September, 2007


She explained with the best and most honest words she could find, what she felt she had to do. Her foster sons (sons of her heart more correctly) had settled down with their supper and their homework. The half-Elven "tutor" she'd hired away from the Den content to dine with them (though that had not always been the case) and answers their questions or check their answers.

Thorn, with her dogs trailing at her heels, left off her leaning on the second floor banister and padded on light feet down the open hall to her heart-brother's open bedroom door. Rap-tapping blunt finger nails against the wood, she waited for permission before entering.

"There's something I have to do. Somewhere I need to go for a little while Baz." As it was in her nature to do so, the redneck moved about the room tidying up as she went. And as she spoke.

"Where and why?" The amber eyed youth sprawled across the bed asked bluntly.

With a small nervous smile tugging at her lips she settled on the edge of the bed. "To the place I died, to the bramble there, and because it feels right. I don't have a grave to stand over."

"Standing at your own grave isn't pleasant Thorn. I've done it, and--" He trailed off into an uncomfortably helpless shrug. Then continued with a question when she reached over and gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "What will this do for you though?"

"Hopefully it'll help. You now the way I, we, the boys too mourn yeah?"

"The keening and the cutting." A shoulder lifted while his chin dipped into a nod.

"Three days usually as a maximum to push the worst of it out. I never did that for myself. Didn't think I could or I should. Then after a year we burn a cherished possession of the one who's passed to release their soul because in theory a year's long enough for that person to have moved on."

"How does that work when the person comes back though?" Honest curiosity before he rushed on, eyes widening in alarm, "gods Thorn don't burn that bramble! You are what you are, and I've never heard of another going back to the place where they were killed. There's no telling what can happen if you burn that plant." He was sitting bolt upright now for the thought and the possible consequences of that were terrifying to him.

She chuckled ruefully and shook her head. "I've no intention of that Baz. Promise." Thorn waited a beat for him to nod his acceptance, then continued. "I don't know how it works in this situation honey, don't think it's ever come up before." A wry twist of her lips followed the admission; she didn't like being special in that manner.

After leaning to brush a kiss to the Tanar'ri's cheek she rose, "guess we'll find out what happens when someone like me visits the place where they died without being afraid of dying again."

"Do me a favor will you?" He grinned fast and brooked when she began assuring him that she'd be as careful as possible. "Remember everything that happens so you can tell me about it."

And smiling over a shoulder she Gated away. Gated to the tree that she knew a quarter of a mile from the caern site.

Even at that distance, she felt it. Felt the humming against the outer reaches of her mind. Showing her the way. With the dogs ghosting along at her side, Thorn followed the path laid before her. Pale mental images of the battle played through her mind as she walked.

The beacon ahead, its hum changed in pitch. Insistent now it pulled her forward as surely as though a rope had been tied around her waist.

"Anything weird happens, get Baziou." Murmured in a seer's tone to the astral hound as turning back was no longer an option for the redneck. Her feet carried her forward, ever forward while the dogs were unaffected by the pull, unaware of the quickening changes in the world around them.

She stepped from the woods onto what was a battle ground a year past, and walked into her memories made nearly real. Into a full sensory illusion. Wyrm things, tainted aberrations swarmed while screams rent the air, copper scent of blood, stale taste of sweat and fear. Cordite and dust, rage and hate. She struck out, borrowed blades slicking through while she spun and turned. And moved through one of her opponents with nothing to mark the passage. No pressure against her skin, no chill n her bones. Not even a ripple of sensation.

Stunned she hesitated, frosted amethyst eyes flicking glances about as though the answer was just waiting for her to find it. Tears were blurring her vision when she shook her head. Her hands shaking when the images, memory replayed over reality, didn't fade away. No pain here, no dread.

Something stood as a shield between her and that; some unseen protection held it all at bay.

And she saw herself fighting in the front with Devin, the both of them being drawn further away from the others. Deeper into the cave. Thorn, the watcher, dragged along in their wake, the drum beat throb of energy rushing her feet until she too had passed beyond the stone mouth.

With her eyes intent on the scene before her the redneck was unaware that the dogs had stopped completely. Unaware that they whined and strained to follow where she went.

The memory sped by in painful focus. She could see the patterns on Krist's shirt, count the hairs on Cooper's arms, and yet the dance of memories spun by in a blur. Thorn, the memory, was unfocused and blurred. An image overlapping an image overlapping an image overlapping an image, blurred and barely recognizable.

Sobbing, she stepped forward and slid with a click into perfect alignment with her memory-self and fought on. Fought a seemingly unending mass of twisted enemies from a year past while exhaustion and anger and dull pain from yesterday bled into today's fear and guilt. Melded together in one nearly seamless mass. Singularity, duality, and plurality in a throbbing bile-bitter knot.

The cold seeping along her limbs again, the creeping numbness. She knew, gods she knew what was coming but she couldn't break free. The vision held her in an iron grip and refused to let go. The rock wall was rough against her fingers, then and now, when they trailed there for balance and support. The sudden weakness in her legs that had her knees buckling brought about gibbering fear to mix with guilt laden confusion.

Caught, trapped and dying again she struck out. Lashed out to fight the thing that could not be fought. Today's terror overriding the guilt of yesterday. The fight wasn't done and yet she was passing out. Leaving everyone else to finish it. The confused guilt that people would be sad.

Why should they be sad?

Devin there, holding her close, running his fingers through her hair to soothe her. The dying memory blind to it, the living woman re-experiencing the memory of her own death aware. Fully aware that Devin knew.

Knew she was slipping away and doing his best to hide it from her while offering comfort to ease her passing. "Don't worry Thorn, I love you, and I won't let you stay here." Reassurances that fell on deaf ears as her vision faded.

