“a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.”
Pieces of our city are starting to follow us. It starts with a child and their mother. I can hear the whispers of their voices, louder somehow than the bells that have still not gone silent. The words come and go between the drum-beat of our hooves on the moonstone and diamond. Each of them makes guilt spiral up my throat and bang at the backs of my teeth. I want to spit with all the guilt I feel, at their love for me. For me, the once queen who is leaving them to save a country far across the tide. They should hate me, I should be nothing to them. I feel like I am dust on the wind, smoke dissipating into the night from their fires, I am nothing, nothing nothing.
Even my hooves, drumming out a coming war, feel like phantom limbs beneath the weight of all the guilt I feel.
But I try not to let it show, or it let it control me. I try, try, try. And even though I have enough power to conquer this world too, I have always been a creature (a monster) controlled by the thing beating in my chest and the soul wrapped around it, soft and fragile as butterfly wings. I am no good at being frost, and winter, and steel. The tear, the lonely tear, pooling in the corner of my eye gives me away. It is breaking me to leave this city, these people, my daughter.
“I will do more than bend them.” The rage comforts me, makes me feel less like a sorrowful ghost walking across the fresh dirt of her own grave. It makes me feel like a god, a hurricane, the wrath of the world. It makes me feel like a monster with sharp-cracked skin instead of scales. I am broken and every part between the pieces is full of rage.
I am broken and it's only broken things that go to war, that taste blood in-between their teeth and smile. So I tell myself that it's good that I am in pieces, and it's good that I can already taste iron and gore every time I swallow. I tell myself that storms are made to destroy and consume. Storms are not made to rule a city, or to love it. They are made to love what comes after the end of it, when all the slates are wiped clean. They are made to--
We make it to the sea, where my ship is waiting, and I forget all the ways in which I feel guilty. Fable is waiting on the shore, his wings spread wide for the children playing in the shadows beneath them. The children are laughing when he sprays salt-water onto their heads like rain. The sight of it shatters something in me. I beg him again to stay, to remain a sea-creature full of love instead of hate. But before he answers, No, I already know that he will not leave me. He denies me almost nothing, only this. And perhaps I should remember there are worst things to have than a dragon's love, no matter how much it hurts.
The sea roars in my blood again, calling me home. This is the first time I have come to the sea with rage, and sorrow, and heartbreak since I let it kill me and remake me into this terrible thing I have become. It's a siren song ringing in my ears, and that lone tear, turns to salt that glitters like stardust when it falls from my aching cheek. I turn to Antiope and I know it's the sea she'll see in my eyes, sea and war and nothing but a memory of her friend in the ice castle. Beneath my skin my magic rages like a tempest and I wonder how long before I am not bones and flesh but smoke and magic rolling on the breeze like a dead-god. “You will be so much more to them than I could ever be.” I can see it in her, the way she puts down her weapons so easy, the way she smiles and races through the streets.
Everything in Antiope is saying stay, and everything in every inch of me is screaming go, go, go. I am helpless against the violence of the call, of the sea, of my wrath and vengeance and purpose. For a long time I have been more purpose than girl, more wrath than love.
Eik is waiting for me. The country across the sea is crying for me, for my war. Fable has turned from the children and waits for me half in the waves and half out. Avesta is already standing on the prow of my ship, her head tossed to the winds like she's more wind and kelpie than child. Aspara is-- oh I cannot think it because if I do I will not go.
And Antiope is waiting, like a beautiful knight, for me to hand over my city to her because she will love is so much more than I was ever able too. She will not leave for war with all the sorrow and peace rolling in her eyes the same way violence is rolling in mine.
“I promise that by the tide or death I will come back. Aspara is staying so I will come home. Will you guide her for me..” I swallow and it tastes like acid and iron and blood. “for us?” Because I am not the only one who will feel the loss of her like a knife. I know her sister will, but she's more like me than Eik, and she is more like the sea every hour. She cannot stay when the sea is calling. I understand of course, it breaks me but I understand. Maybe this have never been home for the two of us.
My blood has always been made for the bottom of the sea.
“And don't let Morrighan burn down the city.” My smile is more sorrowful than anything. I will miss her too, with her rage that echoes mine. She is the only one, in this entire city, who can see all the monstrous parts of me and find twins of them in herself. And perhaps she will hate me for this, but I know that more than anyone else she will understand. I love Denocte too much to destroy it.
But all this magic, all this rage in my soul, it all wants out in the worst way. I do not love the country on the horizon, and oh---
Oh they should be very afraid when they finally see me coming to their shores. They should tremble.
@Antiope
