No matter how many miles I am from the war, or the night-sky, or the memory of blood blooming on the sand like roots in spring, my heart does not silence its wolf-howl or its lion-roar. Even the line sketching black across the horizon, broken up by the sharp shard points of my mountains, does not settle the bottomless war-song.
I wish it would. I wish I could settle my bones into the petal-soft shape of peace, or love, or eternity. I wish I could reform the monster rooting along my bones into something gentler like mothers are supposed to be.
But I am sharp. I have been made sharp by evil things, and fire, and a hunger that has burrowed into my soul like worms.
The brightness that flashes white as sea-foam behind my eyes each time I close them will never stop reminding me. I do not know how to be dull. A war has not whittled down my edges, even when everyone told me it would.
'
Fable still tries. Just as he does now as he rises from the sea to rinse the last of the desert sand from the crease of my spine and the tangles in my mane. I smile at him, the gentlest thing I still know how to do, and both of us turn to look at the horizon as that black line thickens and color starts to paint itself over it like the dawn over the night. My ship trembles and changes from cypress to marble and back again before it can start to sink.
Time starts to trickle back in, hours turned to minutes that race over my heart and pour into my lungs like water. How silly it seems, that it's time that makes my spine ache again where gore and conquest could not. But I remind myself that I am sharp, and iron, and stone. There is nothing that can drown me, not here, not home.
I laugh, knowing that the two bits of my heart waiting below the deck will hear the new lightness it in (like one of the arrows shimmering across my shoulder) and know we are so close. It won't be long now.
I still don't know how to wait, or be patient, or be anything but war-wild now.
The deck creaks below me when I leap from it. And the air billows and howls though my horn, and my tangles, and my chain, as I plummet into the waves with a dragon close behind me (a happy roar dying in the waves as he sinks into them).The water welcomes me home even as it twists and twines around my legs like snakes as I swim for the shore.
And this time I am not spit up by the waves onto the shore of Novus.
This time I rise from them. We rise from them.
I am them.
“Did you really think she was a tender flower you could trample upon, and damage her very soul? She is wildfire. And she is coming to devour you whole.”
Grueling tensions // Want me in a spiral // I'm waiting to unravel // Twisted motives // Drive me in a circle // I'm dying to untangle
All she knows anymore are aches and pains and nausea. How anyone could do this willingly is beyond her, but it became more clear to her why her mom resented her sometimes. If this is how she felt during pregnancy, Morrighan supposes she couldn't entirely blame her.
If many didn't get nervous by her fire, they do now, since any wrong move sets the Regent off. She can tell she's nearing the end of her pregnancy, but it's not just the hormones and pain that's on her mind. She's still not sure if she's taking care of this child alone or not. To say the least, things didn't go exactly as she hoped with Al'Zahra. It's all very complicated and maybe they were never meant to be.
It was a lot easier when she turned down any chance of love. She used to think it was all stupid and childish, but then she let herself fall, and hard. She made a mistake.
Part of her, though, doesn't want to make the child be a mistake. Part of her actually wants to be a mother, as scary and impossible as it feels. But for the love of Caligo, she keeps hoping it'll be the end of it already. It's clear the child has inherited her stubbornness.
Morrighan doesn't usually spend much time by the sea. It never called to her in any particular way, but for whatever reason she finds herself lost in thought by the shores. The breeze sweeps her mane and plays with strands of her hair. Her forelock falls over her eyes and she shakes her head to get it back into place. It's then that she sees a boat and something shifting beneath the waves. She immediately conjures a fireball that hovers by her side and Bram steps forward with his hackles raised. Morrighan is extremely pregnant, but that doesn't mean she would let a threat walk freely onto their land.
When the creatures rise, she realizes that it's no threat at all. It doesn't take her long to recognize the faces of Isra and Fable. It's felt like ages since they left on their quest. They hadn't gone alone either, but it seems they are the only ones here (or the only ones left- she's afraid to ask).
As Isra approaches, the sea acts like a child not wanting to let go of its mother. Morrighan watches with narrowed eyes and the fireball still hovers in the air. Bram has relaxed, but keeps a close eye on his companion. She is still too bitter. What was possibly more important than Denocte? Maybe she will never know or understand.
