In Dire Straits

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C A P P E L L A

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In which Cappella can not sleep, yet again.

In her dreams, she was running. Something was chasing her, but she didn't look back. There was no need to - she did not need to know what demon from her past it was this time. Around her, Inaria burned and it's civilians screamed in terror and grief. She was covered in blood, she did not know if it was hers or not, but in her panic she fled to Inaria's beaches, driven by the flames behind her. She passed corpses (so many) on her way, faces she'd probably recognize if she stopped to look.

(It didn't matter, she'd still remember).

She sprinted out onto the sand, kicking it up as she went by, but there was no end in sight. The beach stretched on for an eternity, littered with the bones of those who had fallen before. Suddenly her paws came to a halt, and confused, she looked down to see herself sinking into the sand that quickly started to consume her. She cried out for help, she screamed but soon choked on blood.

Around her, the skeletons cackled, their eyesockets glowing green.

She awoke with a jolt in the middle of the night, gasping for air as she looked around. She was outside, beneath the stars and the moon; a stark white against the pitch black sky. Slowly, things started coming back to her. She hadn't been sleeping well ever since, well, everything had happened, but she didn't come back to her den last night. Instead she had wandered Inaria restlessly, her state of mind jumpy and paranoid, expecting someone to jump out at her from the shadows.

She must have passed out at some point.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck." She cursed under her breath, visibly shaking as she began to pace. Despite the deep breaths she was trying to take, the gripping feeling in her chest only got tighter. Out of the corner of her eye, something moved, and regardless of whether it was her imagination or not, she burst out into a run. The lilac trees whipped past her as she sped along, not knowing where she was going but simply following the instinct to flee.

Even if it wasn't some monster she feared, she didn't want people seeing her like this.

They already saw her as a useless traitor.

But reality and nature were unforgiving, as she snagged one of her paws on the arched root of a nearby tree. She crumpled and fell to the ground, rolling to a stop from the sheer speed she had been going. She still shook, still gulping for air, but she lay there, defeated.

Still, she chanted quietly to herself:

"Fuck, fuck, fuck."

The queen had always had trouble sleeping, and tonight was no exception.

Things had been quiet for some time now. Peace had settled across Inaria like a comforting autumn warmth. Haven didn't really know what to do with peace, in all honesty. Sometimes she could not help thinking that she had been fated only for swords and blood, not flowers and family. She didn't know how to touch fragile things like that. She knew how to destroy enemies, how to survive wave after wave of assault, how to decide what losses were acceptable losses. If you held flowers too tightly they fell apart.

The lilac blooms were heavy and saturated by time, hanging loosely to the trees, bright and preparing to fall. Haven walked beneath them in the dark, paws retracing the same path she always took, meandering through her kingdom. Cappella would have recognized the trail, the pair of them had raced along it once. But the old ache in the queen's leg was back again tonight, and so she walked instead, taking efforts to hide the slight limp. The path lead to the water's edge, but Haven didn't get that far.

She heard the quiet curses in a familiar voice. A hollow thunder sounded in the paladin's chest. She had not gone to see the girl after....after everything. After her accusations, after the war, after believing her to be dead. After Cappella came back, salt-sprayed and starved and pregnant. After the little desert wolf had given birth. The queen didn't know how to be anything to this troubled, battered woman. If Cappella wanted family (and that had always been what she wanted), Haven didn't know how to help her. Haven had left her own family half-buried in the blood and dust of the wars she'd created. She didn't know how to love in a way that was gentle and peaceful. She wanted to know, but she didn't.

The grass was damp with dew near the roots of the tree, and Haven walked forward uncertainly. She hesitated a moment, unsure, before speaking.

"I..." She stammered. "It's hard to sleep when the nights are too quiet like this." She tried, stepping closer to offer to help the girl to her feet. Haven understood the eyes, or eye, in the dark. Green and bright as a threat. No matter how hard you tried to sleep, that unsettling promise didn't go away.

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#7c0a02
song inspo
Have you fixed your eyes to the wind?
Will you let it pull you in again?

Life was hard to settle back into after everything that had happened, he felt Cappella's pain before. Long ago when he was small and new, there were things young children should never have to endure, things they never should see, and they both had. The painful part was surviving them and reliving them, they'd left impressionable marks and bruises. All they could do now was try to be the parents their own children deserved.

It was a constant battle, but they couldn't afford to waver. They'd need to be strong like the rest of Inaria.

We didn't make it this far, just to make it this far.

What he was waiting for was to be awaken by the familiar quavering of his mate, most nights her terrors hardly allowed her a peaceful night's rest. However, this wouldn't be the case, a leaky spot within the den allowed for a droplet of water to fall upon the large male's nose. He'd jolted up, blinking tiredly and glancing around the darkness of the earthly alcove. "Cappella?" He called out softly around the quiet den, looking to his side to see a worn spot which she usually laid in, it was cold and she wasn't there. There was a hollowness to the place, a mate gone and kids old enough to have moved out.

He hadn't remembered her coming home last night either, a fear began to bubble in his stomach causing his body to feel as though tiny pins and needles were prickle at him. "Cappella?!" More urgently this time, he'd stand quickly and clamor forward, back brushing painfully against the roof of the den.

