[align=center]
She wasn’t sure why; wasn’t sure what seemed right about picking up the smooth, ridged, or serrated things she found along the beach. But keeping them safe, tucked away in Arion’s saddlebag, Hazel would take some of them out on lonely nights, running thin fingers over the ocean’s craft.
Her favorite was the spiraling conch she had picked up one day not too long ago. Her fingertips seemed to fit the gentle, creamy grooves just right - like it was a gift, custom-made. She’d slip her hand along the inside of the shell where it was a soft pink, pressing her fingernails back against the tight curve where the material began its coil. She would run the flat of her thumb over the soft interior over and over, wondering in quiet thought at how such a gentle, graceful thing had come from the tumultuous ocean.
Wondered how such a thing could be tossed in the waves, and come out so cleanly on the other side.
Wondered how nature couldn’t have done something similar with her.
Wondered why she came out so scarred and bruised and upset with herself, and what she’d done. Why she had gone to Eden so young and innocent and impressionable, only to leave tired and numb and hollow. Hollow like the shell that rested in her lap on lonely nights, when she found herself missing everything she used to have. Numb like the blunt ends of her nerves and emotional ties, because her body and mind couldn’t handle anything else. Tired like the ache in her feet and back and all over after a long day that would have been so much better in Eden, where her friends and family were.
Hazel would turn the shell in weary hands, shifting it down in her grip until she could trace the small, dull spikes that lined the coils on the top. Traced them as keenly as she had thrown herself into the life of a new place, desperate to get away from her childhood, to make something of herself. That place just happened to be Eden, with its once-undamaged courtyard and massive oaken doorways; with its old hallways, grand hearths that filtered a smoky scent throughout the room, wooden floors soft with use, permanently lit lamps casting a golden light across the floor, and rugs and tapestries and paintings and furniture that smelled of home.
Eden was daunting and formidable when Hazel first arrived. With great stone walls and towers that climbed high into the sky, the castle had been frightening. But within the cold cobbles lay flower beds, just as within the great palace lay welcoming, friendly people. Hazel had immediately sunk into the warmth of the embrace that was familial, losing herself to it. It became her greatest attachment, her greatest loyalty. And with that loyalty came a great, great price.
As Hazel grew, so did Eden and her family. Drama twirled their whiskers and plot twists jumped at them from behind every corner. Caught up in the midst, she had no choice but to follow along. She poured her heart and soul into Eden and its doomed cracks and crevices; filled them with everything she had so she could live the life she wanted. So far into chasing her perfect life, she refused to acknowledge as things crumbled.
There was more to her story than a paragraph. Oh, there was much more. There was the chaos of leading a mirrored sort of life with two souls, tests of nature, and people. So many people that changed her life and point of view: big brothers and best friends and mothers and sisters and...love, maybe. Her heart skittered.
But eutopias never last the test of time, and thus things went from tightly wrapped to loose and frayed, much like the coil of the conch shell. People left, or died. Hazel always thought watching someone leave was more painful than watching them die. When dead, they put a permanent halt on life and time and memory. Things stayed as they were. When they left, they were turning their back. Making a blatant statement and saying that no, that wasn’t for them.
Hazel had left.
Hazel had left because she couldn’t live within those walls anymore. Couldn’t live where Dahlia had walked, where Alfred and Shatteredpaw and Romanpaw and Glitchedpaw had all walked. Couldn’t live haunted by their memories. She couldn’t turn down the hall without seeing something that reminded her of what Eden used to be when the sun shone and the ocean stayed on the horizon and demons stayed in her dreams and under her paws. She couldn’t fucking live knowing they had all left on a cliffhanger; abrupt, with no explanation. No ending. Just...gray. Hazy gray.
Except for Dahlia.
