It is just before dawn. The woods are as black as the pocket of a dead star, smothered by the canopy. The only light for miles is his, each tooth of lightning biting at the barks of old trees, veins of blue light so loud it hurts to hear.
Andras is hungry for some black and nameless thing, an ache that defies his language but grows from the cauldron of his rage and breaks across his skin at a rising volume; at first it is just a hum below the screech of coyotes and the persistent song of birds that sing through the night, but as he walks it swells into something louder, the mechanical hum of a sub-station, a crackling rumble that turns the whole of Viride to silence.
The time has come and gone for patience, and diligence, and poise. It sits behind him, in an empty city with long tables and white, clean stone. He has no more patience for bookstores and carefully cultivated gardens. It is a time for teeth and bone, blood and bruise, for savage things to beat their feet on the deer tracks like thunder.
It is time to become a calamity.
When he sees her the machinery of him locks into place, a loud thunk that rattles through him like stormwind. She is a strange violet in the branches of light arching off his back, his wings, his face. The sharp spear of her horn cuts the black reflected on black of his lenses when he looks at it. He draws a sharp breath, almost a gasp.
Andras swallows the grin that crawls up from his throat. His skin crackles like wildfire, the buzz of his rage growing louder, and louder, and louder. A familiar panic settles deep in his bones. The promise of something bad, bad, bad.
"Ah, here she is." he says. His mouth twitches.
Perfect.
sleep like dead men, wake up like dead men
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
You knew what it was the first time it happened, or you should have.
Maybe you were too caught up in the moment. It was something little, something that began benign and grew the way a fissure will grow, in ice or a continental shelf: nothing, and then the breaking point. You might have been alone, but it is just as likely you were not. You were always volatile, it didn’t matter if the whole world was watching or nobody was. Everything provoked you, even yourself. Maybe especially yourself.
Did you notice the way the hum in your blood didn’t end there, the way it always had before, but spread into your teeth, your bones? Maybe your rage, all scarlet and crimson and black down beneath, blinded you to the thing your body was waking up to. It tried to warn you - the hair standing on end, the crackle back-and-forth between your shoulders, arcing out to those long black wingtips. Were you paying attention yet? Did you guess?
That was the lesson - the realizing. Call it knowledge, call it understanding. If you slowed down enough to know it was happening, you could begin to control it.
But not this first time. When did you realize - was it when the electricity began to trace over you, little arcs of blue light, capillaries to your volatile heart? Maybe not even then. Your anger was the fuel, after all, and it only kept building, until all those little warnings died away, and -
Were you surprised (shocked works too, but is perhaps cruel under the circumstances), when it hurt? Maybe you’d come to expect that from your fury; the pain was never over for you just because someone else was bleeding. But everyone expects magic to be a blessing. At least from this god - so wise, so patient, so gentle. Dull, to some. Maybe he didn’t start out that way. Maybe he had to learn it, too, how to turn all that terrible wrath at the world into something useful, something powerful, something that wounded by intent and not accident. Rage must have purpose or it is only a weakness that will eat you up from the inside.
That is the ongoing lesson of this magic, this gift. That you are not a black hole or a dying star, set to swallow up yourself or everything else and be left wanting and alone. That it is a choice.
It was not a choice, that day. That first arc flash, an explosion of noise and heat, the acrid smell of burning afterward, the world that rang and rang before falling to silence. Were you amazed? Horrified? There was collateral damage. There always is.
Awesome used to mean more than it does now. It was a word for the old gods, the power they held, the wonder and the terror both. It did not mean good. It mean fear and trembling, supplication, worship to appease. It is not a comfortable thing, an easy one.
You have an awesome gift. The trick now, the key, is what it has always been, and what has always frightened you -
Know Thyself.
@Andras should have felt it coming. But did he? Does he know how terrible the things living inside him really are?
