HEATHENS

tie a rope around your neck, and let me kick you off a bungee Had I been able to see, had the Rift not eaten up what I relied to heavily on, I would know he lingered there behind the tree, a familiar figure that was faded from the length of time it had been since I had last seen him. The memory is frayed, torn from time and we are no longer as young as we were, while he was still childish and I was less emotional and present. He is there, recognizing me while I am completely unaware of his presence until he steps out and speaks to me in a deep voice I can barely recognise as his, telling me that I made it. It stops me, because had I made it? Had I gotten through the Portal, through the end, and pulled through? No, the answer was clear in my mind, I hadn't made it - not the me that he knew, the child, with her quick insults and sharp tongue. I am now lost to the mourning, to the despair of witnessing my mother die before me, of knowing that I was helpless and now I'm entirely defeated, stumbling blind through the world with constant panic clawing up my back. I wish I could look to him, could see how he's grown since we last met, that he is shooting past me and I am smaller now - I am hunched, I am bearing the weight of my suffering on my shoulders, crushing bone and battered wings and I feel weak beneath his surprise. "Not quite." I murmur, feeling my lungs struggle to take in air as I answer him slowly, unsure as if that's the right answer because really - I hadn't made it at all. I was falling apart slowly, gradually crumbling now that the brunt of the devastation was over. It was still a mild burn, scalding flesh sizzling and popping slowly as the flames were out but the damage was still there, scarred tissue that plagued the surface of my heart as I think about how much of me truly made it through the destruction of Helovia, through the death of my mother. "You made it too, bőgőmasina." There's a thick tone of harsh, mocking surprise, feigning the doubt that he could have made it through the end, through the rabbit hole and into some twisted realm with corrupted magic and a false god. He had been a bőgőmasina before, perhaps he was one still, weeping his way through catastrophe and coming through to the otherside unscathed. It would be just my shit luck to be the only one so greatly fucked by the Rift's cruel jokes, stripped of my sight for a second time by it's malicious hand. I think some sort of teasing humour will suit me best, to poke and prod and return to whatever childish state I was in before everything fell apart at my hooves, before my mother let herself burn away in the Heart and the gods were crushed by a foreign power. Before my excuse for vision was entirely torn away, leaving my in the same, familiar dark that had consumed me in the first few months of my life. Before my throat bled from my screams, before the world burned around me and I could only wail for forgiveness that would not come. I understand now, why the companions, the followers, the lovers and children of Gaucho had wept so harshly, had fallen into a manic frenzy of denial, had screamed when a distant, foolish child pushed aside their loss so easily. I know why they lashed out, why they fell to their knees and clung to the cooling body of the Sultan, had refused to accept that the fire that burned deep within him was doused and just smoke and ash - they were now whispers of a legacy, and there was nothing left of him to be carried on, not the bridge of the Throat or the ever burning golem, but in the fading memories of his children, his acquaintances, the generation that was there to witness his rise and fall. Understand their backlash against whatever ignorant comments I made on their mourning, because I had fallen to that same low level when my mother too succumbed to Death's vice grip. I fall into a deeper silence, taking in his words of the sun god, rolling them over, reliving the moment I told him that no one cared. It had been the truth then, and it remains the truth now. There truly was no one. Not the gods, not me, not Sikeax, she had had no one. I can feel the tension in my shoulders build at his words, because he has been through something, something awful that has chewed him up into fine grain and loss, spit him out and let him sit with the world a while - the same world that crushed all hopes and dreams, that tore families apart with ease and mutilated children without hesitation. I was the product of that cycle, of the torturous process life puts you through for entertainment, for development and a little fun. I can feel my brows twitch to his words, ears sliding back because I'm sorry - "what has changed your mind? You were so adamant about protecting the beloved sun god before, so what is different this time?" Tell me, bőgőmasina, what has happened to you to make you turn your head from your blissful childish ignorance and admiration?

@Saoirse