Post by Beets The Beetle (Feenix) on Jul 5, 2022 14:27:28 GMT
Following on from: Qirliria's Lament
I lay resting against Qirlira for what seemed like hours…I’d felt the approach of others at times…heard the call of my name from friends voices in my ears. The light rest of a hand on my shoulder, a gentle stroke on my hair. Each time though they seemed distant, muted. As if they were just echoes and weren’t really there. Nothing could break through the void of grief that surrounded me now.
———
The thudding of deep wing beats roused me. It could be one of them, one come to take revenge on Zanathir for taking down their mother..and so many of their siblings.
But as I raised my head, I saw the form of the enormous moon mother herself, head hung low, her jaws and claws splattered with gore as she landed on the opposite bank before slowly breaching the…river…The waters quenching the last of her broiling rage…washing away the filth of her prey.
She takes slow mournful steps towards us, water dripping from her washed snout like a flood of fresh tears…Yet the look in her eyes shows she is beyond tears now…We both are…
She takes in Qir’s body. Her torn wings rippling slowly in the breeze. The scales scattered around her like broken glass. Her proud crescent horn, now shattered and broken on her crown. The blood, like a final trail of teardrops streaking from her closed eye.
We say nothing..We don’t need to…
Eventually I find my voice, weak and cracked, my throat raw from screaming and searing hot dragon blood…
“Where..Where will you take her?”
"Home, where she belongs…” comes the surprisingly soft voice of Zanathir. There is no anger, but the grief is unmistakable.
I give a nod, small and accepting. “Home.” I echo, “With her…Mama…”
Slowly I find the will to lift myself away from Qir, giving her face a final gentle stroke with my fingers as they lift and leave her. Before, with huge amount of difficulty, I stagger my way towards her mother, getting down on my hands and knees, pressing my head low into the remains of the dew drop grass before her.
“I’m so so sorry…I-I didn’t mean for this to happened…I didn’t mean for Qir to die…It’s…” I stifle a sob I wasn’t expecting, a final flood of tears flowing forth as if to confirm my guilt “…it’s all my fault. I should never asked her to come!”
I wait for the rage. For the torrent of confirmations and insults to be hurled at me. “Yes your fault! You should have kept these pathetic mortal matters to yourself! Your actions have cost me my daughter-INSECT!” I wait for the strike..the bite…That will be my end.
But instead, “Qirliria was her own dragon. Do not presume to take on the burden of her choices when she made them freely…”, come Zanathir’s words slowly.
There’s a pause during which I lift my head to see the sorrowful face of a mother accepting the loss of her young, before she turns gaze away from Qir to cast down upon me. “She spoke of you, Beets the Beetle. Said your story may have started in strife but that your bravery and strength could see it change into something…” She stopped, as if holding herself back from saying the words, looking away for a moment as if listening, awaiting for a response on some silent conversation, before dipping her head with smallest of acknowledgements and then turning her head back to finish, “..different.”
I take in her words, rolling them over in my mind, “strife…bravery…strength…something..different.”
I then speak aloud a question. One that had ebbed away at me as I has laid there that morning. One that a child would ask a mother.
“Why does everyone I love have to go away?”
I don’t expect a response, don’t expect Zanathir to even hear, my voice is so weak…Yet she hears all the same.
“The ones we love never really leave us.” She says as she slowly, gracefully, makes her away past me, walking over to the body of her daughter, before gently, effortlessly, cradling her up into her arms. Adjusting her wings, wiping the trickle of blood from her eye like a mother wiping a speck of fluff from the cheek of a newborn babe, before staring sorrowfully, lovingly at the last echos of her daughter on this beautiful, cruel world. “They live on… in our memories and in our hearts.” And with that she turns, flits of light lifting from her scales to form a radiant beautiful magical swirlin’vortex, which closes around her and her daughter…Leaving me alone on the grassy plane…With my memories..and the last of my tears.
———
I lay awake in my room later that night. The events of day running through my head. The list of names of the dead Jenna had read aloud in the remains of the courtyard. So many I’d lost count, lost sense to even feel sad for the few I knew.
And then he’d appeared standing high above us all, Coll. Normal, smiling Coll…Just as I’d last see him the last time inside that ruby gem..Just like all the times I’d flitted up to him at the bar in The Great Hall. His easy stance, warm smile and likely tankard polishin’hands being all the 'welcome home’ I ever needed.
