she was powerful not because she wasn't scared,
but because she went on strongly despite her fear.
The merciless sun hammered down, it's one wicked heart unblinking, and the sky only assisted it with not even a tuft of cloud to moderate the rigid rays. Heat thrashed at her sunburnt flesh and coiled around her flank and limbs like a hot-blooded viper. Each step immersed into the searing powder sent a spiral of dust into the stagnant air - the particles taking on the form of glitter as the sun's rays beat down on them too.
Maerys was used to it though. She'd spent years of her adolescence ripening in Ragnarysa, a desert region, and had long ago mastered suggestions and methods that aided in her survival. She knew well which course she had come from, and though she wasn't precisely convinced what desert this was (or rather, who's), she knew how to backtrack to Delumine which was necessary when navigating the endless rolling knolls of red clay sand.
Vradara had drifted away hours ago and Maerys had not stopped her, letting the creature to fly freely wherever she desired. The dragon could effortlessly take care of herself and Maerys fretted little for the beast whose ancestry and sorcery screamed excellence, particularly in the heat of a desert. Though this left Maerys expressly unprotected, she carried her sturdy ax with her and would not be hesitant to guard herself should a predator approach.
Ahead in the distance, Maerys caught sight of another. She didn't promptly identify him from such a far distance but didn't exclude the possibility as she commenced to move nearer.
When she eventually was able to grow close enough to distinguish his features, it was bittersweet. She wasn't sure who she wanted to find, not entirely, but felt excited to meet another soul with a unique story and experience.
"Good day," she announced, a beaming smile boasted on her delicate face. "I am called Maerys."
Emersyn did not know the intricacies of the New World faith. It consisted of four Gods, five? She couldn't remember, the history was so old it was convoluted and difficult to understand. Now, with everything shaking the very foundations of it all -- what was real? Was any of it real? Or was it her, imagining things again? No, no, she made sure to check with others - not directly. No - no one could know Emersyn to be a skeptic, her image had to be propagated just right. And so, paying for few drinks to loosen someone else's lips seemed to be the best way to know for sure without raising alarms.
Emersyn learned then about the Island, the mysterious statue, and the day that stood still for so long that even she saw it herself, many days later after encountering her drunk informant in the bar. It rattled some cages, and although her emotional response was lacking, utterly, it rocked whatever world she once felt so sure in. The grullo was straight faced despite that, blue eyes neither reading nor reciting any changes in the way she was looking at Novus.
So why, then, was she going to Temple in the middle of the day when she could be seeking out Somnus? Her father would be ashamed of her now, if he knew that Emersyn chose to find answers to something he considered fanatical and pointless rather than making use of her time. Nicolai would rather see the girl doing something more useful, finding a position within the military would be his first point in the advice he would give her. Find her place within the ranks, establish firm ties with upper command, then start scaling the ranks until she could do what she did best. He had raised her to be a tactician at best, being a leader would come naturally.
Emersyn could hear him at the back of her mind, the summer heat screaming over the top of it all, his criticisms and displeasures. Knowing he was not a part of her current situation was the only thing that kept the gray's ascension, she was determined to see the Temple for herself. Emersyn wanted to know where the people of Novus went to make peace with their Gods. If magic could suspend a scene of life and turn it into the page of a story book, then certainly Oriens, the patron deity of Delumine existed as well?
What did they look like? What did they sound like? Was her god a feral god? Was he unlike his people entirely? Emersyn occupied herself with several questions, answered herself with many more, all for the sake of drowning out Nico's utter disdain. His disappointment felt very real to her, two years past his death, and she could not shake the realness of his presence in her life. Was Oriens like Nicolas? Was he hard on his people? Was he expectant of each and every one of them to be perfect versions of themselves? Everyone in Delumine that she had observed had a sort of way about their life that she sadly could not answer these questions for herself. So she climbed.
The heat was oppressive and more direct as she gained altitude. Once, when she first arrived in the city that was now her home, she saw (for the first time ever) a horse with wings. How much easier it would be to simply fly to her destination than to climb the wearisome path to the top. It wasn't much further, and she was determined to make her efforts count for something. A rucksack that did not belong to her carried a candle, fresh flowers, and a jar of precious honey that she wished to offer.
Emersyn arrived to the temple at dusk, she had started her journey before dawn (she was a very early riser) and had made it to the peak when the sun was highest in the sky. The young soldier felt a quiet victory for herself for not having turned around and abandoning the journey once met with the blazing heat of the day. She was relieved to see a setting sun, a thin veil of night letting the brightest of stars shine through the last of the day - altogether a breathtaking twilight that she shared with no one but herself.
