⚓︎ 𝒔𝒂𝒍𝒕 & 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒅
There was no light where she drifted -- no sea, no sky, no Braeden. Just that laugh. It was low at first like water gurgling through hollowed out bone. It grew louder, piercing through the nothingness like thunder which erupted from the very core of the earth. "Ya got a fire in ya, girlie," the voice crooned. It curled around her like smoke. "Even dead, you burn too loud for da grave to keep ya. Mm-mm, now dat's entertainment." Suddenly, Azanae was aware of something, something she had not been aware of in an unknowable space of time -- her breath. It came sharp. How, she couldn't say. She was acutely aware of the last time she drew breath, but still it coiled up in her like a weapon, preparing to discharge. She was present for but a moment in her body, like a thin remembrance of herself, grasping at anything to tether herself to the moral coil once more. Her ribs were shattered; her mouth was laden with the taste of copper and brine. All of these details, all of these sensations came to her in a sudden orchestra of suffering, pain, rage. All the fight in her that had been extinguished in the moment she'd been stolen from this place was rattling inside of her. In the ritenuto of it all, she could hear the staccato of his laugh. Bwonsamdi. "Tell me, Captain," he drawled, as he began to circle this revanant of her, this form in which her senses came and went. In this memory of what she once had been, while still existing in what she had become. It flickered in and out like a static as he spoke. One moment, sensation was there -- of cold, of salt, of simply existence. The next, it was gone again and she had lost grip on that fine tether, drifting in everything and nothing. "You wanna live again? Drag yourself up from the rot and make dem bastards pay?" She said nothing. She didn't need to. Her rage spoke for her; loud, old, righteous. His grin grew wide, teeming with shadow. "Thought so." But then his smile shifted. Became something serious. "We got rules down 'ere. Ya don't get nothin' for free. Not from me." His fingers snapped, and suddenly she felt the weight of his terms press in on her, surround her like snarling wolves before they would each lunge to take their pound of flesh. "You get life. But you work for it. You'll be mine, little storm. My hand. My shadow. My reaper." The word echoed. Something inside of Azanae's being railed violently against it. Against being owned. Leashed. "See, some o' dem souls I bargain wit? Dey get clever. Dey think Bwonsamdi ain't watchin'. Dey break deals. We can't be havin' dat now can we?" He leaned in now, close. His voice was a rumble behind her ribs. It could have come from anywhere, the way the sound pressed violently into her. She was acutely aware of the movement of his mouth, but the thunderous words that came next pulsated from everywhere all at once. "You find dem. You remind dem why no one cheats Bwonsamdi." He hesitated a moment, his voice lowering. "And in return?" He clacked his jaw shut with the finality of a coffin's lid. "You get to keep dat pretty face o' yours. Even keep yer rage, if it pleases me." Azanae still remained silent. She just looked at him with all the fury that death had failed to strip from her, all the vengeance that even her departure from this world could not steal -- and nodded. And oh, how he laughed. As the sound rippled outward, her eye -- the one still open in her lifeless body far above, flared. Not green. Not anymore. It was a cold, unnatural blue. It burned into the dark, soft as latern light and cruel as unforgiving winter. It was the color of promises broken and graves disturbed. The sea would never reflect it. The man she had loved would not recognize it. Still, it burned. She woke with dirt in her mouth, and cold in her bones. The blood on her skin was hers. The breath in her lungs was simply on loan. And that laugh? His gods-damned laugh? Still echoed somewhere behind her eye. He hadn't left. He never would.
