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lacrimosa - Rhoswen - 05-29-2018




R H O S W E N




It had been years since Rhos had prowled the plains of Eluetheria. Upon her travels between Solterra and Denocte, she'd had no reason to drift this far east toward Delumine - until now. Until the hands of time and fate had twisted the world into an unrecognisable painting with strokes of colour she could barely read. Dawn had begun to break overhead, brushing the muted blue sky with colourful promises of the coming day, and as the red woman traced a winding path carved into the ancient earth by generations of bison, she felt the memories unfolding like paper planes in the cortex of her mind. 

Appearing first, pale and sure, was the desert queen she had left behind. Seraphina was a woman Rhoswen knew so little of, truly, but knew regardless that she would choose to trust her all the same. There were not many who might have won the respect and allegiance of such a spitfire - they instead have burned beneath her ire - but the child-solider-turned-empress was a creature of different ilk. There had been something measured in that steadying gaze, something bearing truth, and in Rhoswen's hour of need, Sera had been there. Rhos owed her the life of her child - could a stronger testimony exist? Feelings of uncertainty spread like ripples from a stone dropped in water: so many questions yet answered. Would the Sun queen trust her in return? Would she see past a heady girl's errors?

Behind Seraphina there lurked a spectre, as wraithlike as the very mist that formed these visions in her mind. Blue eyes blinked; blue to drown the fire in her heart. Raum was an inescapable force that she had come to reckon with in more ways than one. How could she love someone as hard as this, and yet want, still, to rip him from her life like a plaster left too long on the skin. What was she hiding beneath that bandaid? A cut, a broken bone, a shard of shrapnel wedged deep into her flesh? Their affair had been wrought with complexity and conflict from the very first instance, culminating in bitter words and crimes she was working hard to unravel. A love like this was enough to shatter worlds.

But Raum was not the last memory to spin like a bottletop round and round and round - there was another left to show its hand. One shrouded in a mire of guilt that Rhoswen had sidestepped for too long. Bexley Briar. She wondered what the scar looked like - whether it had altered her friend beyond repair. Was it bright and garish, or dark and ominous? Soon, the sun girl would see for herself. Her association with Acton's violation had born many sleepless nights, for there was something evil in the knowing - knowing she could have prevented this, and knowing her inertia had cost so very much. 

At last, Rhoswen reached the highest point of the plain, coming to a halt upon the swelling ground. She was a flickering flame over a sea of grass, like gasoline upon an oil-slicked ocean - a ballerina lost behind swathes of auburn hair and sharp, sharp lines. She knew the Deluminian owl had reached Bexley, for it would not otherwise have returned so soon, but upon it's descent it had carried not a word of reply. Rhoswen had come to the halfway land between Dawn and Day all the same - she owed Bexley that much, and so here she stood - a sanguine sentry against the backdrop of a new sky.






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RE: lacrimosa - Bexley - 06-02-2018


Moments after it arrived in Solterra, a flurry of soft feathers and beating wings, Bexley had sent the owl away with a snarl and a gilded fuck you, and then she had stood holding the letter out of the window of her quarters, waiting to drop it into some howling nighttime wind, and had not been able to.

She hated herself for it.

Armageddon, then, in the long minutes that followed. Unwrapping the  letter, pulling at that silver ribbon, already she felt that something inarguably wrong was to come from it, that this half-second was to be her penultimate of peace. The night was deep-blue and cool when that letter arrived, and for hours - perhaps until the sun rose, she couldn’t remember - Bexley turned circles in that sandstone tower, reread the lines of thin handwriting, feeling viciously unsettled by the reminiscence suddenly forced upon her. That crush of rocks - the gauzy dusted light, filtering in from overhead - each passover of the letter is one more pebble in her lungs, is another long-standing reminder of the scar on her face, moonlight and lace.

She wanted to un-read it. To rip it, to burn it, to let it drift away.

But reality is omnipresent, and Bexley is steel, is real, is tooth and claw, and it is with that sense of iron-will that she forces herself from Solterra in the first warm moments of the morning, hair braided, smelling of sandalwood, and strides alone toward Ruris.

The sky is glowing gauzy-pink, shredded in places with purple and red; a cool breeze, the first of autumn, blows cool-bright against Bexley’s small body and pulls the sparkle of tears from her blue eyes. Her necklace clinks quietly in the buffeting wind. Head pulled down against her chest, white hair swirling in a loose cloud, she trudges toward the highest point of Eleutheria and fights the nausea so imminent in the pit of her stomach, so blackout and overwhelming. How long has it been since they’ve seen each other? Months and months, and who knows how Rhoswen has changed since returning to Denocte? Is she moon-bright now? Has she given up on Solis, on Solterra, on her love of the sun?

Are either of them the same girls they were when the met in that aureate desert?

Of course not. On the rise of the slope ahead of her, Bexley catches sight of a svelte silhouette, red and dark and red again, and her heart thrums wildly in the cage of her chest. Feral and anxious, she forces herself toward Rhoswen despite the lead in her legs, and when she speaks, it is strange and deep, uncertain and disembodied: Nice morning, hm?