Yet his smile seemed uneasy, not right. And his words confirmed it as he spoke. He wasn’t coming back…He was part of the city now, part of Gadenthor. I’d knew in my heart when I’d seen his broken body that day when he’d fallen back to earth that he really had died. That no amount of magic could really bring him back…Yet I hadn’t really…Hadn’t wanted to have to accept that he really was truly gone.
I helped where I could around the Fort. Moving the injured on stretchers, clearing rubble from doorways, heaving the corpses of yanki-dragons off the fort walls, like ugly warts across its soft pink surface. No one really spoke to me, many had saw me fighting out with Qir last night, or had heard of tell the fairy that had sat out with the beautiful moonlight dragon body, waiting till it’s mother had returned, before both of them just then vanishing again, as suddenly as they had appeared.
I looked about my room, the scrapes and scratches of my ‘bug’ self-lockup fainter but still visible on the floorboards and wood panelling skirting the walls, as if buffed for many an hour by magically controlled polish soaked rags. My bed had been replaced too, fresh and plump with an orange and yellow patchwork blanket picked out for me by Jenna. Though I had yet to even lay on the thing, let alone try to sleep on it, much preferring my moon and starlit roof top naps. It didn’t feel right, but Jenna confirmed she wanted everyone not on nightwatch inside the Fort or undercover-even me!
My eyes glanced toward the thick new door, thinking just how much trouble I’d get for slipping out anyway, when I saw it hanging on the hook, as if just waiting for me to notice it. Marto’s cloak. A little torn and ragged in places from one of my outbursts, but still there..Still present..Just waiting.
I tried to ignore it, tried to turn my eyes away from it…But before I knew it I had it wrapped around me, slumped down against my door, taking deep breathes of the now faint but still just noticeable piney woody smell it held. I knew what I really wanted right now…To feel his arms safe around me, just as he had done in here months before when he’d come to check up on me. To save me. But no one had seen him for weeks…He’d disappeared after his..’trip’..After his..embrace..with Zola. I remembered his words as he’d looked into my eyes…“It’s what friends do. They help each other.... stand beside one another when they need the support... they protect each other. ”You're not alone, Beets.” “Oh Marto…” I murmured, as the faint smell of pine soothed me off to sleep. “Where are the bug you?..."
I lay resting against Qirlira for what seemed like hours…I’d felt the approach of others at times…heard the call of my name from friends voices in my ears. The light rest of a hand on my shoulder, a gentle stroke on my hair. Each time though they seemed distant, muted. As if they were just echoes and weren’t really there. Nothing could break through the void of grief that surrounded me now.
———
The thudding of deep wing beats roused me. It could be one of them, one come to take revenge on Zanathir for taking down their mother..and so many of their siblings.
But as I raised my head, I saw the form of the enormous moon mother herself, head hung low, her jaws and claws splattered with gore as she landed on the opposite bank before slowly breaching the…river…The waters quenching the last of her broiling rage…washing away the filth of her prey.
She takes slow mournful steps towards us, water dripping from her washed snout like a flood of fresh tears…Yet the look in her eyes shows she is beyond tears now…We both are…
She takes in Qir’s body. Her torn wings rippling slowly in the breeze. The scales scattered around her like broken glass. Her proud crescent horn, now shattered and broken on her crown. The blood, like a final trail of teardrops streaking from her closed eye.
We say nothing..We don’t need to…
Eventually I find my voice, weak and cracked, my throat raw from screaming and searing hot dragon blood…
“Where..Where will you take her?”
"Home, where she belongs…” comes the surprisingly soft voice of Zanathir. There is no anger, but the grief is unmistakable.
I give a nod, small and accepting. “Home.” I echo, “With her…Mama…”
Slowly I find the will to lift myself away from Qir, giving her face a final gentle stroke with my fingers as they lift and leave her. Before, with huge amount of difficulty, I stagger my way towards her mother, getting down on my hands and knees, pressing my head low into the remains of the dew drop grass before her.
“I’m so so sorry…I-I didn’t mean for this to happened…I didn’t mean for Qir to die…It’s…” I stifle a sob I wasn’t expecting, a final flood of tears flowing forth as if to confirm my guilt “…it’s all my fault. I should never asked her to come!”
I wait for the rage. For the torrent of confirmations and insults to be hurled at me. “Yes your fault! You should have kept these pathetic mortal matters to yourself! Your actions have cost me my daughter-INSECT!” I wait for the strike..the bite…That will be my end.
