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paying respects - Printable Version

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paying respects - Fira - Jan 05 2017

RATED M FOR: Mentions of suicide, and violence against cave deer.

OOC: Set the day the lights turn off.

Destiny was dead.

Fira didn’t know this for absolute certain, but what else could have happened to her? At some point… At some point, Fira had lost track of her mate, and now she had been gone for cycles, and somehow the leopard had never been able to find the platypus no matter where she looked. Maybe she just hadn’t looked hard enough… No matter. None of it meant anything anymore. Her kids were gone, too, so really, there was no reason to go on living. Except that suicide was the coward’s way out, and Fira wasn’t really into the whole idea of taking her own life. It’s just that now… Now she had to start over. But first she had to mourn for the loss of her mate, and most likely, her children.

She was a horrible wife, a horrible mother. She had failed them. All three of them. She had to do something right after all this time moping about, being sad about a death that had come and gone while she’d been too busy being sad about it to even notice it. And somewhere in a nearby room, her wife’s body was slowly decaying. And she didn’t even know it.

But, as was said, none of that mattered. All that mattered now was paying her respects to her wife, whom she hadn’t seen in over two, maybe three, cycles now.


RE: paying respects - Fira - Jan 05 2017

Here, in their sad, empty den nearby the river, Fira was clearing out the old moss and mulch that had kept them warm and comfortable in their short married lives together. It was hard work, but it had been Fira’s job all this long while, and she was used to the task. The mindless movement eased her a heart a little for now, scooping out pawfuls of once-green grass and dried out soil. She backed up ever farther and ever farther until more and more of the old was kicked out of the den they had shared. But carefully tucked away in a separate area of the den were the opal shards of their children’s chrysalises, which Fira would keep forever. She only wished she could find Destiny’s body, so that she could keep her wife’s gem, as well.

Shoving the thought from her mind, Fira continued her task, until the den was nice and clean and even more barren than it had been before. She wasn’t going to continue using it now that her life was essentially over. She’d have to move somewhere else, avoid Polaris for a while — possibly forever. Right now, though, she needed to make some kind of… commemoration of Destiny’s life. Something to do with flowers, probably. Destiny had always liked pretty things, even if she couldn’t see them in the end…


RE: paying respects - Fira - Jan 05 2017

After removing any excess scraps from the den’s packed dirt floor, Fira tried as best she could with her paws to scatter the pile of mulch and leaves and moss, so it wouldn’t look so ugly right there in front of the den. Once the pile was a little flatter and less of a mini-hill at the entrance, she sat down and thought for a while. What would Destiny have liked? After a minute or two, she stood up again, and made her way to the river, plunging her head in without thought, ignoring the rush of the cool water all around her face, and closed her jaws around a mouthful of pebbles.

She pulled her head back up out of the water, and made her way back to the den entrance, spitting the pebbles out onto the ground, and then thoroughly shaking her head until she was relatively dry again. Without much thought to design or how pretty or un-pretty the pebbles were (Fira didn’t have a head for this sort of thinking), she started to arrange the pebbles in a kind of semi-circle in front of the opening to her old home, sort of like a welcome mat.

It was rather hastily done, but it was the best she could do, really, considering she didn’t want to spend too much time on this. Fira wasn’t one to mourn like this. She would do real mourning later, in hunting, and sleeping, and forgetting to bathe herself, and days lost in stupors. This small part was just something to mark her life with Destiny, however short her time spent had been. She observed the pebble arrangement for a moment more, and then bowed her head for some time, as if in prayer, though her mind was blank. Then she stood again and left the den, not knowing when, if ever, she would return.


RE: paying respects - Fira - Jan 05 2017

Once she was far from the river, far from the physical memories of her old life, she had a different goal in mind. Hunting was how she had been coping recently, and hunting was how she would cope now. It wasn’t the best method, perhaps, but with no one to talk to about how she felt, exercise was the best method she had. She had been stalking the herd of deer for a while now, and something told her that they knew she was there. All of them were cautious and alert and snorting, but she would try, anyways. She needed something to do with the pent-up emotions inside her body and heart and soul.

Without thinking, she sprung at the nearest of her prey.


