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  • Beqanna

    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


    to start back where we ended; agetta
    #1
    he must be wicked to deserve such pain;


     
    He wakes on the shore of the river with a blinding headache and no memory of dying.
    He blinks, slowly, trying to orient himself. There is a river, rushing past. He is at the edge of it, wet from head to tail, and muddy now too, from where he’s lain. He gets up, moving cautiously, expecting his body to ache, to have some remnant of what had happened, but there is nothing. He himself has no memory of what had happened, of why he had been in the river, or even really what he’s doing here at all.
    He remembers an eagle and looks around, as if it will appear. But there is nothing, only silence, the gentle movement of other horses off in the distance.
     
    The sun is warm on his dark, unblemished skin. The gray that had began to touch his muzzle and mane is gone, he is young again, except he doesn’t know it’s again, he only knows he feels disoriented and lost and this place is familiar but not.
    He moves away from the river. It causes a deep unease when he looks at it, though he can’t say why. There’s a lot he can’t say right now.
    He keeps moving. Soon the sound of the river is gone. Eventually he is in a meadow and he wants it to be familiar. It almost is. Almost.
    He is dry now, although his legs still bear the river’s dried mud. He does his best to scrape it off – he doesn’t like the reminder – and the dirt fills his mouth. He’s still dirty. He lifts his head and swallows, trying to clear his mind, trying to settle himself, trying to figure out what’s happened, and why he’s here at all.
     

    garbage
    image credit



    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #2

    — I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night —

    She had not left the river since he disappeared. She searched the banks, half frightened to find him and half hoping for it. Agetta knew he had survived death once - but whether that was because of some magic in him or from an outside source (like her own resurrection) she didn’t know.

    Hope was such a dangerous, all-consuming thing. But Agetta was not ready to lose him and did not allow herself to entertain the possibility.

    Even if losing him also felt like payment for her sins.

    Even if she didn’t deserve to have him in the first place.

    When she sees him again, she doesn’t believe it at first. She’s thought she’s caught the beautiful orange of his eyes so many times now that she doesn’t trust herself. So she investigates like she had every other time and her heartbeat picks up when the colour remains, when he remains and does not become a shadowy mirage that disappears. A wordless cry escapes her and she closes the space between them without thought or hesitation - such little things had disappeared during the year they spent together. She reaches to brush her muzzle against his cheek and his neck, overjoyed at the fact that he is solid.

    “Oh my love, you survived!” She’s too relieved about this fact that she does not immediately notice the lack of grey, how he is younger now than when she first met him. Her words fall quickly from her, thick as they are with joy and the aftermath of the sorrow that had plagued her. “I feared the worst when you went into the river and I couldn’t find you.”

    Agetta

    art by millionashes | table by laura


    @[garbage]

    @[The Monsters] let's just see if anything happens to her sacrifice embodiment <3
    Reply
    #3
    @[Agetta] nothing happens to your sacrifice embodiment
    Reply
    #4
    he must be wicked to deserve such pain;


    He is hollow and there is a desire to be filled, but he does not know yet with what.
    He has only the sense of things missing, but not want those things are. He extends his mind back, tries to grasp for something, but there is only a darkness that feels all-encompassing.
    A familiarity, too – like he has known this darkness before. Maybe he has.
    It’s too much, to swim in this darkness, and so he focuses instead on movement. His bruised body aches, but the ache is something real, something tangible, and so that is what he turns his mind to, not the way he is empty and strange and haunted by the sense of something missing.

    He is engrossed in this and does not notice her at first, though when she cries out he is shaken from his trance. He barely has time to observe her – a flash of white, the opposite of the darkness clouding him – and then she is against him, warm, and he thinks of how dirty he is, muddy and bruised, and wonders who she could have mistaken him for.
    He draws back on instinct, though heat had flared in his body when she touched him. He looks at her
    (oh my love)
    and wishes he was who she thinks him to be, because that would be easier, but he is some filthy stranger and she will see it, now that he has granted her distance, she will see it and maybe she will just walk away.
    “I…” he says, the word trailing off because he doesn’t know what to tell her, “I’m sorry, I’m not –”
    I’m not whoever you think I am, I’m not me, I’m not sure I’m not sure-
    Her next words, though. You went into the river and I couldn’t find you.
    “You saw me?” he asks, “go into the river?”

    garbage
    image credit


    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #5

    — I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night —

    Agetta doesn’t know what to think when he steps away from her, though in all of her thoughts she doesn’t blame him. She quickly assumes it is something she had done - like if she had touched a point that had been bruised in the river or maybe he was disappointed with her for not saving him. If she had just been a little stronger, a little faster, would they have ever been separated? If she had not become so focused on the one battle and forgetting the rest?

    It is so easy for her to believe the distance between them is her fault. When he asks about her seeing him go into the river she nods automatically, eager to answer his questions - to prove in some small way she’s not useless. “Yes of course.”
     
    But then confusion begins to crumble the smile on her face as more thoughts begin to leech in. He should have known that, shouldn’t he? She’d be there with him. It was once he had gone into the river that she had lost track of him. The smallest of frowns begins as her blue eyes searching his for… something?

    “Are you alright?” She looks him over again, now that there is space between them, and there is something different, though she cannot quite place it. Her mind is looking for wounds, signs of a struggle, not for a lack of grey hairs or scars. Perhaps, she reasons with herself, it’s just that he’s covered in dirt - though she cannot quite bring herself to suggest he go back into the river to clean off.