She transforms the ball into the shape of an arrow and it hisses through the air towards Isra's chest. Morr aims for her heart, but makes the fire disappear before it meets her flesh. In a way it's a warning, but also a greeting.
"You're back," is all the Regent says. It's all she really can say for now.
The sea is singing through my veins in notes of roaring currents and black tides. Note by note the song is rising in pitch. It echoes in my ears like a heartbeat resting just above my own and it pulses behind my eyes like an embedded crown. And it does not quiet as Fable and I rise from the tides with that song echoing between us like another sea, another world, another realm in which there is only us.
That song turns like a wolf to the ball of fire that catches our eyes (and it snarls low in my chest, somewhere between the heart and the belly). I am too fresh from war to notice Morrighan beside it, too full of the lingering echoes in the canyons of my rage to see the flare of her sides. I answer her fury with fury, and her wrath with wrath, because I have forgotten how to speak in any other language but war.
All the sand around her hooves turns to quick-sand and vine. Sulfur stings my nose when the space between us turns to swamp and steel. I want to bellow with the rush of magic and tide when the waves rise up to my knees even though the distant moon is fighting me for the tide. But there are no gods of the night, or of the cosmos, here to take it from me. There is only the hiss of a fire turning into arrow and the roar of salt water blasting from Fable's mouth as he snarls his own echo of my rage. His flaring wings stir up the marsh-water and my eyes water against the tang of rotten brine.
He does not settle when I step forward. He flashes his teeth like weapons and snakes his head back and forth in anxious anger.
The quick-sand and swamp turns to marble as my hooves land upon it and the steel unfolds into flowers all rusted and wicked. My smile is full of too many teeth as I move to Morrighan, only now catching the pregnant flare of her hips (and somewhere, deep below the lingering war in my heart I rejoice at the sight). “Still impulsive. Time has not settled you at all Morrighan.” The arrows on my shoulder blaze to life and set the darkness lingering at the bottom of my gaze to glowing.
I have seen death, that blackness in the sea-blue says. I have become death.
I do not touch her. The sea is still singing in my veins. I do not want to hurt her.
“Did you doubt that I was going to return?” I know my voice holds a touch of laughter, below the fury, to see the embers still blazing just below her skin. And I wonder, as the sea settles at my back and the marble blooms around my feet (but not at hers, I do not trust her enough to change the swamp and quick-sand back to shell), if there are remnants of wildfires blazing across my home.
“Thunder in their hearts. And chaos in their bones.”
Grueling tensions // Want me in a spiral // I'm waiting to unravel // Twisted motives // Drive me in a circle // I'm dying to untangle
Suddenly, the ground beneath her turns to quicksand and she finds herself stuck in place. Morrighan narrows her eyes at Isra's approach and is clearly not impressed with the woman's retaliation to the arrow. Fable appears just as unsettled as she sees him flash his teeth. Her ears pin to the back of her head. Really?
It shouldn't come as a surprise for Isra's return to be so dramatic. The ground turns to marble as the woman walks, yet still Morrighan is stuck in the swamp and quicksand. Flowers turn to steel and rust, reminding the Regent about that garden her and Sirius came upon. When Isra does finally stand in front of her, there is fire at her feet but it does nothing to the transformed ground.
The mare's words don't do much to calm her irritation, especially when she asks her question. "Maybe," she grumbles an answer. Since Isra's quest seemed so much more important than their Court, Morr didn't expect her to come back. Part of her wanted to, but now that she stands here, she finds herself feeling more irritated than the day the woman left. Especially now that she can't move a muscle, it would be much better not having her here.
"Was it worth it?" she asks, referring to the quest she left for. Her tone is as bitter cold as she feels. Maybe she'll always feel bitter about all this, but she supposes she can't be that upset. It allowed her to move up as Regent, which Isra doesn't know yet.
She'll tell her eventually.
"And maybe now that you see I'm not trying to kill you, you can get rid of this shit?" she gestures to all the quicksand, which her legs are slowly sinking further into. She is not amused.
