so i am relieved that the turbulence wasn't forecasted,

part one of one

Oh Gods, how was she going to tell Diana?

How was she going to tell Diana?

How exactly could a person tell their best friend that her husband was dead through her own discretion?

Emrys' hands were quaking at the thought, bile burning the back of her throat with a ferocity that cannot compare to the burning through her heart, like hot coals scorching through her chest.

This pain was an unfortunately familiar companion, having been burdened with grief for eons with not an ounce of recognition for the figure for whom she is mourning. Emrys had only ever seen a fleeting glimpse of her in her dreams; hair like the blanket of the night sky and eyes that touched the deepest part of her soul.

Each sickening crunch of snow was a reminder of the fact that the gods had never been in her favour. Emrys was finding herself closer and closer to the border of the arctic wasteland that she had called her home.

Each sickening crunch takes her closer to what she would consider the closest thing to death that she could achieve.

And so she marched her way to execution.

Hours had passed, and the blood that had run down Emrys' face had dried uncomfortably. Her wounds ached, screaming for attention, but her physical wounds could not distract her from the gaping hole in her chest.

How would Diana react? she would wonder. Each path her thoughts dragged her down more morbid than the last. Would she cry? Would she scream? Would her anguish match up to that of her own or far beyond?

Through the fog, she could barely make out a figure in the distance. Diaphanous in nature, skin tainted with dark blood. The smell of it hangs in the air like an aide-memoire.

Emrys knew who it was. How could she not? Their voice had echoed in her head with every traipsing step. A smile wry and vacant, it cut through Emrys like a dull blade.

And so she walked on.

How ironic, that a human touched by the hands of War and blessed with the undying, would tremble in the face of confession?

Emrys' hands quivered just shy of the door handle, ice creeping through her blood seizing her arms in a fit of rigor mortis. Arms of stone, that refused to look in the face the mistake that she had made.

She made the attempt to steady her hands, and erase the horror in her eyes, but the ice remained.

With a heart burning with grief, she entered the place she considered home: knowing she would have to tear out the heart of her closest companion.

When she had entered, Diana had been seated at the hearth, unaffected by the growing blizzard outside, and blissfully unaware of the later torment she would have to endure.

"Emrys, I have hope that it all went well."
Diana's smile was warm, a long awaited summer breeze, one that rustles through carnations or the pale strands of a long awaiting lover.

Her eyes drifted over many curious volumes of forgotten lore, a sudden chill sinking to her bones and running its course through her veins. Where could her husband be? He had not come through the door with his smile so full of impish glee. They did not stand beyond the threshold either.

"Emrys, darling, do you know when dear Atlas is to return?" she questioned, grin now trembling with a sudden grim prospect.
He will not come home at all. The thought had occurred and it had shattered her.
"He's not coming back." her eyes were burning, grief devouring her whole.

And at this moment, Emrys briefly considered a different time. One where she had never decided herself good enough for comfort. One where she had resigned herself to an eternity of violence and gore and blood. Maybe then, spitefully she wonders, it would be better to have never loved and lost them, as to only avoid this immeasurable grief (though deep down she knows that she would have grown to love them whatever the time, and that the Gods had fated them to meet). A grief too great to measure— one that scorched her to her core and rotted her bones.