Dahlia had left on the worst sort of ending: the kind that made you cry in frustration and confusion, leaving you equal parts hoping for a sequel and knowing that was it. Dahlia had left as the total opposite of the person Hazel had grown up knowing. Hazel had known the nurturing mother figure, the mentor and general caregiver. She easily became Hazel’s adoptive mother, giving her comfort in her darkest hours and support in her weakest moments. She taught Hazel how to sword fight, and how to stand up for herself. She could still feel the blisters and calluses bubbling on the inside of her knuckles - could still feel the gentle brush of Dahlia’s fingers and see the spark of sympathy in her eyes. She could still feel the drop of her stomach as Dahlia walked away, commanded that she do the drill again; Hazel could feel the lump of pain lodged in her throat melt into liquid motivation that slid into her lungs when Dahlia, voice hard and clipped military staccato style, told her that she’d never get anywhere crying over blisters and scrapes. She’d never make it on her own (why would I need to make it on my own, Hazel thought, when all I’ll ever want or need is right here?) or in battle. And fuck if Hazel was tired of being weak.
Whether she liked it or not, Dahlia was wedged into her deepest foundation as a person.
In the days leading up to the trial, Hazel had been distant and drifting. She didn’t know where her mind went, or why. She just knew that one minute, everything was alright - a little out of focus, but alright - and the next, Eden’s sky was black and Dahlia had murdered someone and Bastilleprisoner was grand prior. (She ignored the frantic skip and ache of her heart at the name.) Everything was thrown ass over tea kettle, and Hazel couldn’t tell up from down.
She had always known Dahlia was a demoness. Hell, she never really tried to ignore it. In fact, Hazel looked up to Dahlia for that reason, too. As Charlotte had been a daughter of Hades, Hazel’s grip on the Underworld was a strong and unwelcomed one. Knowing that Dahlia had a corner of darkness within her as well was a strange sense of comfort for her. And in some small part of her mind, she knew there was the threat of Dahlia going dark.
But when that threat finally proved itself, Hazel wasn’t there to see it. She wasn’t there to know the root cause or the entire scheme of it. She was just...in the dark. And it was frustrating - so endlessly frustrating and confusing and infuriating because she didn’t know who to believe or who to talk to - and she could talk to Bastille, if she had really wanted, but she was mad at him before they even left the trial room because there had been absolutely no option to try and - god forbid - save Dahlia, because the goddamn trial system didn’t allow for emotional interventions like that.
Hazel hated the trial system. Honest-to-god hated it. It relied on cold hard facts and theoreticals - the conclusion usually even more so. She tolerated it when used on outsiders and strangers, but when used on members? On her family?
Hazel remembered the apathetic indifference on Bastille’s face when he presided as judge; she remembered the stone that sank deep in her heart. She knew it was a mask - knew it like she knew tomorrow would come inevitably. She could feel it in the shreds of their broken bond; the way the panic frothed at his feet, the threat of too much responsibility looming over him. So he shut down on autopilot, as done when he had reached a breaking point. It wasn’t the calm before the storm - it was the absolute silence that lasted a heartbeat before detonation.
She knew there was a piece of the puzzle she was missing. Hazel knew there was something she wasn’t getting. But Hazel also knew one thing that she would hold on to until the last drop of sunlight left her: Dahlia could be saved. Because if she was saved from damnation once, she could be saved again. She could be saved again. Hazel just didn’t understand why nobody tried.
And, in a small trip to Hazel’s ever-growing guilt, she hated herself for not trying. For being too shocked to actually move her ass - to throw Bastille’s “court manner” out of the window (because she really wasn’t afraid of what he’d do…?) and grab Dahlia by the arm, yank her into the next room, and shake her until she came back.
In the end, Hazel’s anger and hostility festered too much. She never felt the same after. Bastille and Dahlia had been the only remaining members of the old Eden, and Hazel couldn’t take not having someone to talk to or vent with. Petty, but...pathetically true. Not having her safety net was frighteningly debilitating, and she hated that, too. She lost too much to her anger (and wasn’t that funny? Bastille was always the angry one): her best friend, her support, her clan, her loyalty...her identity.
