Post by superkamiguy1 on Nov 8, 2024 2:28:16 GMT
The river ran shallow and cold, like a slice of winter stolen and tucked here between the trees. I knelt by the edge, filling my canteen and feeling the chill bite into my fingertips, and for a while, that was enough to keep everything else at bay. Just the cold. Just the sound of water slipping over stones, like a language I used to know but had long since forgotten.
Celest was crouched a few feet away, her face barely visible in the fading light. She was rinsing her hands, her movements slow, deliberate, like she was focusing on each finger as though they might slip away if she didn’t. She hadn’t spoken for most of the journey—her silence had stretched long and thin, like a string pulled taut. I knew the feeling too well. That hollow, tired numbness that clung to the corners of my mind. It was easier, maybe, not to speak, to just let the emptiness settle like fog over everything we’d lost.
But Celest was different. She’d always been bound to her kingdom, her titles, to the myth she’d grown up inside. She’d been taught to hold everything together as the world leaned in on her, never giving her the option to crumble, never letting her become anything but Queen Celestia. Now she was just Celest. Just a woman with no kingdom, no throne, no Saints. Just the dust and ghosts of memories that used to be a life.
She stood up abruptly, staring out over the river, and then she screamed.
It was raw and jagged, cutting through the still air, an unfiltered cry that echoed and cracked like thunder, tearing its way into the quiet. She screamed again, louder, until her voice was ragged and broken, carrying all the things we’d buried, the things we didn’t say to each other or ourselves. She kept screaming as though maybe, somehow, the World Saints would hear, as if they could change any of this. As if they might answer.
I don’t know how long it lasted. The sound seemed to stretch on, filling the trees, the river, the stones beneath our feet, until it all became one endless roar of grief and fury and something so human, so primal, that it twisted in my chest like a blade. By the time she fell silent, her voice was a raw whisper. She sank to her knees, her head bowed, and the sobs came then, thick and unrestrained, breaking over her shoulders.
I don’t remember moving, but suddenly I was there, kneeling beside her. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, holding her tight as she cried, and I felt her fold into me. She was shaking, her body wracked by sobs that felt like they were tearing her apart, like they were dragging pieces of her soul out with every breath. And all I could do was hold her, letting her fall apart because there was no fixing this. There was no going back to what we had been, no returning to the world we’d known.
Her hair smelled faintly of lavender, mingling with the scent of river mud and crushed leaves, and for a moment, I closed my eyes, breathing in that smell, grounding myself in the fact that she was here, that we were still here.
When her sobs finally subsided, her body relaxed, though her shoulders still shook now and then with the occasional hiccup of breath. She pulled away slightly, enough to look at me, her eyes red and raw, her face streaked with tears and dirt. There was a lightness in her gaze now, a strange sort of clarity, like she’d finally let go of some weight that had been pressing down on her for far too long.
“I don’t know how to be anything but a queen,” she whispered, her voice cracking, fragile as glass. “I don’t know how to be... just Celest. I don’t know who that is.”
I didn’t have an answer. Hell, I didn’t know who *I* was anymore. But that was the thing about us—we were both adrift, stripped of everything that had ever anchored us. And maybe, just maybe, we could find something new in that emptiness. Maybe we could become something neither of us had been before. So, I pulled her close again, resting my chin on the top of her head, and we sat there by the river, listening to the quiet rustle of water and leaves, letting the world rebuild itself around us, piece by piece.
For now, that was enough.
A sad but heartwarming scene! Yeah, as mystical as the world resetting would be, the fact remains that Celest lost everything she'd fought for and even her Kingdom was lost before the rebirth and she didn't get it back afterword. Now she has to figure out she is in this new world, a world that doesn't even remember her. Who are you in a world like that? Who are you in a reborn world where your old life, and everything you fought for, was erased? It's an interesting philosophical question to be sure. Fortunately there's a heartwarming moment at the end with Robin still stepping in to give her the calming hug to help her relax.