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 Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 7:08 am
The images and sensations were so overwhelming in quantity that they became nothing. The first conscious moment was feeling for something, anything in the expanse of oblivion.
A voice that whispered, and her response on recognition.
"Hello, little one..."
A sudden feeling of self, and realization as her shattered mind rebuilt and stabilized and Tartaros took form again. Nightmares restored, beneath a new keeper.
The moon's sliver of waning crescent hung in the sky, although the cloudy weather seemed to occasionally cause the tiny bit of moonlight to blink in and out of existence. Occasionally the wind would rake against the walls and windows, and Dodge seemed to pad around Chester's office nervously.
It was a huge change of pace. The large puppy had been lethargic since Noah brought him by with a sparse explanation that Zia had not pulled through from her stay in the hospital. The rottweiler mix had taken to laying in the middle of the floor in a melted lump, occasionally emitting a soft whine. After first he would get up when enticed with food, but to date hadn't eaten in two days. He was unresponsive, and the normally energetic and destructive ball of fur seemed to have little interest in resuming activity.
Tonight was different. He seemed to jump with the sounds of the weather, and pace with agitation. Hackles raised as his paws clicked around Chester's office, trying his hardest to look out windows. When he felt Chester wasn't paying adequate attention to their surroundings, he would assault him with a cold nose, nudging it under his hand.
The air felt heavy, and there was a weird tension as the moon went dark again.
And suddenly Dodge began howling and pawing at the door to be let free.
-----
The Big Top of the carnival had always had the biggest draw, something that tugged at her soul. The visual, the atmosphere, even the way the tent canvas felt on her fingers. Her bare feet covered in gems and gold slowly moved across the cold ground, trailing the overlays and skirts behind her. Her eyes were cast up at the structure while she moved in a daze, like she always did when she was around it.
Tartaros seemed to reject her, the timeline seemed to reject the paradox, and yet she had managed to survive. The universe seemed t have reconstituted something new and old at once. Her body bore no scars, no brand from the blood moon court on her chest. Tattoos were gone, signs of age and stress erased.
She was here, unbound and reborn, and had chosen this circus for reasons that weren't immediately apparent to her. She only wandered it in quiet fascination and intrigue.
A dog approached, and she moved behind a large supporting pole at first. But she peeked out at the canine who halted to wag his tail expectantly, and smiled. Memories buried under more memories struggled to make their way out, but she regarded him with the warm familiarity of an old friend as she stepped out and reached for him.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 8:29 am
Chester was getting used to having Dodge around the place, but it was not the same as having Zia there. He missed her endlessly. All work on his carnival had stopped, or at least his participation in it had, and for the first time in all the years he had been working he opted to stop. He did nothing at all, day to day.
Much like Dodge.
He looked up from his position on the sofa, which seemed to be worn in from his long hours of sitting there recently, a glass in his hand. Turning to alcohol and remaining completely isolated from the world was probably not the best decision he could have made, but he saw little purpose in anything else. He simply shut down.
She had been his everything, and without her he found he was no longer a complete human being. He would not be until she was back with him, and if she never was, then he was simply a wasted hollow shell that no longer held any meaning. It was the first time he had ever felt anything so strikingly depressive and painful, and he was ill equipped to deal with the weight bearing down on him.
The drunken stupor he was constantly in did little to help, and yet he thought it was numbing things just enough to be tolerable.
At the howling, he got up, putting his glass down. He moved to the door and opened it, looking out into the dark night. He had not felt any will to go outside of his little home until now, and he was not sure why. He resisted it, until Dodge took off into the darkness and he was forced to go and follow the dog. He lost track of him somewhere near the big top, but saw him standing still not too far.
"Dodge?"
He moved closer, noting that Dodge seemed to be looking at something. His body came to a full arrest when he saw her, and for a moment he forgot how to breathe. Words fled from his mind and he simply stared, watching her as she pet Dodge carefully. This wasn't the first time he had seen her, but it certainly was the most vivid. Everything was strange, and different. He could almost believe it was real.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:04 am
Dodge didn't seem put off by the strange new physical features of his human. Her teeth seemed a bit more pointed, her ears came to a point, her nails were sharper. He seemed to recognize something at the core of her darker new rebirth that was his old master, though, and he laid there in a happy puddle while she pet him.
She glanced up and saw a man. His name didn't immediately come to her, but his visage resonated with something. Direly important memories tugging and fighting to get out. A visceral, emotional reaction took hold of her and she waited to regain her composure before she approached with a tentative and slow few steps.
