These tombs that we call hearts
Talyson Seawright
the Messenger
Courier

Age: 27 | Height: 5'10" | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 10 - Strg: 44 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 50 - Luck: 52 - Int: 1
BOREAL - Mythical - Dragon (Fire Breath)
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#1
Well after midnight and long before dawn Talyson drifted through streets of Snowcloak, hands jammed into his pockets as he wandered. His skin was stained black where Banshee blood had splashed across it earlier that same day, and his eyes were bruised behind the Goggles he wore to see through the Halovian darkness. Work on the pyre and the gathering of bodies had trickled to a halt several hours before as darkness and cold sent most people to beds or shelters in the Palace until their homes could be rebuilt.

But Tal hadn't laid down for more than an hour before he'd risen and slipped his boots back on, sneaking out of the house he shared with his sisters. Boreal paced silently at his side, a pale wraith in the darkness who lent her presence and support to the restless human who had woken from nightmare and now walked alone through the quiet, snowy streets.

He didn't realize where his feet had brought him until the dragon bumped her head beneath his hand and leaned into his hip, turning him towards a dark house he barely recognized until he was standing on the step and looking at the door with distracted puzzlement. "It's late, girl," he murmured to her, rubbing her scaly head distractedly. "She's probably sleepin'. We can check on her tomorrow."

But he didn't turn around just yet; he leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes, resting his fingers between Boreal's horns and simply existing between heartbeats as he watched the Shields being torn apart again and again behind closed lids.

Seeing his father's face on every one of them.
Hotaru
Hotaru Kaito
the Valkyrie
Masseuse / Headmistress

Age: 33 | Height: 5'2 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: King's End
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#2
HOTARU
She's in a long black coat tonight
Waiting for me in the downpour outside
Selfishly, Hotaru does not aid in the preparation efforts.

She stays inside with her daughter, for as long as Flora can stand her quiet, resilient presence. Ru strives not to be overbearing, not to hover, but she guards the door like a furious draconic creature. The last defense between her sole remaining child, and the hungry, cruel world that has taken every other.

She doesn’t sleep much. There are no companions left, either, to keep watch or awaken her. There is only Hotaru now, the sole keeper of vigils at the window, the empty void of a woman that she has become staring back through the snow-stained reflection in the glass.

It is how she sees Talyson approaching, listless and meandering. Like a wintering bear she sits contemplative, only to rise soundlessly to approach the door. No beloveds have attempted to visit her yet; she still awaits the return of Deimos and Noah, though she suspects it will be any moment yet. Talyson is the first.

The door opens with a soft groan, and Hotaru steps out into the cold, far from fit for the weather and yet equally uncaring. “Tal,” she says softly, and nothing more. Any other words die in the closing of the door, and in the image of the Valkyrie - tiny, yet somehow darker - standing motionless on the stoop beside him. Scant inches between, and yet a yawning maw of miles to overcome.
singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears
While the rhythm of the rain keeps time
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.
Talyson Seawright
the Messenger
Courier

Age: 27 | Height: 5'10" | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 10 - Strg: 44 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 50 - Luck: 52 - Int: 1
BOREAL - Mythical - Dragon (Fire Breath)
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#3
Boreal heard it before Tal did. The hand on a knob, the twisting of metal on metal, however well-oiled. Her head dipped, sliding from beneath her companion's fingers and she stepped back. It drew him from his reverie so that he was straightening as the door opened and a slip of a woman ghosted through it, as if materializing from the shadows within.

The darkness wasn't impenetrable to his magic-enhanced vision and yet--

It was more important to see her with his own eyes than to see her clearly. He reached up, tugged the goggles down, and his brow furrowed as he drew an unsteady breath.

And then stepped forward, wordless, and wrapped his arms around his friend and found family and buried his face in long, blonde hair. His arms were strong; stronger than they had ever been, but even still he wasn't sure they were strong enough to bridge the chasm between them that gaped wide and threatened to swallow all their tears before they could shed them.

