Solo The Art of Letting Go

[Taurina]

Early Morning of the 75th of Spring 518

She woke with something fervent and aching pressing against the inside of her chest. Something that begged to be acknowledged and would be satisfied no other way. She did not want to acknowledge it. She did not want to satisfy it. It was easier to be consumed by the pain; to tell herself that the pain was what proved her existence. But a part of her knew that it was time to act. It was time to take, to steal, whatever peace she could for herself. It was time for the past and the pain to be allowed to rest in the past, where they belonged.

She had dreamed of him that night. She had seen him on his speckled mare with her bone white face. They were playing a game.

Skylla and Azmere ran ahead, the latter showing off just how brilliantly he could ride and the former relishing in the opportunity to play, to dance. Taurina could have watched them forever. Just sat staring and studying, admiring.

“Come zulkina.” A gentle request, voiced so clear despite him being so far away.

The Ethaefal smiled and kicked her heels against her stallion who was so eager to join their play. They flew across the plains for there was no fear here. There was no imbalance or falling. Starfire rubbed against the little mare, danced with her. Azmere smiled his familiar half smile; Taurina threw back her head and laughed something joyous and clear.

Drykas reached out towards each other, the male taking hold of the female and helping her move from her horse over to his so that they could be together. Starfire threw back his head and shook his mane, Syna light bouncing off of him as he took in the freedom but continued to stay near. Taurina smiled as she watched him, as she settled herself in the spot over Skylla’s withers where Azmere had made room for her. His warmth wrapped around her and she pressed herself into it, she tried to take hold of it.

“Taurina, look.” His voice was a warm rumble in his chest as he took her arm and showed it to her.

Windmarks inked in black stretched out over the skin of her arm. The chaos of a strider’s mane, of her life, all rooted in the family knot settled in her palm. Taurina felt tears prick her eyes as she stared down at it, as she brought her hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles and then her palm. The Stormblood knot, Azmere’s knot, their family. The tears began to fall.

“I don’t want to say goodbye,” the Ethaefal admitted, turning her face so she could stare up at his. “Can’t we just stay here forever?”

Azmere smiled down at her with that half smile and kindness in his eyes. He wrapped his arms around her and ran fingers over her knotted hair. A kiss was pressed against her temple, where he had kissed her once before, and then he shook his head.

“No zulkina, we cannot.”

Taurina shook her head and her body began to tremble. She knew the tears were rimming her eyes in red and her face was turning blotchy, but she did not care much about any of it. All she cared about was him and how she had lost him and how she was going to lose him all over again because while he was here, he was not really here. This was just a dream and dreams were sweet until they ended. And they always ended.

“Please… Please stay… I need you…” She buried her face in his neck, hiding her eyes away from the world as if it would keep her from facing reality. “I love you.”

There was no response at first. There was nothing but the gentle hum of the same lullaby he had once used to comfort her rising from his chest. Knowing fingers stroked over her hair continuously as he allowed her to cry. As he allowed her to savor the warmth he could give her.

“It’s time, Taurina,” he finally told her, “It is time to let me go.”

Taurina rose her head and met his gaze. She swallowed once, twice, and then she shook her head again.

“No…” she murmured, “No.”

The multicolored gaze turned sad as Azmere brushed a strand of hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear.

“Do it zulkina, let me go. Live your live. No more tears for me.”

Taurina sniffled and kept shaking her head. Syna was getting brighter in the sky, the plains were beginning to fade. It was nearing time to go. The Eth wrapped her arms around her ankal’s neck and held onto him tight. It was as though she was trying to keep herself in the dream. Trying to make it last..

“Just a little bit longer,” she begged, “just a little more time.”

Azmere smiled.

“We are always going to want a little more time.”

The scene faded into light and shadows. Azmere faded, and it did not matter how many times she screamed his name, he did not come back.

Taurina woke to her large apartment. To the gaping hole in her heart and the pulled silver chord of the Kelvic bond intwined with her soul reminding her she was not completely alone. She struggled for breath as her hands gripped at the sheets, as a scream trapped itself in her throat. A handful of moments passed before she sat up and grabbed her journal along with a nub of charcoal off the nightstand. She knew what she needed to do.

It was time to say goodbye.

Common | Pavi | 'Thoughts'

[Taurina]

The pages of her journal had been covered in renderings of him. Some full sketches of how she remembered him, but most were doodles of his features. Those kind eyes, that half smile, the windmarks that covered his one side. In one she had even taken the time to detail his scars, shade in shadows were they were deepest; in another -a sketch of his eyes alone- she had taken paint and added in every color as she remembered them. Her painting skills had not been on par with her sketching ones, but the point was gotten across. Even the beauty, in way, was gotten across.

