Lilliana, but her newfound friend is worth mentioning. “A monster attacked us, and it bit me so hard I felt like I was dying, and there was blood everywhere.” She must have been so exhausted that her dreams were peaceful, but now she wonders if they will be darker the next time she sleeps. “I felt nothing for an instant before I felt like I was in a hundred places at once. And in the next moment, I was in this purple body. And now I’m here.”
She knows it’s a lot to take in; sometimes, Wishbone leaves her head spinning thinking about her own stories. Death, life, near-death again, life again. She has always known Death has panted after her. The more truth is that Wishbone has always tempted that gaunt creature.
The memories she carries with her from her days as a bay mare are essential pieces to who Wishbone is. And she has learned that each new body — from mahogany to obsidian to purple — paints a new layer of life on her skin. It is not that the changes are wiping her clean or forcing her to decide whether she truly wants to be Wishbone. Instead, they are pulling the vibrancy of her life closer to the surface, so she can tell her stories to those who are willing to listen.
She is grateful Lilliana will listen. Wishbone hopes the red woman will hear her with an open heart and that their conversation will knot them together even closer. It has been a long time since she has had a close friend that does not share her blood.
“It started with my daughters.” Despite the years since she has last seen Rivuline and Delphi, Wishbone’s heart twists in her chest. “I carried and delivered twin daughters during the Plague, and it nearly killed me. The girls’ father actually did kill me, though. He drowned me in the ocean.” Hadn’t she been warned about Ivar’s nature when she was growing from a child to a woman? Shouldn’t she have recognized he honestly didn’t care for her, that she was just another Leviathan queen he could mark off his list? “I experienced several strange things at the end of my time in the Afterlife, and then a portal opened between here and there, and I jumped through it.” She didn’t even have to think about whether she wanted to remain dead or not; the burning passion of a mother’s need for her children had fueled her endless pacing near that rift, and she had willingly followed it back into Beqanna.
“When I woke up, I was tall and black, like how you met me. But before I died, I was closer to this height, and I was bay.” Her knees crisscrossed with scars from trying to climb the volcano before her first birthday, her heels patchy with burn markings from lava, her mane knotted with paraphernalia from her adventures. “It took me a long time to realize that a new body wasn’t the end of my story, but a part of it. And at first, I didn’t understand why I was different. I thought maybe the experiences in the Afterlife had changed me, or maybe the fairies were trying to show me something. But I was just in the Forest with someone named Mazikeen.” Wishbone isn’t sure if the name is familiar to Lilliana, but her newfound friend is worth mentioning. “A monster attacked us, and it bit me so hard I felt like I was dying, and there was blood everywhere.” She must have been so exhausted that her dreams were peaceful, but now she wonders if they will be darker the next time she sleeps. “I felt nothing for an instant before I felt like I was in a hundred places at once. And in the next moment, I was in this purple body. And now I’m here.”
She knows it’s a lot to take in; sometimes, Wishbone leaves her head spinning thinking about her own stories. Death, life, near-death again, life again. She has always known Death has panted after her. The more truth is that Wishbone has always tempted that gaunt creature.
@[lilliana]