"Ru," he mumbled into the top of her head. "Ru. They said you... an' dragons..." The details were unimportant. She was alive and not bleeding and for the moment it was enough to chase the nightmares back to the edge of the porch, at least, where Boreal stood guard.
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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#4
HOTARU
She's in a long black coat tonight
Waiting for me in the downpour outside
His eyes are a void that reflect her as easily as the glass had, and some small part of her loathes their removal. It is easier to stare into her own reflection, so familiar even in its emptiness, than to bear the scald of emotion in eyes not her own.

There are a thousand pathways this meeting, this reunion, could voyage down. As he steps forward, another Ru shoves him. Down, down the stone steps, into the dirt, the snow, the tread of her boots. A show of brutality, a reminder of her own power, which had so grievously failed her recently. Another Ru crumples into his arms and cries in the dark there, moonlight too weak and scattered by clouds to light her way. On and on and on, a thousand versions of her made distinct only by which emotion they embody at the exact hour, minute, second that Talyson Seawright darkens her doorway.

But what does philosophy matter? There is only the Ru of now, and oh how the Valkyrie hates that version the most.

He tugs her in, and she goes. As he is enveloped in golden hair, so she is cocooned in turn by snow-burned arms and the furs of his cloths. From over his shoulder, her eyes stare blankly into the dark. Only the dimmest ember sparks at the heaving weight of his emotion, so much easier felt than heard, so faulty and insincere is his tongue when attempting to deliver them.

“Only two, in the end. White dragons.” Her voice has never known ranges beyond regality, but there is something hollow beneath the inherent silk of her natural tone. Slowly, her hands climb his back, fingers turned to claws that grip into his vest as something possessive and primordial overtakes her. Bringing him close instead of shoving him away - and revealing the underbelly of this new, oil-slick-black thing she has become. Bleeding tar all over the both of them. “We saw the cannon; I was - I tried to make it to you.” It is a faltering excuse, an empty condolence. She hadn’t made it in the end, had she? So what was it worth?

What were her failed efforts ever worth?
singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears
While the rhythm of the rain keeps time
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.
Talyson Seawright
the Messenger
Courier

Age: 27 | Height: 5'10" | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 10 - Strg: 44 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 50 - Luck: 52 - Int: 1
BOREAL - Mythical - Dragon (Fire Breath)
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#5
He would never know how close he had come to rejection, to violence, to cracking like the ice on the Sea had less than a day before. He was brittle, was the gruff young bleeding heart, fragile in places that would break if he ever so much as acknowledged them, and he had handed Hotaru the mirror that could undo him a season and more past.

But it was not a knife that twisted against his back. Talons sharp as blades cut through his skin, unbleeding, to prick his heart through fur and cloth and he welcomed the pain as he hugged her hard and fierce and didn't let go. They were two shadows in the night, wraiths whose only substance existed on exhaled smoke and frozen tears.

"Only you could say 'only' two," he mumbled, face scrunched into her hair. "We were... it was..." The words caught in his throat, any attempt at brushing off the brutality of the Banshees choked away by the memory of the men they had cut down as casually as he swatted ningyos. They didn't even s-scratch me," he managed at last, tongue thick with a bitter, irrational guilt. Why he had been unscathed when so many others had paid the ultimate price. The tar she bled was no thicker nor blacker than that which had soaked his skin from the Banshee's wounds, or the survivor's guilt he didn't even know he was drowning in.

"Were... did they hurt you?" A tremulous question, a sudden realization of how tight he was holding her and the beginnings of a loosening of his grip--

And then a tightening once more, unwilling to relax even that far, in case she vanished into smoke the moment he let 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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#6
HOTARU
She's in a long black coat tonight
Waiting for me in the downpour outside
So few remember the cruelties the Valkyrie is capable of. Deimos was the most solemn keeper of her secrets she could ever dream to have, but at what cost? As her hands claw into Tal’s vest, Ru wonders if maybe she has approached this all wrong. Perhaps she should have bled the world dry before it ever had the chance to do it to her son. Perhaps she should do it now, to keep safe those she loves, those precious few that remain. Talyson’s strong but trembling arms shake out the darkest flecks of her degrading soul, out into the moonlight where she can’t ignore it anymore.