It was how she found herself miles and miles and miles up the coast, following Eden’s ocean shore north. It was how she found herself numbly tagging along with a little rag-tag group of stragglers well-versed in survival, and they openly welcomed a girl with a young, supersonic stallion. She was almost always barefoot, with her sword hanging heavy at her side and Arion a constant presence behind her unless she told him otherwise. She looked like a part of the land; had lived here too long to not look it.
Her friends were constantly travelling. Today, they had decided to set up camp half a mile or so from a stretch of rolling fields. They’d stay for a maximum of a week and four days, collecting information and local resources to take with. Hazel was out on patrol - or, was supposed to be. She was...to a degree.
Crouched in a tree on the line before forest smoothed into field, she tightened her grip on her sword handle, watching a stranger and his mare pass by underneath. Her mind was carefully blank, as it was most days now. Ever the territorial, Hazel was more aggressive with border patrols than her friends were. She’d grown up protecting Eden’s borders, and she’d do the same now.
The stranger murmured something to his horse - Arabian, she thought with such clarity it startled her - too quiet for Hazel to make out from this distance. Then he knelt, rummaging through a bag of some sort.
He didn’t seem like much of a threat. He had a sort of dazed aura about him when he walked, like he was having a bad daydream. Still, he was young and strong and Hazel was itching to get some sort of energy out. And honestly, thank god she left Arion back at camp, because he’d be all over the mare.
Hazel wasted no time in raising the bandanna over her lips and nose and dropping to the ground, quiet and reflexes sharp. She darted forward, aiming to close one hand around the man’s shoulder and spin him around and then shove, hopefully forcing him onto his back in his surprise. She would then kneel over him, one knee pressing against his ribs and the opposite foot pressing his wrist into the dirt. She leaned in, heedless of the mare next to her, and stared at the stranger with such intense gold eyes they seemed to shine, drawing her blade in a flash of motion and holding the cold metal against his throat.
“Who the hell are you - and what do you want?” She growled, lips parting to bare her teeth.
★ WHEN MY HEART IS MADE FROM GOLD AND FORGIVENESS SEEMS TOO BOLD
[div style="height:auto; width: 480px; font-family: verdana; font-size: 11px; text-align: justify; line-height: -1px"]Hazel collected shells.She wasn’t sure why; wasn’t sure what seemed right about picking up the smooth, ridged, or serrated things she found along the beach. But keeping them safe, tucked away in Arion’s saddlebag, Hazel would take some of them out on lonely nights, running thin fingers over the ocean’s craft.
Her favorite was the spiraling conch she had picked up one day not too long ago. Her fingertips seemed to fit the gentle, creamy grooves just right - like it was a gift, custom-made. She’d slip her hand along the inside of the shell where it was a soft pink, pressing her fingernails back against the tight curve where the material began its coil. She would run the flat of her thumb over the soft interior over and over, wondering in quiet thought at how such a gentle, graceful thing had come from the tumultuous ocean.
Wondered how such a thing could be tossed in the waves, and come out so cleanly on the other side.
Wondered how nature couldn’t have done something similar with her.
Wondered why she came out so scarred and bruised and upset with herself, and what she’d done. Why she had gone to Eden so young and innocent and impressionable, only to leave tired and numb and hollow. Hollow like the shell that rested in her lap on lonely nights, when she found herself missing everything she used to have. Numb like the blunt ends of her nerves and emotional ties, because her body and mind couldn’t handle anything else. Tired like the ache in her feet and back and all over after a long day that would have been so much better in Eden, where her friends and family were.
Hazel would turn the shell in weary hands, shifting it down in her grip until she could trace the small, dull spikes that lined the coils on the top. Traced them as keenly as she had thrown herself into the life of a new place, desperate to get away from her childhood, to make something of herself. That place just happened to be Eden, with its once-undamaged courtyard and massive oaken doorways; with its old hallways, grand hearths that filtered a smoky scent throughout the room, wooden floors soft with use, permanently lit lamps casting a golden light across the floor, and rugs and tapestries and paintings and furniture that smelled of home.
