I hear empire down

Art by Neverr ♥

but somewhere here in between the city walls of dyin' dreams

He stared into a void, and the void stared back.

It was a black hole, a dark opening in the mouth of the sea, looking as if it wanted to swallow him, and he thought that, maybe, just maybe, he wanted it to do so. To eat him. Devour him. One, large bite. He didn't want to die in pieces, but as a whole, or, as whole as he could be, when part of him was fucking missing.

He contemplated the hole in silence. It was...a hole. It might lead somewhere. It might not. Tracks led into it, and it looked like some tracks led out, too, but if it was because you could pass into it and live, or they chickened out, he didn't know.

"Hi, hole," he said in a tentative greeting, his voice an ugly, rasping thing. It didn't answer, and Mauja's brows furrowed slightly, his sick mind trying to wrap itself around it. "Hello," he finally answered himself, figuring it was better than acting as if the hole wasn't talking to him.

Diego glared at the back of his head, but Mauja didn't notice. He just felt the throb in his skull like hammer blows, a demand for something he had long ago forgotten what it was. Food? Rest? He didn't know. Water, maybe? Who cared. Irma's lost. "My- my owl," he began to tell the hole, his voice still a rugged and raw thing, for he had spent weeks shouting her name to the whole forest, "She's.. she's missing." He didn't even know if he was still talking to the hole, or if he was talking to something—someone—else. He was just.. talking.

It surprised him he still had tears left to cry, but they pooled in his eyes, hot and burning and unbidden. His throat closed up. His breath hitched. His jaws trembled—his entire body trembled, skeletal thin, like when they'd just fished him out of the sea. His eyes were haunted, his flanks crusted with dried sweat.

His jaw kept working, but his throat still produced no sound, until the faintest of whispers passed his lips.

"I just want her back."

And the tears fell again, turned into ugly sobs.

[ .. err okay he's losing it @Cahira ]

Like the stars chase the sun over the glowing hill, I will conquer. What subtle schemes! What hazy motivations drove her onwards, back towards the sea, Cahira couldn’t understand; wearied and withering from prior dread, sweat still clung in throngs to her side and, oh, how selfish it was, but what she wouldn’t give to be back home. Maybe in some naive, childish way, that was why the ocean sang so clearly to her, so fiercely, with its steady tide, tenderly lapping at her hooves, something about it reminds her keenly of mother. Maybe it was the hunger in her cumbersome skin to return to the haven where she’d met Abigor, Castiella; Ayla. She cannot think too fondly on the happenstance—how could she! With the vitriolic demeanor of the children—yet something had spoke to her there, some soft murmur of woodland brooks, of the sight and smell of vibrant, fragrant fruits, that it was good, that isle. A sliver of purity somewhere, as far as she knows, is ailing with its lack. There was so much corruption, so much misery and anger broiling in the air, in the odd, new skies, the shadows with eyes. Or, perchance, had she simply been stricken with ill-fate? Was it slander to think of this place as likened to Hades, an abyss— Maybe it was Mother Fate, with needlework and seams, with (more!) devious machination, some new valley for her to cross. She was fortunate, she knows, because she has a nephew and a sister, here and—and it was conceited, unreasonable vanity for her to brood when it had been mercy enough for her to survive her brush with Death, with the thing she had awoken by; and, perhaps, it had been apt, sardonic humor that the jaguar had been what had saved her, had been what had brought her back; granted, with its teeth and claws. But however much she knows it is wrong for her to challenge Fate, as if they were alike, as if she were valuable to the Deity, when she is the consequence of a misstep, as lowly as mere mortals could be. And yet, beneath the piety, it rises with acrid smoke from a burgeoning flame, unmistakable. Loathing. Loathing, she’d been shred of her soul as if it were a toy, something to be grabbed and flung and she’d felt every second Dagr and Nótt had been split, cleaved from her side. From each other. She ought to have still felt it, the frailty in every limb, the compression of her chest until she felt she couldn’t, wouldn’t, breathe again, that she dare not, for the torment breathing brought her. But all she perceived now was a infinite, gaping emptiness, a detached sense of loss, guilt, for not still weeping her folly into unforgiving earth. A deeper, more severe, ache would surely come later, when the shock had worn itself dry, and then there was the words Dallilja had sworn to her, of mother’s demise. Had she even had pause to grieve? To properly mourn the being who had given her life, who had loved— loved her, despite the afflictions her arrival in the world had wrought; the separation from Destry, a daughter she’d actually— she’d wanted. Not the result of a horrid beast. As it may be, if her limbs hadn’t suddenly felt like wobbly lumps of tissue beneath her, and if she hadn’t been forcibly wrenched from her thoughts by the natural inclination of her body to catch itself before she tripped and made a frightful fool of herself, the bumbling idiot traipsing through the woods, she mightn’t have seen him. So appallingly sickly he seemed to be, so forlorn, as to be nearly imperceptible in the eerie, half-light of above,  as if the world itself thought so poorly of him, it’d rather look the other way. He seemed to be in idle conversation with the cavern before him, and truthfully, if he hadn’t seemed so wretchedly pitiful, like the hounds she’d seen cast out into the streets of Arazar to fend for themselves, or if her good-hearing would’ve abated her for the few moments it would’ve took to stride away from him; so she couldn’t hear the plaintive cries he spoke, she would’ve been readily on her way. She’d had quite enough spectrals and fiends for a day, for a month, a year. But his words, the way he enunciated the forfeiture of his owl, there is something that makes her think very dearly of her soul (curses, as if she hadn’t been already), of the bond between her and they, of the affections she had for Dagr and Nótt she couldn’t quite describe, but welled up in the back of her throat, in the sudden difficulty of swallowing. And she had to help him, she had to try, then, and she knew it; there bridged between her and this miserable man a congruity, a sameness of circumstance. Perhaps it was simply a cherished pet, though the abrupt, heartrending sobs made her assume otherwise; perhaps he was from Arazar, too, and there was a primal, sympathetic urge at the sight of his tears which launched her forwards towards him, her voice clambering weakly out of her lungs. "Your owl," and her wide, compassionate gaze struggles to meet his, “You’ll—we, we’ll find her. M-Maybe not tonight, but I’ll, I’ll help you. We’ll find her. I swear.” They are quivering words, at first, solidifying into a firm covenant, and with a throbbing in her chest she continues, gently. “F-Forgive me. But you look terrible. Surely she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t want you to die. You won’t be able to find her if you succumb to fever, or…” Or starvation. He seemed so gaunt, like the faces of children who were too poor, or too sick, to earn the meals the King provided the Capital with. She hadn’t been able to do anything then. She could now. “P-Please. What’s your name?” @Mauja A/N: I am so sorry for the prolonged wait Neo! I hope this extra long reply makes up for the time, thank you for being so patient with me!  Cahira

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