Her huff of a laugh is a hollow, resonant thing. “They both died by my hand,” she admits easily, “I think I’ve earned the arrogance to say ‘only’.” Hotaru would never dismiss Sah’s help and efforts, but in the end she had been the superior predator. Again that slick, obsidian creature inside curls restlessly in her gut.

It subsides as Talyson quakes, something more protective crowding it out as she holds him tighter. Bright irises gone flinty in the moonlight as they sweep the dark beyond as if inviting the banshees to return, to dare to rectify their mistake. “Just as you would have taken any blow in their place, they would have done the same for you or any of their brothers in arms. They would not have wanted you to torture yourself; we all knew, when we stayed here, what fates might await us.” To assume anything less would be insulting to their memories, the independence of their choices and actions.

It is different with Enzo. Her baby. Her son, so young, she never should have let him choose…

Hotaru is jolted out of that spiraling void by his sudden release of tension inside her arms. It’s corrected moments later, and she tucks him closer. “Only once. I was able to heal it myself; not even a scar.” It’s the closest she can get to a soft, comforting tone, so exhausted it has been by tending to Flora. Her heart - if any of it remains - cracks further. “I - Tal, do you know - did we lose anyone else?” A mere whisper, and far too revealing in her word choice.
singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears
While the rhythm of the rain keeps time
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.
Talyson Seawright
the Messenger
Courier

Age: 27 | Height: 5'10" | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 10 - Strg: 44 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 50 - Luck: 52 - Int: 1
BOREAL - Mythical - Dragon (Fire Breath)
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#7
He knew of no atrocities that Ru had committed, but even if he had the courier was, first and foremost, Halovian. A survivor. And one whose loved ones would always come first and be given every benefit of the doubt, no matter how heated their arguments became. What the Valkyrie had been and done in the past mattered not at all compared to what she had done in the year they had known each other.

Through his own pain he was beginning to awaken to the darkness in her, however. Hollow voice and hollow eyes and arms that wrapped around him as much in possessiveness as comfort. He had thought to hide in her arms for a little while, knowing that Ru, predator that she was, would understand the twisting guilt inside him in a way his blood sisters couldn't.

But something wasn't right. He'd never seen her like this before.

And then, for a moment, she was the Ru he remembered. Advice: stern and wise, gentle but firm. She held him until his ribs creaked but he didn't protest, relishing the proof that she was here and alive and not a dream. For the moment it was just words; well-meaning and honest but empty. In the hours and days ahead they would play in his mind at odd moments as he put them together piece by piece and come to understand them and find the truth that she had learned long ago. For tonight it was enough just to hear them.

And then--

"...I... no, I don't... Delia ran away an' Evie'll live an' I heard Sah made it but..." He heard the 'else' and his mind spun, frantic, running down the list of the dead that he had carried to the place they were building the pyre. Neighbors. People whose faces he knew but whose names he'd never learned. Friends of friends. But on one... "Else?" he asked, voice small, wavering, wondering who he'd missed in the cataclysmic events of the day and the quiet nightmare of what had come after.
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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#8
HOTARU
She's in a long black coat tonight
Waiting for me in the downpour outside
It is a selfish thing, to coil herself around him in the guise of the brand of comfort he seeks while she leeches her own from him in the quiet and the dark. The blackness ebbs and flows, leaving her aware and incoherent in alternating waves. Sometimes herself - whatever that was - sometimes…less. She tries, for him. She always tries, because she loves him, and she would do anything to relieve this burden she can see building around his shoulders.

It’s not enough. No matter how hard she tries, it’s not enough. Whatever he saw in her, she fears it no longer exists, and how could he love her or look up to her when she is not her anymore?