Taurina stared at her sketches, at her memories of him, and felt as a lump began forming in her throat. She ran her fingertips over the charcoal marked parchment and swallowed her tears as they came. It had taken him dying for her to understand the time she had wasted. It had taken him dying for her to realize just how much he meant to her. These were things she had come to understand and regret. If she could do it all over again she would have told him. She would have swallowed her pride and her fear and admitted to him just how important he was to her. How much care she held in her heart towards him.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured to herself, to Azmere as if his soul could hear her, for the thousandth time since his death, “I will always be sorry.”

The Drykas swallowed and rose her knees to her chest, the journal held over her heart. She curled up into a ball and rested her head on her knees, eyes closing as tears streamed down her cheeks. The sound of waves crashing and seagulls talking where all she could hear as the ocean breeze tangled her hair and sand was trapped between her toes. The beach had not been their home, but it was where she had come to say goodbye for she did not feel quite ready to face the plains once more.

A tremor worked its way through the small Drykas body. Then another and another. The cry of her heart was ugly and wretched, but there was no one here to see. Even Syna’s light filled the dusty colored morning with enough brightness to scare off the shadows that haunted the night. Long moments passed before Taurina began to pull herself apart and wipe away the tears from her red stained cheeks. She had not come here to cry, but to bring an end to the pain. It was time.

‘We are always going to want a little more time.’ Azmere’s words from the dream echoed through her thoughts.

A little more time… A little more time… Taurina let out a chocked sob. No more time.

Hands shook as the journal was laid out in the sand and she began pulling at the pages. One by one she ripped them out. The sketch of his eyes, of his windmarks, his scars, the study of his half smiling face… Everything. Nothing was left. Tears splattered against the parchment and streaked the charcoal. Still Taurina ripped away until each was out and the journal was a good fourth empty. She held the pile of sketches in her shaking hand and stood to her feet.

“I wish I knew how to be angry at you.” Taurina’s broken pavi spoken words were carried with the wind inland as she stared out at the sea. “I wish I could hate you instead of love you. This would be so much easier.”

But she knew she did not hate him, could not. Not after all they had gone through together. Not after the affections he had poured over her and the care he had taken to make sure she knew that she belonged. With him, with their family, to the Drykas. Taurina sucked in a shuddering breath and let it waver as it was released. No, she was not angry with him. But she could not hold onto him any longer either.

Taurina looked at the trembling works of art in her hand and let out another wavering breath. She sat down where she was, further down the beach than where she had been previously, and began to fold each piece of parchment as small as it would go. Taurina worked slowly, meticulously. Each sketch was given the attention and care she wished she had been brave enough to bestow upon the ankal she had loved.

“I wanted to kiss you in the summer,” she admitted for the wind and ocean and seagulls to hear as her hands continued to work, “after you helped me make my mark on Ola Pohaku, there was a moment there when you were so close and I knew it would not have taken much… I didn’t though, you know I didn’t. I told myself it was not the time, that it would have taken away from the meaning of the night.”

Taurina pursed her lips and shook her head. There had been other times too, but that was the one when she most felt like she should have taken the chance. She should have closed the gap between them. It had felt right, but she had convinced herself that it had felt wrong. Fool.

“I love you Azmere.” Taurina blinked back a fresh round of tears, determined not to cry anymore. “I don’t know if you can hear me, if your soul watches or if you have already moved on, but I hope you hear for you need to know this. A part of me will always love you, and I think that was how it was always meant to be. This plan of the gods… Taking you from me.. I should have known that our time was precious.. I should have kissed you in the summer.”

She stared down at one of the last sketches to be folded, fingertips brushing over the charcoal only very slightly damaged by tears. A small smile lifted the corners of her lips. He had been so beautiful to her, the sketches did not do him justice but they did help her remember. She decided that this one, a full rendering of him standing beside Skylla, she was going to keep. So that even when her mind began to forget how exactly sunlight danced in his eyes or how the one side of his face would lift while the other remained permanently frozen when he smiled, she would have something to help her put the pieces of her memory back together.

“I will never forget you. Never. That is a promise.”

