Bramblepoint but i'm only human

set a few hours after this thread. tags for reference. <3

praimfaya bears it, until she cannot.

she bears it until the weight it feels like it is crushing her chest, her heart, her lungs. she does not want to leave @Opalia who mourns the death of her brother probably more than praimfaya does ...but does she believe that? she loves ...loved @Dacio, too.

her heart splinters for a third time and a part of her dies with her klikalida; more painful somehow than losing her parents. older. wiser. more understanding. more guilty ...because, because she should've done more. surely, she could've saved him if she'd tried.

when moonspear feels like it, too, might crush her; praimfaya flees. she has no destination ...but the world outside of hydra's domain offers her no solace. the pain, spirits, the pain remains. it remains and eventually; exhausted and gasping for breath — from running, from the sobs that would surely bring tears would she be able to cry — praimfaya collapses in the swaddling dark of bramblepoint.

wishing she could feel someone other than this pain

...or better yet, nothing at all.

Kind of all over the place because I was deliberating Yao's belief system : /

He could hear sobbing in the woods. The noise elicited a range of emotions, but fear was the strongest. He was not the most spiritual or religious member of his family, but he believed in the stories. He knew that there were things beyond his knowing, stronger and faster than him or any other wolf, things that no one could rightly explain.

He did not know if this place had spirits like home did, and if they did, he did not know if they behaved in the same way as those where he lived. He knew how to placate the spirits back home. He participated in the rituals and gave sacrifices to his familial ancestors at their shrines. But here, far, far away, without anyone to guide him, he had no idea how to move forward.

This was all assuming that the creature eliciting the sobs was something 'not of this world'. It could be far more mundane, and the spiritual fear that shot through him could be purely due to the strange new world he now found himself in. The sobbing went on as he deliberated. Sighing with resignation, he tracked the sound to its source. A she-wolf. She looked rather mundane, with silver fur and...scars on her shoulder. He laughs to himself internally and he shook his head at his own superstitious panic. Spirits don't have scars. He keeps his distance for the moment, chuffing softly to her direction. Mortal wolf or not, she could be dangerous.

the sound of approaching footfalls nearly goes unheard over the sound of her own weeping. for a moment, as she sobers and stifles the worst of the sobs wracking her body ...she contemplates not caring. not caring if her guard is down and in her vulnerable state of grief, weak. what happens when death comes for its commander? the question is desperate, wild; unanswered. as she realizes the footfalls draw nearer still she sobers up entirely; letting the gates slam shut. she will barricade herself in her fortress of stone; unwilling to allow anyone to see that beneath the draconian exterior she is a girl grieving the loss of a loved one.

quick, praimfaya turns to face the stranger as his chuff sounds thru the air. frostbound gaze studies him, hackles bristling in both weariness and silent warning; 'come no closer'. chit yu gaf? she demands, wincing against the rawness of her own voice; a moment passes and she lets out a low sigh. what do you want? she translates as if she were forced at knifepoint; tiredly.

The woman — she was a woman of mortal flesh, since she bore those scars on her shoulder, he told himself — reacted to his presence, her sobs ending swiftly, replaced by a face of stone as she turns to him. A warrior then, he thinks. He recognized the motions that she underwent. He knew them all too well. 

At first he wonders if she spoke a form of Common unbeknownst to him. The words sounded somewhat similar to Common, but not exactly. His face must have been blank, for she translated quickly. Her voice was soft, rough, and resigned. I wanted to see what creature was making all that noise, he said to the woman. You mourn loudly. What else could her tears be shed for? He had never see such sadness except in the face of death. Or perhaps romance? He knew more of the former than the latter.

while praimfaya does not enjoy having it pointed out to her that she's been caught mourning dacio ...at the same time, she refuses to apologize for it. previously, she's had leading roangeda to throw herself into to distract herself from all the grief; now she has nothing. not unless she returns to crogeda but she cannot bear to leave this place.

you mourn loudly.

there is a measured tilt of her head, a hardness to her gaze as she interprets his words as meaning that he finds it annoying — though really, this is what she worries. she hadn't meant to be heard, which is why she sequestered herself out here in the first place; as if hoping the change of scenery might allow her to breathe.

beneath the sadness and the crushing grief, she is angry; so very furious.

unless you can resurrect the dead then there's nothing to be done about it. she says; words sharp. if he lost a meal ...tragic, there were others. dacio could never be replaced; not as a spooked off meal by a grieving commander could.

Her face stiffens more into stone. She had taken offense. Yao frowns, more at himself for seeming crass in the face of her raw emotions. I did not mean that you cannot mourn. Just that the volume may attract unwanted attention. He bows his head slightly. Not me — I mean no harm. he adds quickly. 

He isn't surprised by her sharp words, nor the fact that her grief turned to anger and rage in his presence. He bears the brunt of her words, trying his best to quell any lashes of indignancy that bubbled inside him. I cannot, he shakes his head. No one can — no one of good intent, anyway, He does not know what words of comfort to give to this foreign woman, who speaks a second tongue unbeknownst to himself or anyone he knew back home. He had long known that the people beyond his homeland thought differently than he about many things, especially about the dead, but this was the first time he had been confronted with that reality. I don't know what you believe, ma'am, but where I come from, the dead remain to assist the living. Especially those they loved in life and who loved them in return. This person isn't really gone. Their mortal, physical body may be ended, but the important part of them — their soul — that remains. That's the part that remembers. And loves. He locks eyes with her for a moment. His normally stoic face slipped away at the shows of her grief. He cannot help himself to feel pity for the woman. Death was something that awaited them all, but even with the beliefs that he had, it never made the pain any less sharp.