That alone, was magnificent.
The temple looked as though it had seen better days. It did not look quite the way she imagined it to. A garden of Gods, clearly disturbed by something not of this world. Or if that something had been, it was no more. Emersyn took the details in quietly and maintained modesty as she cooled off in the shadows of the evening. The wind dried the salt in her hair, the peppery waves had gone stiff from all the sweat and hung in flat sheets against her gray skin. It bothered her to be this unclean but she was alone, and would deal with it as any soldier out on his own would do.
Emersyn chose no altar to bare her gifts and instead left what she brought spread out before her on the smooth marble beneath her feet. She arranged it neatly and pushed the candle out at last. There was no fire to light it, but that was beside the point that she even came for. The woman settled in against her carrying bag and rested her tired body. Although Emersyn was both hungry and thirsty, she chose to remain vigilant all night while fasting as her first devotion to a God she was not certain existed. As she rested she realized that she had no questions or requests for Oriens, and therefore, no prayer.
She did pray then, to anybody, that her God was not an angry one, and that her silence would not be seen as derogatory to the whole act of worship. If anything, Veneror peak offered a spectacular night sky, one unlike any other that she had ever seen. Even back in the city.
"Do you know what happens to falling stars? I don't. I do wonder about that from time to time."
Out of that hellish hallowed room where glass sung and memories died, down steps that sniggered and snapped in bald hope that she might fall, and out - out - out into the heat of midday. The city groans under the pressure of the sun, for even in the nook of spring Solterra burns like Chernobyl.
She is stunned by the wall of torridity, brought to a withering sliding halt at the neck of a yawning courtyard, but she does not, cannot, linger long. She won't stay here, in this strange salt-licked graveyard where her father wears the face of Hades and she can practice the numeracy he'd taught her on the bulbous ribs of his people. Her mother's people. A godless people.
Sabine thinks Solis does not love his creation, for if he did, he would not have left it to die.
As she clacks on into the desolate square, her heart thudding like a cricket bat in pinching discomfort at just how loud her hooves sound against Solterra's stifling silence, she is blinded by the vision of him.
She does not see his rage, or his vitriol, or even his blatant wicked bloodlust. As she pushes on into a feverish canter, blue horns refracting the terrible sunlight, Sabine can see only the look on his face when she told him Rhoswen was gone -- the grief of the moon upon the final setting of the sun.
She's flying now, because she does know how to stop her heart from devouring itself or how to bring back her mother so that Raum might love again. Past spilled decaying fruit from markets abandoned, past sunken eyes that gawk in shadows and past the guards that had laughed at her lunacy.
The girl makes it all of five stabbing strides out of the gates and into the desert before the very existential force that had driven her out of that throneroom sends her plummeting into the sand.
Her knees sink into the dune, and she does not fight back the tears as she watches her life drift up into the sky; a helium balloon carrying the ashes of time.
There are ten flies on her skull. She counts each of them as their labrums bury like hooks into fat arteries, slurping her blood like a slushie in July and, unfathomably, she does not shake them from their feast. The derivative itch is a terrible thing, and she thinks it might send her mad.
By the grace of all things good, she hopes it might send her mad.
The desert is assaulted by the canyon, with its sudden unreasonable existence that slams so bluntly into the sand. To Sabine, they look like two titans, brothers perhaps, caught in a perpetual quarrel over the kingdom they ruled. She pauses, as if anxious to pick sides in such an ancient feud, but instantly she knows she has made a mistake.
She should never have stopped. In a fraction of a second, the momentum she has been riding on disappears and all the weight of the past few days comes clapping like thunder.
Seventy-six hours, fourty-nine minutes and twelve seconds since she looked at Raum and felt the last shadow of home dribble away for good. Home had been finding dragons in the clouds after her mother had gone to bed. It had been racing up the highest tower until their lungs were fit to burst and their legs felt like tamberines. It had been the sound of knives sharpening and crows chortling and all the colours of the sea.
She does not want to think of everything she has lost, but tell me - what else is there to think of when your universe is made of four walls and a door to the dead?
Madness, then, was what she prayed for. Sweet merciful madness to wash away the love that was laughing at her stupid little heart, laughing because it had her wrapped around its finger, laughing because despite everything -
she still loved Raum.