RE: paying respects - Fira - Jan 05 2017

The kill was an easy one, and as the other deer fled in a panic, and Fira continued to grasp the struggling creature’s neck in her jaws, her mind was as blank as ever… As blank as it had been for the past three cycles. It wasn’t that she didn’t let herself feel, it was only that the way she mourned was different from the way most Gembounds mourned. She didn’t see the point in fighting the inevitable. Of course Destiny’s death was sad, and of course she was heart-broken, but blubbering about it wouldn’t solve anything. Then again, spacing out for months and killing deer when she didn’t need to eat wouldn’t solve anything either, but at least she was staying active, right? At least she wasn’t laying around moping and crying all day, even if she did forget to bathe most of the time. Even if she did sometimes think about throwing herself into the river and seeing where the current dragged her. Not necessarily suicide, just very dangerous. Still, it could be an adventure, if you thought about it the right way.

The deer stopped struggling, its breath slowing to a halt, and Fira let go of its jugular, panting at the effort of holding onto a kicking cave deer for so long. Then she sniffed at the body, made a face, and took a hunk of meat from its flank, just to feel a little less bad about killing it. That one taste, though, made her stomach churn, and she turned away from it in disgust, facing the river again…

After a moment, she stood and made her way back to the water, intent on getting the blood off of her.


RE: paying respects - Fira - Jan 05 2017

As the leopard plunged her body into the river, ignoring the pulling current, she thought about her relationship with Destiny. It had all been rather rushed, if she let herself think about it long. In hindsight, she’d only agreed to be Destiny’s mate and to have children with her because Destiny was going to die. They’d known that from the beginning. And even if they hadn’t, even if they only knew that her gem was hurting her and not killing her, Fira still would have agreed just as soon as she did. Fira’s whole life was lived mostly for others. By herself, she was kind of an empty shell. She had no purpose when she wasn’t doing something for someone. And she was okay with that. Left to her own devices, her life was an endless cycle of hunting, eating, shitting, and sleeping, with no detours. Left to her own devices, Fira’s reason for existing was that death just seemed so extreme and unnecessary. So she did just enough to keep herself alive. She pursued things that interested if they came up, but 99% of the time, anything that interested her had everything to do with other Gembounds.

So what good was she on her own? Doing nothing but taking up oxygen and killing deer out of boredom and depression. She sank her head into the water again, letting the current rush through her fur and drag the blood away downstream, staining the water pink for a few seconds.


RE: paying respects - Fira - Jan 05 2017

Feeling clean and cold, Fira dragged herself up onto the bank of the river, and stared out across its expanse for a time, looking to her right, upstream, and seeing the generator. She’d never given it much thought before, but now, for a moment or two, it piqued her curiosity. Fira had been born long after the lights had turned themselves on, with the help of others in the Cave, so she didn’t know what it was like to live in complete darkness. In fact, she wasn’t even aware that the generator was what kept the lights on. Such a thing had never been explained to her. She had no clue what the generator did, now that she thought about it. But, with a shrug, the whole thing suddenly seemed boring again, and she went back to staring into the water, without thinking.



After what seemed like a long time, perhaps an hour, or perhaps only a few seconds, Fira stepped back into the river and lay down in the middle of the current, head submerged, feeling it push at her like someone on urgent business. The cat closed her eyes against the water, let the breath out of her lungs so that she could no longer breathe, submerged as she was, and allowed the current to drag her away. At some point, she surfaced again, and her body responded by sucking in air. But she otherwise did not fight the situation she had just put herself in.

The current dragged her faster and faster, into ever-deeper water, and she had a fleeting memory of almost drowning with Destiny when they were both much younger. She smiled for a split-second, and then a rock struck her head hard in the swift current, and she passed out.



When she awoke, it was Dark. Dark like Destiny’s vision had gone as the gem had pierced her eyes, shoving them from her skull before puncturing her brain. It was Dark like Fira’s heart, now that her wife and children were probably all dead. It was Dark like the entirety of the Cave was in mourning with her.

There on the far bank of the Crystal River, there in the Dark, Fira cried for Destiny for the first time, and not the last.

[End]

@Chou -- For Moon, for Destiny.