Common | Pavi | 'Thoughts'

[Taurina]

Taurina collected the pieces of folded parchment into a pile in her palms and held the sketch she was saving carefully in the crook of one arm. She walked, slowly, back to where she had left her journal and charcoal before she allowed the folded sketches to fall into the sand. She took hold of the remaining sketch and carefully placed it back in her journal that she proceeded to close shut around it. Later she would deal with finding a proper place for the sketch. Perhaps a frame to protect it and maybe even put up somewhere in the apartment, when she was ready. Leaving it be for now, she turned to her pile in the sand and knelt down beside it.

She did not know how to say goodbye. Not to the fisherman who had died before her departure from Mura. Not to the family she had left behind in Endrykas. Not to the god she still hoped to see again one day. Not to Azmere… Taurina blew out a sigh. She did not know how, but she needed to figure it out because it was necessary. It was time to let herself heal and move on. As she believed he would have wanted her to.

“It is hard you know… being here without you. Figuring all this out without you,” Taurina spoke as if he were there beside her as she picked up her pile piece by piece and created a sort of lopsided stack in the crevice between her thighs.

Palms rubbed away threatening tears and a sniffle sent the ball of snot forming back into her throat. She was not pretty as she knelt in the sand weak with grief and trying to put all her broken pieces back together again. All she could think was how Azmere would have known how to chase her tears away and hold her together until all those pieces melted and merged back into one. Having to do it alone.. she was unsure if she could, but like how she knew that she needed to say goodbye, she knew she needed to do it alone. Was forced to because that one she longed for was the reason for all of this.

“You would know just the right thing to say, to do,” Taurina whispered so quietly that even the wind would struggle to hear.

Another sigh as eyes closed and a mind attempted to empty. An idea began to form in the back of her thoughts. A way to set her sketches, her memories, free without bringing harm to them. It was the Drykas way to leave a body to rest out in the sea of grass where nature and the gods could have their way with it. Return it to the life cycle as it was meant to. There had never been a body to discover and leave, however, never been a way to know for sure. All there had been was his absence and that had been enough to believe he was never coming back. But the lack had left no way to bring closure, no way honor all he had been and all they had once had. All Taurina had was this, the sketches and her memories, with which to put him to rest.

Taurina turned her palms up towards the sky and began drawing out a pool of opalescent colored res. The caramel gaze opened to stare at the forming pool, admire the way it shone in Syna’s morning light and focus on the magic. The color was much like that of a Konti’s shining scales. So many colors that shifted with different angles of light. Taurina had once thought it meant to reflect the moon and her connection to it, but these days she was not so sure. Maybe it was just meant to be pretty. No hidden meaning. Seemed unlikely given the nature of djed, but she wanted to think that maybe something -anything- in her life was just simple.

It took effort to force the res to take the shape of a sphere, but she had done it before and knew well enough how to get the magic to obey her. Instead of forming two bowls to put together in the end like she had earlier in the season, her goal was to make a single ball hollowed out on the inside. The hard part was making the inside hollow, but res was malleable and listened to a strong enough will. Taurina left an opening at the top and turned her gel like res into a more solid form. Holding the sphere that was roughly the size of one of her ink jars at work in one hand, the Drykas began putting in the sketches one at a time.

Words felt too empty to try and speak. Nothing conveyed all that she felt. Nothing said she was sorry for the wrongs she had committed and conveyed how much she loved him quite good enough. All her words had been spilt over the course of her grieving and, in a way, it felt like everything she might have been able to say had been spoilt because of that. So she decided not to say anything at all and allow the sounds of nature to fill the silence.

The sphere was sealed shut and coated in a second layer of res before Taurina willed it to turn into a stone that shone like a diamond. Perhaps it was diamond. The Drykas was unsure, but that had been what she wanted. Diamond stone for the warrior from the diamond clan. Exactly as it should be.

Common | Pavi | 'Thoughts'

[Taurina]

Toes buried in the wet sand as waves rolled over the shore again and again. The Drykas woman stood there with silver lining her eyes and hands trembling as she held onto the diamond made globe. She had realized upon approaching the water that she did not want to let go. She wanted to hold on with both hands and beg him to stay. She wanted her screams and cries to cause the gods to give him back to her. It did not matter that her prayers had only ever landed on deaf ears. It did not matter that wishes and wants and dreams meant little in the grand scheme of things.

“I love you.. I miss you…” Taurina murmured as she cradled that sphere against her chest.

A tear slipped and splattered against the surface. Another and then another followed. The Drykas sniffled, but made no move to stop the tears as she had before. It felt right to cry here. It felt right to give into the tears. Because soon she was going to have to pull herself away. She was going to release her form of a note in a bottle into the waters and with that action she was going to give him up. Not give up loving him in that small place in her heart carved out just for him or cherishing who he had been, but letting go of grieving him day in and day out. Give up on holding on so tightly that she did not allow herself to live her life or to heal.