Eden was daunting and formidable when Hazel first arrived. With great stone walls and towers that climbed high into the sky, the castle had been frightening. But within the cold cobbles lay flower beds, just as within the great palace lay welcoming, friendly people. Hazel had immediately sunk into the warmth of the embrace that was familial, losing herself to it. It became her greatest attachment, her greatest loyalty. And with that loyalty came a great, great price.
As Hazel grew, so did Eden and her family. Drama twirled their whiskers and plot twists jumped at them from behind every corner. Caught up in the midst, she had no choice but to follow along. She poured her heart and soul into Eden and its doomed cracks and crevices; filled them with everything she had so she could live the life she wanted. So far into chasing her perfect life, she refused to acknowledge as things crumbled.
There was more to her story than a paragraph. Oh, there was much more. There was the chaos of leading a mirrored sort of life with two souls, tests of nature, and people. So many people that changed her life and point of view: big brothers and best friends and mothers and sisters and...love, maybe. Her heart skittered.
But eutopias never last the test of time, and thus things went from tightly wrapped to loose and frayed, much like the coil of the conch shell. People left, or died. Hazel always thought watching someone leave was more painful than watching them die. When dead, they put a permanent halt on life and time and memory. Things stayed as they were. When they left, they were turning their back. Making a blatant statement and saying that no, that wasn’t for them.
Hazel had left.
Hazel had left because she couldn’t live within those walls anymore. Couldn’t live where Dahlia had walked, where Alfred and Shatteredpaw and Romanpaw and Glitchedpaw had all walked. Couldn’t live haunted by their memories. She couldn’t turn down the hall without seeing something that reminded her of what Eden used to be when the sun shone and the ocean stayed on the horizon and demons stayed in her dreams and under her paws. She couldn’t fucking live knowing they had all left on a cliffhanger; abrupt, with no explanation. No ending. Just...gray. Hazy gray.
Except for Dahlia.
Dahlia had left on the worst sort of ending: the kind that made you cry in frustration and confusion, leaving you equal parts hoping for a sequel and knowing that was it. Dahlia had left as the total opposite of the person Hazel had grown up knowing. Hazel had known the nurturing mother figure, the mentor and general caregiver. She easily became Hazel’s adoptive mother, giving her comfort in her darkest hours and support in her weakest moments. She taught Hazel how to sword fight, and how to stand up for herself. She could still feel the blisters and calluses bubbling on the inside of her knuckles - could still feel the gentle brush of Dahlia’s fingers and see the spark of sympathy in her eyes. She could still feel the drop of her stomach as Dahlia walked away, commanded that she do the drill again; Hazel could feel the lump of pain lodged in her throat melt into liquid motivation that slid into her lungs when Dahlia, voice hard and clipped military staccato style, told her that she’d never get anywhere crying over blisters and scrapes. She’d never make it on her own (why would I need to make it on my own, Hazel thought, when all I’ll ever want or need is right here?) or in battle. And fuck if Hazel was tired of being weak.
Whether she liked it or not, Dahlia was wedged into her deepest foundation as a person.
In the days leading up to the trial, Hazel had been distant and drifting. She didn’t know where her mind went, or why. She just knew that one minute, everything was alright - a little out of focus, but alright - and the next, Eden’s sky was black and Dahlia had murdered someone and Bastilleprisoner was grand prior. (She ignored the frantic skip and ache of her heart at the name.) Everything was thrown ass over tea kettle, and Hazel couldn’t tell up from down.
She had always known Dahlia was a demoness. Hell, she never really tried to ignore it. In fact, Hazel looked up to Dahlia for that reason, too. As Charlotte had been a daughter of Hades, Hazel’s grip on the Underworld was a strong and unwelcomed one. Knowing that Dahlia had a corner of darkness within her as well was a strange sense of comfort for her. And in some small part of her mind, she knew there was the threat of Dahlia going dark.
But when that threat finally proved itself, Hazel wasn’t there to see it. She wasn’t there to know the root cause or the entire scheme of it. She was just...in the dark. And it was frustrating - so endlessly frustrating and confusing and infuriating because she didn’t know who to believe or who to talk to - and she could talk to Bastille, if she had really wanted, but she was mad at him before they even left the trial room because there had been absolutely no option to try and - god forbid - save Dahlia, because the goddamn trial system didn’t allow for emotional interventions like that.
