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hamelin-born:
angelrider13:
hamelin-born replied to your post “aniseandspearmint replied to your post “aniseandspearmint replied to…”
…and NOW I just have the mental image of Thalassa wrapping seaborne!Ardyn in her coils and murmuring a lullaby as they sink into the deep, lightless abyss for a sweet, dreamless sleep that spans decades.
@hamelin-born
Yeeessssss.
Yes, this. Good.
I love the thought of Thalassa singing Ardyn to sleep. Ardyn wrapped in her coils or laying down with his head in her lap, playing with his hair as he drifts off listening to Thalassa’s voice. Just singing to him in general, really. (Omg, sudden thought of Thalassa serenading Ardyn. Or Regis.)
I think Thalassa singing to him was part of what pulled Ardyn back after Angelgard. She sang to him every day and night, constantly, for days, weeks, however long it took to convince him, to remind him, that he was free, that this was real.
@angelrider13
Yes.
In - a very, very odd way, Leviathan has to teach Ardyn the lessons she herself learned so very long ago. How to live, as an immortal, in a constantly changing world. She had ‘How To Astral’ pretty much automatically installed by the Mothers, but even so - Thalassa wants to weep as she gently teaches her tide-son how to live, how to love - and how to let go.
It is not a thing she would ever have taught him, if it were her choice.
I am reminded of Kipling:
Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.
Thalassa croons to her son as they sink deeper into the slow roil of water that is her realm - that is, to some extent, an extension of herself. I am the sea, and you cannot chain me.
And just. Yes. Thalassa after Angelgard, Thalassa who begged her tide-son’s permission before gently Drowning him (”Yes”, Ardyn had gasped, eyes wide and wild, hands clawing at rock, at stone, at her scales, at his own flesh. “Yes, yes, mother, please mother please make it STOP mother PLEASE - “) Thalassa who held him and loved him and sang him a path back to himself.
@hamelin-born
It is very, very odd. Leviathan has just sort of intrinsically understood what it was to be and Astral. She was made to be an Astral; it’s something she understands. She also remembers what it is to be human. And those two parts of her have always just. Co-existed. They balanced each other out – one side providing insight and understanding where the other side is confused, one side reeling the other in when the other side goes too far, and so on.
But she’s never had to explain that balancing act before. She’s never had to teach someone else how to make and understand that transition. It’s. Not an easy thing. To teach or learn.
Ooooooh, that poem is so good. It’s the perfect lullaby.
The Angelgard scene is. Not a fun scene. (And I’m the kind of person that gets invested in my writing, so literally every time I work on it, I start tearing up.) That moment of Drowning Ardyn, that’s so hard for Thalassa. Because she knows that it would be the best move to protect him, that Ardyn would be safest in her waters, in her domain, where she could guarantee that nothing would harm him. But she also knows that Ardyn isn’t really in the correct mindset to make that kind of choice, not after everything he’s been through. She refuses to make that choice for him though, to take yet another thing from him, so she asks him. She asks for his permission and prays that he doesn’t regret it once he’s in his right mind again. So she asks and Ardyn all but begs for her protection, sick and wounded and broken and dying (over and over and over and over), sobbing in her arms, and Thalassa’s heart b r e a k s.
thalassa is all about consent and choices and everybody’s right to have them but ardyn is very much not okay he’s desperate and hurt and scared and people don’t always make the choices right for them in those moments (it turns out okay tho ardyn is pretty pleased about the seaborne thing once he has a moment to think about it)
@angelrider13
Thalassa tries. She really does. She tries to distill concepts and coping mechanisms she has never conciously verbalized before into concrete concepts she can pass along to Ardyn. Sometimes it’s successful; sometimes it’s not. A great deal of said lessons are - less effective then either party would like; as you’ve said, in a very real way, Leviathan was built for immortality.
But there are enough scraps and fragments that Ardyn can adapt into something worthwhile, something sanity-saving, that they keep at it. They have to. (Years later, Ardyn, mainly on a whim, writes up the various philosophies imparted by his Tidemother in an actual book - it’s. An interesting read.)
Thalassa is gentle, so gentle with her tide-son - her son, her chosen, her child, who screams with a thousand tongues and writhes in her arms, nails clawing frantically at his own flesh. His eyes are wide and wild, darting mindlessly from side to side in sheer terror as he shakes uncontrollably. He begs her to kill him, to Drown him, anything, but take him away from here, please, let it end, let it end - and he’s so, so terrified. Her son is so frightened.
Thalassa lets the water roar into his lungs, watches his struggles intensity breifly before stilling - it is not the first death she has seen him undergo, but it is by far the kindest. She spends a long moment brushing her fingers across his face - and then she leans down, and breathes the sea into him.
Ardyn doesn’t awake with a thrash and a cry, the way so many of his newly-made brothers and sisters have. He curls into her instead, as trusting and vulnerable as she child he was when he first met the sea, as she takes him into her arms and bears him into the heart of the sea.
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