All this bitterness between us feels like a million fractured bits of our hearts laid out on the ground instead of sand and stone. I wonder if my soul can hear the crack, crack, crack of it when I walk across the marble. Does the sulfur in the air hide the acid smell of it, or the dark flavor of fermented fruit instead of cedar smoke?
Does she not know how bitterness spreads like cancer into the marrow of our bones? Has she learned nothing?
I almost ask her as I pull back my magic and turn the sand to dandelion seeds that she will not know the meaning of. I almost say a million other things. But what comes out is, “of course,” in a sigh as tired as my bones who are only starting to learn the ache of immortality. “How could it not be when children will grow up never knowing the meaning of the word chain?” The smell of sulfur changes to brine when Fable settles his wings and his fury.
But I am not settled. Not at all. The bitterness, the fractured trail of my heart between us, has only risen that beast in my bones so close to the surface that I can hear it breathe.
It's whispering as my magic begs for her own. My wrath begs for her bitterness so that I might unmake this shallow world of Morrighan's thread by thread.
“Should I have let them all suffer with death the only relief? Do you think it would have been better to sit in my castle, with my city safe and warm around me, when I had power enough to save thousands?” There is no gentleness in my smile now, no love. There is nothing but teeth and fury enough to melt every bitter inch of ice in his world.
Show me your teeth Morrighan. I want to say. Show me your rage.
Dandelion seeds float up around us in clouds a million wishes we have forgotten about. I do not try to catch a single one. I do not watch them drift out over the sea and gather between Fable's scaled. Neither of us needs wishes, or seeds, or forgotten things.
“Has your world always been so small?” My soul can barely hear the fragments of us shattering beneath my steps as I move close enough for her to burn me. It hardly hears anything but that monster breathing just below my skin.
I wonder if it ever will again.
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Grueling tensions // Want me in a spiral // I'm waiting to unravel // Twisted motives // Drive me in a circle // I'm dying to untangle
Thankfully, Isra doesn't continue to torture Morrighan with the quicksand and the ground transforms to a field of dandelions. Some of the seeds float in the air from the ocean breeze and it tickles her nose. It's hard, but she does her best to hold back a sneeze. The last thing she needs is to lose her composure by having a sneezing fit from the damn things.
The former Sovereign goes on to explain her journey and, while Morr still doesn't know the details, she knows it had something to do with a war and the woman's homeland. Sure, maybe part of her would want to travel back to Ourania too and finish the war they started, but that all felt like ages ago. It's a world she doesn't even consider home anymore, but somewhere foreign and no longer important. She's transferred her roots here in Denocte and it's much more worthy of her energy and time.
Maybe she'll never understand it because she never lived through what Isra endured. There were no children in chains or in other words, there were no slaves. Just a war against two species that seemed to span centuries with no end in sight. A war between magic and a predator's jaws. She's not even sure if there's anything left of that world or if they all had been scattered across realms during that same blackout that brought Morr here.
In all honesty, she didn't know what she'd do if she had the power to save thousands. Would she use it for good or for chaos and destruction? She decides to keep her mouth shut, but her eyes are still narrowed. Especially now that Isra is assuming the Regent's world has always been small.
"No," she says curtly. "I've just always had one family to be loyal to." In a way she's mocking the mare, but it's also the honest truth. It became very clear when she first arrived that she would have to make this new world her home, so she did. She settled into the Night Court, called them her new family and home, and pledged her allegiance to them instead. Here she is now making her way up the ranks, but of course Isra wouldn't know about her promotion. It's almost tempting to mention it, maybe then she would understand, but Morrighan decides to bring that up later.
Her fire disappears. There is only smoke in the air and the smell of burning grass and dandelions. She will always feel bitter about this, but she can at least put her weapon down.
For now.
"Did the others make it?" she asks, referring to the ones that joined Isra on the boat. Morr remembers hearing something about Michael coming back early, but she has yet to run into him again. It's odd to see no one behind the woman now except Fable, which doesn't seem to be a good sign. She hopes they didn't perish at sea, or worse, got caught in the crossfire of Isra's war. It certainly would not help her case.
