Hotaru
My head's a burial ground of your memory
Clarity has not been long rooted in her mind, but Hotaru is not a creature of indolence and procrastination. Not that she’d needed much external motivation upon coming to herself in the moss-thick greenery of a thicket she didn’t recognize, dirty and wounded with only Atlas standing guard over her prone form to assure her that something remained recognizable. Concern emanates from where his soul is irrevocably bound to hers, far more mature and concise than she remembers. Hotaru can’t recall much of anything of the past few days - gods let it only be days - but as she stares down at her own body, skinnier and bloodier than she remembers it being last she perceived it, her belly swoops low and heavy with the kind of preternatural knowledge that only dread can inspire. Something is terribly wrong. Atlas bends his neck to her, and she boggles silently at how much he has grown seemingly overnight even as her grateful hands twist into his mane to pull herself from the earthen cocoon she awoke in. ”What the hell has happened Atlas?” Even spoken in soft undertone, her throat twinges in subtle warning, rendering her hoarse as she speaks. As if she hasn’t for some time. That feeling in her stomach seems to triple its mass, and the woman runs her hand over wind torn hair and stares helplessly at her bonded. Atlas responds only by kneeling, offering his body as her carriage in a way he could not have done before. Hotaru gingerly swings her injured leg across his withers, clinging to his mane as he rocks back to his hooves and immediately begins to stride out into the unrecognizable forest. Whatever may be lost and lacking in her own mind, it’s clear that Atlas will make up for it for her. She leans down and presses her cheek to the warmth of his shoulder, feeling the muscle move with each step taken. All the while her mind whirls, trying to make sense of itself, wondering what could have possibly happened to pluck her so fully from her own awareness. Terrified of it happening again.
In all of this, there is only the prevailing urgency to return home. Whether Atlas senses this or not, his path remains true, as if daring something try and interrupt his passage. Hotaru watches the sun rise higher in the sky, illuminating the unicorn’s golden dapples. She rakes her fingers through her hair - longer than she recalls - and bandages the long, shallow wound along her calf. Atlas stops only when she requests it, and only for long enough to allow Hotaru to wash clean in the chill of a small stream. He huffs and shuffles uneasily the entire time, and his pace is decidedly faster when once more she is astride him. It does nothing to settle her nerves.
The portal is a welcome sight, the beach even more so. Finally, recognition. Familiarity. Hotaru clings to it fiercely, even as her teeth clatter and her hands go white tangled in Atlas’ windswept mane. A little cold won’t stop her from returning home to her fiancés. To finding out what has happened.
They realize it in slow-dawning tandem. The house does not stand against the horizon where it always had before. Atlas can only get her so far before Hotaru is heedlessly leaping from his back, stumbling barefoot in the sand, battered knees scraping to push her back upright as she runs towards-
Black. Scorched. The skeleton of a home she had only just begun to call her own. Terror strikes into her valiant heart, tearing down all pretense and defenses as her fingertips touch ash. She looks like a wildling as she stands and spins uselessly, fear like glass in her stomach, where it hurts the worst and where she cannot reach in and tear it free. ”Nate! Sunjata!” Her screams pierce the relative calm of sea and shore, white-struck gaze frantic as she scours the horizon for any sign of her beloveds. What did she miss? Why wasn’t she here? Why can’t she remember? Hotaru stumbles away from the wreckage, soot staining her arms as she brings her hands to hold herself, braced against the chill. There’s another house in the distance, looming and unfamiliar. No question as to whether or not she’ll investigate it of course. No stranger or happy little family’s pleasant evening is worth more than finding out where her lovers are. And again she calls, her unused voice cracking like the lightning in her blood as desperation keeps her on her feet. ”Jata! Nate!”