@Seraphina | "speaks" | notes: this is shitty and i'm sorry it took s0 long
& let the sun shine & let the stars fall & let the world be free
The world tilts on its axis, spinning closer and closer to the sun, then farther and farther away. It rises and falls with the tides that terrify and frighten the winged girl, the green goddess, the pale ghost in the sky who circles and laughs like a crow cackling above. There is a hunt, a great hunt!
And something is happening.
Bodies flock in, they come from near, they come from far. The swamp girl, the priestess child, the eternal daughter of dusk watches them circle and hunt, watches the way they come and go, and all the while she listens to the harkening whisper of the winds that hold her aloft. Goddess-girl, ghostly girl, she at last descends from her cloud perch into the swaying grasses of gold and dreams. Bodies have left under the light of the moon, it lifts the world into silvers and grays, blues and blacks. Heavy shadows toy with her skin, marking it in cloud dapples and throwing dark gray - darker than her wings - where it does not belong.
Juniper almost frowns in distaste, but she wonders how many times she’s been dappled by the canopies at dusk, how many times she’s painted herself black as she flew to not be found during a game in the middle of the night? And like that the displeasure is released from her body, entering the world as it exits her soul, expunged from shivering body. From afar, perhaps she seems cold, but it is excitement that shakes her, the thrill of a hunt, the yearning for more knowledge.
"These are the fields where the dead man rose - they must be,” she whispers with the moon as her witness and the wind as her guide. Bright green eyes, spring green eyes, laughing green eyes rake over the hills and wonder who could be hiding - and where the grave was undug and corpse come back to life. Perhaps she could find it, if she tried.
There is only one other place in Terrastella that Charlie likes to be that is not the docks. And that place is the home of the Halcyon, the barracks, the training grounds. The two places are very different. One meant for sea and one for air. Even so, both places carry the same kind of excitement. Both loud, and bustling, and filled with equines that the filly would like nothing more than to grow up to be.
On the docks, it’s one old grumpy sailor with the worst mouth Charlie thinks she’s ever heard.
In the Halcyon, it’s Commander Marisol.
The barracks is exactly where Charlie had been when the letter had been discovered. Not by one, but by many. Now, Charlie might not have learned to read very well yet (and even if she could, that’s not to say she would understand the short-hand, cryptically written message anyway) but enough of the adults were going on about it with her hanging out just around the side of the building that she thinks she understands enough. What with their own theories and her love of adventure, there was no better combination in the world but for her to go on this daring search.
So that’s what she’s done. Though the day is almost still dark it is too early, the young pegasus follows the coastline away from the court, her vermillion eyes sharp and bright, with Indy nestled between her shoulder blades. They don’t speak while she runs, her too-long legs and bottomless energy making relatively quick work of the fields.
Oh, she has poked around too much for her own good. If any adult had known how much she stuck her nose in places it surely didn’t belong, she would be grounded to the court with a guardian. Good thing she’s too smart for that. (Perhaps more that she would not listen regardless, and would find a way to go out if it killed her).
Soon she is standing before the graves, none of which she really knows who they belong to. Charlie assumes anyone of the court, but perhaps it is only the Halcyon who are buried here. She slows to a near-trot, passing stone after stone, marked, unmarked, old and newer. She can feel Indy stir and raises one wing for the young Osprey to perch upon.
”Do ya see it?”
“Um, no. They said it was near someone called… Lore-can.” She tries to say the name she heard the adults talk about, but she’s sure if anyone was around they would correct her. Instead, she focuses on trying to find any graves with an L on them.
When she finds it, it’s not because she spots a gravestone she’s able to read, but because she almost ends up inside the empty grave. Charlie struggles to keep her footing with only one wing to balance her, and without throwing Indy off the other, but somehow she scrabbles backwards enough that she only teeters for a few moments before finding solid ground again. Her chest heaves and she can feel Indy clinging so tightly to her wing it almost hurts. “Okay, that was close.”
”You can say that again,” the fledgling mutters, abandoning her place on Charlie’s wing for fear of another incident. Indy makes her way to Charlie’s poll instead, settling down among the mess of thick black hair. “Sorry, Indy,” the girl says, taking a few cautious steps back (the only she might ever make in her life).
And she stands there and stares at the empty grave and the stone at the head of it and tries to make out what is written on it. But still, she doesn’t get what’s so special about this place.