Perhaps I am supposed to feel like a traitor beneath the embers of her almost-hate. Maybe that's what this is-- the arrow, the fire, the snap of teeth in snarls instead of smiles. But I do not know to bow before things that see in black and white to the kaleidoscope of my world. And even if I wanted to bow my head in shame, in apology, in joy (perhaps in another world all my friends would not be sharp edges and brittle hearts), my spine is weary from the war and it only wants to rest.
But there will be no rest here, not with Morrighan and her sharp and brittle edges. It's in her eyes, that black glare that tells me I will have to pay over, and over, and over again before she will understand and forgive me for a sin that I will never apologize for.
Fable rests his head between us and when I move forward it's to him. He's all scale, and salt, and sea-water and not a single one of his edges his brittle or made of soot and ember. His wing curls above me, he calls it a shield, and I know that he can feel all my edges wearing down and growing brittle. He never wants me to break more than I already am.
I wish I could say the same for the rest of the world.
“They are all on the ship waiting for it to dock.” There is no more I will give her than this. Fable's scales feel cool when I rest my cheek against him, cooling the fire and the rage rising like tides below my skin. My eyes close. I see swords and blood enough to flood a forest.
I open them. Tonight will be soon enough for the memories and the nightmares to come.
“I will not apologize for leaving Morrighan.” This time it's painful to look at her with her loyalty hanging from her like armor. I do not have the energy to try to pierce it. Not now. “So if you have come only to glare at me until I do--” My sigh feels like a snarl at the back of my teeth. “I'm sure you remember the way home.”
“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight.”
Grueling tensions // Want me in a spiral // I'm waiting to unravel // Twisted motives // Drive me in a circle // I'm dying to untangle
Morrighan watches as Isra's dragon envelopes her with his wings. It's like he's comforting her from the Regent's judgmental gaze and words. She won't apologize for it though because while Isra may be a hero, she still left. Maybe she will never understand why Isra still went back. Maybe it doesn't matter anymore.
Morr is relieved to know that the others came back in one piece. It reassures her that maybe this mission wasn't entirely impulsive and Isra still kept them safe.
Even as Isra says she won't apologize, Morr can feel herself backing down a little bit. There will always be a touch of bitterness of course, it would be unlike her to not hold even the slightest of grudges. Surely Isra must expect no less of her after knowing her for so long now.
There is a pause before she says anything though, more for effect than anything else. Maybe it's to make Isra think there is still rage boiling inside her. Her two-colored eyes still look on with a bit of judgment, but then she mutters, "come on" before gesturing for them to get moving. "Let's go home. I want to be the first to buy you a drink."
As she starts to walk back to the Court, the offer surprises her a little, but she wants to be the one to present the former Sovereign back. It'll surely be a big event with everyone cheering and crying over her return (if they aren't already doing that at the sight of the ship).
Yeah, sure, she's happy to have Isra back on the inside.
And maybe even a little part of her is looking forward to her daughter getting the chance to meet her.
When did it become so hard to go from violent to soft, broken to repaired, lost to found? When did I forget how to really smile at the thought of home? I realize now, looking at Morrighan with her fat belly (I know that look well) how far I have risen, or fallen, from the mortal world. I want to step around my dragon's wings, laugh and race her home until our sides are dusted in sweat and our throats parched for the drink.
I want to be happy that's she's not glaring at me. I want to be something other than a god trying to fit into a world to fragile to hold me.
But I worry that I'll never be all the things I want to be again as I follow her as she turns. I smile like I'm not full of everything but the joy I should feel. My voice does not waiver as it should when I laugh and fold my war-toned body into a trot and then a canter. It fades anyway in the roar of Fable's wings as he launches like a weapon into the sky and heads towards his favorite turret in the court.
I will race you home, he says. And I know he only says it because I am still too strange to look at my friend and remember how to be mortal. I do not look at him but my heart soars at the reminder that I do not have to be so cold, and sharp, and broken.
I can just be home.
“I'm surprised there are any buildings left standing in Denocte.” I can hear the hope in my heart, the way my words are trying to stitch me back together into something like I once was. I can hear a story in them, a memory, a legend I know the art of. But I can hear the sea too; I can always hear the sea now.
When my body stretches long and low like a weapon, and we pick up our paces into a gallop, I try to hear only my heart as we race towards home like two friends instead of two bodies who have forgotten the way home.
