Yolonda

Yolonda is young and bright, a knife in the water. She hunts through the shallows and the deeps, anchors silver in her feathers to drag her down where monsters dwell. she melts silver, strikes with claws and teeth, hunts darkness.

Her skills sharpen only to a point.

It is not enough for herself or her parents.

(her magic spirals out into the water, filling it, humming with it, and she is at the center of a web of vibrations. everything that moves, everything that holds magic, is known to her. her parents will not see; they are too busy searching for a perfect student, a perfect daughter.

deep under the sea where the light never reaches, and then deeper still, Something takes notice.

or perhaps He has been watching all along.)

(some floods cannot be contained, cannot be stopped)

The first vision takes her.

It sweeps over like a tsunami and she is drowning as she has never drowned, as she will never drown. the taste of loss and iron lingers in her mouth almost as long as the images. She strides among a desert dry as bone, and the sky is white and brown and patchy grey. She hunts death through tombs filled with glittering gems. She is the hidden guide to the ruler of a clan, she is the channel for the powers of a god, she is - she is strong and confident and secure, a swirling storm sheltered by the rock of Dragonhome.

She has been gifted the future.

Yolonda takes her gift and carries it north on wings more suited to pushing the embrace of the tides. She seeks the clan of her visions and makes it her own, carves her place as she channels her sight.

time drips down.

(she knows she can do this because she has seen it done.

yolonda does not stop to think that it becomes true because she makes it so.)

She follows, faithful and loyal to the leaders, drops knowledge like pearls and sees the fates changed (and if she searches for Themis’ approval a little more fiercely, well -

the guardian is brave and strong and beautiful. is it any wonder?)

Yolonda has settled in, shaken the dust off black and white feathers, hollowed her own niche - she feels strong. It is good, this clan is good, and iron begins to creep into her bones, lift her head higher.

Then, then, with all the unexpectedness of a riptide sucking away the shoreline, rusting metal, shredding stone -

She is wrong.

She is wrong and it shakes her to the core, trembles through her being.

She is wrong and her clan pays for it with lives.

Yolonda puts her claws to her soul and digs deeper than she has ever done before, raging through water without care for the ripples. She must know, and she bends all of her power on itself, pulling and diving ever downwards until -

the realization blooms bright, and terrible, and crushing, a waterfall roaring downward over her soul.

there is no fate but that they make. there are only choices, countless, innumerable, raindrops on an ocean filled to the brim and seething with the storm.

she has been so blind.

she is lost.

she despairs.

And as she is stricken by the breaking of her truths, as she is swallowed by the enormity of what she finally comprehends, a great force curls upwards and outwards, presses itself around her and cradles her gently in strength born of currents. Yolonda is awed and terrified and betrayed, but her god is there. Why, she howls, wordless and hurt. Why did you not show me sooner?

if I did not let you make your own destinies, He rumbles, infinitely sad and powerful and proud, they would not mean anything at all.

and truth must be a choice, my own.

He is quiet comfort; she shakes herself to pieces in His claws.

It does not last forever. Slowly He fades like mist in the sun, and when her god is gone Yolonda spreads aching wings.

She has always found the sea when troubled.

this sea does not breathe the peace she seeks. it is poison-tides and a bitter, aching emptiness, an infuriated seething power. something from before the gods. yolonda has never ventured here before; she should not have come.

waves crash salt-heavy on the northern shore, crushing cliffs to sand. Godspawn, they hiss, child of fresh waters, seer, come to us, show us the paths, and we will build you a lordship of ashes, a kingdom of the dead, and you will be queen of an empire with your mouth full of blood.

she turns away.

(this, ultimately, will be the bubbling source of her hatred for Charon. not his magic, which reeks of rot and blood and unmaking, not his repellent magnetism, not his endless frigid hunger. her god has given her true sight, and so she turned away from the voices in the dark and voracious ocean, in the gaps between stars. his god gave him life and he was weak; she will not forgive.)

she has been left no peace by the ocean. Yolonda finds it within herself.

She sleeps, and dreams, and dreams, of claws turned red under the wailing moon, the endless abyss, a hundred thousand choices, scattered grains of sand as stars across the sky-

She will see no one for an empty stretch of time. there is nothing but herself and her choices. She is more somber when she emerges, more careful; her tongue is made lead and weighted. (there is always the taste of metal in her throat)

She has been gifted the future (the truth), and it sits heavy on her wings.