first & last breaths


Age: 7 | Height: | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
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#1
what the snow hides shall never be found
Hotaru.

Do you hear it, Hotaru? Floating to you on the breeze, borne across the ice? Travelling through snow and sleet, through wastes and wonders - do you hear it?

It is the sound of spirits crying, mourning a loss yet to come.

It is the sound of vultures circling, ready to tear into flesh.

It is the sound of a unicorn dying upon the frozen sea.

Will you go?
Hotaru Kaito
the Valkyrie
Masseuse / Headmistress

Age: 33 | Height: 5'2 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 3 - Strg: 38 - Dext: 38 - Endr: 54 - Luck: 40 - Int:
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#2
HOTARU
Here she stands in the flurry, bow strung upon a shoulder, eyes scanning a horizon that defies stability and recognition. Hunting, stalking, preparing for the coming sunless days. Hotaru has heard the sound of the wounded and dying, echoing out of the mouths of countless creatures, humans included.

This is that sound. This is that preternatural call that tugs behind her breastbone, beckoning with an urgency that leaves her breathless without taking a single step.

Between the space of each breath she slings her how across her back and runs. There's no explanation for the pressure she feels, but her limber legs carry her like the northern wind over the snow and ice, drawn to the wheezing braying sound that strikes a chord so familiar and archaic in her heart. She crests the bank like a rising tide, eyes darting about and discerning some dark mass standing out against the all-consuming white.

She jogs closer, magic crackling in anticipation over her hands and wrists, unsure of what is happening and why she has been called here. What her purpose is.
i'm the little lightning girl
living electricity
a lightning bolt in human form
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.


Age: 7 | Height: | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: - Strg: - Dext: - Endr: - Luck: - Int:
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#3
what the snow hides shall never be found
Crackling magic and falling snow and there in the distance, a unicorn.

Not just any unicorn. The unicorn.

She's beautiful, pink and white and delicate with eyes like emeralds beneath an ivory horn. Hotaru, do you recognize her? The unicorn you know so well, whether from your memory or your dreams? Do you feel her within you, memories and lives so closely entwined you could strum notes on the strings of them?

She flashes you a look of fury, her ears pinned to her head. She is angry in her agony, raging against a cruel world in which she never stood a chance. But she is distracted, too, looking away quickly, turning her attention to something precious which shelters against her other side.

Above, the vultures circle.

What will you do?
Hotaru Kaito
the Valkyrie
Masseuse / Headmistress

Age: 33 | Height: 5'2 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 3 - Strg: 38 - Dext: 38 - Endr: 54 - Luck: 40 - Int:
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Posts: 2,242 | Total: 6,169
MP: 9427
#4
HOTARU
At first, with the snow in her eyes and the creature's pale coat, Hotaru is unsure what lies before her. And then, as if everything has suddenly held its breath in the distance between them, there is clarity. Hotaru stares into the cracked mirror before her, and stumbles, stricken by this phantom of her past. This wraith that haunts her every step. Her own shadow, given form and fury, torn from her body in some macabre mockery of Peter Pan. Hotaru stares into the eyes that she sees in the mirror every morning, and in that moment she can taste every emotion roiling off the unicorn in the snow.

There is no hesitating, no time for indecision, no allowances given to fall to her knees and scream and scream and scream at the unfairness of it all. At the reminder of all she has lost, all that this wounded soul before her carries, for their burdens are the same. But Hotaru has walked through Hell's grasping fingers and come out unchained, her legs will not falter now.

She still never looks away from those hellfire eyes. Eyes so like her own that well with tears that stream down ice chilled cheeks, even as a grimace of fury and indignation twists her beautiful face into a harpy's facade. The space between them does not seem to exist, eaten up by her sprinting gait even as her magic - one they share, one she has finally reclaimed after a year of work - calls upon the heavens above. Lightning screeches across the sky, summoned and commanded, striking down towards the vultures that circle above...above...

Herself. Mother and child, for there is a shadow at that pale flank that she has seen from every angle of her own eyes.

A mother never forgets.
i'm the little lightning girl
living electricity
a lightning bolt in human form
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.


Age: 7 | Height: | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: - Strg: - Dext: - Endr: - Luck: - Int:
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#5
what the snow hides shall never be found
In the light of the crackling lightning (her lightning, your lightning, another shared echo) you see it.

The shadow that rests beside her.

The figure.

The heartbeat.

The child.