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The world is warm and dark. For days now she has sensed it, the subtle shifting of light across the pale walls of her shell. Sometimes, she can feel the vibrations of the Mother or the Father, the jostling as the nest is rearranged just-so. Sometimes, she imagines she can hear the movement of her siblings. There are many of them, but none like her. (Even a snake may know it is meant for more than slithering on its belly along the earth).
Oh! She is tired of waiting, of sleeping, of growing with no room to stretch out and a membrane between herself and the world. Every day she is a little hungrier, a little less patient. Every day she is a little more aware of the fangs in her mouth and more curious of what they might be for.
When the day comes the sun is high and hot. It is warm even in the shade of the nest, carefully hollowed in the leaf-litter. The first of her siblings emerges and she only knows it when she hears its flickering tongue tasting the air for the first time. If it were possible jealousy alone would free her then, a mad drive to be free free free -
And then. And then she hears the slither of the Father as his scales glide over the sand and rocks and leaves, hears the Mother go to meet him, heard them speak in their whispering tongues. From further away (but close, too close) there rises a shivering, yipping, laughing sound, a cry from many throats. She can not guess what they are, the African wild dog pack that comes bounding and sniffing and hunting over the grass, but she knows they are monsters. Enemies (most everything is an enemy to her people; she knows this still a small, curled thing in her shell).
There is nothing she can do. There is nothing she can do, as the Father spits out a warning and rises to spread his hood and the Mother strikes lightning-swift and one of the dogs jump back. Everything is shifting shadows, light growing and receding. Everything is feeling the earth quiver with each rapid movement and listening to the snarling and spitting and knowing they will eat her, they will eat her and her siblings, and yet she still must hatch, she longs to be out, to taste the air -
A new sound rumbles like thunder, new footsteps shake the ground. Bigger, heavier, than the ones that came before. She is heedless of these dangers; she is striking the soft membrane of her shell, the outside light is bleeding through the cracks. She is tasting the world, loamy and hot. Her head is free, the world is too bright, the sunlight glistens off her opalescent skin. She has no siblings left; the other eggs are smashed or empty. There is no sign of the Mother or the Father. There is a shadow looming over her and she tips her chin to see, she spreads her marvelous, beautiful hood, and she rises, defiant, to return the stare of a unicorn.
@Jahin might have been drawn by the sound of the hunting, wild dogs. Or maybe he was only looking for water to wash the desert sand from his skin. But not matter his reasons for coming to the oasis it is not dogs, or water, that he will find.
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In the time before time, in the held-breath silence before anything was made and named, there was only darkness.
And when that darkness at last broke and shattered, scattered to bits by the piercing light, the pieces of it still recognized each other.
So it was when Thana’s shadow fell shivering over the ground that belonged to the beast.
The Nerubyian was curled up like an ouroboros, slumbering as the dawn wind sloughed sand from the tops of the dunes and sang the stars to sleep. The desert was still blue and cold, and beneath his jaw and scaled belly where it lay upon the ground the beast could feel the infinitesimal scrabble of the feet of the beetles that climbed the dunes to drink the morning fog. For them his breathing did not so much as shift. For the sand wyrm that passed far away and far beneath like an orbiting comet his paws flexed and curled in his sleep. For the teyr that blotted out the waning moon in its passing one ear twitched, and still he slept on.
But when the unicorn crossed from her forest and the first palm-width succulent died in her wake his golden eyes blinked slowly open.
When he stood his fur and scales wept grains of sand in whispers. It was the only sound in the dying night except the wind and the footsteps drawing ever nearer over the blue dunes. Like a wolf the Nerubyian dropped his head low and breathed slow and hot as he listened, but his teeth were not a wolf’s teeth and his hunger was not a wolf’s hunger.
And when he slipped into the shadows between hills with all the ease of a shark gliding into a channel to see what made his desert die with thoughts of war and hate there was nothing wolf-like about him. For even the proudest of predators is only an animal - and the Nerbuyian is no animal but a monster.