That last shuddering breath, a filling of lungs gone cold and useless before the final plunge. Memory and reality; then and now.

The visions were gone, the pain and fear erased by their leaving. Only the confusion left in their wake.

A bramble now. A bramble rooted in stone where her body had been. A bramble that until this moment, and that moment, hadn't existed, hadn't been there. That had been absent until the moment when still living eyes opened once again.

Caged in, trapped by the sign post of her soul's passage. And the drums were singing again.

Eighty and more sent their vibrating song to tempt the sleeper to awaken. Blooms, flowers never to ripen, in numbers that matched the drums tipped their faces imploringly to the woman laying in their midst. Blossoms, but only one berry. One berry as rich and dark and tempting as the warmest of midnight whispers from a silver tongue. A deeper song there, bass drum to call the others to line and to heel.

And tempted she was, tempted enough to lift a hand to brush her fingers most tenderly across its pebbled surface. Shock and pain had her crying out.

In moving she brushed against one of the myriad branches that formed her cage, lined with vicious thorns. Thorns that cut into her flesh, ripping her left arm open just below the elbow. The bramble was a brutish thing, vicious and huge for all it had only been growing a year. And it had teeth to bite with.

She jerked away, involuntarily in response to the pain of the invasion, and was cut again. Across the curve of a shoulder a jagged, thin line of blood wept from an open wound.

Fear caught her in its grip once more and goaded her into a desperate bid for freedom from her entanglement. Blindly, mindlessly she struggled and thrashed while the intertwining branches tore into her skin with a mind of their own. Fought until the core of the bush had been hollowed; each branch that drew blood having disappeared, perhaps destroyed by the attack.

Trembling and nauseous she fought to still or even stifle the painful whimpers that wracked her throat. Kneeling in the heart of the bramble she wrapped her torn arms around her center and fought to control the shaking of her limbs. Wide amethyst eyes lifted from their near blind staring at the floor, and settled on the undamaged blackberry that was still within easy reach. And still calling to her.

Drawing her, begging to be plucked. To be devoured. Exhaustion lay heavy over her, lead weights pulling at her limbs. Distantly she heard the sound of two dogs barking in a frenzy of near killing rage and fear, a man's voice shouting. Pleading.

As though in a dream she lifted a hand, its fingers cupping the berry. In that brief moment of contact she felt such a sense of finding Self that it was magnetic. Only by an extreme exercise of stubborn will was she able to open her fingers again. To draw her hand away. But of course, it didn't last. Almost afraid that she'd stop herself, Thorn plucked that tantalizing fruit from its branch.

The pain and fear ebbed, was it the redneck's or the bramble's? A twinge of relief sliding through, a coming home. Energetic and curious, tranquil and calm. So many things slipping into places that she hadn't been aware of having gone dark. Hadn't been aware of their being nearly tapped out.

She cradled the berry as gently as she would a new hatched chick and wondered. Wondered at the calm that came now in those last memories of life. Soothed into its ending by the touch of a dear friend. The feeling of a chapter ending, of a new pen being put to paper to write out the next.

She no longer felt caged by the twined brambles. Coccooned and held safe in a place that was so purely her own. And there she could, and did break and mourn. Keening rose unbidden in her throat, the wordless sounds of mourning she'd been taught to give vent to when the pain of loss was too great. Sobbing changes in pitch and liquid pulls of breath.

Inhuman for some, painful for others, the sound tore at the interior of her throat even while it helped the woman to purge.

Baziou's voice shook with fear when he called out to her again, the dull sounds of fisted impact rebounding through the corridor. They cut through, drew her out long enough to call out reassurances. Reassurances that seemingly fell on deaf ears.

The brambles wouldn't let her go, wouldn't open to free her from their bubble. Left with no choice, spurred on by the growing desperation in her heart-brother's voice the redneck began forcing her way through the brambles once again. Recoiling in new pain as each touch brought a new rip in her skin, and yet left her shirt untouched. As before when a thorn drew blood from her, the branch snapped away into nonexistence.

Blood dripped into her eyes from the tears above her brows. The hand that she brought up to wipe it away brushed the berry across her lips.
The want, the need, to eat that fruit rose up to swamp her and left her dizzy with the suddenness of it. She jerked her hand down and away and cast a look over her shoulder the way she'd come.

Where a clear path should have been, she'd forced her way nearly through to freedom, the brambles had closed in once again. A solid wall of thorns and leaves and branches that reached out for her. The mouth of the cave in her sight, Baziou beating against an invisible wall with hands that were torn and bloodied. Her dogs, all three of them together again, scrabbling and snapping at the same barrier. "I'm here, I'm alright." Again she offered reassurances, and again they didn't hear.

Baziou calling while the dogs howled, into the cave. "Don't die on me baby. Please, I can't handle you're leaving me too." Behind her, only the brambles stood.

In her moment of confusion the temptation rose again. Tempted as Eve had been tempted some say, to eat of the fruit. And like that long storied woman, Thorn ate.

Three bites and each brought something more. Something different. An image of herself as she had been formed in her mind, half real nearly transparent. The beginning of a major change, the moment when she was forced to face the truth. That she was real, that what she did affected herself and others. And that she was a tainted thing in her own eyes. And belief, the half formed belief that she was real, that she did matter. Then the sensation of being washed clean, of having that taint bleed away into the dirt from innumerable tears where self-inflicted scars used to be.

Every forward step a thousand possibilities.

She called out to Baz, and turned when he pointed with wide eyes behind her to watch the last of the mature branches of that bramble sink into her skin with no pain.

Her life reabsorbed.