• Mature • Suspension

[Edalene]

9 Ymiden 717

She fell through the dark.

The fall was endless. It seemed to go on forever, and as she fell, she saw colours and moments. Blue, green, red flashes spiralled past her as she fell downwards to the bottom of the pit. The yellow honeycomb on the walls of the cliffs on either side of her glowed sickly, and screamed. Or was she screaming? Was it her, or the insects, or both? Who did they scream for? For her oncoming death, or for the gods of Shay past? Whatever it was, something screamed, and Edalene fell.

And as she fell, she seemed to float, but ever downwards. Perhaps that was why the fall took so long. It was as though Ralaith had slowed time for her, to enjoy her last moments, but enjoy was the wrong word, because how could you enjoy a journey when you knew finality lay at the end? Instead, sickeningly, the honeycomb screamed, and colours invaded her skin, and flashes of Aeodan convulsing, dying, the poison from the spider bite crawling up, staining his skin black until it bled from his eyes like sewered tears.

And slowly, torturously, her fall came to an end. At the bottom of the pit was blackness, and she slammed into the stalagmite that would hold her death. But as the fall was slow, so too was her impaling. Sickeningly, she could feel everything as she at a glacial pace slid onto the pointed stone. She felt her skin burst first, and then her stomach slice open, the juices poisoning the flesh. Then, her spleen, and bile dripped down the stalagmite as did she. Finally, like rolling in bed in the morning and cracking your joints, the stalagmite cracked apart Edalene's spine.

And finally, she hung, suspended on the stalagmite. Her limbs twitched, and then stopped. Pain was everywhere, agonising, needles into every part of her body, as if she were being stabbed over and over again.

But this time, she didn't die. She simply hung there. Suspended.

Waiting.

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[Robin Stark]

This wasn't a nightmare.

Robin sighed and the cavern sighed and the stalagmites and stalactites sighed. It was all strangely comforting. He thought, idly, about things he didn't care about; it wasn't important how he arrived to the cavern or how he couldn't remember walking through the rocky pathways or why he was sitting down. The questions went as they came, unanswered.

He rested against an especially large stalagmite. Robin had learned, long ago, that stalactites and stalagmites were formed the same way -- not that he knew how they happened anymore. He did know how to listen, though.

The stalagmite whispered, the stalactite somewhere above, its twin, lost to the darkness. There had been water. Milky and heavy and wet. Drip drip drip. It covered it's history in fragments, in a collection of droplets, a deep certainty that somehow it would meet its sister. The stalagmite sang of wishing, a deep desire for unity, a prophecy promised by nature. Robin wondered if he might speed up the process. He would need to talk to water first, to understand its role in the stalagmite's and the stalactite's creation.

A single drop hit him on his forehead, trickling down, a smear of red and iron spilling to his nose. He knew, immediately, that it wasn't water. A body, a woman's body, thin and long and broken. She was dying, or dead. Something red and plump and small clung against the stalagmite, an apple he might have thought, had it not been covered in broken veins. A liquid, green brown, acidic and thick, mixed with her blood, staining the white stone.

"I hope the stalagmite doesn't break under your weight," he said, standing now, his eyes, cold honey, watching hers, "It has a wish, you see. It has a twin somewhere, alone, up in the darkness above. They spawned each other, or so this stalagmite said," Robin shrugged, conveying his own uncertainty. Stone was generally reliable, but only in what it could know. It had been strange to hear earth whisper about promise and prophecy, that was usually wind gossip. "You couldn't have known, though. I don't blame you, of course, but perhaps you might move?"

Robin thought it a perfectly reasonable question. After all, the stalagmite had been there first.

[Edalene]

Edalene hung there, her body pierced. And she could not move. Her limbs twitched spastically at random moments, her nerve endings screaming to their broken counterparts, trying to communicate to one another and finding the pathway blocked with stone. A long moan escaped her mouth. The pain was unbearable, stinging and searing, but it never seemed to end. On and on the needles stabbed her, radiating out from the sleek smooth stone piercing her body. And the pain never dulled. Instead it became a part of Edalene. It was an essential part of her.

Blood dripped from her mouth when she moaned, and a panicked moment made her want to catch the drop with her hands and force it back inside her mouth. But her limbs would not obey her, betraying her, leaving her alone with the cool cavern as her body refused to die around her. Alert, and undying. Blood welled in her eyes like tears, but beyond that filmy red liquid, still those colours that had haunted her in her floating descent danced. They taunted her with their movement; movement she could not command her body to perform. Again, a moan, and her blood dripped down the cool white stone.