The day, gray and cold and bitter as old paper, passes first through time, then through memory, as if it had never happened at all. Magic settles to a dull hum in the back of his head where he tastes it between his tongue and his throat but cannot feel it, crackling over his skin like-- well, electricity. From day to day life becomes dull and bland and empty and Andras himself becomes a knot of ugly anger and frustration that sits in the pit of him like a heavy, black rock.
At some point between then and now, the dam breaks. There is no investigation, no murder, no kindom, no king, no catastrophic and tangible fear that screams louder than the hissing of snakes. Andras cannot focus, cannot search, cannot do anything because he is raw and angry and obsessed preoccupied.
So he leaves.
As if he is nothing. As if his country is nothing. As if everything is not chaos and he is not perched in the center of it, buffeted on all sides by the winds of fear and murder and the persistent and ever-louder question of who? A day trip, he tells himself. Just a chance to stretch his wings. He stretches his wings so far that the sea of spring grass gives way to dry, brown blades which in turn give way to the baked sand of the Mors. He eyes it, waves of deep red smeared into the dusty yellow, blue-gray shadows cast on the backside of each dune.
Andras clenches his teeth. Andras tells himself no, no, no until his hooves scuff on the street and it is too solid a feeling close his eyes and wish away-- but still he does. The gate to the city creaks as it opens, a loud, sort of aching noise that echoes the one his heart is making as it claws its way up his throat and into his mouth.
He doesn't realize he's holding his breath.
sleep like dead men, wake up like dead men
let this whole town hear your knuckles crack
girls who run with wolves aren't here for boys to love. the moon sings every night, pulls the ocean's tides to shore; your heart belongs to every star, screams dance upon your lips. a princess should be built of stars and suns and forevers, your mother told you fairytales but she didn't tell you this:
Salt and sand and stone and sea and storm.
The water is black. Reason says no one should be on the cliffside. Reason says the storm is coming. Reason says run girl run as the clouds rush in and the thunder rumbles somewhere on the horizon, as if resonating from the belly of a great and terrible beast. Reason says run girl run there’s still time, there’s still time, there’s still time—
And then there is no more time.
The lightening cracks the sky like a whip. It reflects glass-sharp in the hungering sea and Boudika thinks this is me this me this is me this is me, my soul, crying out, hungering, hungering, hungering—
In all of these days, weeks, months, years the realisation comes to her with that angry sea and brilliant, brazen lightening. She is hungering. The red mare on the cliffside, chest-deep in the grass, separated from the sea only by parapet of rock. Even that she climbs, until there is nothing but air beneath her, a step away. She stands overlooking, a goddess abandoned by the gods, her shape aching to becoming something else.
This is what it is, she knows. This is what it is to want, and want, and want and as she wants the rain unleashes in a torrent, ripping apart the surface of the water below, melding sky and sea. The heavens and the oceans are stitched together in one chaotic thread.
And the things she wants are endless.
Give me a thousand shapes, give me Orestes back, let me taste Torix’s flesh in every way I can, give me the goodbye I deserved with my father, I want to sink my teeth into Tenebrae, I want to sail to a beach where no one knows my name and become something else entirely—
But Boudika stands at the end of her known world. She stands, the rain slicking her copper hair to something dark, something black. Aside from her shining eyes in her bald face, she is all black, all sin. It is only when the storm reaches its pinnacle that she begins to keen to the sea, a soft-sweet sound that rises and rises and rises and begs and begs and begs to be met with something more, with everything, as within the girl the wants of a god tremble on feeble, mortal wings.
I want to jump. But the wants outweigh that desire, and she trembles with all the things that are no longer graspable. She closes her eyes and feels the rage of the spring storm, the rain a cold lash to the face. There is something inconsequential and insurmountable building within her; an anger; a righteousness; a desire; and she never knew the taste of freedom is flesh and blood and rain on slick, sharp teeth.