Hazel hated the trial system. Honest-to-god hated it. It relied on cold hard facts and theoreticals - the conclusion usually even more so. She tolerated it when used on outsiders and strangers, but when used on members? On her family?
Hazel remembered the apathetic indifference on Bastille’s face when he presided as judge; she remembered the stone that sank deep in her heart. She knew it was a mask - knew it like she knew tomorrow would come inevitably. She could feel it in the shreds of their broken bond; the way the panic frothed at his feet, the threat of too much responsibility looming over him. So he shut down on autopilot, as done when he had reached a breaking point. It wasn’t the calm before the storm - it was the absolute silence that lasted a heartbeat before detonation.
She knew there was a piece of the puzzle she was missing. Hazel knew there was something she wasn’t getting. But Hazel also knew one thing that she would hold on to until the last drop of sunlight left her: Dahlia could be saved. Because if she was saved from damnation once, she could be saved again. She could be saved again. Hazel just didn’t understand why nobody tried.
And, in a small trip to Hazel’s ever-growing guilt, she hated herself for not trying. For being too shocked to actually move her ass - to throw Bastille’s “court manner” out of the window (because she really wasn’t afraid of what he’d do…?) and grab Dahlia by the arm, yank her into the next room, and shake her until she came back.
In the end, Hazel’s anger and hostility festered too much. She never felt the same after. Bastille and Dahlia had been the only remaining members of the old Eden, and Hazel couldn’t take not having someone to talk to or vent with. Petty, but...pathetically true. Not having her safety net was frighteningly debilitating, and she hated that, too. She lost too much to her anger (and wasn’t that funny? Bastille was always the angry one): her best friend, her support, her clan, her loyalty...her identity.
It was how she found herself miles and miles and miles up the coast, following Eden’s ocean shore north. It was how she found herself numbly tagging along with a little rag-tag group of stragglers well-versed in survival, and they openly welcomed a girl with a young, supersonic stallion. She was almost always barefoot, with her sword hanging heavy at her side and Arion a constant presence behind her unless she told him otherwise. She looked like a part of the land; had lived here too long to not look it.
Her friends were constantly travelling. Today, they had decided to set up camp half a mile or so from a stretch of rolling fields. They’d stay for a maximum of a week and four days, collecting information and local resources to take with. Hazel was out on patrol - or, was supposed to be. She was...to a degree.
Crouched in a tree on the line before forest smoothed into field, she tightened her grip on her sword handle, watching a stranger and his mare pass by underneath. Her mind was carefully blank, as it was most days now. Ever the territorial, Hazel was more aggressive with border patrols than her friends were. She’d grown up protecting Eden’s borders, and she’d do the same now.
The stranger murmured something to his horse - Arabian, she thought with such clarity it startled her - too quiet for Hazel to make out from this distance. Then he knelt, rummaging through a bag of some sort.
He didn’t seem like much of a threat. He had a sort of dazed aura about him when he walked, like he was having a bad daydream. Still, he was young and strong and Hazel was itching to get some sort of energy out. And honestly, thank god she left Arion back at camp, because he’d be all over the mare.
Hazel wasted no time in raising the bandanna over her lips and nose and dropping to the ground, quiet and reflexes sharp. She darted forward, aiming to close one hand around the man’s shoulder and spin him around and then shove, hopefully forcing him onto his back in his surprise. She would then kneel over him, one knee pressing against his ribs and the opposite foot pressing his wrist into the dirt. She leaned in, heedless of the mare next to her, and stared at the stranger with such intense gold eyes they seemed to shine, drawing her blade in a flash of motion and holding the cold metal against his throat.
“Who the hell are you - and what do you want?” She growled, lips parting to bare her teeth.
[align=center]
WITH EVERY HEARTBEAT I HAVE LEFT
i will defend your every breath; i'll do better