The news that Cordelia ran away has golden brows rising slowly, and then narrowing abruptly. Cousins, yes? The two were related somehow, she knows it. And the woman - who had snubbed Ru so often for seemingly no reason than offense at not being welcomed with open arms - had abandoned Tal? “Ran?” she asks, voice deceptively silken, a vague interest or perhaps a feigned confusion to garner more information.

The facade falters immediately after.

Her arms loosen until only the leather beneath her hooked fingertips keep her arms hanging limp in broken cradle around Talyson’s body. He is older than her Enzo, but in many ways his youth is an echo. A different kind of brazen, but still a distorted mirror that has her draconic urges insisting she hide him away in the safety of her nest. She cannot tell him, cannot break his innocence.

She could lie. Oh, she knows she could. The words are right there. Lying is as easy to Hotaru as breathing, regardless of her recent honesty in her later years. She could convince him it was a slip of the tongue, could assure him she meant the Shields. There is no doubt in her mind she could fix this. Here, again, the needle quivers between two pathways. The easy one, and the hard one - the one that forces her to bare herself in ways she isn’t ready for. That Talyson may not be ready for, unused to bearing the weight of another’s grief the way his older companions are.

But he will know in time. These things never lie secret for long.  

“My son…he was killed in Torchline. His sister teleported him here in the middle of our fight with the dragons.”

It is clinical, but quiet. No need for further explanation; she’d regaled him with plenty of stories and humorous letters from the twins in the past. And, foolishly, she hopes that if she does not expand any further, the hurt won’t touch her here in this small bubble of comfort she has found.
singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears
While the rhythm of the rain keeps time
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.
Talyson Seawright
the Messenger
Courier

Age: 27 | Height: 5'10" | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 10 - Strg: 44 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 50 - Luck: 52 - Int: 1
BOREAL - Mythical - Dragon (Fire Breath)
Played by: Cirago Offline
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Posts: 1,869 | Total: 7,219
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#9
They were selfish together, and it was a selfishness Tal wouldn't have minded if he'd even known of it. It was enough that she was alive and here, where he could see and feel and know it, and if she took some small comfort in his own presence then it was nothing he would begrudge her. He was sandstone to her granite, a weak and fragile stone to bear her sorrow, but better able to shoulder hers than his own.

It was what family did.

And if she had broken beyond repairing, then he would still love the pieces that remained.

The ghost of her lingered, at least. He heard it in her voice, the question as innocent as sunrise and as pointed as a cougar's fang. Delia was no blood relative of his, but a dear friend whose cowardice he might judge but didn't begrudge on this night when so many others lay cold and lifeless in the square. "Doesn't matter," he sighed into pale hair. "Least she's not dead. S'all I'm askin' for tonight." At least she was around to fight with and forgive over it. Strange, he wondered distantly, numbly, how one's priorities could shift so drastically in less than a day.

If only he had chosen different words. But he couldn't have, when he hadn't known. Hotaru's embrace softened and he held his breath, some ineffable sense of teetering on a precipice washing through him like vertigo as the silence stretched, punctuated only by rare heartbeats.

And shattered, not with a crash but with a whisper, whisking the world out from beneath Tal's feet and leaving him dizzy and sick in front of the door to Hotaru's house.

"Enzo...? Flora!" His name was a question, a name without a face, a story without a cover. But hers was a gasp as Tal stiffened and a memory of blonde insouciance and the taste of vodka on his tongue turned to blood and ashes. "Oh, Ru, fuck."

What else was there to say?
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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#10
HOTARU
She's in a long black coat tonight
Waiting for me in the downpour outside
“Of course it matters,” she insists, voice low and dark. “If I had lost you? If you or Evie had died, because she ran? I would burn her. Clawlike hands cling tighter, reminding herself that he hadn’t. He is still here and breathing, she hasn’t lost him yet. And that is the only reason Cordelia’s cowardice will not seal her own fate. Pale hands - no longer claws, now - loosen slowly, and she tucks her head into his neck a little further to feel his pulse against her cheek. “I can’t lose you, Tal.” The rest of the world could burn, but the few precious people she’d pulled to the dark caverns of her heart needed to survive. Her own survival depended on it.