“I bet you are a beautiful strider…” She smiled when she thought of that, of his soul running free on the plains among the striders he had loved so dearly. “Someday I will witness that, if the gods grant it, I will see you again.”

She knew somewhere inside of her would know it was him. That something would tell her. Did not matter how much time passed or where she was at life then. Even if she had adventured around the world, found someone else and married them, maybe even started some sort of new family; when she found him she would know him and it would be something beautiful when souls reunited. She would always know when it was him.

“Won’t that day be something spectacular?” Taurina’s laughter mingled with her tears. “Something to look forward to.”

A scarred hand ran over the uneven surface of the sphere as her laughter turned into a sad smile. It would not be the same, but at least it would be something. It would be him and maybe, if she was really lucky, he would choose to stick around as Starfire stuck around. She would be content if he did not though. As long as she learned he was happy and thriving, she would be content with whatever she got. Even if she hoped for more. Even if what she really wanted was the Azmere she remembered back and cradling her in his arms.

“Someday, right?” Taurina sniffled and shook her head, an impossible dream.

It was time. She knew it was time, had known for the whole time she had been slowly sinking in the ever shifting sand. It was easier to just stand and hold on, put off the inevitable. She tried to remember Koshin and his story, do what he had suggested she do. The difference of his story and hers was that he had had someone to help him, a family to live for. She had left her family and had only herself to do this with. She could have asked Alek to come, but she had not wanted to involve the Kelvic. She had wanted to be strong enough to say goodbye on her own.

“I am really happy you found me that day at the Lilacwinds. I am happy for the short time we had together.” She lifted the sphere to eye level. “I will find happiness again and I will find my way back to our family someday. In time.”

A long and shaky breath was sucked in and released. Taurina pressed her lips over the top of the diamond made orb before walking out into the sea. She went until the salt water came up to her waist and then she stopped. The waves were gentle as they rolled in one after the other, Taurina was able to remain solid in her stance. She drew in and released another breath before she nodded to herself. No more holding on.

“I promise to become everything you saw me to be and more. I promise to try and never give up. I promise to live, to find joy, to enjoy every moment. And I promise never to let my chance for happiness and love pass me by again.”

Taurina smiled to herself, to Azmere wherever he was. She looked down the orb as it sparkled in Syna’s light and threw rainbows in very directions. The promise of a storm having passed. The smile grew. Using both hands, Taurina rose the sphere above her head before quickly pulling back and pushing her arms forward. Fingers released and the sphere was sent flying a short distance before it came down in an arch and plopped into the water. Taurina just smiled, tears slipping down over her blotched red cheeks.

“Goodbye Azmere,” she murmured, “I hope that, wherever the gods take you and whoever you become, you find happiness.”

The Ethaefal fell back into the waves and allowed salt water to rush over her, washing away the tears and sadness. When she rose to her feet once more, she released a laugh that was joyous and free. Somehow she had done it! She had gotten herself to part with those things that had meant so much to her. Fingertips brushed over the wrap in her hair, the other memory she had kept for it had been about more than just her and him. She had done it, she was going to be okay.

With a heart a little less burdened, a soul a little less heavy, Taurina made her way back to shore and gathered up her things. A glance was cast back over her shoulder and she could have sworn she saw the orb drifting away in the waves with Syna light bouncing off of it. Another smile was given as she turned and began to walk back home to the apartment. Yeah, she was going to be okay, her heart was going to heal. Better days were just around the corner and finally, after so much time, she was excited to face them.

Common | Pavi | 'Thoughts'

[Paaie]

G R A D E

XP

Rhetoric +2
Endurance +1
Philosophy +2
Reimancy +1

LORES

Death changes one's perspective on life
Farewell ritual for Azmere
Taurina: Full of regrets about Azmere
Drykas culture: Leaving the dead out for nature to reclaim
Reimancy: Forming diamond-like stone out of res
Philosophy: Drykas reincarnate as striders
Belief in reincarnation soothes Taurina's grief
Taurina: Makes a promise to live well
Taurina: Will not let love pass her by again

NOTES

I am crying, and smiling, and I think you may have broken this grader! Absolutely stunning glimpse into Taurina's thoughts, as always, a pleasure to read.

If you feel I missed anything don't hesitate to PM me. Don't forget to edit your grade request here~