who we are and all that we're trying to be
Silence, the taciturn, reserved doldrums, held him together while the rest added their devotion, their regrets, their apologies. Numb, cold, taut, rigid, he stood stock still, as he’d done with all other catacomb reaches, battered against the rocks, the waves, waiting to spiral and sink. The bile choked, the remnants collided, and he was merely stone, rubble, and ruin, remaining upright because it was the only thing he could do in these scattered moments, in the finality of everything. In another life and time, he’d been the sunken one, the beast perished beneath rainfalls and nothingness, and to have it turned, twisted back on him, was a paralyzing weight. The beast felt Hotaru at his side rather than saw; his eyes sliding away from the rendered brush, the immobile form of his best friend, and to Bastien. One nod followed, and he steeled himself once more.
But within his blood stoked denizens of fire – and he ignited it now.
Every frustration, every vexation, every coil, contortion, and soulless irreverence gave into the flames. Every assemblage of rage, of not being able to do anything at all, harpooned and lanced, brought them from smoking fumes to bristling accord. The flames snapped at brush, popped at sticks, devoured, consumed, and swallowed the motions below, until they were bright, illustrious, seething things, potent, powerful, and reaching, reaching, reaching towards the sky. There they settled upon her, across her, coaxing a form into ash, but never dust.
And beyond his wrath, his heartache, his anguish, the beast orchestrated visions within the inferno: a sun, streaks of power undulating in their bestial, vibrant shades, followed by an eclipse, covering, until they maneuvered into cloaks, into daggers, into symbols of worlds she’d long since left behind. There were shades of mountains, of summits, rising from the abyss, crimson and effervescent, dreams of yesteryears colliding into the present, crowns adorned in ichor, blistering, maneuvering pieces of what she once was. There wasn’t any way to perfectly embody Rexanna; but he fed the embers, the cinders, the conflagration with what he’d always known, presiding in absolution, in sanctuaries, in sanctums, in memories, for eternities.
Then maybe others too would contribute to her story, and she wouldn’t be forgotten, a legacy untarnished.
It takes dying to know
How to live as ghosts