Staggering out into the night, the crisp air, twinkling stars, and the round face of the moon greeting him. Hashmal heaved a tired breath, and rushed forward, nostrils flared and blue eyes wide and positively wild. There was many things he had accounted for in neatly ordered boxes within his brain, all labelled PANIC. His wife not making it home was one of them, it was something he thought he'd be prepared for, hell he had prepared for it during the war.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Soft chanting. "Capp-" It's hard to sleep when the nights are too quiet like this. Another voice that dripped with familiarity, but his heart was racing and his head spinning. Calm down, you can't and you don't know why. He'd stumble forward until he saw their forms, his mind still not registering who the other was, but he was sure the one laying down upon the grass was indeed Cappella. "Cappella! There's you are, god! I was so worried, I'm.. I... s-" He bounded forward, exasperated from running and nearly collapsing by her side, he'd finally register Queen Haven's presence and he'd freeze. Shame washing upon him as he looked to the shaken form of his mate.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner, I'm so sorry. I.. god.. I'm sorry." The apologizes began to spill as he felt his voice grow hoarse and he'd try to hold his tears back, there was a mixture of emotions, pain and relief being the most potent. Hashmal couldn't help but feel as if he'd let her down.

Just a bit run down here at the moment. Let me think about it babe; let me hold ya.

They'd all felt the teeth and venom of the same beast. They'd all come out alive and mostly intact from the other side of a terrible veil.

It was a sick sort of way to bond with one another, but you take what you can get when the world is harsh and cold and lonely.

Jackals as animals were neither quite diurnal or nocturnal. As such, he tended to wake early and sleep early, or if not that, steal what he needed from catnaps between jobs. He'd been relying more on the latter after the war's conclusion... hence his prowling among the heart of Inaria, following the cleared paths, the arteries, out of his hidden den and back into polite society once more. It was a good time to awaken, apparently, for he'd sniffed out a clutch of baby rabbits deposited just a mile south (the mother, a young doe, had been carried off by a hawk) and snapped up all but one, which he buried with the rest of his food cache. It was never unwise to be prepared for... well. Who knew anymore?

Still tired despite his rest, not body-tired but soul-tired, Kashmir sat by the buried bunny and looked up at the full moon, a bright white orb in the sky. He liked the sight of it and always had, far more so than the sun. Maybe he would have gone back to sleep bathed in the light of it if not for the distant commotion that pricked his ears and guided his pointed snout to the source direction like a helpful hand.

Night terrors in Inaria, what a concept. Truly on the same level of rarity as purple on trees... okay, bad example.

He came from the brush, its prickly branches parting around his thin form, and stared blankly for a moment. Cappella was on the ground, cursing bitterly, while her plump mate comforted and apologized, again and again. Just nearby stood his queen, hovering uncertainly; the tenderness needed in this sad situation was not their strong point. Kashmir's voice was raspy and hard to hear over Hashmal's, the way it was most times after sleeping.

"Is everything... okay?"

In another lifetime, maybe.

A E S T H E T I C A R T

A voice breaks through the thick, smothering darkness that seeks to consume her; hesitant at first, but then it cuts through her thoughts like a blade:

"It's hard to sleep when the nights are too quiet like this."

Cappella lifts her head and stares at her Queen with wide eyes, her body still trembling from the demon that stalked her in the shadows. She tries to find something to say, but with her heightened anxiety comes an onslaught of realisations about this chance encounter - Haven knows the creature in Cappella's nightmares personally, Haven watched as Cappella lashed out at Sage during a challenge she had no right to, Haven had children now -

And most importantly: the last time Haven and Cappella had a conversation, it had been just before Inaria went to war.

"Cappella! There's you are, god! I was so worried, I'm.. I... s-"

No, no not him, don't come closer don't see me like this just go back HOME--

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner, I'm so sorry. I.. god.. I'm sorry."

"I-I..." She swallows thickly as words still fail her, but she leans into her mate, taking a moment to control her breathing. She was the one who kept getting herself into dangerous situations, kept making questionable decisions and kept messing it up - and yet he was apologising? "Sei un uomo sciocco" She croaks, knowing that he'd understand. She had been teaching him here and there, and he definitely knew some of the things she'd call him (which were nothing like the insults she threw at him originally). She looks at her mate with tears still brimming at the edge of her eyes. "What have I told you about apologising when you don't need to?"

"Is everything... okay?"

To put it lightly, this was...not how she wanted her night to go. "I...I'm sorry." For many, many things. Too many to keep track of. "I didn't mean to waste your time like this." She lays her head onto Hashmal's side, exhausted and defeated, the lack of sleep clearly evident in her eyes. "I just..." She sighs; she didn't want to talk about it in front of her mate, she didn't want to worry him more than he already was.

But this wasn't a conversation she could avoid from Haven or Kashmir - especially so now that they found her like this.

"Everytime I close my eyes...Dragon is there." Waiting, watching, stalking her. "She's still out there..."

She had children to think of now, this place was now full of family.

"What if she comes back?"