Moira Tonnerre
i will burn and burn and burn again, and you will come home safely
Every step forward is like two steps back, a downward spiral she does not know how to halt her journey upon. So Moira digs her own grave, shovels grains of dirt out one by one, lets them fall in a growing mountain of regrets beside the open earth. Gold meets gold and he hisses at her, tongue lashing like that of her family's. Somehow, in some unimaginable way, his words hurt far more than the frozen blocks they stoned her with ever did. Hoarse, she is so hoarse and aching for water when she says "If I do, then it is because Death is the only friend who ever remained beside me."
Perhaps the world sighs again at the infinite sorrow she carries within her breast, the unending maze of pain. For a time, Caine knocked down hedge after hedge until she almost felt alright, until there was almost something like the tickling breath of hope in her chest. When he went away, that breeze died and her gardens of promise wilted until just a single tinder set them alight. Great pyres of memory and once-promises burned in her chest for so long, but they are burning low now. Can he see the smoke in her soul that matches the smoke of her voice when it cracks, when her fallen head does not rise but dark lips merely move to some unseen cadence and pace she sets? "You cannot tell the wind where to blow, you cannot choose where my emotions rise and fall and whom shall receive them. So much is taken, gone, gone, would you take that from me, too, Caine?"
At last she halts her forward attack, at last she meets those golden, grieving eyes. They stare at her, they search for the shred of her humanity which she learned to tuck away and hide her soft underbelly. Over and over and over she did, plating armor on, becoming a creature so unlike that which she could have been, would have been if the world had shown her more than even a half an ounce of kindness.
And the phoenix sighs and shakes her head, curls bouncing and falling into her eyes. Moira does not bother to move them with her next words. "They were dying, they could not be saved." It is soft, it is void, it is an unfathomable and great truth she has been taught since the day she accepted an apprenticeship. You cannot save that which is already dead. "It was a mercy to let the ancestors take their souls and let them rest in the twinkling stars." For death was far kinder than life had ever been to her. The phoenix would not inquire of the children who killed their parents in birth, she had closed herself off to the world that sought to shun her, to destroy her, to make her a scarecrow girl with beads for eyes and straw for guts. They taught her to be strong, but Eluoan taught her to heal. The twins taught her to laugh and trained the corner of her mouth to twitch up, a sly smile upon dark lips as she hid behind books and water fountains.
She is not terrible. She is not made to be a sinner and take from the world until it breaks. "I am not so horrid to desecrate their memory in that way, but I do not care for their lives as I do yours. So no, Caine, I shall not kill you for caring and you shall not slay my physical body." An answer at last slips out, limbs nearly shivering, but from what? Does she shake for the emotion and adrenaline that courses through her? Do her wings tremble from her want of crying that she should not ever let out? There are sobs in her chest pounding at high gates that have been locked and overgrown with ivy and thorns.
At the last moment, the phoenix turns away. Her fire does not touch the weeds that grew where that garden of hope once stood. Instead, a numbness spreads. It begins in her belly, slow and deadly, killing off butterflies that once shook her to her core, burying bile that would make her fall to the ground with sickness and disgust and self loath, covering up the forges of anger and hiding them away. Dished head tilts, an analytical woman rising to the forefront, armor locked in place again. "I wonder, though, what holes will you leave when we part? Something has changed, I can taste it, I can finally feel it." And in those feelings she lets herself become anesthetized. Curtains are pulled shut again, everything is through a fog, a haze, a never-ending night setting itself upon her soul to feast and feast and feast until it is gorged on the pain of a girl who feels her losses like pounds of flesh from her own body. How hungry the beast is.
Its feast continues, and so too do her steps. Moira Tonnerre dips her head in thanks, "It would be a pleasure to have you by my side once more. You can tell me your theories on flight, and perhaps next time I should not fall from boulders so easily." There is the ghost of a smile, or maybe that is just the memory of it, as she turns hopelessly away from the mountains, seeming without direction once again atop these foreign cliffs. Brow furrows again, and she looks back with a raised brow. "Perhaps you should lead, no?"
Perhaps the world sighs again at the infinite sorrow she carries within her breast, the unending maze of pain. For a time, Caine knocked down hedge after hedge until she almost felt alright, until there was almost something like the tickling breath of hope in her chest. When he went away, that breeze died and her gardens of promise wilted until just a single tinder set them alight. Great pyres of memory and once-promises burned in her chest for so long, but they are burning low now. Can he see the smoke in her soul that matches the smoke of her voice when it cracks, when her fallen head does not rise but dark lips merely move to some unseen cadence and pace she sets? "You cannot tell the wind where to blow, you cannot choose where my emotions rise and fall and whom shall receive them. So much is taken, gone, gone, would you take that from me, too, Caine?"
At last she halts her forward attack, at last she meets those golden, grieving eyes. They stare at her, they search for the shred of her humanity which she learned to tuck away and hide her soft underbelly. Over and over and over she did, plating armor on, becoming a creature so unlike that which she could have been, would have been if the world had shown her more than even a half an ounce of kindness.
And the phoenix sighs and shakes her head, curls bouncing and falling into her eyes. Moira does not bother to move them with her next words. "They were dying, they could not be saved." It is soft, it is void, it is an unfathomable and great truth she has been taught since the day she accepted an apprenticeship. You cannot save that which is already dead. "It was a mercy to let the ancestors take their souls and let them rest in the twinkling stars." For death was far kinder than life had ever been to her. The phoenix would not inquire of the children who killed their parents in birth, she had closed herself off to the world that sought to shun her, to destroy her, to make her a scarecrow girl with beads for eyes and straw for guts. They taught her to be strong, but Eluoan taught her to heal. The twins taught her to laugh and trained the corner of her mouth to twitch up, a sly smile upon dark lips as she hid behind books and water fountains.
She is not terrible. She is not made to be a sinner and take from the world until it breaks. "I am not so horrid to desecrate their memory in that way, but I do not care for their lives as I do yours. So no, Caine, I shall not kill you for caring and you shall not slay my physical body." An answer at last slips out, limbs nearly shivering, but from what? Does she shake for the emotion and adrenaline that courses through her? Do her wings tremble from her want of crying that she should not ever let out? There are sobs in her chest pounding at high gates that have been locked and overgrown with ivy and thorns.
At the last moment, the phoenix turns away. Her fire does not touch the weeds that grew where that garden of hope once stood. Instead, a numbness spreads. It begins in her belly, slow and deadly, killing off butterflies that once shook her to her core, burying bile that would make her fall to the ground with sickness and disgust and self loath, covering up the forges of anger and hiding them away. Dished head tilts, an analytical woman rising to the forefront, armor locked in place again. "I wonder, though, what holes will you leave when we part? Something has changed, I can taste it, I can finally feel it." And in those feelings she lets herself become anesthetized. Curtains are pulled shut again, everything is through a fog, a haze, a never-ending night setting itself upon her soul to feast and feast and feast until it is gorged on the pain of a girl who feels her losses like pounds of flesh from her own body. How hungry the beast is.
Its feast continues, and so too do her steps. Moira Tonnerre dips her head in thanks, "It would be a pleasure to have you by my side once more. You can tell me your theories on flight, and perhaps next time I should not fall from boulders so easily." There is the ghost of a smile, or maybe that is just the memory of it, as she turns hopelessly away from the mountains, seeming without direction once again atop these foreign cliffs. Brow furrows again, and she looks back with a raised brow. "Perhaps you should lead, no?"
@Caine | "moira" | notes: A CLOSER AT LAST and her sense of direction is impeccable, as always XD
