(no subject)
She stepped through the door and the rage hit her like a blow. Before she could even set a single, bare foot into the ashes of the world, it screamed at her. The wind whipped and tore across endless, ravaged miles and left the flat taste of death in her mouth as she gasped and recoiled. Rachel could understand the hatred. After all, she'd convinced the world to live after grievous harm...
...but that had only been half the battle. There was nothing that could grow, here. No resource left unscorched, slagged, or fused into a life-defying whole. Oh yes, Rachel could understand. The men that had followed her into the blasted landscape were forgotten for a moment as she fell to her knees and buried her fingers in the ash. One couldn't placate the focused rage of a world. It couldn't be bought off.
No, one accepted and moved on.
And so she spoke as she had spoken to the world before, whispering formulas and life energies and landscapes. Making promises that bled fire, and a promise of death afterward. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough...but it caused the wash of hatred to recede just enough for Rachel stand. That bridge crossed, and burned, she led the way to a stone cairn nestled among the dunes of ash. It's endless litany was no diminished since her last visit. Listings of the dead, of the crimes of her mother...
The cairn was a brutal center point to a wide circle she was walking in the ash. A circle to keep the boys in. A circle to keep them safe...she could not give them more than that. Not yet.
First she needed strength. Power to carry her through her endeavors...and to break the shell of death that covered the world. Above them, a fitful sun burned. It had been glorious and large, a glaring, tropical sun. Now it was limping and damaged...
...Phoenix had been feeding when the fleet ran her to ground...
...destabilized.
She spent precious moments staring, fighting off a hunger she could no more deny than she could change. Precious, endless moments listening as well. She could always hear it, Starsong. That trilling whisper threading in her blood and raining from above. This song was stuttering...and that realization helped defeat the hunger.
The Starsong was broken, cracked, and strained as if the singer were injured, or reaching for arias far beyond it's range now. It was what she needed. She was not a singer, but she could tell where the song should shift lower to weave better.
She could tell where. There was another who knew how. He did not, could not, stand beside her...but he was present none the less. Always present.
It was not her hands that reached for the sky, but theirs. Hers flame wreathed, and another set that were mere shadows twined among her fingers.
And this was how the song should go, trilling and glorious through scales far more suited to it's new voice. The power that had been tearing it apart bled away, slipping and braiding into ropes of liquid flame that laughed and streaked towards the planet below.
Yes, that was how the song should go.
And this was how rebirth began...with pain. With power so strong and desperate that it slammed mercilessly through Rachel and into the ground beneath her. The planet screamed and writhed...and for the first time since it's injury, the crust, that hated, dead layer embracing the world, cracked.
Every world was born in fire; a time when earth and stone moved as liquid.
This world burned.
Again.
Only this time, a woman held it tight through it's fear and pain.
This time, a circle of ash, alone untouched, bore witness.
And this time...
...this time the flame was a beginning.
...but that had only been half the battle. There was nothing that could grow, here. No resource left unscorched, slagged, or fused into a life-defying whole. Oh yes, Rachel could understand. The men that had followed her into the blasted landscape were forgotten for a moment as she fell to her knees and buried her fingers in the ash. One couldn't placate the focused rage of a world. It couldn't be bought off.
No, one accepted and moved on.
And so she spoke as she had spoken to the world before, whispering formulas and life energies and landscapes. Making promises that bled fire, and a promise of death afterward. It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough...but it caused the wash of hatred to recede just enough for Rachel stand. That bridge crossed, and burned, she led the way to a stone cairn nestled among the dunes of ash. It's endless litany was no diminished since her last visit. Listings of the dead, of the crimes of her mother...
The cairn was a brutal center point to a wide circle she was walking in the ash. A circle to keep the boys in. A circle to keep them safe...she could not give them more than that. Not yet.
First she needed strength. Power to carry her through her endeavors...and to break the shell of death that covered the world. Above them, a fitful sun burned. It had been glorious and large, a glaring, tropical sun. Now it was limping and damaged...
...Phoenix had been feeding when the fleet ran her to ground...
...destabilized.
She spent precious moments staring, fighting off a hunger she could no more deny than she could change. Precious, endless moments listening as well. She could always hear it, Starsong. That trilling whisper threading in her blood and raining from above. This song was stuttering...and that realization helped defeat the hunger.
The Starsong was broken, cracked, and strained as if the singer were injured, or reaching for arias far beyond it's range now. It was what she needed. She was not a singer, but she could tell where the song should shift lower to weave better.
She could tell where. There was another who knew how. He did not, could not, stand beside her...but he was present none the less. Always present.
It was not her hands that reached for the sky, but theirs. Hers flame wreathed, and another set that were mere shadows twined among her fingers.
And this was how the song should go, trilling and glorious through scales far more suited to it's new voice. The power that had been tearing it apart bled away, slipping and braiding into ropes of liquid flame that laughed and streaked towards the planet below.
Yes, that was how the song should go.
And this was how rebirth began...with pain. With power so strong and desperate that it slammed mercilessly through Rachel and into the ground beneath her. The planet screamed and writhed...and for the first time since it's injury, the crust, that hated, dead layer embracing the world, cracked.
Every world was born in fire; a time when earth and stone moved as liquid.
This world burned.
Again.
Only this time, a woman held it tight through it's fear and pain.
This time, a circle of ash, alone untouched, bore witness.
And this time...
...this time the flame was a beginning.