Dragonveil Fold rise and rise again

Fear and adrenaline might have coarsed through her blood, but now she was here, now she had found him, and somehow the idea that everything would be okay had clicked neatly into place after it, as though it were the utterly natural conclusion. Kjors would never let her get hurt, had never let her get hurt before, and to Bennet there was no living creature which could truly combat a dragon. Her father might have possessed a wolf's body, but he was built of fire and smoke; Bennet knew what that was like, what it felt like to stand on four furred paws and yet be soaring on vast wings at the same time. The dragon will come out. The dragon will prevail. As the girl always did, she had faith, and her faith was resolute.

She watched the dragon fend off the cougar's attacks from between the stranger's legs, wide-eyed, never doubting, unable to see how its claws dug into her father's hide and left vast bloody marks because it jarred so completely with her reality.

She heard her name spoken in an unfamiliar voice, heard the warning and advice, but it all came through a thick plane of glass, too thick to hear properly, to absorb. There was a nose on her shoulder, pushing her, and she staggered to the side under its force, but the moment the stranger left she was unable to move any further. Stood out in the open and far from the rocks and shrubs he'd tried to urge her towards, the young dragon was now the complete opposite of earlier, when she had been able to do nothing but run, for now... now she could not move an inch.

Two images swam in front of her vision. Two movies, played out at the same time, side by side. One was of a mighty black reptile, wings wide and jaws snapping, forcing back the much lesser predator with insulting ease. The other was of a tired old wolf refusing to give in, even though surrender might have been wiser.

The stranger rammed into the cougar and for some strange reason, the first movie now showed two dragons against the common foe, but the foe had grown in size and strength and ferocity and repelled the attack with a well-placed strike to the second dragon's face, who then staggered back, and the foe grew larger until her beloved dragon sank its teeth into its legs and then - and then -

The sound of her heartbeat in her ears had been replaced with white noise, but perhaps it was still her heart, moving too fast and frantically for her brain to keep up. Her head felt faint, lines of electric snaking in from the edges of her vision, and then she blinked and focused and the foe was gone.

So were the two movies. Now all she could see were two dark wolves, fallen like heaps of dead leaves in the red-dotted snow. Distantly she heard the second talk to the first, but she couldn't make out the words for all the static in her head. Her legs moved without conscious thought. To his side she strode, blind to the blood, to the gouges in his flank and chest and everywhere, to the ragged way he breathed, to the look in his eye, because if she saw it then it might be true.

She sank to the ground next to him, as though proximity might clear the clouds in her eyes, might bring clarity to her confusion, reassurance to the worst fear she could hardly bring herself to consider.

But it was staring her in the face. Breathing light and fluttering, as her body began to panic, she swept her tongue out and over his face, his cheek, his ear, his neck, as though she could merely clean it all away, because this, this was not something she could just accept, she couldn't, she couldn't, she couldn't.

If you need some sad music...

Distantly, he heard the lion fall, even as it all played out in front of him.  It seemed to happen in slow motion, the coil, the sudden blur of dark brown fur, the scramble of claws as the creature tipped and fell far below.  Did it live?  Did it die?  Did it matter?

Kjors could not quite remember the urge to lay down, but he suddenly found himself on his belly, snow cold against his throat as his paws law beneath him.  Finally, the pain seemed to become a reality instead of a far off threat, his skull and sides burning – but that could not compare to the horrible, awful fire in his throat.  His daughter appeared and he wheezed, finding only the strength to tip his head enough that his remaining eye could take the young dragon in.

“Bennet,” he gurgled. 

It’s alright.

But it wasn’t, was it?  No wolf should watch their father die – look what had happened to him.  He closed his eye and shuddered before forcing it open once more.  “Benny – go with yer uncle Kjell an’ git outta here ‘for it comes back,” he slurred, another shiver racking his body.  It was getting so cold.  He couldn’t feel his legs.  “He’ll take care a’ ya.  ‘s time fer me t’ go an’ –“  And what?

Join the Mother in the afterlife?  Had he earned his place?  Join his father -- for surely the brave wolf had earned his place among their forefathers – and look on after his child?