Enzo’s name in Tal’s mouth is a knife to her ribs, and though the two young men had never met - and now never would - it’s a cold comfort to know that Talyson at least remembered his name. Her hands fall limp away from Tal’s back (had it gotten broader, lately?) and her empty eyes burn but produce nothing. Only ash that still reeks of smoke and embers, clouding her vision with blackness. “I have lost four children now. Four. A wounded, animal low escapes her, a moaning thing that echoes with so many years of loss. “I’ve killed nearly all of them, Tal. What is wrong with me? She should have known that even fleeing Helovia was not enough to break the curse. It wasn’t the land that was cursed, it was Hotaru. Her womb a delayed death sentence for any soul that dared to grow within it. The true crime was her own selfishness in continuing to try. And finally the tears come, though they burn impotently in her waterline, refusing to fall when they can burn her longer by lingering.
singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears
While the rhythm of the rain keeps time
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.
Talyson Seawright
the Messenger
Courier

Age: 27 | Height: 5'10" | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 10 - Strg: 44 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 50 - Luck: 52 - Int: 1
BOREAL - Mythical - Dragon (Fire Breath)
Played by: Cirago Offline
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#11
It was a new and strange thing to Tal, being loved so fiercely, but Hotaru had always been honest about what she was. Huntress. Warrior. Teacher. And, somewhere along the line, family; a sister no less than those he'd grown up with. He hugged her tighter, feeling her claws scrape over his Vest and not caring what damage they did to cloth and layers in between. "Yeah, well, no argument from me there," he mumbled. He hadn't really considered what would happen if he died, but he wasn't going to talk anyone out of vengeance done in his name.

They were alike, he and Hotaru, in that self-preserving selfishness of holding their own close and above all others. He understood and wouldn't protest it, even for Delia's sake.

She nestled close and his own embrace became a little less desperate. Had she always been so small? For all her petite stature he was so used to always looking up at her and it was disorienting now to be able to rest his chin on the top of her head. He tried to will some of his heat into her through his arms as he nodded a silent promise. He remembered it: a long walk through the Oerwoud; finding each other again and admitting how much he'd missed her once. He didn't intend to let that misunderstanding happen again, even if he was shit with words.

She let him go but he didn't return the favor. He didn't dare. There was something dangerous in her pain; a precipice that he was afraid she'd willingly fall into if he let go even for a moment, and so he continued to hold her tight even as her revelation left him swallowing past a lump in his throat. It had been bad enough, watching his friends and neighbors die on the wall. But to watch family...

And four??

"I... only knew about Flora an' her brother," he admitted quietly. "I'm so, so sorry. I dunno what happened to 'em but..." There weren't words for the pain he felt for her in that moment. If she wouldn't cry then he would, and hot tears rolled down his cheeks to dampen her hair. He couldn't answer her question in any way that she'd accept, so instead he fell back on the honesty in his heart.

"I love you, 'Ru," he said fiercely. Helplessly. Lost and not wanting to lose her, too. "An' Flora loves you. She needs you. An' I can't lose you again. Promise me, please? No matter how far you go, it won't be where I can't follow."
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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#12
HOTARU
She's in a long black coat tonight
Waiting for me in the downpour outside
His protestations would have done Cordelia no good in such an eventuality. Even if he’d lived to plead the woman’s case, the Shrike would have been torn apart upon her own weaponized thorns, shredded by the Valkyrie’s rage as recompense for every wound the young man would have endured. Though Talyson remains whole in her arms, she shakes with the anger of the possibilities, the outcomes that had breathed and died in the span of blinks as fate took other paths. Her loyalty is grievously hard to win, but Tal has managed to do so, and while the fires of her love may be too hot to stand near sometimes, they will never burn him; only others, in defense of him.

That fire burns low, banked and sputtering, and he is right to fear. As the wind of a target - so sorely needed in the wake of Enzo’s death - is ripped from her sails she sags against him like a discarded marionette. Porcelain facade cracked, lovingly painted veneer chipped, revealing only dark, hollow caverns within.

