good night, sweet prince

Time has passed. How much time is not Isla's concern - Halo became the Grounds, strange became familiar, and she begins by trying to piece together whatever is left of the life she left behind. There isn't much, even less than she had hoped, in truth, but there's something at least. That something is Remi Taliesin. Rumours abound, of course, about the demigod in the Greatwood, and though she cannot go there, she also doesn't sleep. So it's of little consequence to send a raven into the trees with a letter to seek out the Lullaby, and pace the outskirts under the moonlight in the hope that she might glimpse her old friend. Call her nostalgic, but it's almost impossible to concentrate on anything else until she's started to rebuild those connections. And Edrei aside, there aren't that many connections in the Hollowed Grounds. ISLA pray for me pray to me

walked out this morning and i wrote down this song.
i just can't remember who to send it to

Why Ludo was sending him ravens and signing them with Isla's name was beyond him. That it often took the form of the former-medic when they were together made sense. But this seemed contrived even for the herald. Normally Remi's evenings were reserved for Mateo and then Ronin, the Star would just have to understand that while Ludo did not come first by any means, ignoring one's summons wasn't a smart idea.

And so he trudged toward the border, stifling a yawn behind the back of a hand while the other held a chunk of bread with a wedge of cheese unceremoniously lodged inside.

Seeing Isla sparked nothing within him. News hadn't travelled to the Greatwood about what had happened during the festival, and so there was no reason for the Lullaby to think that the pebble-blue stare he would soon be greeted with belonged to anyone but Ludo. "I do appreciate the charm." Remi says, holding aloft the letter and the small charm which has allowed it to find him so swiftly. "Since you summoned me, does that mean you brought a game this time?"

In contrast, seeing Remi sparks everything in Isla - upon seeing the alchemist emerge from the woods, wild and haggard in the moonlight, breath she doesn't possess catches in her throat. Falling to a halt at the borders, wanting nothing more than to run across the perimeter but knowing better than to incite that sort of threat, she does little more than linger and shuffle her feet. Tears of fluid prickle in her eyes, and she offers him a wobbly sort of smile. "Gosh, Remi. You look terrible." It bubbles out before she can help it, the medic completely missing the way he doesn't react to her at all. The words register, at least, Isla shaking her head as if to tell Remi she doesn't get it. "Game?" she echoes. "It wasn't a summons, I just... I heard you were in the Greatwood. I had to come and see you." ISLA pray for me pray to me

walked out this morning and i wrote down this song.
i just can't remember who to send it to

Remi isn't looking too closely of course. Anytime Ludo has taken on this form it usually is to drive home some message or other, or to impart a very specific brand of torture. So he misses the tears that make shiny Isla's pebble-blue stare and the smile that belies more emotion than the herald has ever used Isla's face for.

'So I've been told.' The alchemist says through a tired sigh, ruffling a hand through his curls and coming away with more than a few twigs and small leaves. At the confusion of his reference to a game, Remi's instincts rouse from slumbery to on-alert. However as she further says she just heard he was in the Greatwood, Remi's ears metaphorically pin against his skull as his pale stare rises sharply.

"If this is the game...I don't want to play. Please, not with her." He manages through a throat suddenly quite tight. Balling his hands into fists (and thus letting his dinner drop to the ground), is all he can do to keep his temper. "I know what I did to Isla. I don't need to be reminded." Remi adds, cheeks flushed from shame and ever-lingering guilt over how he'd selfishly retained the medic.

"Have you considered showering? Or having a shave, perhaps? I think a chipmunk has taken up residence in your hair," she says with a soft laugh, Isla wiping at her eyes and sniffing, straightening herself up to look at him properly. The fact that there's no surprise, no happy reunion, no... anything, is enough to put her on edge, much as she just wants to bask in seeing her friend again. "I'm not playing a game, Remi," she says, shaking her head. "I'm Isla. The Voice, she... at the Festival of Lights, don't ask me how." It sounds ridiculous to her logical mind, but so much has happened regardless. "I'm not the only one who came back. She gave everyone a choice. I came back. I'm here, I swear." She holds out her hands, like that's evidence that she's real. ISLA pray for me pray to me

walked out this morning and i wrote down this song.
i just can't remember who to send it to

"I showered..." The alchemist frowns, trying to remember. "..an amount of time ago." As for shaving? He shrugs. "Why? I wasn't aware my grooming routine was part of my mandate here." Remi replies stiffly. That Ludo would say it wasn't playing a game was all par for the course, until the Voice was mentioned.

With eyes tinging white at the outset now, the alchemist straightens fully, his wings very nearly unfurling from his back in a display of intimidation. He refrains, but only just. "The Voice at the Festival of Lights. She gave everyone a chance." Remi repeats flatly, hoping that Ludo—or whatever this was—would see the blatant absurdity in what was being said.

"I don't really know what your mandate here is," she admits with a small smile, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear and strolling along the borderlines until she can stand opposite the alchemist. Raising her eyebrows at the white flaring at the edges of his eyes, the physician in her can't help but crane forward a bit, as if trying to get a better look. "You couldn't do that when I was a unicorn," she remarks. "Not that I remember very much of it by then." Nodding as he repeats her words, Isla glances around, as if she can find something she might use to prove she's real, and frustratedly finds nothing. "Listen, Remi, I know... I know how it is. With Ronin, with Ianto... Ludo has tricked you so much. I don't blame you for not believing me. I remember how hard it is for you. But I just need you to know that it's okay. Everything that happened, it's okay. I don't hate you, or blame you. You were trying to save my life." ISLA pray for me pray to me

walked out this morning and i wrote down this song.
i just can't remember who to send it to

Remi eyes the...whatever is before him with a stern and untrusting stare. His ribs expand outward with each breath, the muscles of his biceps tense enough that his arms threaten to shake under the stress. As she leans forward, the Lullaby similarly leans back, head tilting slightly as she eyes him. "No, I—" He bites off the word, as if saying anything more might play into whatever game this was. "Ah, convenient that. Imitating someone but lacking the specifics of their life." Not Ludo then, because Ludo would know.

