She glows. Her heavy strands of black hair slide /
like serpents over somber, blood-red plush.
☼
Contrary to his words, her companion took the helm of their venturing, trailing over the tether that had undoubtedly bound them both. Hälla was helpless to follow, but not within the cloaked stallion’s shadow. She allowed the forest to guide her endlessly forward, deep into the unlocking of memories she had resisted since her awakening. They hummed through the woodland, electrical currents that shot through the shadows and coursed through her limbs. Aching, yearning, within her bloodstream.
More was what she hungered for, and the revelation of light at the end of the path, somehow, was more disconcerting than the shadows that’d sought to swallow them.
Lanterns ebbed in favor of the bloom of fungi, fat and healthy upon the flavor of loamy soil. The bark of the trees as vibrant, limned in the iridescent dappling of sparse sunlight, spreading its rare fingers over the starved forest floor—relieving her skin of the ghastly chill she hadn’t noticed before. It was the birch that caught her hoary eye, tilting her scarred chin in the direction of the trees’ striated trunks.
The desert woman’s expression fluttered with uncertainty, with remembrance, as she parted from her companion’s side and delved into the throng of mist that danced between her limbs, leaving her adrift within a sea of blinding nothingness. She barely noticed, her eyes upon the trees.
This was not the forest that whispered through her dreams; this was not the bed of wildgrass where she had once lain pregnant and alone within a nest of shadow, accompanied by her silence and her tears. It was a devastating relief, like blood pouring from an infected wound, purging the brokenness of her heart in a sea of throbbing red. A tear dewed upon her lashes, slipping, calloused, over her badger-marked cheek.
And when she turned her head to find Avallac’h, she saw only the fog. The wraith like apparitions that drifted in whorls of grey smoke, dancing across her skin until the surge of the clouds took shape; took form.
She was frozen where she stood, her limbs rooted deeply into the earth, her brokenness seeking the health of the earth as her veins reached, and reached, for warmth. Nothing answered the plea of her searching, nothing but the smog and the dismal cacophony of ghosts.
The whisper of fog turned into a trill of words, and the will-o-wisps coalesced into unfamiliar shapes; a tide of faces that danced in and out of her reach. Daring to draw near, and yet, with an outstretch of her touch-starved lips, dancing out of her grasp. Hälla found the conscious will to step after them, to chase their songs and their screams, to escape the darkness that had returned to claim her.
One such shape surged for her, a violent outlier of the rest, and she shied with a suddenness that felt arbitrary. She had stirred from dreams with the faith that she was made of more grit than softness; that certainty in her strength would overcome the cowardice of her fearful heart.
But the woman stumbled, her teeth bared as her tail slashed a line through the fog, the black point of her horn cleaving a space as she brandished, wildly, for the apparition that surged for her. Its teeth had sought her throat; its claws had reached for her heart.
Her pulse leapt within her veins.
And as she slipped to the side, the leathery plush of lips caressed her withers, a wanton tenderness that brought a shiver through her spine, a hungry deviation to the song of the spirits that chilled her to the bone.
I love you. More than anyone ever will.
She did not believe the voice—the memory. She wondered if she had believed it at the time, or if she had spun upon it as she did now, driving her horn through the breast of the specter. It faded with a haunting laugh, with a sob that sounded horrendously of her own, with a clash of violent hooves.
How could you? A voice whispered in her ear, sodden with disappointment; with desolation. By now, her lips were parted with the heaviness of her breath, and her wide eyes sought an escape from the fog. There was no thrall to be found here, not for Hälla.
Memories, perhaps, were not as kind as she had wished them to be.
After everything we’ve been through, the voice persisted, a woman’s. Hälla could not tear her eyes away from the ghost, the mare, that prowled nearer with bared teeth. They stood level at the withers, and yet the desert woman felt inescapably small. I knew you would damn yourself one day, Hälla, the ghoul snarled, and yet the hatred of her voice dripped with misery. But your sister, too?
She had not known she’d had a sister, and neither did she know how to be guilty for a crime she could not recall. Her chin lifted, breaking her from the spell of deference as she bared her teeth, heedless of the tears that had sprung, unbidden, along her lash line. Even so, no amount of mustered pride could heal the fracture that steadily fissured her brimstone heart, unleashing the flame that threatened to consume her.
Her breast ached with the treachery of remembrance, and with the confusion that accompanied such a wretched path to walk. What had become of Avallac’h, she could not say for certain—for no matter where she turned, how she angled her body, the glow of his silvery eyes could not be found through the mist.
And so, as she had through the gloom of the catacombs, Hälla persisted. She did so with vengeance, with fangs bared to the ghosts that dug nails in her heart, into her skin; that punished her with the lash of horrors long past.
The melancholy within her chest did not feel her own. No, it belonged to a girl ages and ages past; left to rot within the toil life had paid her. The viper shed those fragments as a second skin, sloughing the suffering away, peeling it back from the raw nerves that lay underneath.
