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+--- Thread: Stavanger Bay So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders (/showthread.php?tid=49565)
So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Rosalyn - January 05, 2022
Idk why I decided violence tonight but... set a few days after prev thread. aw <3 tag for reference
(could also easily be RO'd)
(could also easily be RO'd)
This place held history. There were ghosts here, flitting through her mind, memories she barely recalled but that hit more poignantly than she could almost bear.
@Erzulie and she, running upon the sand, beneath the cliffs. Her wife's presence wove through this place, yet there was no trace of her. Where had she gone? Where had they all gone?
There had been others. They'd been important, once, but now...
Rosalyn was hit with a keening sense of loss as she walked along the bay's curve. Her eyes ran over the cliffsides with desperation but she saw nothing. How was there nothing here?
She was alone. She was...
Something in Rosalyn fractured. Panicked fear flooded and overwhelmed all of her carefully constructed facades. She didn't know what was happening. She did not know why everyone was leaving her. She did not know what the world around her was becoming. And she did not know how to deal with this grief she felt.
Rosalyn's breath caught as she sobbed, then raised her muzzle in a call that was so sharp with desperation, it almost sounded like a scream. Where are you?
She didn't stop until she ran out of air and it stuttered out. Then she crumpled to the sand where she was, gasping, sobbing in the sand next to the ocean's quiet pull.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Erzulie - January 05, 2022
omg u really did choose it D;;;
the obsidian decided to head south along the edge of the sunspire again. once the coast was in sight, she would veer up between ankyra and the tangle, back within the welcome protection of sapphique once more.
what erzulie discovered was the trail of rosalyn, too new to have been an earlier excursion. she looked down along the shoreline and frowned. the tanzanite and herself had both been searching, but rosalyn would not have left sapphique in her wife's prolonged absence were it not important.
and so erzulie did not return to sapphique. she followed her mate's trail along the cold and saltladen coastal land.
the terrain became more familiar. she knew where this path led. and she knew, with a sinking feeling, that mireille would not have come so far. it was something else that drew rosalyn here. but it was hope that her wife knew something she did not which kept the obsidian moving: it was more than that, worry, driving worry —
rosalyn was screaming. rosalyn did not scream. erzulie could not have explained how she entered the bay so swiftly, propelled perhaps on a wave of terror.
she found her wife crumpled on the sand, sobbing in a thoroughly helpless way that she had never thought possible. erzulie threw her arms with desperation around rosalyn. "i be here, love!"
and around them the shades of ironsea flowed.
what erzulie discovered was the trail of rosalyn, too new to have been an earlier excursion. she looked down along the shoreline and frowned. the tanzanite and herself had both been searching, but rosalyn would not have left sapphique in her wife's prolonged absence were it not important.
and so erzulie did not return to sapphique. she followed her mate's trail along the cold and saltladen coastal land.
the terrain became more familiar. she knew where this path led. and she knew, with a sinking feeling, that mireille would not have come so far. it was something else that drew rosalyn here. but it was hope that her wife knew something she did not which kept the obsidian moving: it was more than that, worry, driving worry —
rosalyn was screaming. rosalyn did not scream. erzulie could not have explained how she entered the bay so swiftly, propelled perhaps on a wave of terror.
she found her wife crumpled on the sand, sobbing in a thoroughly helpless way that she had never thought possible. erzulie threw her arms with desperation around rosalyn. "i be here, love!"
and around them the shades of ironsea flowed.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Rosalyn - January 05, 2022
Once she'd given it freedom, the fear consumed her. She shook with it as she rocked with sobs, not noticing her wife until she had circled her. Even then she was helpless to stop.
They're gone.She choked it out, but it wasn't much of an explanation.
Was it they who were lost? Or herself?
There was an emptiness in her that was beginning to yawn wider, blackening her edges. She barely registered Erzulie's presence in her panic beyond that response. She ached to call again but (thankfully) was too out of breath to manage it.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Erzulie - January 05, 2022
"who?"
there was no recognition in rosalyn.
there was no recognition of her in rosalyn.
erzulie finally identified the lurching sensation in her stomach as fear. "rosalyn, look at me," she urged, trying to keep her voice steady. "you are not alone."
sobo had thought his mother was sick. erzulie found herself panicking that the tanzanite's eyes would not clear enough to see her.
there was no recognition in rosalyn.
there was no recognition of her in rosalyn.
erzulie finally identified the lurching sensation in her stomach as fear. "rosalyn, look at me," she urged, trying to keep her voice steady. "you are not alone."
sobo had thought his mother was sick. erzulie found herself panicking that the tanzanite's eyes would not clear enough to see her.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Rosalyn - January 05, 2022
I don't know,she moaned reflexively, but she didn't look at her. It wasn't until Erzulie pulled her attention that her eye finally set upon her wife.