But instead, “Qirliria was her own dragon. Do not presume to take on the burden of her choices when she made them freely…”, come Zanathir’s words slowly.
There’s a pause during which I lift my head to see the sorrowful face of a mother accepting the loss of her young, before she turns gaze away from Qir to cast down upon me. “She spoke of you, Beets the Beetle. Said your story may have started in strife but that your bravery and strength could see it change into something…” She stopped, as if holding herself back from saying the words, looking away for a moment as if listening, awaiting for a response on some silent conversation, before dipping her head with smallest of acknowledgements and then turning her head back to finish, “..different.”
I take in her words, rolling them over in my mind, “strife…bravery…strength…something..different.”
I then speak aloud a question. One that had ebbed away at me as I has laid there that morning. One that a child would ask a mother.
“Why does everyone I love have to go away?”
I don’t expect a response, don’t expect Zanathir to even hear, my voice is so weak…Yet she hears all the same.
“The ones we love never really leave us.” She says as she slowly, gracefully, makes her away past me, walking over to the body of her daughter, before gently, effortlessly, cradling her up into her arms. Adjusting her wings, wiping the trickle of blood from her eye like a mother wiping a speck of fluff from the cheek of a newborn babe, before staring sorrowfully, lovingly at the last echos of her daughter on this beautiful, cruel world. “They live on… in our memories and in our hearts.” And with that she turns, flits of light lifting from her scales to form a radiant beautiful magical swirlin’vortex, which closes around her and her daughter…Leaving me alone on the grassy plane…With my memories..and the last of my tears.
———
I lay awake in my room later that night. The events of day running through my head. The list of names of the dead Jenna had read aloud in the remains of the courtyard. So many I’d lost count, lost sense to even feel sad for the few I knew.
And then he’d appeared standing high above us all, Coll. Normal, smiling Coll…Just as I’d last see him the last time inside that ruby gem..Just like all the times I’d flitted up to him at the bar in The Great Hall. His easy stance, warm smile and likely tankard polishin’hands being all the 'welcome home’ I ever needed.
Yet his smile seemed uneasy, not right. And his words confirmed it as he spoke. He wasn’t coming back…He was part of the city now, part of Gadenthor. I’d knew in my heart when I’d seen his broken body that day when he’d fallen back to earth that he really had died. That no amount of magic could really bring him back…Yet I hadn’t really…Hadn’t wanted to have to accept that he really was truly gone.
I helped where I could around the Fort. Moving the injured on stretchers, clearing rubble from doorways, heaving the corpses of yanki-dragons off the fort walls, like ugly warts across its soft pink surface. No one really spoke to me, many had saw me fighting out with Qir last night, or had heard of tell the fairy that had sat out with the beautiful moonlight dragon body, waiting till it’s mother had returned, before both of them just then vanishing again, as suddenly as they had appeared.
I looked about my room, the scrapes and scratches of my ‘bug’ self-lockup fainter but still visible on the floorboards and wood panelling skirting the walls, as if buffed for many an hour by magically controlled polish soaked rags. My bed had been replaced too, fresh and plump with an orange and yellow patchwork blanket picked out for me by Jenna. Though I had yet to even lay on the thing, let alone try to sleep on it, much preferring my moon and starlit roof top naps. It didn’t feel right, but Jenna confirmed she wanted everyone not on nightwatch inside the Fort or undercover-even me!
My eyes glanced toward the thick new door, thinking just how much trouble I’d get for slipping out anyway, when I saw it hanging on the hook, as if just waiting for me to notice it. Marto’s cloak. A little torn and ragged in places from one of my outbursts, but still there..Still present..Just waiting.
I tried to ignore it, tried to turn my eyes away from it…But before I knew it I had it wrapped around me, slumped down against my door, taking deep breathes of the now faint but still just noticeable piney woody smell it held. I knew what I really wanted right now…To feel his arms safe around me, just as he had done in here months before when he’d come to check up on me. To save me. But no one had seen him for weeks…He’d disappeared after his..’trip’..After his..embrace..with Zola. I remembered his words as he’d looked into my eyes…“It’s what friends do. They help each other.... stand beside one another when they need the support... they protect each other. ”You're not alone, Beets.” “Oh Marto…” I murmured, as the faint smell of pine soothed me off to sleep. “Where are the bug you?..."