She pushed forward, towards the light that haloed the open maw of the path once more; an escape from the belly of the beast.
Hälla, they called. Hälla, they screamed.
She could hear their damnation, she could hear their praise. She could hear the hateful intonations of enemies she had fostered, and the lustful allure of bedfellows she had invited. And yet there was no passion to the ardor of her loathing, nor to her loving.
Emptiness stalked her through the woods. A hollowed vacancy where such hunger ought to have laid.
Until—until.
Her steps froze as a gaggle of foals, two, crossed her line of sight. They nipped at one another, a reverential speck of light upon such a dismal horizon, and they shone brighter than the glow at the end of that hellish tunnel. Together, they danced from the path—the indentations of the fog’s artful attention to their eyes turning toward her, their lips parted in laughter at they teethed at one another, as they chased, as they lived a life heartier than she had ever known. Another trailed them, only a year or so their senior, the expression written within the fog betraying the barely-contained ire of an elder sibling.
But she knew—knew, with agonizing certainty, with crippling loss—that she’d once had a child.
This was not the memory she had sought.
Mama!
Their heads turned to her, and her breath froze within her chest, rooting her in place. The eldest of the trio cast her a wearied smile, a roll of their eyes; the children were a bundle of joy, and one that she longed to hold close to her chest.
Come with us! They reared, they danced; they tipped her nickering lips heavenward to coax her into their games. And she, starved for that lost perfection, chanced a step in their direction.
Through the emptiness, she felt the inexplicable pang of a mother’s loss.
Whatever their happiness in this moment, in this memory, she knew that it was not the ending of their tale.
Had it been, they would surely be with her now.
She stepped toward them once more, the calloused stone of her expression chiseled into something soft—into slopes of relief, of hope. She outstretched her muzzle to meet them with affection, to answer their calls and to watch on as they played their games. It would be so simple, to join them in this refuge; to leave the other wraiths behind and to be with her—
Warmth touched her side with a vagueness that was barely a touch at all. Not meant to be tender, but to call her back, to call to her with a voice was real—that was solid.
“Hälla!” It was Avallac’h, the two of them having drawn near enough to the cusp of the lit path that she could see his face through the fog. Her head jerked towards him with suddenness, and when she turned to face her children again, they were gone.
No words could put paint to her harrowed expression, to the loss that glinted in her eyes.
She joined him, wordless—her head still angled toward the path.
And prayed to Solis, to her own heart, to whomever would listen—prayed that the light held more hope than those joyous laughs.
More was what she hungered for, and the revelation of light at the end of the path, somehow, was more disconcerting than the shadows that’d sought to swallow them.
Lanterns ebbed in favor of the bloom of fungi, fat and healthy upon the flavor of loamy soil. The bark of the trees as vibrant, limned in the iridescent dappling of sparse sunlight, spreading its rare fingers over the starved forest floor—relieving her skin of the ghastly chill she hadn’t noticed before. It was the birch that caught her hoary eye, tilting her scarred chin in the direction of the trees’ striated trunks.
The desert woman’s expression fluttered with uncertainty, with remembrance, as she parted from her companion’s side and delved into the throng of mist that danced between her limbs, leaving her adrift within a sea of blinding nothingness. She barely noticed, her eyes upon the trees.
This was not the forest that whispered through her dreams; this was not the bed of wildgrass where she had once lain pregnant and alone within a nest of shadow, accompanied by her silence and her tears. It was a devastating relief, like blood pouring from an infected wound, purging the brokenness of her heart in a sea of throbbing red. A tear dewed upon her lashes, slipping, calloused, over her badger-marked cheek.
And when she turned her head to find Avallac’h, she saw only the fog. The wraith like apparitions that drifted in whorls of grey smoke, dancing across her skin until the surge of the clouds took shape; took form.
She was frozen where she stood, her limbs rooted deeply into the earth, her brokenness seeking the health of the earth as her veins reached, and reached, for warmth. Nothing answered the plea of her searching, nothing but the smog and the dismal cacophony of ghosts.
The whisper of fog turned into a trill of words, and the will-o-wisps coalesced into unfamiliar shapes; a tide of faces that danced in and out of her reach. Daring to draw near, and yet, with an outstretch of her touch-starved lips, dancing out of her grasp. Hälla found the conscious will to step after them, to chase their songs and their screams, to escape the darkness that had returned to claim her.
One such shape surged for her, a violent outlier of the rest, and she shied with a suddenness that felt arbitrary. She had stirred from dreams with the faith that she was made of more grit than softness; that certainty in her strength would overcome the cowardice of her fearful heart.
But the woman stumbled, her teeth bared as her tail slashed a line through the fog, the black point of her horn cleaving a space as she brandished, wildly, for the apparition that surged for her. Its teeth had sought her throat; its claws had reached for her heart.