 @rhoswen



RE: lacrimosa - Rhoswen - 06-10-2018




R H O S W E N




There was a violence in the ichor of her blood that rattled and clanged, and the sound of its song rang like a bell tolling in the dawn mist. Many times she had fought it and many more times she had let it pass through her body like music through a violin, pouring hot red light into the cracks that riddled her soul. Her mother and her father, they had seen the fire in her heart, knowing it would burn the night like a match struck against petrol, and many hours they had wondered what path their daughter (bleached by the sun and the wild) would take. For many years she could not name herself, did not know the truth within - for it is not easy to see yourself in the mirror when you are standing in the dark. You might catch slivers of a reflection, but quickly that sun-girl had come to realise the peroxide silver of moonlight distorted reality into a lie. And so many lies she had kept. To herself, from herself - within and without. 

Solis, you see then, had saved her. In the midst of her dreamless, blackened chaos he had reached down and plucked her from the abyss, leading her not into temptation and delivering her from evil. To Solterra she had blazed, leaving the earth behind her feet charred from the heat of her punching ambition and bite. A lifetime of disarray smoothed out in a single decision, or so she had thought. For who could ever truly escape their demons? Rhoswen had been sorely naive to think her troubles would end the day she walked out that Denoctian door, leaving behind blood and a pair of shark-blue eyes set to haunt her until their worlds would collide once more. She could still remember the moment he had slipped into the ballroom beside her - in that ancient aching moment, narrated by tapestries and gold, knowing that this was where her ruin had truly began. 

Rhoswen could never be the same. She knew what it was to love a man, and, more than that, a child - she was a harbinger, an omen of life and death and betrayal - but wasn't that the beauty of the human condition? The weakness of a heart set to burn for another. 

There was always a price to pay for love.

And as she turned a ruby-glass cheek toward the horizon, the violet light writing poems upon her oh-so-soft skin, Rhoswen saw Bexley's sacrifice for the first time. Except it was no sacrifice - it was the scene of a crime laid riddled by her guilty fingers. At a loose glance she might have thought her fair-haired friend had changed not at all - still that biting gaze leading a walk that oozed intent. But there it was: a tall florid scar that stared at her with dried-red eyes as if it were an entity all of its own to spit at her: 'what the fuck are you looking at?''. Rhoswen's chest hitched, marooned in a sea of frustration and regret. What to do with this emotion? This entire fucking world that lived inside of her? Bexley drew near enough now that Rhos could smell the sand and the heat on her skin, flooding her senses with a cutthroat homesickness that she had not allowed herself to feel since that first night back in Denocte. Gods, she missed the desert.

They settled together, each coiled with a tension that had brewed in darkness for what could have been an eternity, and as Bex spoke, Rhoswen felt their eyes meet for the first time. Electric-shot blue against a howling stormful grey. Two women caught in the mess of men. No longer. 

"You came."



@Bexley <33


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RE: lacrimosa - Bexley - 06-14-2018


b e x l e y
MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.

In the early morning they are both wraiths, the gold and red of Solterra’s flag blanched somewhat by a weak morning sun: even if Bexley wanted to use her magic, still so novel that she feels it as consciously as she would an extra limb growing from her ribs, it would take an effort in this cool dimness that she is already wasting on containing a vacuous anger. Trembling with just-suppressed emotion, she meets Rhoswen’s gray eyes with a dull bitterness. The dawn is violent and seemingly endless, and it runs a familiar course in Bexley’s heart, wild and red and unrelenting.

You came.

Her lip curls in something half-snarl, half-smile. Perhaps this whole thing would be easier if either of them knew what they wanted, or what they felt, or who they were - but Bexley still doesn’t know many of these things about herself, and something about looking at Rhoswen, seeing the silver-white gleam of light on her roaned skin and the storm of her eyes, convinces the Regent that Rhoswen knows about as much as she does. What do they want? A return to friendship? A return to normalcy? It’s been almost two years since Bexley found her way to Solterra, and not a single damned day has been normal - neither of them would know normalcy if it slapped them in the face.

Is it normal for her to love the world that has beat her down and brought her back up again - the man who hurt her - the girl who allowed it?

We are not strangers, Bexley points out. Her voice is strangely soft, near dissolving in the wide-open space between them. As much as I would want to pretend. Hurting someone is still an act of intimacy.

Bexley stumbles into silence, and the wolfish howl of wind around them is overwhelming. There is no turning away from the history between them or the allowance Rhoswen has given her for anger - although Bex would be so anyway, if such permission had not been given.


