(PRP) And the Saddest Sound Was the Little Bells

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Siblings & Romani

 

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Her bells were the first sound that woke him in the morning and the last sound before he fell asleep. It signaled the sound of her coming and her going. He could tell just by the sound if she was happy or sad, dancing or twirling. Each sound was different, beautiful. Unique.

Each sound was the sound of his sister.

It was spring and the thunder rolled like drums of war. The echo beat inside of his ears until he felt he'd go deaf. He'd been out playing when the lightning storm had struck. The air was electric, all the hair on his head felt like it was standing on end. The world crackled and the sky danced.

Scared by the storm, he'd sought shelter as best as he could beneath the sweeping branches of a tree. He shivered, cold with all the icy rain that drenched him. There was puddles of mud beneath his feet so he leaned against the tree to steady himself, to keep from slipping.

Sound is slower than sight, the sky shone white and blinding. Something shot through his skin. His body screamed in silent protest. The sound of a buzzing white nothing filled his ears.

Everything faded away into white.

Was this what nothing felt like?

Viveka....

VIVEKA!

Where was he?

What was happening?

Was he dead?

He didn't want to be dead. He was just a foal.

Why is everything white?

Am I dead?

The first thing he could remember was the sound of the bells above (below?) the lashing rain and ominous thunder. The world came to him like it was at the end of a long train.

And all he heard was bells as she ran.

He knew she'd come, through rain or storm. Through the ending of the world she would come. Viveka. He wanted to shout her name, but he couldn't get the words out. It was too difficult to speak and there was still nothing to see.

Shadows shifted above his face, swayed. He felt pain shooting through his body, echoing into his very bones. He could feel the wet mud and it soothed some of the burning sensation in his body.

Then the world came into focus above him, branches swaying with fire.

He should run, but he couldn't. He was trapped immobile underneath this canopy of death. This is it. This is all there is going to be.

But the bells....

They came closer then farther and closer. Were they real? Was he imagining them? But she would come, she would always come.

Viveka.

Her name fell from his lips soft as a feather.

The bells grow louder and his fear spiked. She had to be close. Nothing would stop her from getting to him. He had faith in her. Faith.

Then the world was nothing but her eyes. Large and brown like chestnuts and deep enough to fall into.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Viveka had been humming to herself when she'd seen the storm roll in. She had called for her brother immediately to bring him to the safety of the caves. But he had not answered. The rain soaked her pale hair, made her shiver with cold but she waited outside the cave for him.

Their parents said he would be fine, he would be fine. He knew to get out of the storm, but something terrible tickled some sense in her body that was older than time itself.

"Sven!" She called to him the pet name she'd always given him when he'd had problems pronouncing his full name. Others called him Ozi, but not her. Sven was a name all her own for him.

Someone had told her parent's a prophecy about him once, told them that he would be a master of storms, a master of his fate. They had named him for it, "The Young Lightning Warrior", because was not lightning the herald of the storm?

But there was a dark omen about it, terrible and fearsome.

"Sven!" She yelled.

She ran through the high grass, sped by fear into looking for him. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.

Then it happened.

The world went white just as she found him. The tree, he stood beneath exploded in pieces of charred wood. Fire rained down where he stood.

She was screaming his name. She was running.

And then there he was, lying there looking up at her with glassy eyes.

"SVEN! SVEN!" She screamed his name as she looked at him. His grey body streaked with yellow marks where he had been struck.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Oziuhilasven looked up at his sister and held on to the mercy of her eyes. She was the only thing in a shimmering world that danced and swayed. Her voice seemed distant, a part of the rolling thunder.

But she was here. She was here, she was here. She would always be here.

When he could move, Viveka had helped him from the mud. She was trembling, defiant in the storm. All he could think of was how amazing she looked standing there as though she was afraid of nothing when it came to him.

That's how she would always be for him. Always.

Once the initial shock of what had happened had worn off, his parents had been fiercely proud of him for surviving. As though, he had something to do with it. Fortunes, glimpses of the future--these were the things that his parents believe in.

But often in the night when he could not sleep, he wondered if he had been struck by lightning because of his name? If somehow, he had been tempting the fates? Or perhaps, it all would have happened anyways.

How could he even know?

But Viveka told him it did not matter. He had survived, he was her brother and nothing else mattered. Still, it bothered him. It haunted him like big brown eyes in the dark.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Viveka smiled at him though there were hot things behind her eyes pinching her and making her want to cry. This might be the last time she would ever see Sven.

She remembered that day she had found him in the mud as though it were only moments ago. She had thought she would find him dead. But he had been spared. Her mother said it was all part of his calling, his prophecy....but Viveka was skeptical. She was not as superstitious as them.

"Sven, you'll be good won't you? Promise? I have to go for awhile, but I'l come back whenever I can. Okay?" She laid her head over his so that he would not see the solitary tear fall.

"I promise I'll come back, I promise."

Only, she hadn't.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

He did not understand her leaving. He knew that she didn't want to go. He had asked her over and over again "Then why won't you stay?" But she would not say. She promised she would come home to him, that things would go back to how they were.