But, strangely, there is something new there. As his tears slide down his cheeks and onto her own skin, they slip past the porcelain dust coating the rough edges and begin to fill the emptiness with something new. “Even after all these years it hurts to talk about them,” she croaks, his tears flooding her insides until the words float high enough to come free.

She wants to curse him for his pleading request. Why, why did they keep asking her to stay? Was their selfishness worth more than her own relief? Than reuniting with her children? How much could she possibly be worth alive to outweigh that kind of peace?

But she knows she would ask the same. Because she is selfish, and has lost far too much already. And in looking from the other side of the glass, she understands. And as her shoulders begin to shake, as the burn in her eyes increases until finally tears force their way through the grit and fire, Ru nods her head jerkily against Tal’s collar. “I promise. I promise. I -” and on and on again in dissolving mumbles that become more a mantra to herself than a vow for his ears. Only ceasing when the sobs break through and distort any attempt at speech, as the pain finally crests and she shatters all over in Talyson’s arms.
singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears
While the rhythm of the rain keeps time
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.
Talyson Seawright
the Messenger
Courier

Age: 27 | Height: 5'10" | Race: Accepted | Nationality: Natural | Citizenship: King's End
Level: 10 - Strg: 44 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 50 - Luck: 52 - Int: 1
BOREAL - Mythical - Dragon (Fire Breath)
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MP: 10170
#13
There was a pain in her he couldn't even imagine. He had lost his parents sooner than he had ever expected, but he'd had his sisters to help share and ease the sorrow. And as much as it still hurt, it was only natural for a child to outlive his parents. But for a mother to lose her son - to lose her children, over and over - would have broken a lesser soul. He only nodded against her hair, accepting the gift of her honesty without asking for any more memories than she had already given. It was enough to know that she had other children.

And had lost them, in some distant past. Another life... another world?

But here and now it was Enzo; and the ones who were left--

Selfish. Shameless. Desperate. He grasped after words to anchor her in a world he knew, a place he could reach. He needed her. Flora did. So did Deimos and Sah, each in their own ways. She was as much his as he was hers, and though he had no claws to hold her in place he held her as tightly as mere flesh and muscle could, even after her promise drowned against his chest and the tears began to flow.

"I'm here," he mumbled against her hair, stroking her back even as his own tears continued to fall and mingle with hers. "I'm here. Won't leave you, either. I've got you." The words didn't have to make sense; what mattered was the emotion behind them.

And discovering that even sandstone could build a lasting foundation when held together with a fierce enough mortar.
Hotaru Kaito
the Valkyrie
Masseuse / Headmistress

Age: 33 | Height: 5'2 | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: King's End
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#14
HOTARU
She's in a long black coat tonight
Waiting for me in the downpour outside
There is only so much energy left in her to be spent, even on things like tears. As badly as she needs the emotional release, the hours - days? - spent holding vigil over her son’s body, over her daughter who is more body than girl now, are fast catching up to her. Though she has never looked down upon Tal, the differences in their age, experience, and disposition has admittedly led Hotaru to take on a more dominant angle to their relationship. It feels strange to lean on him now, to break apart in his arms; to find that, somehow, he doesn’t buckle beneath the weight of her grief. Remaining steady, unmoved, and supportive.

Her sobs turn to ragged gasps, lungs too desperately in need of air to sustain the emotive grief. She is so accustomed to Deimos’ careful avoidance of promises, so like herself, that Talyson’s vows leave her rocked and unsteady. It’s a promise he can’t make. Shouldn’t make - because she clings to it immediately. Unable to remember the last time someone so naively promised to stay forever, it’s like a drug, and she finds herself clinging to it like an addict.

Alas, the strength even to cling is gone like a blinked out star, and she is left limp in Tal’s arms, breathing slowing but becoming more ragged. “I’m so tired,” she cries, and feels it down to her bones.
singing "Baby come home" in a melody of tears
While the rhythm of the rain keeps time
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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