“‘s time, baby girl.  ‘ll see y’gain one day.  Until then, Ah--” He wheezed and choked, bubbles of blood landing on the snow. “Remember: rise an’ rise ‘gain, ‘til lambs become lions.”

If he wanted to say something else, it never made it past his throat – the wolf settled into the snow with one final eye, his eye sliding shut as sleep came upon him.  And for the first time, Kjors did not have it left in him to wake.

to have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you

KJORS SØRENSON

to feel your weight in arms I'd never use

(This post was last modified: Dec 30, 2016, 11:38 PM by Kjors.)

This was her fault.

Her attempts to kiss away his injuries was in vain, and the sound of her name on his lips, the way she could hear every breath laced with blood, they told her to stop. To believe it. To accept it. She was so young still, and while not sheltered from the hardships of life, death was still alien - just a concept, something that happened to the lesser animals that they ate, something that she understood on one level but not in any meaningful way. Bennet had thought she knew what death was, from the teachings of her mother and father and her own conclusions, but that was before she'd been faced with it. There was nothing beautiful about this. When she looked at him, she did not see a wolf moving gloriously to the next life, called by the Mother for his next purpose, slipping peacefully from this world. She saw raw flesh, heard pained breathing, smelled blood, and saw in his eye - saw in his eye... saw...

"No," she breathed as his head fell, his last words gone from his lips, his final utterance seared into her skull, because if she let it go then she would never hear his voice again. Never. Bennet had never been scared by finality before, by loss. She'd walked away from Hearthwood without looking back, had easily pushed down any reminders of her milk-mates, had reasoned away any tiny twinges of nostalgia which popped up, had even accepted that one day they might need to leave Dragonveil. All her short life, the dragon girl had looked forward. Always forward. The past held no allure, no pain, nothing worth her time and attention. She lived for the future, for the present. But what were they without him? How could the Mother allow such a fearsome, strong creature to be stuck down so effortlessly, so pointlessly? She could not believe that a dragon could be bested, not like this, but she had witnessed it.

No. She had caused it. It was her fault.

She had done this. It wasn't his fault, it wasn't Her fault, it wasn't the cougar's fault. Bennet had done this.

Only a dragon could defeat a dragon.

The fuzziness in her head faded as her breathing grew steadier, her body calming itself before she fainted, eyes wide and staring at the lifeless face of her father, fallen onto the ground. She watched silently as the blood pooling behind his gums spilled out between the gap left by two of his teeth, the tiny trickle escaping his mouth and running over his lip to drip onto the snow. His last eye had slipped shut, and she wondered what it was seeing now, on the other side. More than anything, she wished that she could see it one more time, see it focus on her with that sharp, intelligent gaze he had, that way he always looked right into her core. But even if she were to open his lid, she knew she would find only yellow glass behind it.

Reaching forward slowly, tenderly, she nosed at the soft fur at the base of his ear, running it along the angle of his cheekbone under his skin, touching it gently to the end of his dark snout. The temptation to nudge him, to try to will him back to life, was monumental, so powerful that she thought she might explode trying to contain it, but she resisted. If she let herself succumb to the kind of desperate grief which clawed at her insides then she would be lost. Rise and rise again, he had said, 'til lambs become lions. His final testament, her holy grail. Rise and rise again.

Apathetic to the blood now clinging to her fur, eyes still unable to move away, the little dragon stood, legs steady though it took every ounce of her might. "Pray with me," she whispered, to the man who lay nearby, who she knew was watching, who was now important because he had said so - go with your uncle Kjell he had said, and Bennet had always obeyed his direct commands, had always accepted everything he told her, so why would she ignore or defy his last instruction? She heard Kjell shift, come to stand over them, saw him drop his head and heard him speak. Speak of a proud father, of being one with Her. Unable to make sound, Bennet just listened. Her throat felt tight, and there was a boulder on the back of her tongue, and though she breathed evenly, she felt each inhale threaten to hitch and catch and tip her over.

She had done this. Now she had to make sure it meant something, otherwise she would turn into leaves in the wind and float away into obscurity, and his sacrifice would mean nothing.




I'll see you again.