But she had not come and Viveka was not one to break promises.

So why had she not returned. Had something happened? He could not believe that fate would spare him just to condemn her? Or had in some odd twist of fates, had she made a deal that it would be her not him? He was young and he did not know how these things worked.

Silently, he looked up at the heavens. Every thunder storm he stood in the rain shivering until he was not afraid. Take me, he thought. If that's what it means to know she's safe, take me. But one did not make deals like that. It took time for him to understand that.

Time passed. Each day was longer than the last. His parents consoled him, told him not to worry. At the back of his mind though, something tickled...something they were saying wasn't right.

Something was very wrong.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

When she had left him, her heart was breaking. He was still a foal, so much growing left to do. She would miss so much, so very much of her brother. And no one else would call him Sven like she did, no one else ever had. Her parents would move as they always did and if she ever got free, she might never find him or them again.

And what if she had other siblings she might never know of? She had gone so as not to lose him and lost him all the same. Yet, she would do it all over again, a thousand times over. As frightened as she was, she could handle it and he could not. She would get back to him, she had to. She had promises to keep.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Oziuhilasven did not miss her less as the days went on. The empty spot in his heart remained the same size hole as when she left. Nothing would ever fill it but her return. But each day as he grew from a foal into a stallion that chance of her returning seem to grow less and less. His parents seemed to have forgotten her almost. They never spoke of Viveka and when he asked, they would turn away and divert the questions. There was something that they weren't telling him and it scared him. Was she dead? Why had she left? Why wouldn't they tell him? He couldn't understand it.

It seemed as though he would never learn what happened to her, and something had. She would keep her promise otherwise. That's when he heard the rumors.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Viveka could not forgive them. Each day that passed in her servitude, she vowed she would not forgive her parents. She did not know why they had owed Horus, but how could anyone have made a deal with a stallion like that knowing the cost? How could they offer up a child as collateral if they could not pay him back what they owed?

And what choice had she had but to leave Sven with them? Hopefully they paid more attention to him, filled her absence with laughter and light for him. Somehow though she began to doubt that though as she slipped further and further into the darkness.

It was only the thought of Sven out there waiting for her that kept her holding on to something inside of her unconquerable.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Oziuhliasven was about to walk into a friend's camp when he heard a stranger talking with an elder of the romani. At first he couldn't comphrehend what they were talking about. Then he caught the sound of his name and Viveka's. The words stung like bites, whirled around chaotic circles in his mind. He felt his whole body grow cold and hot.

His parents had sold Viveka into slavery to pay off a debt, it was either her or the boy--Oziuhilasven, they said. She had gone because of him. How could his parents even do that? How could any of this be true?

But it explained too much. The way his parent's didn't want to talk about it....Viveka not coming back though she had promised. He had to ask them, he had to know for sure. And yet, he didn't want to know. He wanted this to be a nightmare.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Each day was a nightmare more horrible than the last. Every inch of her hurt from pure exhaustion, from the tenseness that would never leave her body again. As long as Horus and his brood lived, nd perhaps long after, she would still be afraid of them. But that was a distant dream, that one day that Horus and his brood would be far enough away for her to even have the luxary of them being memories.

Each day she rose and each day she went through the motions of what she had to do repeating the mantra in her head. I am here so that he does not have to be. Oziuhilasven is safe. He knows I love him and if thre is a keeper of promises, I will find him again. I will never tell him about this place. He is alive, he is well and it is better that I'm here than him.

WC 156  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Sven listened, his heart hardening as they spoke. They confirmed all that he had heard, all that he had thought them incapable of. But now the truth was laid bare before him and his very soul hurt. The father and mother who were supposed to love their children above all else had sold one of their children into slavery for a debt. They kept saying stupid things like they had done the best they could, done all they could to keep it from happening. But their words were hollow to his ears.

If they had loved either of them so much, then they would not have made the bargain to begin with. Viveka had stayed because it was him they'd take if she did not go. Why had their mother or father not said, my life for theirs? My service for theirs? But instead they let her go silently, letting him think that she was off enjoying her life when all this time she'd likely been in pain or fear.

He steeled up his heart to their words and told them with a finality that rang into his words. "You are dead to me."


(WC 194)  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

The days melted into one another until Viveka couldn't remember how long she'd be gone or how old she even was anymore. Did Sven even remember her anymore? She could not recall her father or mothre's faces anymore, but Sven's as always was firmly ingrained in her mind. Each night it was the thought of his foalish face that she summoned up before she slept. He's the reason I'm doing this. He's the reason.

He had loved to hear the sound of her bells, and she would jingle them whenever she felt too despondant too get up. The soft, sweet sound of the bells would give her heart courage to face another day.  

[Nyx Queen of Darkness]

Sven had left all that he had ever known to set out to find her. In his mind, he held the memory of her dancing to the sound of bells. In his dreams she was one with lightning and the storm, her bells were the sound of his saving grace. But to him, the sound of the bells was the saddest thing for as the days drudged on, he could hear them no more.