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+--- Thread: Witch's Marsh Death doesn't let you say goodbye (/showthread.php?tid=33059)
Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Siarut - March 03, 2019
The cold had never bothered him before, it was easy to shove the feeling away, and hide away the discomfort among his thick fur. No, the cold never bothered him. His mother used to say, that he didn’t fear the cold because nothing compared to the frozen abyss within his own heart. He hadn’t put much thought into it at the time, but now… now he had the time to think.
Thoughts haunted him at all hours of the day, whether he slept of not. The what ifs tormented his waking hours and could have been disturbed his sleeping ones. The ghosts of his past haunted him, following him wherever he went. Shivali, Takiyok, Uki, @Nanook, he had let them all down, and all that was left was his immense guilt, threatening to crush him. It had been months since he had last encountered anyone, aside from the woman in the wood a few days ago. Siarut allowed his loneliness to consume him, this was his punishment. There was no redemption for him, there was no way out. This was his purgatory.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Nanook - March 04, 2019
Nanook tended to @Keen with what assistance @Derg and @Wintersbane would allow her to offer, collecting herbs and showing the men how to best apply the poultices and wrappings so they might find themselves equipped for when she herself was gone. In need as they were of a healer, Nanook did not bind herself to the Vartija. She could not. Her loyalties would never settle with them, and though a pack promised security and safety within the warmth of their number, her feet were calloused from the years of travel. The paths she best knew were the roads best travelled alone.
Yet her duties to Vartija were not yet over, not until she was certain the men could identify the herbs she had used, could recall what she had taught them, and could replicate the process again. They would pay their debt by accepting her teaching. She knew the proposition would be unsatisfactory, but what she wanted most, they could not give her.
The Hollows lay somewhere far behind her, concealed by the frozen tomb of what had once been her home. Here in the marsh, she couldn't see the monumental grave; the forest wrapped thick shadows around her, and she pulled through the mire with nostrils flared for a plant she didn't quite care to find.
Today had been a hard day.
No matter how many debts she collected, no matter how many favours she was owed, what she wanted most, no one could give her.
Tags for reference <3
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Siarut - March 05, 2019
The dim setting helped to calm his senses. The darker the space the easier it was for him to forget, if only for a minute. In the dark, he could reveal his monsters, the demons harbored deep in his soul. It was hard to hide the darkness in the light. He wasn’t sure what stopped his pursuit, just as he wasn’t sure what he was still pursuing. Confusion flocked the man, as he hesitated midstep. He had no interest in eating, nor sleeping, lest he be caught unawares by his own memories that he desperately tried to outrun.
Coming back to his surroundings, Siarut found himself at a crossroads. Staring down the options at his paws. Right or left? Right or wrong? Wrong or wrong? There was nothing left in his life to do correctly, and once again he found that he just honestly didn’t care which path he took. Both options were criminal, and always would be.
His pale fur stuck out like a sore thumb in the waning light. Turning toward the left-hand path, Siarut stared with glazed eyes down his chosen path. Wondering, hoping that maybe this would be it.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Nanook - March 15, 2019
She continued walking, the purpose of her journey partially abandoned. The herb would be here somewhere, and she would return with a collection of its properties, yet her want to find the plant paled next to the barrage of all she pondered. The silence outside her head was a comfort to her; she did not break its cover, nor did she stray from the shadows. Nanook willed the dim light to catch her in its embrace; she felt wholly at home in the shadows the darkness cast.
Her path was unnatural for one so carefully calculated - seemingly aimless - yet even in her spontaneity, she moved with purpose. In places, the mud slicked to barriers of ice, and she braved these, just as she chose the harder road, the one less travelled. Her path wove a pattern as twisting as her thoughts, and as convoluted as the feelings still buried in her chest. They oozed like the mire through the cracking ice, but she did not wish to see now; she would let herself feel, later
For now, she willed her thoughts to run quiet, and told her heart to rest. There were things beyond the difficulty, and the healer chose to turn her focus outward, to the world beyond her narrow one. Eyes which saw the sinking glow, the tired branches beneath the snow - and there, between the boughs, for a moment...
...she saw his ghost.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Siarut - March 16, 2019
A rush of snow fell to the ground, the branches of a large evergreen suddenly unable to handle the weight. Slightly startled by the noise, Siarut paused and turned toward the sound. Watching the snow settle after the disruption, falling into a new norm. Through the blur of the power he caught sight of a phantom, a mirage of one of his failures. His jaw fell open and he shook his head as his breath caught in his throat. His trachea shrinking with the panic rising in his chest.
Stumbling slightly toward the figment of his imagination, Siarut couldn’t bear to pull himself away. She looked so real, that it broke his heart. The agony he had felt in tunnel rushed back, and suddenly the rock that had settled in his chest released. Air rushed into his chest, his chest heaving as hyperventilation took over.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Nanook - March 25, 2019
She blinked and jerked her head back with a start at the figure before her, and expected him to disappear. But he didn't; he remained, and wore a look of equal shock on his face - and it was then she knew - that he was no apparition - that she knew those eyes, that face, this man, and a deep and agonizing weight sunk through her chest, a heaviness wrought by a confusion of loss, and a desire she didn't know how to place. Something different, something new, Something she'd never felt toward any wolf she'd ever known -
any wolf, except him.
And all at once, her shock crashed her over like the torrent of breaking ice, and the reality of him hit her like a meltwater stream. Somewhere in the mess of understanding, she had begun to slip forward, and his name stuck on her tongue. Siarut. Siarut. "Siarut," her breath whisked out in a whisper. He was here, he was real - but something was wrong. The air around him cracked with tension, and she felt his panic reel off him in waves. His breathing was not right, and she felt her heart match the speed.
