Tell me something nice
Like flowers and blue skies
Like flowers and blue skies
She watched Edana burn, watched it fall into disarray as the darkness spilled out over the wall, creeping into the safety of the main region, bringing destruction in its wake. She had fled with it hot on her tail, had pleaded with higher powers, with Cosmos and Halla, to let Pyrrha be safe. It was déjà vu, panting and screaming until her throat was raw and bloodied, wielding Ruinam against the dark tide. All she had wanted was to see Pyrrha to safety, to see the Southern people of Edana to safety, to do what she could not in Nordlys' final moments. But fate had different plans for her.
In an instant was returned to the wretched familiarity of an open, empty expanse, filled only by the twinkle of starlight. Her arrival was met with nothing but deafening silence, not with the tormented cries of her gods nor the cries of her slaughtered people as it had been before. She couldn't decide which was worse. She had wept for eons within these confines, listened to the hollow sobs that rattled her ribs; she watched the twinkling starlit tears slip from her cheeks and into the endless black, wished them luck as they joined the billions of others she had shed. And returned to her purgatory, the tears began to flow once more, her cheeks stained with her sorrows, skin crawling with glistening stardust— she had thrashed and screamed, had hissed and snarled like a cornered animal as the void had swallowed her up, taking her away from the chaos of the death of a world.
She had tried to bargain, to plead, begging to be returned to Edana, to burn with it, it's ruin hauntingly similar to that of Nordlys. Was she truly so cursed, that she had to witness the demise of two homes? To witness the deaths of thousands, millions, mortal and god alike — oh the things she had seen! How marred and heavy her conscious was, dripping with the golden ichor of her gods. Why had she been chosen to survive and endure such hardship and heartache, why had fate cruelly selected her to torment in this starlit hell? These questions had rolled from her tongue, from quivering lips broken sentences were spilled, but there was never an answer.
She cannot tell how long she was there, adrift in nothing, waiting for something — she only knew that her tears had run dry and that no matter how much time passed, the sharp pain in her chest would not dissipate. She was tired and weary, weighed down by her survivor's guilt, by the idea that she may not escape a second time. She held Ruinam in her grasp, the only thing to keep her company, the cold bronze tip resting against her skin, the pressure delightful to her tarnished mind. But she never went farther than that, for she valued her life too much, valued the chance that she would be freed someday. And she had convinced herself Ruinam didn't want to pierce her flesh either, loyal to its wielder. What a horrible fate immortality is, condemned to witness the deaths of your people and gods, to outlive them all, to exist in nothingness. Never to age nor rot, left only with memories of worlds now ruined.
Was she the last of her people? The Final Daughter, the Last Matraan, sentenced to eternal solitude. She knew it so, fate cruelly crushing her hopes of finding survivors, of rebuilding her tribe on foreign soil. For the survivors of Nordlys' ruin had been scattered, few and far between, sent to lands beyond her reach, likely to die horrible deaths in unfamiliar lands. She thought of Pyrrha, whose fate was unknown, proud and beautiful and fiery as the desert sun. She tried not to think of the antlered warrior's untimely death, of life wrenched from her grasp by shrouded shadows and hellfire, ashes burning up with Edana. And she thought of the beauty of the North, draped in fine furs and worn leather, a daughter of stars and snowy peaks. She thought of Cosmos and Halla, whose existences ceased to be millennia ago, and yet her prayers were still for them, hoping by some miracle her gods and escaped their horrible undoing.
There is a moment in time where her prayers are answered, either by pure coincidence or a purposeful act by a benevolent deity — before her, a tear in her void, a rip in the starlit backdrop she has been suspended in for eons. It sizzles against the black skin of her purgatory, ripped open by invisible hands, a toothy maw agape before her. It opens to reveal a prairie, golden and green fields and rolling hills, gloriously familiar to her desperate mind. Frantic limbs kick and thrash at the sight, a slate muzzle reaching out, straining to touch the tear in reality. Something nudges her forward, through the rip in the fabric of space, and she is tumbling out, free at last.
Her first thought is to reach for Ruinam, to arm herself with the bronze headed spear, to find comfort and safety in the familiar wooden shaft. But as her mind reaches, she comes up empty handed, grasping at air and grass and dirt instead. And somehow, this feels so much worse than being alone in that endless void, than watching her gods unravel before her very eyes — she is alone in unfamiliar territory, with nothing but tooth and hoof to defend herself and tears she didn't know she was crying. Hunched over like a pathetic babe, she weeps crystalline tears that fall like dew drops into foreign grass.
This is not the Nord Prairie, this is not her home.
She doesn't even feel at home in her body, unable to stand as her knees buckle, as her stomach growls and her skin blisters beneath the sun. She doesn't feel whole, doesn't feel right, something is missing that she can't quite place. She would wretch if she could, mouth agape in some silent scream as amber eyes wander the beautiful field she's been placed in. The sun is hot against her back, having been comfortable with the chill of her starry prison. Her forehead brushes against warm dirt and rests there, laid down in defeat. "Item non, commodo non iterum," her words are nothing more than a hoarse whisper in her native tongue, a plea made to her gods and the gods of this realm, to the sun and the dirt beneath her, to the tears she sheds that lack the stars of her past.