Erzulie.The relief was palpable. The panic didn't immediately leave her, but she pressed herself close, as if to assure herself that her wife was actually there. This was a place of ghosts.
She shouldn't be here.
Rational thought was still just beyond her, along with the inevitable shame this would bring her. There was no hiding this any longer. Both of these would perhaps reappear when fear ceased to drive.
We need to go.Something had happened here... something violent. She remembered.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Erzulie - January 05, 2022
finally; finally
she let out her breath and held her wife for a long, haunted moment.
the fear was still tangible in every line of rosalyn's body, and erzulie did not understand. her eyes said as much, expression half-determined, half-pleading. "all right. we be goin' now," she said, opting not to question to ask; she only wanted to pull rosalyn to her feet and bring them both home, to the safety of sapphique and their family where she could at last truly look at her wife and search for the truths she did not want to know.
she let out her breath and held her wife for a long, haunted moment.
the fear was still tangible in every line of rosalyn's body, and erzulie did not understand. her eyes said as much, expression half-determined, half-pleading. "all right. we be goin' now," she said, opting not to question to ask; she only wanted to pull rosalyn to her feet and bring them both home, to the safety of sapphique and their family where she could at last truly look at her wife and search for the truths she did not want to know.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Rosalyn - January 06, 2022
She allowed herself to be led silently at first. Rosalyn kept herself close to Erzulie, but as the fear faded, the silence became heavier. Without the panic to scatter them, the pieces of what had happened began to piece themselves together.
She did not know why she had come out here. But she knew what she had done, and the truth of it weighed like a stone in her midsection. Her fear had been real, and she could feel it lurking still, focused on a place she knew now she would never return to. But she had no right to come here, to drag her wife into this, and to display such weakness before her family. First Sobo, now this.
She was tired. There was nothing she could say that would fix this, so she resigned herself to the fate of explanations. Some of it she would be unable to... the why, the how, the when. In fact, most of it she had no clue about. And, when she thought of that, the fear threatened again. She swallowed, dropped her head, but continued forward with even breaths.
Some small hope in her thought perhaps, now that her wife knew, there was something that could be done. She wished she hadn't needed to but... there was a chance. However minute, she'd take it.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Erzulie - January 06, 2022
erzulie remained pressed to rosalyn's side as they slowly made their way back along the beach. her wife had come so far and found herself here. the obsidian had ranged the same and had lost herself in the season.
guilt ravaged her mind. she should have been here. she should have listened to sobo and come back the next day — she could not keep herself from assuming the blame for this. the tanzanite was not herself. she should not have been alone.
it was another thing with which she must live.
her mind raced, to medicines, to her own knowledge which was both immediate and rudimentary. erzulie was able to clean and wrap a wound during battle, but she — was there a plant she might find for rosalyn?
she began to sing a light french song, one of those she had put on for her children in their infancy. and she forced herself not to weep. her mate was here. they would go home. erzulie clung to those truths.
guilt ravaged her mind. she should have been here. she should have listened to sobo and come back the next day — she could not keep herself from assuming the blame for this. the tanzanite was not herself. she should not have been alone.
it was another thing with which she must live.
her mind raced, to medicines, to her own knowledge which was both immediate and rudimentary. erzulie was able to clean and wrap a wound during battle, but she — was there a plant she might find for rosalyn?
she began to sing a light french song, one of those she had put on for her children in their infancy. and she forced herself not to weep. her mate was here. they would go home. erzulie clung to those truths.
RE: So we built a fortress of red bricks and ladders - Rosalyn - January 06, 2022
They had never been unequal before.
Rosalyn felt a deep welling of shame, mingled with an even deeper affection, as Erzulie began to sing. Maybe it was simply this that she hadn't wanted to change. If she admitted that things were different, that she could no longer even number the children of previous years, then she would be admitting that she was no longer worthy of her place at Erzulie's side.
But she knew.... she knew it was not like that. What they had ran deeper than this. It wasn't that her wife would turn away from her that she worried about... it was that she would pinion her here with her, pull her alongside, become something that was more burden than partner. Let the sea take me first.. It had taken far better than she.
She wasn't sure what else to do. So she began to hum along. Even when her mind was sound, she had never been able to pick up the lilting words of her wife's home tongue. The melody was beautiful, though, and familiar.