"There's something about a circus," She murmured, similarly to how she had rambled when she broke in the night they met. "Something about mirrors and beautiful dreams. I've found a dream, about a man with dark hair and eyes that are kinder than he thinks," She said, her voice gaining a bit more strength as she reached her hands up to hover near his cheeks. She seemed to be inspecting his features before she seemed to reach a conclusion, and smiled.
"I am the regent queen of the Black Moon and the conqueror of Tartaros. Trapped in the darkness, I've been dreaming of you," She said with an almost melodious tone of elation in her voice, and she cupped his jaw and held his face in her hands. "Who are you?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:32 am
Chester was having a hard time thinking back to how many drinks he had that night. Surely it was not so much as to cause all this. And the dog wasn't drunk: why was Dodge in this strange fever dream in the first place? The dog seemed to know more than Chester could at the moment, trusting his instincts.
Dodge knew who this was, and Chester scarcely dared to believe it.
He watched her as she moved closer to him, staring at her. Her words made him shiver, but it was her touch that made his blood first run icy cold, then fill with a warmth that threatened to consume him.
Was this Zirconia, then? Had she won out over Zia completely, and taken her body, her memories? No, he could not believe that: Zirconia did not want to stay here, that he knew. She wanted to be done with Earth and this side of the mirror, hadn't she?
Dreaming of him...
"My name is Chester," he said dumbly, his voice very soft and broken as he struggled to form each word. He almost introduced himself as Luxor, as if duty bound to do so. He was struggling with more emotions than he knew how to deal with, and his eyes glistened as his voice caught in his throat. "I've been dreaming about you, too."
But not in the same way. Not the same.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 9:59 am
"Well met, Chester," She said softly with a happy grin, hands still cupping his face. She ran her thumbs across the skin of his cheeks, and affectionately touched on finger to his lips, feeling her pulse quicken.
He looked wretched, and a pang of sadness at his pain seemed to creep into her thoughts.
Things came back, although in pieces and slowly. Emotions seemed to hit first, and then memories backing them up second. She brushed a stray hair away from his forehead as she inhaled sharply with a quick memory. "Chester, Luxor... my knight and protector."
She seemed to almost cradle his head again.
"I got lost," She said, thinking about her stupor of destabilization in Tartaros. "I found you, though."
She looked at his ragged features sadly, and raised on hand to stroke his hair with open attempts at comfort. "I remember... I wanted to be human... with you. But I can't. The moon is dead, and so I have a duty. But I'm here, I found you. Because I am your guardian as much as you are mine."
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 12:47 pm
Chester stood quietly as she investigated his face, just watching her as she did so. He was having trouble to really understand just who he was looking at, or if he was really in this moment or just imagining it. Nothing she said or did screamed of Zia, and yet she knew him. She knew Luxor.
"You came back," he said, deciding that this had to be real. He put his hand over hers as she held on to him, closing his eyes and taking a slow breath. It was Zia, not Zirconia, not anyone else, but she was changed. Something had definitely happened from her quest to help Zirconia, but it was not what they had wanted.
A duty?
"I want to help you. I want to be with you, where ever you go. I don't want you to go away without me again." He didn't ask her what happened, not sure he would get a direct answer, and not sure he could handle one if he did. He didn't want to push her or drive her away. Maybe this was all just temporary, and she would come back to him whole in time. She remembered him, when just a moment ago she didn't, after all.
He was her knight, her guardian: he was meant to help her and follow her no matter what happened. And he would. Better now, because he would not lose her again.
He couldn't.
"Do you want to go home?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 12:59 pm
"Sometimes roads don't go where we wish," She answered in response to his plea to never leave him behind again. But in this moment she didn't dare think of a moment in which she would willingly leave him on any quest. The darkness of the collapsed dream world, and the oblivion of what felt like death still raked in her mind. Such a feeling of isolation and eternity was something she shuddered to think of repeating.
She examined her arm, as if she was seeing her own limb for the first time. Soft and unmarred skin, but there was a weakness too. Thin, no muscle tone. "But I am vulnerable. It would not be wise to fight the battles ahead without you, obviously," She cooed, still stroking his hair.
Do you want to go home?
The question made her stop. This was not the moon palace she remembered so vividly. She was still a foreigner here, and she felt it. But somehow, not as strongly. Zia's soul gave her roots here that were innate and unyielding, and especially strong in this particular place. She looked up and around, at the moonlight poking through the clouds and the circus tents, and then to him before she smiled.
"Am I not already home?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 1:16 pm
"Obviously," he repeated softly, but he wasn't really listening to what he was saying. He was just watching her, and he closed his eyes for a moment as she ran her hand through his hair, the touch familiar and soothing.