She stopped in her advance, though she wished to keep moving; she wished to close their distance, and feel his heat around her, but her gut would not let her. Something was wrong, and a high-pitched whine leaked from her throat, filled with the agony of seeing him like this, and filled with the want to hold him.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Siarut - April 02, 2019
Her voice broke the silence between them, a delicate sound. How he wished he could miss this sound, miss the way she spoke his name. But he never had the luxury, not even with Cassie had he been able to escape. No, Nanook had never been far from his mind, often the very center of his darkest thoughts.
She took a step toward him, which was quickly followed by his own retreat. Stepping back, his eyes swiftly shut as tear welled. Her ghost was always the hardest to face. Against his lids he could still see the blood, and his nose twitched from the phantom smell of her scent.
She often came to him, in his dreams. With kind words, and smiles. Things he didn’t deserve, and hurt him more than anything. How he wished she would yell, and scream. But she never did. His dear Nanook. Yet another mistake, and another lost future. A sob retched from deep within Siarut, refusing to open his eyes, his head slumped dropping toward the ground. Defeated.
“Nanook.” He cried desperately, wishing her to finally leave. “I am so sorry.” The conversation always started the same, his hallucination sometimes lasting for hours at a time. But they always had the same conversation, over and over and over and over.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Nanook - April 03, 2019
This thought repeated and refused to leave: that he was real, and that something was wrong. She could tell in the way he pulled away, in the way he closed his eyes from her, and she hurt with the want to help him, and stung with the uncertainty of how. He couldn't mask his anguish, nor hide his grief, even as he hid his gaze from her.
He wretched a sob, and Nanook found she was unable to retain her distance anymore. With a wrench, she unfurled her steps toward him and covered the distance left between. His voice rang with such distress, that her chest burned, and she felt the heat of a cry sting through her throat, yet no noise escaped. No, no - he blamed himself, and she shook her head, even though his head remained bowed, and his eyes closed, and she knew he couldn't see.
"No," she broke the stillness, her voice hoarse, and her thoughts a mess of every word she wished to say. That he had done nothing wrong, that he was not to blame. Not for the lynx, not for the cave-in, not for the blizzard which had made their home a glacial tomb - but her breath drew blank. There were no words to cushion his guilt. Instead, she found herself ushered back to a day long ago, when she had cried in an agony so similar to his own. "I forgive you. I am sorry, too," her head buzzed as she breathed the very words that had once healed her, "I missed you, my ice bear."
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Siarut - April 04, 2019
His breath caught in his throat. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how this conversation was supposed to go. There were no forgiving words, or apologies. She spoke of comfort and the will to keep going, the notion that they would see each other again someday. But she never forgave him, nor did she apologize. This phantom before him was new, a different agony in a familiar silhouette.
The air was displaced as she came closer, and her delicate, confusing words struck a cord. His heart rammed against his chest, he was sure she could hear it. Slowly he opened his green orbs, gazing at the woman hovering before him. It was almost as if she were real.
Perhaps his demons were thinking of new ways to torture him, to manipulate him. Giving him a false sense of safety and security, because he was sure she was real. Closing he distance, and pushing away his fears, he had to feel her. To know that she was there. “Nanook?” He whispered gently, afraid to break the moment. “Are you—are you really—” He choked on the word, to afraid to say complete his sentence.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Nanook - April 04, 2019
When he opened his eyes and slowly set his gaze upon her, it was like the whole world slowed in her course, until the sun stood still, and the flurry of a thousand stars fell from the sky and lighted within to make her body feel as though her bones were on fire. She had not realized his eyes, his face, no matter how full of sorrow, had become like home to her. He was her home, and she drew in a breath, and forgot to let go.
His feeble voice matched his approach; she could still feel the uncertainty written in his steps, and etched into the fabric of every word he spoke. Quiet and broken, she hurt, she hurt to see him like this. So unlike the man she had come to love - and yet, she loved him still. She loved him, and she had not lost him. He was here. He was real, and she had found him.
She had found him. A soft smile played across her face, and broke into the quietest of laughs. Filled with the words she had failed to understand when she had been with him, dancing together, beneath the Borealis, when the glacier had been theirs. She had found him, and he had found her.
And, without fear, she leaned forward to complete the distance, until she met his cheek with a gentle touch, a wordless answer to his searching words.
She was here. She was here. And she would never lose him again.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Siarut - April 04, 2019
For once the world stilled, and the ground felt firm beneath his paws. She grounded him in a way no other could, even his sisters had never held such a weight over him. The idea that she was here, standing in front of him and accepting him, brought him a closure that he hadn’t realized he had needed.
A strangled, and happy wet laugh dragged from his lungs, as she leaned into him. She was here, and she was real. Alive. Finally the tears fell, but not from sadness or despair. No, for the first time in a very long time, he was happy. Honestly and truly happy, straight down to his core.
“You’re really here.” He couldn’t bring himself to pull away, instead he whispered into her ear. Encapsulating them in a world that was purely their own.
“I thought…” He trailed off, the ache in his chest still present at the very thought that she had perished in the caves. “Oh god, Nanook.” He sob softly, pushing forward into a desperate hug.
RE: Death doesn't let you say goodbye - Siarut - April 25, 2019
He had thought he dead, but she had risen to show him the way. Teach him how to love and love again. He embraced her with all the night he had left, which was surprising little given his giant form. The man on the cusp of defeat, the brink of death had joined his love in the light.
Tears freely flowed against his cheeks, Siarut sighed in happiness. Glee energizing his frigid heart. Nanook was alive, and with her a new beginning had begun.