| CHARYBDIS would you have it any other way? |
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A slender white ear turns at the sound of the red mare’s voice, and distantly the pale figure registers the question. But before she can gather the thoughts that swim through her mind, the eyes of the maelstrom mare are drawn from the lady of fire to the foals gathered close to her. There were two. Weakly, Charybdis shook her head, seeking understanding, but it slipped further away from her even as the tide. How had she missed the boy? And Eidolon. Eidolon had come to her side, swift and fleeting as the wind itself. Just as she had dreamed of the shadow-presence of this one so many times, but even without turning to look, even without reaching to touch, Charybdis knew this was no dream. The sight of that pale face with those eyes like liquid amber, without depth, containing the last vestiges of wisdom that had all but been lost to time, never failed to settle the restlessness within, the ever cresting and breaking of her soul, like waves upon the cliff-face, relentlessly rising again and again to face that which seemed impossible, a fate from which there was no escape. And to reach for her, that felt inevitable too. Unattainable, that’s what Eidolon was. Wild, free, called to higher things. Transient and ephemeral. And Charybdis, Charybdis was destined to know only the peripheries of such freedom. But those evanescent fractures of time, when Eidolon was with her, the half-blind sea spirit lived for such rebellion, the way the spray of the ocean waves defied gravity to dance with the wind. Even now, she longs to turn to the slight figure beside her. Water carries traces of all that it has touched, and in the same way, within the dark well of her memory Charybdis holds echoes of every word she had heard from Eidolon’s ashen lips. The very way the curled about the syllables she spoke, it alone was enough to stir new life in Charybdis. This was how she could tell Eidolon was truly with her, in whatever way she chose to manifest: it wasn’t such a fight to breathe any more. “ ‘im sprung up from from de darkness, shining like de fading light of de sun on de ocean at rest, serving as guide to souls who lost ‘em way.” The pale, ominous woman uttered when at last she found her voice in the swell of the sea. Her eyes remained settled on the colt, but seemed unfocused, like she wasn’t seeing him properly with the dark eye that worked. She was seeing beyond, with the help of chalcedony blue. “ Like de blushing white flowers in de stories...” She drifted, and allowed the current she found herself in to bear her where it willed. The girl child, Charybdis felt her head loll, tangled up in retroflection as her focus shifted abruptly. “And ‘er, ‘er be a fighter from de first, a survivor, like ‘er – like ‘er mother.” And finally, the answers that the red mare sought wash ashore, deposited at her hooves like flotsam – the salvaged ruins of what had once been a great and beautiful thing laid to waste by a fearsome storm none – not Charybdis – could fully understand. “Skylla, I – I knew ‘er, once. I t’ought I lost ‘er to de sea, and I was right. ‘er was so angry, de one who’s blood ‘er wanted, ‘im wasn’t ‘ere. But de girl was, and Skylla---” A sound of anguish caught in her throat and Charybdis turned aside, lapsing into silence. And the world around her felt so empty, she could not help but feel like giving in to those grasping, icy fingers of despair that reached for the heart of her. But then Eidolon spoke, providing guidance to the lady of fire and the lives that were now in her care. Charybdis closed her eyes, murmuring a silent prayer of thanks to the wind that it had conveyed her desperate cry to Eidolon in time. It was more than she was worth, it was more than she deserved to have such a soul come to her aid. But she was safe now, and for today at least, darkness had been banished and death had been undone. Eidolon owed her nothing, and Charybdis would ask no more of her (but she wanted, she wanted). The gentle touch at her hip electrified her like lightning striking the sea – nothing was spared, and for the salt in it (the impurities), it was by far more conductive. The white mare with her mantle of red (and just a touch of darkness marking her in the form of black tangled locks near the base of her neck, entangled forever with stark white hair as pure as snow), feels her chest heave just once before she steadies herself, banishing the tremble from her aching legs. She stares in awe, feels her jaw work as crestfallen, she registers with disbelief the meaning of Eidolon’s words. For a moment the only sounds she hears is the sough of the breeze whsipering on the surface of the sea – mirror flat in a sudden cessation in the wind. “ Eidolon, I called for you and you came. Dere is no failure in dat, and not’ing to forgive.” Charybdis dared to drift nearer, all but closing the distance between them. If the chestnut mare still lingered nearby, Charybdis would take a moment to acknowledge her with something glimmering in the depths of her gaze, weighty and hidden beneath the surface. Soon, she would break away and seek to make good on the promise she had made to do anything for the girl – the vow would extend to envelop the boy naturally, and too, the flame maiden herself, and all that she loved. What was such servitude compared to her own life – if she had been willing to relinquish it to save one soul, now that she was granted to keep it, how could she not exert every effort to ensure their survival? But for all her strength, Charybdis was not strong enough to willingly part herself from Eidolon before fate decreed it so. She stood near with head bowed, and for some moments became as still and silent as stone (as stubborn and unrelenting – she became the cliff face battered by the ocean, relentlessly enduring, towering up to the sky where the wind howled among the crags and outcroppings in the heights). “You’re hurt.” The words were soft, the gentlest of accusations. Slowly, Charybdis lifts her head, meets the gaze of the midnight creature before her. Appears oblivious to her own condition, but it is not so, not entirely. “Come with me into de water, Eidolon,” she implores, her voice tenuously earnest. “Commit de blood to abluvion, wash ‘im all away.” She looked to the sea, and even as her body seemed to sag with exhaustion, the both of her eyes glimmered with renewal. “De ocean is for a healing, Eidolon, but I will not go wit’out you.” |