And a man's voice. For a moment she thought it was Aeodan, but in her descent she had seen his skin blacken with the poison of Farafan. No, it was a stranger, some boy sitting at the bottom of the cavern - as if he had been placed there, waiting for her. But to what end? Edalene felt the pain rise in her body at his words, as if she could not summon anger and so pain had responded instead.

"I have a twin in darkness too," she replied, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper, blood and spittle flying from her lips. Each beat of her heart - stubborn in clinging to life - spurted more blood into the caverns of her body through broken arteries. "We were spawned together. But I cannot find him, and I cannot leave this stalagmite. My limbs have turned against me."

As if to prove her point, her limbs twitched all at once. "The stalagmite seems to have broken me, and not the other way around."

[Robin Stark]

She wasn't dying. Or she was, but she wouldn't die. Robin frowned; blood pooled and dripped from her pretty mouth, thin white lips. Her body was broken, speared by stone, sprawled over the stalagmite. She should be dead. Human bodies were fragile, he knew because he had one. "Your pain is just more obvious. You're blind and deaf to what you've done to the stalagmite."

Robin wasn't. He could hear the splits in the stone, the aches and pains. It groaned, desperately reaching for the ceiling, despite the sudden weight. She was threatening to ruin everything. "Then you understand. It just wants to be together with it's twin," he sighed, watching as her body twitched. The splits brightened into cracks and the whole of the cave seemed to shudder in mourning. "This one was spawned by it's sibling and water. It cried, alone, until the water pooled here, giving birth to another. Brother, sister, father, mother, son, daughter. They are everything to each other," Robin watched as the blood pooled onto the floor.

"How did you lose your other? Why didn't they fall with you?" Robin asked, using his own magic to bind the stone together. He wouldn't allow this stranger to break his friend, to halt their dreams.

[Edalene]

Edalene listened to his words, their gentle and modulated whispers echoing fiercely in the cavern. She reached for anger, but could not find it inside of her. She knew she should be furious, that this stranger blamed her for the pain of the unfeeling, but instead all she felt was impassive. As she hung there on the stalagmite, pain writhing through her body as a dance, she looked down and noticed the lack of insects crawling on the floor. Curious. She was sure they had been there before. Now everything was still and quiet, and even the man beside her seemed barely alive.

"I was born of mother and water as one half," she whispered, watching her blood pool at the base of the stalagmite. She itched to ask the man to help her off the stone and allow her to bleed out and die on the ground, but somehow she knew there would be some force that would stop her from being freed. She knew that she would instead hang here, suspended, unable to die.

"I don't know why he didn't fall," she whispered. She tried to crane her neck up, look around, but she could not. Only then did she feel something other than pain. Even with the stone being knit together beneath her, the panic bloomed. Where was Aeodan? Breath came to her in short bursts. Edalene began to hyperventilate, and tears streamed with blood fell out of her eyes.

"I don't know where he is," she cried, gasping. "I was not supposed to leave him--Mother made sure--I was always to--to be--where is he? Where is Aeodan?" She tried to reach out, grasp Robin in desperation, but with her severed spine, she could only twitch them in a cruel pantomime. Edalene moaned in grief.

[Robin Stark]

He watched as she cried.

It struck Robin that he couldn't empathize with her. She cried water, each drop saturated with salt and blood. Her tears, birthed from grief and pain, cried with her. They sang in a chorus:

Aeodan.

Aeodan.

Aeodan.

And still he couldn't understand her pain.

The stalagmite whined under her. "You'll be fine. I'm here," he offered, breathing magic into the stone. It borrowed his strength, his reserves, mending itself. The space was filled with a crackling like heavy boots on fresh snow. He gave willingly, happily. He imagined the earth knitting itself together, molding like wet clay. Her tears, he imagined, collecting over the rock, smoothing it's edges.

"I don't know where he is," he offered with a shrug. "Your water pleads for him. It's strange I --," Robin's eyes narrowed as he considered their situation. "I've never heard tears before, not like this. They're too human, usually," her blood too joined the chorus. They yelled his name, two syllables, again and again and again. "You must love him very much."

His own heart fluttered, echoing an almost forgotten pain. The earth thumped along, warming and cooling, warming and cooling. "You must love him very much," he echoed, a whisper. His eyes were wet, suddenly. Robin touched the corner of his left eye, wiping away. The air changed, remembering a day long ago, smelling like the sea, like the forest. He swallowed, blinking, unfeeling because everything he loved was here. There was no one else. He remembered no one else.

"You'll be better without him," Robin said, his voice harsher. "He never loved you," he coughed, wiping his eyes again. There wind pressed again, a breeze, the quiet sounds of morning waves against soft, brown sand.