Her pulse leapt within her veins.
And as she slipped to the side, the leathery plush of lips caressed her withers, a wanton tenderness that brought a shiver through her spine, a hungry deviation to the song of the spirits that chilled her to the bone.
I love you. More than anyone ever will.
She did not believe the voice—the memory. She wondered if she had believed it at the time, or if she had spun upon it as she did now, driving her horn through the breast of the specter. It faded with a haunting laugh, with a sob that sounded horrendously of her own, with a clash of violent hooves.
How could you? A voice whispered in her ear, sodden with disappointment; with desolation. By now, her lips were parted with the heaviness of her breath, and her wide eyes sought an escape from the fog. There was no thrall to be found here, not for Hälla.
Memories, perhaps, were not as kind as she had wished them to be.
After everything we’ve been through, the voice persisted, a woman’s. Hälla could not tear her eyes away from the ghost, the mare, that prowled nearer with bared teeth. They stood level at the withers, and yet the desert woman felt inescapably small. I knew you would damn yourself one day, Hälla, the ghoul snarled, and yet the hatred of her voice dripped with misery. But your sister, too?
She had not known she’d had a sister, and neither did she know how to be guilty for a crime she could not recall. Her chin lifted, breaking her from the spell of deference as she bared her teeth, heedless of the tears that had sprung, unbidden, along her lash line. Even so, no amount of mustered pride could heal the fracture that steadily fissured her brimstone heart, unleashing the flame that threatened to consume her.
Her breast ached with the treachery of remembrance, and with the confusion that accompanied such a wretched path to walk. What had become of Avallac’h, she could not say for certain—for no matter where she turned, how she angled her body, the glow of his silvery eyes could not be found through the mist.
And so, as she had through the gloom of the catacombs, Hälla persisted. She did so with vengeance, with fangs bared to the ghosts that dug nails in her heart, into her skin; that punished her with the lash of horrors long past.
The melancholy within her chest did not feel her own. No, it belonged to a girl ages and ages past; left to rot within the toil life had paid her. The viper shed those fragments as a second skin, sloughing the suffering away, peeling it back from the raw nerves that lay underneath.
She pushed forward, towards the light that haloed the open maw of the path once more; an escape from the belly of the beast.
Hälla, they called. Hälla, they screamed.
She could hear their damnation, she could hear their praise. She could hear the hateful intonations of enemies she had fostered, and the lustful allure of bedfellows she had invited. And yet there was no passion to the ardor of her loathing, nor to her loving.
Emptiness stalked her through the woods. A hollowed vacancy where such hunger ought to have laid.
Until—until.
Her steps froze as a gaggle of foals, two, crossed her line of sight. They nipped at one another, a reverential speck of light upon such a dismal horizon, and they shone brighter than the glow at the end of that hellish tunnel. Together, they danced from the path—the indentations of the fog’s artful attention to their eyes turning toward her, their lips parted in laughter at they teethed at one another, as they chased, as they lived a life heartier than she had ever known. Another trailed them, only a year or so their senior, the expression written within the fog betraying the barely-contained ire of an elder sibling.
But she knew—knew, with agonizing certainty, with crippling loss—that she’d once had a child.
This was not the memory she had sought.
Mama!
Their heads turned to her, and her breath froze within her chest, rooting her in place. The eldest of the trio cast her a wearied smile, a roll of their eyes; the children were a bundle of joy, and one that she longed to hold close to her chest.
Come with us! They reared, they danced; they tipped her nickering lips heavenward to coax her into their games. And she, starved for that lost perfection, chanced a step in their direction.
Through the emptiness, she felt the inexplicable pang of a mother’s loss.
Whatever their happiness in this moment, in this memory, she knew that it was not the ending of their tale.
Had it been, they would surely be with her now.
She stepped toward them once more, the calloused stone of her expression chiseled into something soft—into slopes of relief, of hope. She outstretched her muzzle to meet them with affection, to answer their calls and to watch on as they played their games. It would be so simple, to join them in this refuge; to leave the other wraiths behind and to be with her—
Warmth touched her side with a vagueness that was barely a touch at all. Not meant to be tender, but to call her back, to call to her with a voice was real—that was solid.
“Hälla!” It was Avallac’h, the two of them having drawn near enough to the cusp of the lit path that she could see his face through the fog. Her head jerked towards him with suddenness, and when she turned to face her children again, they were gone.
No words could put paint to her harrowed expression, to the loss that glinted in her eyes.
She joined him, wordless—her head still angled toward the path.
And prayed to Solis, to her own heart, to whomever would listen—prayed that the light held more hope than those joyous laughs.
Speech, @"Avallac'h" @Official Dawn Account
Permission to lightly powerplay Avallac'h given from Neam <3
~
Choice: continue through the fog onto the light
Permission to lightly powerplay Avallac'h given from Neam <3
~
Choice: continue through the fog onto the light