    Agetta

    art by millionashes | table by laura


    @[garbage]
    Reply
    #6
    he must be wicked to deserve such pain;


    Her blue eyes search his and he can only hold her gaze for a moment before he has to turn away. There is such intimacy there, the way she looks at him, and he does not know how to react.
    Her eyes are blue as the sky, and he thinks of looking up through the water at the sky. Was that him? Was that his memory? Everything blue and blurred and then nothing. Then this. Whatever this is. He is lost and scrambling and this woman, this stranger, she so clearly wants something from him, has so clearly mistaken him, except she saw him, or said she did, so maybe they know each other.
    (She looks at him like she knows him. She touched him like she knew him. So why can’t he remember her? Surely she couldn’t be forgotten.)

    Are you alright, she asks, and he can’t help it. He laughs, a thin, high sound, less humorous and more hysterical. I am not all right, he thinks, in fact, I think I have lost my mind. Or I am lost. Something’s lost. But he can’t say that to her. Or, he shouldn’t. He doesn’t want to run her off.
    (Though maybe it would be better. The sooner she’s gone the less memories he’ll have of her, the easier he can forget her. She looks like the type who will haunt him and he thinks part of him is used to being haunted.)
    “No,” he says, then, “I woke up – I guess that’s the word – on the riverbank. I don’t…I don’t know what happened. I don’t even know who you are, though you’re nice to stick around like this. I’m sorry for wasting your time. I’m sorry I’m not…whoever you think I am.”
    The apologies come easy on the tongue, like they are a familiar taste. He clings to it, this sliver of familiarity, even if it isn’t the most pleasant thing.
    His name, too – he has that. He will give her that and she will acknowledge her mistake and that will be the end of this. Whatever this is.
    “I’m Garbage,” he says, then, “I’m sorry. Again. For all this.”

    garbage
    image credit


    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #7

    — I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night —

    She’s watching him with concern burning bright in her heart, trying to figure out what has changed before he starts to speak. Her face is earnest, willing him to tell him something that she can fix. If she needs to fly somewhere and drag a healer back to him to fix something, if she just needs to be there with him.

    At first, he speaks and her concern doesn’t waiver - it deepens one sentence (I don’t know what happened) and the next is pure shock (I don’t even know who you are).

    Those dark blue eyes blink rapidly as she tries to figure out if she just heard that right - and she probably would have just ignored it, reasoned it away, had he not continued. Agetta swears she can feel her heart drop and when it shatters as he introduces himself. As if they had never met, as if everything between them did not exist and never had.

    “This isn’t funny.” She tells him, her voice harsher than she’s ever used with him before but it cracks too as she can already feel the happiness begin to slip away - even though she’s desperate for the explanation that this is just some cruel joke. “I know who you are. We… we’ve been…” But she doesn’t find the words to describe what this last chapter in her life has meant to her. The time spent with him, waking up together each and every single day.

    Please. You must know who I am.” Agetta does not consider herself a proud creature so there is no ego to bruise as her voice grows heavy with a pleading note as she reaches for him again. As if a touch could fix this.

    Agetta

    art by millionashes | table by laura


    @[garbage]
    Reply
    #8
    he must be wicked to deserve such pain;


    He would sell his soul for a memory, he thinks. He is terribly aware of emptiness, a sense of missing – like staring at the ruins of a great cathedral, a monument crumbled to dust.
    There was something here, once, you’d think, something wonderful and grand.
    But he reaches and he reaches and again and again he comes up with nothing. Only that hazy, underwater glimpse of sky and something soaring above it, so faint it may not have existed at all. Nothing like what she seems to expect, or want – need? – from him.

    Rather than acknowledging any kind of mistake, she presses on. Begs, almost. He considers, for a moment, lying. Going oh, yes, of course, of course, I was mistaken, because then maybe she would smile
    (then maybe she would touch him again)
    but even without his memories, he thinks that he is not a very good liar. He doesn’t know how he knows this, but like his name, it feels like a fact. Something concrete. And he will take whatever concrete things he can.
    “I’m sorry,” he says again, “I don’t. You’re nothing to me.”
    He doesn’t mean it like that, of course. He means to say I have no memories of you, I have nothing of you. But he is not eloquent. This, too, is concrete. So instead his words stumble and out and even he, dense as he is, realizes how that could be taken, how cruel.
    “Not like that, I just mean…I don’t know you. I don’t think I know anyone. Not myself, even. I’m so sorry.”

    garbage
    image credit


    @[Agetta]
    Reply
    #9

    — I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night —

    She’s waiting, desperately waiting for something to click and for him to remember her. Like he just needed a moment to clear his head and it was all going to come back and he was going to be there, with her, once more. She doesn’t know how this happened, doesn’t know what magic has taken this peace from them. No, just from her. Because this is not a pain he is sharing with her.

    Once he says them, she doesn’t hear what else he says, how he takes back those words.

    You’re nothing to me

    They rattle through her, branding themselves on every part of her he’s ever touched. She recoils sharply as if he'd struck her, though she would have preferred that. It would have been shocking coming from him, but she knew how to defend herself against that kind of strike. Agetta would be able to fight back against a physical blow.

    You’re nothing to me

    This is different. This is not a pain she has caused like she had with Plume. This is not something she has done at all - and after eons of shouldering the guilt for every single bad thing that has happened to her, Agetta does not know how to react to this blow. There’s nothing left for her to grasp at. It hollows her out with four simple words. She deserves this, she’s sure - but that doesn’t alleviate any of the pain in this moment. Her guilt never has.

    She closes her eyes and stands there for a moment longer, but she can't think of anything else to say. There is no other fight to wage on behalf of what they had. She thinks she manages an “Okay” before she turns, not opening her eyes as she does - she's seen enough. She finds the ability to walk away from the one she has been trying so hard to find as if it doesn’t matter, as if she had been mistaken after all. But the weight of her life begins to descend on her then, dragged down by the grief.

    Agetta

    art by millionashes | table by laura


    @[garbage] I just want you to know that Grammarly thinks this post is "inspirational"
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