Dappled. Slender. Small. So much like a perfect daughter you once bore it tears into your soul, and the golden eyes that look at you are hers, as certainly as the green ones are yours.  For a split second you are the unicorn mother and the babe is your foal, your fawn, one of a perfect set, the love of your life, the reason your wake and live and breathe.

Then you blink, and you are a woman again, and the foal is not Romina.

But it is alive.

The mother is dying. It's obvious: you can smell it, see it, taste it in the air. You can feel it in your soul, as surely as you feel your heartbeat. The mother is dying, but so long as she lives she will not let you touch her child. She will fight you tooth and nail and horn, a mother, a Valkyrie driven by instinct and fear and feral love.

The mother is dying. But as surely as you know that this, you also know that if you do nothing the child will die too.

What will you do?
Hotaru Kaito
the Valkyrie
Masseuse / Headmistress

Age: 33 | Height: 5'2 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 3 - Strg: 38 - Dext: 38 - Endr: 54 - Luck: 40 - Int:
Played by: Brit Offline
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Posts: 2,242 | Total: 6,169
MP: 9427
#6
HOTARU
It is as if her spirit doesn't know which body to reside within. A tug of war between what was and what is. In the maelstrom there is the focus of lightning, electricity dancing in the heavens at her every beck and call, as familiar to her as breathing. And in the space between where mastery and skill reign supreme, there her gaze falls to the dark shape that her mirror image guards with a ferocity she has hosted in her own veins.

With every heartbeat - Romina - with every pounding recoil of heel against ice - Romina - with every breath that swells and swells beyond the limits of her lungs - Romina. There is only her daughter. There is only the enchanting golden gaze that peers from an upturned face, a brow she has kissed too few times. A daughter lost too soon, too sudden, in a flash of there-and-gone that had torn her world apart. Even knowing that it can't be true in some recessed part of her brain, it is swallowed whole by the desperation she feels. A hand outstretched, grasping and pleading, willing to give up everything in this one chaotic moment if only to return her child to her side.

The whiplash of realization, of discerning differences between dappled forms, is enough to drive an inhuman cry of grief from her throat. There is nobody here to hear it, to judge her for her weakness. Nobody but herself and the dying shade that stands like Cerberus guarding the fields of Asphodel. Hotaru can feel the rot and decay that clings to her other form. Opponent, truly, for as they lock gazes - emerald fires raging, neither willing to abate with this one little soul at stake - Hotaru knows only one will walk away from this.

Is it mercy? To end her pain, to take up the care of the child huddled at her side. Is it revenge? Against herself, the one who had failed, who had been foolish and weak and useless in those final moments. Is it love? The kind of sacrificial love that will rend her own heart to pieces, knowing how it feels to embrace the void and leave behind something so precious.

Hotaru doesn't know. But she lifts her dagger from her hip, bares her teeth at the dying mother before her, and lunges. Redirecting her lightning to dance upon her blade, bracing for the fight she knows will come. The mighty, well-matched clash. But she must be triumphant. For the sake of that spindly foal in the snow, she must end this sad defender's life.
i'm the little lightning girl
living electricity
a lightning bolt in human form
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.


Age: 7 | Height: | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: - Strg: - Dext: - Endr: - Luck: - Int:
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#7
what the snow hides shall never be found
Shiing! The blade of the knife is as wicked and sharp as Hotaru's gilded tongue, as brutal as the men who loved her and left her, as cruel as the winters she weathered and the wars she won. Electric queen of the frozen north, the energy you wield is reflected in the green eyes that stare at you, through you, watching as the blade approaches with ears pulled back and white teeth bared.

But she doesn't move, not as you draw closer, not as you slip the steel between her ribs, not as you press the blade into her heart.

She stares at you and you stare at her, and as you press the knife deeper you can feel the pain, the agony, the approach of death.

Will you do it, Valkyrie? a voice that both is and is not yours asks. Behind the unicorn the small foal bleats, and now it is a mangled colt with tusks instead of antlers, too big and too lanky and destined to grow into something ruined, something only a mother could love. What pain will you endure for him? Would you give your life for his?

Are you strong enough this time, Hotaru? Or will you fail him again?


