Dragoncrest Cliffs avec amour

@Chacal @Mireille >:D

Home.
For weeks, the seawoman crawled through the depths of the valley. Her wounds now safely scabbed to the point where walking was no longer difficult; her stomach, still empty, lined only with fish from the riverside.
And now, finally, finally, pushing aside the tendrils of foliage that clung to her ribs, the song of the saltsea rang distantly. She thought of her mothers, of her siblings — their beautiful faces that she would soon see! Oh, how her heart swelled with the roar of that ocean.
And as her swollen feet finally hit the border, her head tips into a melodic call.
Always would she return to Sapphique. Always, always Sapphique.

home was changed; coraline would find it changed.
the last time mireille had seen her sister, they had been young, so young. over a year's worth of time had passed since her sibling had been swathed in bandages and held to recover.
slashes healed upon the half-known flesh. her sister was rawboned and travelworn.
inexplicably, or perhaps very understandably after all, mireille's eyes filled with tears and she stepped forward to wrap an arm around those thin shoulders, accepting the return in entirety as a soft sound escaped into coraline's hackles.

It was not maman who came to her but Mireille, and Coraline's eyes lit up all the same. In response to sister's did her own tears come, streaking pale cheeks as the embrace is returned and held for far too long. Mireille felt heavier, stronger, sturdier; the scents of strangers cling to her, a sweetness reminiscent of a time long forgotten, but beneath it all was that same child she knew last.
I be home, comes her voice, quivering and threaded with the weariness of travel. Home, and never would she be ripped from the mighty arms of it again if she had anything to do with it.
Only after a time does Coraline begrudgingly rip herself away to meet the jadestone glimmer of birthgiven gaze. are you—?

this, after such a long time; this, knowing without words between sisters. "four. chantale, sobeille, also called miette, thibault, and tousaint." breath, catching in her throat; "our mot'ers be gone, coraline. one to a bear. one to a long sickeness an' a broken heart," was all mireille could muster. rosalyn had been moving away from them before such a time, but without erzulie —!
"but dey be toget'er, and sobo wid dem." such harsh things to give at once, but mireille did not want coraline to suffer a second shock once she truly came to see how the face of the pack had changed. "chacal will be happy to see you. i am happy you are home," fiercely.

Oh, Mireille—! A mother; Coraline, an aunt!
Her smile breaks out into a wondrous grin, eyes soft as dainty paws find the russet shoulders once again. Dey be a gift, Mireille, are you happy? I cannot wait to meet dem. And—
A coldness grips Coraline's throat. She searches, blinking; once, twice; no,
No, an emptiness fills her gaze and it is then quickly replaced with an unfathomable horror. you-- no. It cannot be, oh, please tell me you are lying. Heart pounding, heart dropping, and the more the harrowing silence thickened between them the more it sunk in with such power that it nearly flung her rawboned frame to the floor. In fact, it did; she sinks down in a haze.
H-how long? How long ago? the guilt pools in the form of more tears, heavy ones, and the muscles of her jaw clench as her figure is crashed by an onslaught of sobs and she suddenly can look at her sister no more.

coraline's face crumbled, her joy shattering; mireille hated to be the one to say it. but such bandages must be ripped from mother wounds. she gathered her sister close with a glistening thrum to her throat. "maman erzulie an' sobo died de beginnin' of de year," she murmured. "winter."
almost a year without them.
"maman rosalyn passed on t'ree mont's ago," mireille continued, a heaviness clinging to her. "she could not be away from her wife, you know."
all of the obsidian hurt, and now for a silent moment she stood only in communion with her sister.

Winter; three months ago. Where had she been then? What was she doing when they'd—
The weight of it all crushes her lungs, her ribs; she cannot breathe. There is sudden silence in place of the screeching sobs, a shattering echo of hiccups that fill the air. Too much, too much—
Aching, aching, aching, and then she gathers herself with a numbing burst of energy, even as the heaviness curls through her bones, cords within her muscles.
I'm sorry dat I was not heah, she finally croaks out, hoarse and thick and laced with so much guilt. So, so much. dat I could not help. Maybe, maybe I could 'ave-- but there was nothing to say. Nothing that could rectify, nothing that could take her back;
She will never see them again.
Fighting, trembling, paw reaching to viciously wipe the tears that pool and clutch. Can you ever forgive me?

mireille, softly; "i never blamed you, coraline." they came and went, as tides, as eternal waves retreating from their proud, feral palace beside the ocean. sapphique existed as a bastion of peace and familial bond. it did not waver in this, and nor had coraline when she sought out in the world.
"come. i will show you where dey be buried." rosalyn and sobo, with raleska and kaertok and rosencrantz, at last — erzulie along the borders of sapphique where she had fallen to poison.
mireille let herself weep, allowed their tears to mingle, for coraline was home, and now her portion too was sharing in this deep, remembering grief with the sisters who now led their mothers' pack.

And with that utterance, the guilt and shame should have freed her, yet Coraline was left still with the horrific, staunch feeling. A feeling that twisted and slowly rooted within her.
She thinks of those wolves along the creek, and the regret broils, whispering and whole.
She forces her limbs to move, a hasty speedwalk somehow mixed with a drunken stumble. To see her mothers like this, her brother, buried— bile rushes her throat like a wave.
To Rosalyn first she crouches by where she thought her head might be; the packed dirt still a harsh contrast to the seagrass beside her. Mwen dezole, maman, her paw ghosts along the crumbling soil.
To Sobo; oh, Sobo, a soft cry that comes guttural. So young, they are so young, he was so young;
And to Erzulie does she finally drag herself to the side of with the hand of Mireille in tow, and next to her does she wail. The levee breaks yet again and, distantly, she hears the echo of sister sobbing with her. She wished to upturn the ground, to pull her from rest and wake her, to hug her one last time and she swore that for a fleeting moment she could smell her in the brine-air of the cliffside. Manmi!

to share this with another sister opened the deluges locked behind sea-salt walls; they broke and she sank her voice into the baseline of coraline's own, winding their wail up and up and up until, until for a thousand miles, she hoped the story of their mothers and brother would be known.
coraline had not been here for it, but the grief that poured out upon the shoreline was mireille's, was chacal's, was that of their daughters and nieces and the quiet older sisters who had remained forever in sapphique.
not until her voice gave, she would remain beside coraline, and even then, mireille did not think she could lift herself from this earth.

fade? <3

In this pain, there was no one else who could understand quite like Mireille. Chacal, too, yes, of course; but in Mireille there was blood shared only between them, teeth set in mouths the same way and inflection in laughter synchronous. Born of the same day, the same soil; a childhood spent parallel, and unimaginable grief, now, too. In Sobo they lost littermate, and in Rosalyn and Erzulie they lost mothers — a despair that roared across all of Sapphique in their weeping.
That pain did not solely belong to them, nor to Coraline herself, but it felt as if it did in that moment, as her arms snake up in search of an embrace again; in search of cinnamon-soaked arms that might, just might, hold her together before she crumbles to pieces.
But life goes on. It always, always goes on. And at some point, Coraline would drag herself from the gravesites, from what little remained of those now lost to the world, and build herself anew within Sapphique, sister at her hip.
Home.