@rhoswen <3
rallidae



RE: lacrimosa - Rhoswen - 06-28-2018




R H O S W E N




With a hitch of curdled breath and regret, she wondered then just how many times she had imagined this moment. How many hours had she laid awake, staring at white walls and glittering skies, in hope of an answer to her impossible question? You see, the night was a perfect stage to set upon your dreams and your nightmares - for darkness had a way of tangling love and loss together until you could not tell either face apart: had she longed for this chance at redemption, or loathed it long into the labyrinth of sleep and time? But the dawn will always come, and it will always shatter the illusion that your reality is distant and obscure: light, be it blood-red or ichor-gold, will always reveal the proximity of all things from which you wish to escape. 

The curling of Bexley's auric lip drew her attention in toward the present once more, her gaze smoothing to dispel the wall of smoke in her eyes. There was no place for resistance here, not now. 

We are not strangers. As much as I would want to pretend. Hurting someone is still an act of intimacy.

Rhoswen did not flinch at the soft whip of Bexley's voice; her tone did not matter, her words did not matter - Rhos knew the meaning and the truth. Betrayal is a thimble of arsenic: it does not matter how small the act may be, for its poison will spread regardless. Toxic, septic, destructive. In the name of love? Rhos could not bear to look away from her golden companion, but if she had, her gaze would have turned to a horizon that shrank from the noxious silhouette of a man born to ruin her. "Nothing I can say will take back the events of months past, the mistakes made others, by myself -" the red woman's voice levelled like a stone dropped in water, sizzling from the heat of an eternal sun. 

"I have since learned the truth of so many things," the wind whipped her hair into a cloud of sanguine sand, and whistled in and out of the women's legs as they stood locked in space, "but most of all, Bex, I'm just really fucking sorry." She took a step closer, Bexley's scent dancing into her lungs,

"For everything."




@Bexley yo yo


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RE: lacrimosa - Bexley - 06-30-2018


b e x l e y
MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON.

She has always been vividly righteous, since her first breaths as a little girl - it might be the curse of her family or simply Bexley’s own brand of revenge as a religion, but there has not been a time she has let her enemies escape unscathed or her reputation go tarnished, and Gods-be-damned if she’ll start now -

But it’s strange to look at her sister and feel fire taken over what was previously only an affectionate warmth. Now her heart simmers with anger, her nerves spark electric-wild. Bexley’s own azure gaze narrows in the bright sunlight, cast part in shadow by a layer of dark lashes, and she meets Rhoswen’s eyes with a blazing, terrible indecision, unsure how to reconcile with the emotions that war deep within her stomach. Anger, want, sorrow. If only there was some way to rewind the months that had passed, to cleave the scar from her face as easily as someone could peel the petal from a flower. If only -

I’m just really fucking sorry. For everything.


If only it were that easy. If only Bex could find a way to swallow that apology that wouldn’t make her feel sick on the way down. If only - her breath hitches in her chest, her nostrils flare, she grinds her teeth until her pulse blooms in her jaw with stunning loudness. What do you want, she says softly, voice almost carried away in the silver wind, and the hard look in her eyes is briefly replaced by something vulnerable and genuinely hurt. What are you expecting to happen?

She doesn’t want to put words to it - what Rhoswen might be angling for - because what if she’s wrong? What happens then?


@rhoswen <3
rallidae



RE: lacrimosa - Rhoswen - 07-12-2018




R H O S W E N



Deep within the cavern of her heart, ash curdles like old milk: pale and congealed. Was it worth it? Was he worth it? - Her daughter, even? Rhoswen's mind flicks through reels of black-and-white film, watching the past's events unfold once more, though this time with new eyes. Eyes that had seen the grotesque reality of all the choices we make on a stupid fucking lovesick whim. Consequences are ugly - but they are real. They are not stories to be told to children who stray too far, not dreams to be conjured in the black nebula of night. They are a lived reality, and Bexley was living hers right now. Lambent virginal light clung to her garish scar, holding Rhoswen's attention for a moment too long; she did not mean to stare, but how could she deny the gravity of its presence? For their eyes meet again, clashing, reaching, hoping. Was there even a solution to be found here in this pit she has forged - this hollow place where nothing felt familiar and time passed into oblivion. Guilt rummaged through her bones like a thief in the night; twisting its knife deeper into the fine sinew beneath her skin. 


No heroes here. No victors. 

"What do you want? What are you expecting to happen?"

There is a moment, then, where Rhoswen simply watches Bexley. Gazing aimlessly without intention, without anticipation, in remembrance of a simpler time: days defined by languor and hot sand, spears of laughter pitched into the wide sun-sky like javelins thrown over and over again; what she wouldn't give to turn back the clock. Of course she knew it was an impossibility, but that did not stop her from wishing for it regardless. All Rhoswen could do now was to glue back the broken shards of their friendship the only way she knew how - if Bexley should allow her so. Silence, a handful of breeze to catch them both, until - "I don't know, Bex." The truth is as brutal as it is cold; there were no answers here, no right and wrong: there was only an endless open chasm before them - waiting, calling. There was no point lying, no sense in trying to cast meaningless words into the air to appease Bexley, or Solis, or both. "I suppose in my selfishness, I can only hope you will forgive me."



@Bexley 


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