[Edalene]

"I don't - I don't want you here!" Edalene cried, misunderstanding what Robin meant. So caught up in her grief, she did not feel the stone healed as it knit together within her. She did not feel the movement of the stalagmite against her spine and her organs. She only felt a chasm - not the physical chasm of her abdomen, but the place in her heart where she knew Aeodan should have been.

She knew with a certainty, that wherever she was, whatever this place was - the Fifth Verse, bastardised - that Aeodan was not here. That she was alone. That she was no longer whole.

Robin mentioned love, and she cried harder, shaking her head. "Not love," she moaned, but was too distraught to explain. It was more than love. How could four letters explain someone who was part of you - was you - was everything? Yes, she loved her brother, but that did not begin to explain the depth of her feelings for him.

Not even Vri could understand.

Oh, why couldn't she just die and be with him?

And then his words turned her tears to ice.

"What?" she snarled. Furiousity and anguish ran like flames through her voice. "Better off?" she snarled. And then - and then the stone cracked clean in two.

It was almost as if it were just by Edalene's will that the stone bowed and broke beneath her. Edalene toppled to the ground, and the split in the stalagmite meant that each half of the stone fell from her abdomen. She stood swaying, her belly a gaping chasm, her stomach and liver and spleen hanging in that open hole. Blood poured to the ground from her wound.

And she stepped forward. Her hands outstretched, her cheeks red with rage. "Don't. You. Dare." Her body ruined, her cheeks tearstained, Edalene ran towards the man in a rage indescribable.

[Robin Stark]

There wasn't death for stone.

It wasn't flesh to split or bleed. It had no heart, at least, nothing like a mortal might keep in their chest. It simply existed. And yet, Robin mourned.

He screamed when the stalagmite broke. Red, thick blood splashing against the grey, cold stone. Robin screamed. Soft pink things fell from her womb. Robin screamed. She stood, unnaturally, fire in her eyes. Robin screamed.

His magic scrambled, poorly tethering the broken stalagmite whole. It's song was weak, dying. Somber and knowing, it wished for nothing more than its twin. A doomed dream, hope lasts forever.

"I DARE!" Robin yelled, standing as quickly as the woman charged. She wasn't whole. It was fury that moved her. Robin readied his stance, legs bent and shoulders wide. His muscles tensed. He clutched his fists.

He wouldn't know what he dared. All Robin knew was that this strange woman rejected the natural order. The stalagmite should have grown. It should have met its twin. This woman, this monster, with a hole for her stomach, dared too much. He screamed into the cavern. He watched her run towards him, arms out, spindly and weak.

When she was close enough, he would throw his fist out, coming from the left, right for her cheek.

[Edalene]

She could hear the scream echoing through the cavern. His shrill voice against the cold stone echoed, bouncing off each wall, in a way that seemed like the sound would echo on forever and ever. It did not deter Edalene. Still, leaving a trail of blood and guts behind her, spilling from her ruined abdomen, she ran.

"YOU were never loved!" she shrieked as she ran toward him. Still his screams, his words, barely registered within her. All she could think was: he was wrong. This monster of a man, with stone for a heart, was wrong. She would never be better off without Aeodan. She would only be half of a soul.

And her distraction in her rage meant that she did not see the man raise his fist, nor did she see it swing and then connect with her cheek.

It didn't hurt. She did not feel any pain - agony was her state now; this was nothing new. But she crumpled to the ground nonetheless, her dying body barely able to keep her up any more. Silently, she curled into a ball on the ground, her blood and guts seeping from her open belly. "You're wrong," she whispered. "He loves me. He loves me. He loves me." She kept saying it, over and over, as if she could convince herself - as if the words were a shield against the violence of the man above her.

[Robin Stark]

Robin collapsed to the ground.

He hummed, a broken song, something he'd learned in Treth. They sang to their partners and lovers. The wind had tried to steal the words for Hans. The cavern rumbled with him. The stalagmite vibrated, crying, and the stalactite sang in response, a dull vibration ringing through the dark cave.

"He never loved you. He never loved me," He whispered, hugging his knees. His tears fell onto dry skin. He watched as she crumpled into a ball, her body spilling onto the floor. Red and red and redder still. Grey and white and red. Their pain stained the cave with a brilliant sheen. He could only watch as she laid. He had no desire to save her. "Loveless," he cursed, an open word, claimed by both. They shared it. Robin wanted them to share it.

Robin whimpered as a memory threatened to come back. "If he loved you, he would be here. If he loved you, there wouldn't be pain. If he loved you, there wouldn't have been her," he hissed, remembering a warm night and candlelight. He remembered a table he didn't sit at. He remembered loving someone. He remembered when his heart abandoned him.

And then he cried. It was silent, but the world watched. The earth trembled. The wind whined.

There was no one, for either of them.

"We only have each other."