So then this was...

..then..

Remi takes a stumbling step forward, and where the political barrier between the Greatwood and the Grounds a real thing, he'd have been nose to nose with it. Muscles shaking but no longer from tension, the alchemist lets out a shaky breath that has his stomach clenching and his tongue wrapping around discarded words.

"Isla?." Tears prickle his eyes and wash away the white, leaving them a bright and shimmery green. If it wasn't her, if it was all some cruel joke, then best he dig his own grave now. As alone as the alchemist had been over the past weeks, his heart simply wouldn't be able to take it. Not after he'd already lost her so many times already.

"It's me, Remi." She says it like a promise, the Ascended still lingering at the edge of the barrier between them, though as he steps up to it she does reach out for him, as if to take one of his hands. "You look so different. Did you eat a horse or something?" Her soft laughter is dampened by happy tears, and she smiles up at him; an open and bright gesture that hides nothing. "Others are back as well. I think most of us came back tot he Hollowed Grounds, but there might be some in Halo still." Isla is telling him this for no reason and she knows it; she can't help the information download, trying to make her story sound more robust. Because it's insane, and the man before her has lost enough to drive anyone mad. ISLA pray for me pray to me

maybe i'm a runaway train, maybe i'm a feather in a hurricane

He is the thing protecting the Greatwood from the ascended and while the gods might not agree, he's also the one who can bend the rules. So as she reaches for his hand, he reaches for her. Tugging her against him, enfolded in arms and wings and the sounds of muffled tears and sips of laughter, Remi just snorts at the recognition of how much bigger he is now. Her body is a non-temperature against him, calibrated perfectly and in that feeling like nothing at all, but he hardly cares.

"Others?" He mumbles into the golden sweep of hair against her neck, before pulling back enough to gaze down at her. "Oh..kay? Anyone I should know about?" Remi isn't sure why it matters, not having put two and two together that those who have returned are ascended, and unless one of them is Aoife (which Isla presumably would have led with), he doesn't care.

THE LULLABY

maybe it's a long gray game, but maybe that's a good thing

His arms drown her, not that she minds one bit. Hugging him tightly in return, her face buried in his shoulder, Isla ends up on her toes to try and reach him properly. "I have missed you so much," she murmurs to him, leaning in to kiss his cheek only to end up with a face full of beard. Laughing softly, she only draws back enough to push his curls back from his face and look up at him properly through shiny eyes. "I heard you were here to protect the woods?" Remi mentions others and Isla nods gently, clearing her throat to get the words out better. "Edrei is back," she mumbles. "Kiada, too, and a few others. They must have passed after I did, though." Shaking her head, it's unlikely that she'll really recognise anyone from her time as a horse. ISLA pray for me pray to me

walked out this morning and i wrote down this song.
i just can't remember who to send it to

"Losing you twice..." His arms shake with emotion. Or had it been three times? "I'm so sorry. For what I did. For keeping you like that..." He hadn't intended her to be a companion. Hadn't intended for her mind to slowly blow away on a breeze until there was nothing left but a mythical husk with eyes not quite the same shade of pebble-blue. "I know you said it's okay, but it isn't. It won't ever be." Her lips against his cheek, scruff-covered though it is, has a tight ball of emotion in the back of his throat expanding and cutting off anything else he might have tried to say.

Laughing slightly, the tension in his body a variable and unsteady thing just now, Remi glances over his shoulder and shrugs. "Yeah. It's a long story." He replies through a shaky smile. Edrei? Kiada? "Oh, that's.." But he can't even pretend to care, and instead reaches down lowering that he might pick her off the ground to completely engulf her in his grief and ferocious relief and joy at seeing her again.

Isla doesn't try to tell him it's alright, doesn't try to alleviate guilt she knows he'll carry forever, no matter what she says. Her arms tighten around him, her cheek pressed to his curls (a mistake, since there's more than one twig and thorn nestled in there by this point, she thinks), and a soft laugh bubbles up in her throat as he lifts her off the ground. "I'm here now," she whispers, nodding in agreement with the words he doesn't say. That's for later. Now was a culmination of conversations they'd never been able to have, when she was in another body and he was a different man. "They're all long stories," she murmurs. "Just start with the basics. Are you okay? Do you need anything?" She can grab anything he might be lacking from the Grounds, she thinks. ISLA pray for me pray to me

walked out this morning and i wrote down this song.
i just can't remember who to send it to

Grinning into the crook of her neck, Remi eventually sets her down despite wanting to keep clutching at her like some doll from his boyhood. 'I'm okay.' He confirms with a nod. "Not good, but I'm ... managing." And really, that was the truth of it. Remi was managing. Not particularly well, but not terribly either. Or at least, not by his standards. Remembering something she said earlier, the alchemist crinkles his nose apologetically. "I...really haven't showered in a while. Its just been me in the Woods. Well. Me and Ianto, and.." Realizing then that the Isla Ronin had manifested in their dreams to take care of their son hadn't been the real one, Remi brightens and softens considerably.

"..and my son." He nearly gushes the word, colour blooming in his cheeks as his dimples deepen and his smile becomes increasingly bashful and crooked. 'Ronin and I had a son."