Above, the buzzards caw.
Hotaru Kaito
the Valkyrie
Masseuse / Headmistress

Age: 33 | Height: 5'2 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 3 - Strg: 38 - Dext: 38 - Endr: 54 - Luck: 40 - Int:
Played by: Brit Offline
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Posts: 2,242 | Total: 6,169
MP: 9427
#8
HOTARU
The blade seems all the more poetic for who had gifted it to her. Wielding the physical manifestation of her own hurt, slaying this figure of her past self with the continued pattern of her failure. The blade sinks deep, perfectly aimed, and Hotaru falters at the utter stillness beneath the hilt, her own body frozen in sympathetic response. Rooted to the ice and the dark waters beneath.

Even as the pain seems to spear through her own breast, she cannot look away. Entranced, captured, staring into those jaded eyes that demand more from her than she has ever been able to give to herself.

But for others? Her gaze rips away at the broken, pleading noise that will always steal her attention. A wounded noise rattles in the graveyard of her breast as the image shifts to the boy she still mourns. Her hands - ones that have so recently crafted a lantern in his memory - shake against the hilt of her dagger. Through it all the voice calls, demanding, degrading. There has only ever been one answer.

Hotaru snarls and twists the dagger cruelly, ripping her gaze away from the phantom of her son to stare into the face of the unicorn pinned beneath her blade. "Anything," she snarls, more beast than woman. "I will never let him be taken again. I will burn it all before I fail him again, I will burn you to spare him." For they are one and the same, and the Valkyrie knows in her heart that in the other's place, she too would embrace that dagger in her side if it meant her son lived on. "He is everything."
i'm the little lightning girl
living electricity
a lightning bolt in human form
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.


Age: 7 | Height: | Race: Attuned | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: Hollowed Grounds
Level: - Strg: - Dext: - Endr: - Luck: - Int:
Played by: Admin/Moderator Offline
Change author:
Posts: 1,388 | Total: 1,388
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#9
what the snow hides shall never be found
The blade presses deeper into her breast - your breast - and twists. The pain is intense, a sharp and jagged thing that goes beyond the physical and pierces your very soul. You remember them all, and you feel them all: the lives your bore into this world, the babes your held tight in your arms.

The children you lost to time and space and disease and monsters and the cold and the dark.

In a tidal wave of agony you can feel every one of them, each loss magnified and intensified in those green, green hellfire eyes and the beating of your broken heart.

The unicorn exhales a final breath, and you feel it in your lungs. You must kill the past to find the future, Hotaru. Only then can you be everything he needs. Everything you are.

And then the hellfire eyes grow dim. The unicorn - the Valkyrie - is dead.

But you, Hotaru, are still alive. And in your soul a new life blossoms, taking residence in the recesses so long occupied by ghosts. The foal is yours now, your soulmate, your child. The past is gone, but your future is waiting. And you will never be alone again.



Congratulations! Hotaru has received a unicorn companion! (Brit paid MP for this)
Hotaru Kaito
the Valkyrie
Masseuse / Headmistress

Age: 33 | Height: 5'2 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 3 - Strg: 38 - Dext: 38 - Endr: 54 - Luck: 40 - Int:
Played by: Brit Offline
Change author:
Posts: 2,242 | Total: 6,169
MP: 9427
#10
HOTARU
Tears flow fast and she moans like a hurt animal, remembering every life she has brought into this world only to die. She had tried so hard. Loved them with every piece of her heart and soul. And what had it achieved?

The air that leaves her lungs is final, and she withdraws her dagger with shaking hands, the blood dripping down in accusing crimson against the white snow. Imparting its final message - her final piece of advice - it's over. There's nothing left.

Except the babe.

Despite the tears still hot on her cheeks and the ragged, gasping breaths that don't seem to chase the chill of that phantom death rattle out of her lungs, Hotaru cannot afford to collapse. She moves towards the foal, blinking away visions of Ru'in and Romina alike to see it as it is. Unique, untouched by memory or expectation. Golds and blacks painted across soft fur and the earnest, trusting gaze only a child could manage to own. She kneels in the snow, wrapping as much of her body around it as she can, already feeling the stirring of a new bond in her breast where Alice had once resided.

So much has been lost. But the unicorn had spoken true - she can't keep lingering, haunting her own memories, longing to return to a life, a form, a land that does not exist anymore. "I've got you," she whispers brokenheartedly, encouraging the colt to stand. "We can do this. Together." She will make it so.

- Fin ;-;
i'm the little lightning girl
living electricity
a lightning bolt in human form
Hotaru has a passive magic that makes her glow with an internal golden light; it makes her appear youthful and her hair seems to look like moving sunlight. Can only subtly illuminate dark spaces.


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