@anyone || “speech.”
when the sun sets and the wolves run you will find that sometimes the princess and the witch are one and red riding hood will eat the wolf; there is fire in your blood, a forest building in your veins, don't try to lose the moonlight. you were meant for this. between dawn and dusk you were made of miracles and you can run all you want, but in the light of the moon the wolves will always call you back.
In her old testament, murder was not seen as a crime, it was a cleansing. Here, in Novus, under a suffocating stoic title of emissary, Emersyn spends weeks trying to find the eyes that spied her just days ago killing a pair of rare falcon’s for their talons and their wings. Even their eyes had been harvested by the gray who enucleated them in a matter of seconds before dropping all the catchings in a jar of green fluid.
There had been no struggle here, the falcons flew into a sensitive aerial snare and were hung up quickly by the feet for their catcher to check the traps. It all seemed to be a quick smash and grab until a bystander got in the way. It was a unicorn, someone from the court and a real do-gooder at that. It was city-folk like him that drove her to live in the woods, but she would never tell Po that.
The altercation between them was immediate, quick - which then - came to an abrupt end as he turned to leave the forest. He wanted to report her operation to the Warden immediately - but she couldn’t have that - and so went after him, but quietly. His path was easy, and he underestimated the Emissary whose sword had been readied as she crept like a jaguar in the shadows behind him. Poised to hunt, to catch, to kill, and, like a jaguar, utterly dismantle and render him unrecognizable.
And then, Sarkan got in the way.
Emersyn would have lived a life never needing to know who the gray percheron was. But now, her eye witness was bleeding to death because of him. All she could do - for now - was hang back in the shadows and watch .. and wait .. and make sure that the horned crusader never rose from where he fell. The stranger who killed him had already been busy with the same agenda as Emersyn; poaching.
Fuck.
She left quite disappointed, angry, and without the satisfaction of killing the unicorn herself. She did return much later that night to take his eyes after kicking his forehead in out of rage.
It was a late night when Emersyn found herself at her table, incense and herbs burned on a hot stone over the fire where smoke crawled out in curling white tendrils, a quill moved over perfectly straightened parchment. The cursive untangled these words;
I know what you have done.
I have seen it with my own two eyes.
I know you killed the unicorn.
The forest is watching.
And so am I.
Meet me in the woods where it happened.
There was nothing poetic in the six neatly curled scrolls which contained this message exactly. Around each scroll was a dark blue ribbon, and with those ribbons the scrolls were attached to six small black bunnies|rabbits. Even though the poetry was missing, the message was meant to provoke a certain feeling: Of dread, maybe terror, or possibly guilt. Any of these insecurities would do. In the event that Sarkan wanted to show his face in Viride again - Emersyn would meet him there, the message was clear about that.
What the message hid between its letters and all the spaces that went in between, was how Emersyn would meet him if he were to ever have such misfortune. And, of course, nothing in the readings gave any clues away. Sarkan had to be reasonable, if he was still out there, if the rabbits knew how to find him, then clearly his weight was worth something. She had other plans that involved using him to escape a murder she really wanted to commit herself.
@Sarkan I'm so sorry for taking so long. Work is my life.
Posted by: Naida - 02-16-2020, 01:54 AM - Forum: Archives
- No Replies
-- -- --
Despite the miles separating the land mermaid from the ocean blue, Naida found herself exploring the kingdom that she now called her temporary home. As ocean fae, she could still hear the soft lapping of waves as if the sea itself churning through her veins instead of blood; the fathoms singing to her in the sounds of sea gulls and crashing water against stone cliffs and beaches. But instead, she could not answer.. not in the way she needed. For when she returned to the sea, and the sea returned to her.. Naida had no plans to come back to this land. This kingdom, this country, this continent. She would love nothing more than to reclaim the Unknown Sea that surrounded the large island for taking the lives of her crew — her lover, her king, among them — before she could regain even a shred of happiness. For all she knew, their bodies were bone fragments buried on the ocean floor, their souls drowned and lost and unable to cross over to the Heavenly Sea and Sky. Calypso, her patron goddess, now holding their celestial bodies hostage until they could at last rest in peace.
