familiarity, wrapped in bones }} BLOCK Posted on June 6, 2022 at 05:35:38 PM by charybdis
scare away the wolves, scare away the wolves
It was strange, the way the most unexpected of memories washed over her, left her lying in the sodden earth, gurgling for breath through the sea-foam in her lungs. Last time she’d danced so close to death she - she couldn’t recall what she’d been thinking. About Skylla, probably, and how she’d kill this one whom she’d loved if she had to - to save a life. It would’ve been an echo, really. The same wave rolling in over a different stretch of sand, to wash it clean of blood.)
Last time, she had been more action than anything else, it was instinctive, reacting to protect a newborn filly from a mad, murderous mother. This time, she was all rage and regret. Madness and misery. And as she lay there, with the roar of the earth settling around her, Charybdis couldn’t help but feel cheated. What a waste, to die this way, running, falling from the heights.
The mountain had judged her, and crumpled and beaten at its mighty base, Charybdis wept bitter tears. This was not how she wanted to die. Alone. But it was how she lived, was it not, ever so more careful than before to keep everyone at a carefully measured distance. And why? Because of the Darkness. But what if it wasn't real? What if she were governed by Delusions instead?
It was no less than she deserved, truth be told.
And that was what made it so hard to swallow.
Laying there, feeling as though she were finally as broken without as she was within, Charybdis waited, for death or something else to claim her. And she tried, she tried to think of the precious few she had left. The rivers here, and the one in the swampland, always with the guide. She tried to remember the path she had run with Drogon. But in the darkness that governed her, while she drifted in-between, was broken by the flicker of a flame.
Terror and torment squeezed her heart, but it was a momentary thing. The flame she saw was not meant to symbolise the boy she had abandoned, (Oh, gods, what had she done?) Hades? No, no… It was not the other boy, either, the one that had been on the beach, ready to give her life over for the girl. But it was - she was so close.
The red mare, all speckled with white, as though the seaspray had settled upon her skin and remained there, glistening like stars. She, who had saved the pair of abandoned foals on the beach that day, taken them in without asking anything in return.
On another island, in a place that was dangerous to wander alone, Charybdis had encountered Saoirse, who had known of the Ridge, who to it in a way the half-blind mare never would. The younger mare had spoken of her family, and mentioned names that hadn’t registered. Ailill. Siobhan. Charybdis had been sorry that she hadn’t know them, but all this time -
All this time.
The revelation was enough to stir the battered and bloodied mare to her hooves and though she stumbled many times, she limped away from the devastation, not yet comprehending what a miracle it was that she had survived. Her muddled, messy mind could only think about one thing; she had to find Saoirse, had to tell her…
She lost track of how long she wandered, though even when she’d been closer to-whole, Charybdis had never been able to judge the passing of time all that well. She lost her way, confused by the loss of some of the trees she’d used to guide her. In time, new growth would replace what had been swallowed by the landslide. Charybdis could only pray that the same could be said about the void she’d felt she’d become, a great hungry current that would pull down to the crushing depths anyone who waded too far into her waters.
How desperate she was, to find Saoirse. The razor-sharp ache in her throat prevented her from calling, and eventually, the song of the sea pulled her off-course.
Perhaps it was the Fates, all along, pulling at the twisted, tangled thread of her life as surely as the moon pulled always at her heart, even when the eye could not see it.
It was not Saoirse, but her sister that Charybdis found. Aoife was an enigma in her own way, and though Charybdis had not yet realised it (or perhaps she had, and was pleading ignorance for Aoife’s sake), the golden girl, just a shade or two darker than her sister, was in some small, yet significant, ways a reflection of Charybdis. A lone wanderer, content with her own company, drawn always to the sea.
But Aoife was not alone, and even as Charybdis honed in on the shadowy figure standing over, all the muscles in her aching body quivered in anticipation. There came a roaring in her ears, and for a moment, she almost leapt aside in alarm. But the ground did not shake beneath her hooves. The ocean beyond the pair on the sand was relatively calm. A rush of blood in her ears, then? No, it was a savage, strangled cry that left her lips, and she charged, kicking up sand and tearing towards the interloper.
A flicker of faded, fractured memory - she had seen him once before, further inland alongside Aoife. All that was missing was Hades.
(A flicker of flame, red as the sunset. Perhaps I will tell you of them, Saoirse’s words had been written onto her lonely heart that day, as they’d left the Crossing to come Home. So that, if they do come, you might recognise them as family too.)
Oh Saoirse, she has been blind, but know that she has loved you all along. Aoife too. With a love she cannot explain. A love that she will not harbour for anyone else. See, once upon a time, not so far from where she treads now, she made a vow. For the lives your mother saved by taking in, and to honour her selflessness.
And here and now, to protect Aoife, Charybdis would make good on that vow, and so she acted on instinct.
The Darkness was standing before her, and she bore down upon him, a rush of whitewater waves driven by stormwinds. An avalanche of muddied snow, rumbling down the mountain’s sheer slope. Ardent in her aggression. Dangerous and deranged. This time, this time, she wouldn’t let it slip away from her so easily. She’d take the Darkness by his throat and drag him to the waves. To protect what she loved, she would drown him in the waves, drown herself alongside him, if she must.
A life for a life. The red mare’s daughter, for Skylla’s. Aoife. Þrima.
Incomprehensible sounds tumbled out of her mouth as she closed on him, ragged and wrathful. Blind eye blank, seeing eye shining with a feverish bloodlust. She would not drown, not today. The mountain had not killed her, and so, she could not die. Charybdis would see this Darkness diminish and depart from her domain, and then, and then, when Aoife was safe, and Charybdis felt as though she could breathe properly, the two of them would need to find Saoirse.
‘You call ‘er Siobhan. I met ‘er, I know ‘er. Or at least, I do in de way dat is most important. De t’ing dat defines ‘er - dere is more love in de ‘eart of ‘er dan in dat of anyone I ‘ave ever met. To me ‘er ‘as been Sotiria from de first.’