He opened them again and let her think about her answer to his question, expecting something different than what she returned with. He tilted his head at her, then looked around the circus tent, frowning seriously at it and then looking back at her with a much softer expression.
"No, not quite. Almost."
He offered her his hand. He wanted to go back to their little home in his office, the strange house that had been made out of what was supposed to be a temporary sleeping place whenever he had long work nights here at the Carnival. Now it was the place he liked the best, but only because Zia had always been there.
"I'll take you."
He guided her back toward the office, making sure Dodge was following just so he did not get left out in the cold. Chester had been doing his best to take care of the dog so far, and didn't want anything bad to happen to him now.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 1:33 pm
She let him take her hand, but she stood firm until she saw where he intended to lead her. She instantly recognized the office home, and a flood of remembrance of warmth and safety hit her that brought a nearly naive grin of joy to her face.
She free and ran ahead, with Dodge enthusiastically following behind, and everything about the way she ran was devoid of all of the regal posturing and seemed to be purely still Zia's lack of coordination. "A-ah...!" She gasped, feeling the warmth of the indoors on her exposed skin. She held her hands up, as if they were eager to reach out and touch something but she didn't know what yet. She turned on bare heels, jewelry clinking softly and layers of skirts and overlays splaying out on the floor behind her. "I think... I think I remember. This place is..."
She reached out and took his hand again once it was in reach, holding it firmly with both of hers. "You," She said with firm authority, that softened after she stared at him for a bit. "I remember now. Chester, won't you kiss me?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 6:10 pm
Chester looked at her, shaking his head slowly as she asked him to kiss her. He wanted to. Everything in his body screamed at him to do just that, because she was alive, and she was back, and though she was different he knew that the Zia he loved was still there. He did not understand what happened, how or why she changed, but none of that seemed to matter in the face of the very simple fact that she was home.
He had come to think he would never see her again, and it had been a terrible feeling. He loved her, more than he realized he was capable of.
"Are you okay," he asked quietly, caressing her cheek very gently, as if scared to touch her. What if she faded away, or he hurt her somehow, or something likewise terrible happened? He just could not risk doing any more harm, but he was not sure where the line was.
"Maybe you should rest a bit... and we can talk..."
He was also trying to clear his head, as he had a lot to drink before all of this, and his body was reminding him that, though he was keen on convincing himself otherwise, he was still drunk.
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Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2014 6:33 pm
"I am fine," She said, catching his hand as it touched her cheek and making the distinct expression of someone who was not used to having their requests denied.
She turned and took a seat on the sofa, pulling her feet up and resting one elbow on the armrest, resting her fingers agasint her lips. Dodge ambled up to sit on the floor at her side and she used her other arm to rub the top of his head, appreciating an animal that knew his place.
Her demeanor was reeking of someone who was high on their own importance.
"Talk about what? I told you my memory is damaged, I'm not sure that I could answer your questions. It's starting to come back, in bits in pieces. I know that I was sick. Too much time with dual, warring souls. I know I had to make an agreement, but that I seemed to mostly win. I was... someone who went by Zee... I think? But now I am also Zirconia. Sort of. Her legacy and duty, at least, are mine. Cassandra was trying to con me out of my right to the throne, but I took it back. There were consequences, but I think I may heal yet. My power is unbound for the first time in centuries... I'm not bound to that silly Mauvian body that served as my prison. My true form is open to me."
She held out her hand to him, softening again as if she became suddenly afraid she was veering off into appearing too cold. "Will you at least come sit with me?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2014 10:20 am
"I know it is, I don't mean about that."
Chester moved to sit down with her, though, taking her hand in his very gently and lifting it to his lips. He kissed her knuckles lightly, smoothing his hand over hers as if to warm it, but just wanting to hold on to her and keep her somewhere he was sure she was not going to vanish from. He was still scared this was all going to end abruptly, and she would be gone.
"I just want you to be okay. I want you to relax and... and... just talk to me. I missed you so much..."
He shook his head slowly, letting his emotions get the better of him for the first time ever.
"I'm sorry... I am not very good at... at things like this. I don't understand why you're so different... but I know you're still there. I will always be here, I promised you that before... I'm sorry I failed you..."
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Posted: Sun Dec 21, 2014 11:35 am
"Oh... Chester," She nearly broke into a whisper, letting her free arm run her fingers through his hair again, trying to coax him into resting his head. "You are the one who should rest. I've been in the darkness for a long time, what feels like forever. But you didn't fail me, you are right here where I need you to be. I could ask nothing more of you."
She seemed content to just continually pet him, running her hands over his hair and cheeks and the back of his neck, never ceasing in the soft motion.
"I'm sorry you've been worried ragged. Rest. I won't leave you again."
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