She had never been more angry, more determined. Not even when her Queen Mother had banned her from the ocean itself.
Naida found herself wandering the new lands; educating herself in the unfamiliar stars and world that she had never heard of, let alone traversed. Her ocean-born hooves padded along a beaten path, until the land rolled out in hills and greenery as far as her eyes could see with a lake at the center of it. A sea of grass, still holding on, desperately, to the warmth of spring, as the blades were muted beneath a rising sun. The expanse was wide and beautiful, the sky above her a soft blue; the color of a tropical cove in a far away paradise.
This land was beautiful, she could not deny it. Peaceful, and... not as empty as she had once thought.
A woman with no name slips in the negative space between bodies. There are lights, music, smells and activity; it's as though sound itself has color weaved into it. The market has a buzzing about it, an excitement that could intoxicate any goer. She feels it in her gut, tempting her, pulling pitch black eyes to a colorful object in a stand, or an owner boasting her unique assortments to the public eye. It is an entrancing feeling, she'll give it that.
But the woman with no name continues to walk. Engaging was not quite on her mind, she'd always been more of an observer, a window gazer, a wallflower. She would not know how to start a conversation, anyway, as embarrassing as that thought was. But she felt detached and odd in a sea of so many, even if she'd made her home here not so long ago. It had been difficult and unnatural to plant herself somewhere, but she knows if she is to grow at all it must be somewhere. Somewhere safe, and what better place to be than where the night sky, the moon, and all the stars are most beloved?
The Black Doe continues on, passing by what feels like lengths upon eternal lengths of the smell of food, the glint of silver jewelry, remarkable hues of cloth, the lilting sound of music, the energy of a dancer. She does, finally, stop to cling to a corner of the streets; somewhere that is just beside a brightly colored stand, though cut off by thin linen which covers it all around, save for the entrance. Inside, the owner is speaking to some several customers curious of their wares in one way or another ― she can hear the conversation, but it serves more as an addition to the din of the Night Market than anything of genuine interest.
But something pulls her attention another way, and her abyssal gaze lands upon something, someone, in the crowd. Before her, a good ways away, she cannot help being metaphorically grabbed by something that interests her, though she cannot exactly place what it is. It isn't an unknown feeling, she's used to the perplexity, but it does prompt her curiosity to bubble in her chest. Something tells her staring at them will be enough ― but this could be folly, or simple foolishness as she tries to make up every excuse to not approach the subject of her interest with questionable reasoning in her mind ― and though she stays still and silent as she is, she has a forlorn hope she is noticed.
It had been far too long without genuine conversation or interaction, and even in her lifestyle of solitude, it did get lonesome.
Coy grinned as he traversed the forest, his wings hidden deep within his heart and no feathers on his pelt. The latter had him thankful in a way that he didnt even realize, the former was almost an ache to erupt in his new secondary form and take to the skies. But he was on a mission. A certain doe had been able to escape his company for the last season, and he was determined to fix that. Particularly since he had run into the massive fire-hooved stallion that had informed him of her... practicing...
"Oh Cally... Come out, come out wherever you are!" He called, velvet voice rising to twine through the trees around him. She had apparently shot Sol with a practice arrow before getting into a conversation with the giant stallion. "Preferably without the newest weapon in your arsenal and no arrows ready to fire." The tri-colored stallion laughed softly as he danced through the shadows of the pillars. He loved the forest, the scent of the growing earth. It seemed to bring Cally to his memories and made him long for her companionship all the more.
Finding a small clearing, large enough that he could stand in the middle and not be under a tree but in a lone spot of bright sunshine, Coy slid to a stop and gazed around him. His vivid cyan eyes searched through the shadows, seeking the form of the hybrid mare. "Oh Cally, my favorite earthen goddess... Where for art thou, my glorious druid princess?" He called, mirth twinkling in his eyes.