Posted by: Sol Bestiam - 08-01-2019, 11:45 AM - Forum: Archives
- No Replies
Sol Bestiam
Sol had woken that morning with an itch to fly. An itch to stretch his wings and explore the realm that he had decided would be his home. At least for now... The ebony, gold, and white stallion had once been told that he would never have a true home, that he would never be welcome. That bit of information was locked in the back of his head and constantly hounding him. Sighing and shaking the thoughts away, Sol flapped his dual sets of wings and set his golden gaze upon a prairie that seemed to be dancing in the early afternoon breezes.
Angling down, he began to back wing in an attempt to not land so hard on the earth. That was probably what he got for being so obscenely large... He tended to land way harder than other pegasi. The 21 hand stallion carefully chose a place that was a bit more sparse in grass... a place where his obnoxious hooves would not be as irritating as they lit tiny flames for short bursts of time. Sure enough, as soon as he landed, the smell of burning grass tickled his nose and caused him to sneeze. The flames were gone before he could even look down, but he could see the ring of singed earth and burned vegetation where his hooves had planted themselves.
Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Sol carefully tucked in each of the 4 wings that made up his crazy flight and gazed around. It was quiet, though there were others that were within sight and enjoying the day.
@Noctiilucent
"Speaking." Notes: As always XD Someday I will get better at starters... maybe XD
Uzuri sighed as she drifted through the afternoon skies. There was so much that she could be doing, but she had found no inspiration for training that morning. All she wanted to do was find a place and enjoy the nice day rather than working herself to a sweat in a field. Tipping her multi-hued wings, she angled down toward the beach, chocolate eyes alert for danger as she descended.
Her peach hooves touched the sand and she let herself fully become a creature of land again. Snapping out her wings to get the last few twinges from the time in the air, she allowed the sun to rest upon them as she closed her eyes and listened to the world around her. The waves were crashing softly against the sand, birds calling to each other from hidden nests. The salty smell of the water made her smile and she found herself gazing out at the surf rather than listening blindly to the world.
Just like the dawn, the sight of the sea was calming and peaceful... But then she had never had reason to fear the water or what could be in it. Shaking her whole frame, she tucked her wings against her side and took a few steps forward. She could feel the cool water lapping at her ankles and stopped there to just enjoy the morning. It was quiet, and she would not mind company if it came.
"Speaking."
@Aeranas Notes: Terrible starter is terrible XD
"Hello, Do you have any idea what is going on here?" Uzuri started and gazed at the other mare for a moment, not quite paying attention to her surroundings as she tried to figure out what in the world was going on. "Oh! Hello. Sorry... This place has me a bit out of sorts. I am Uzuri... Uzi..." The blue roan splash mare fumbled over her words. She had never been as eloquent as her obnoxious big brother and it had never bothered her before. "I honestly have no idea... This island is strange and seems to be some giant mystery that makes absolutely no sense at all " It was at that moment that a brawny stallion of black, white, and acid green plowed right out of the brush and nearly smacked her in the face. Snorting at the beast, she shook her head and clicked her teeth at him. Darn brothers!
"Well then... You should avoid head on collisions, little sister... Dont want to damage that pretty face. Oh! That's right! You dont care about your looks. You would rather beat things up with your brawny muscles." Uzuri groaned as she listened to his teasing tirade. It wasnt the first time she had heard it... nor would it be the last. His softer words were for Uzi alone and she smiled softly at the affection she heard. Yes... He was a pain in the rear, but he was a good soul in general. Nipping his shoulder, she turned back to the mare and shook her head with a smile and roll of her chocolate eyes. "You will have to excuse the lunkhead here... He likes to hear himself speak and doesnt care who is around. This is my brother, Coy. He is arrogant and obnoxious, but he isnt all bad... usually..."
Moving to where she could see both of her companions, she tilted her head at Coy and narrowed her eyes. "Behave... Or I will send you off with my brawny muscles, pest." She chastised him as she ruffled his perfectly arranged mane with one wing and turned to ignore him.
Each day the sun set, it rose again. The sun does not cast her glance back the way he had come from, it knows only to move forward. Aeranas dogs the sun, chases her to each horizon she sinks beneath. Sleep has not come easily in the recent months to the lithe man, not since his grandmother slipped beyond the veil. She had been the sun in his sky for the last three years of his life. His sun will not rise again. Aeranas knows this, and the thoughts gnaw at his well-being. He spent the last few months grieving her death, but now he is close to their last determined destination. His long limbs eat the ground beneath him effortlessly. Aeranas is but a ghost, an unknown soul in a grand new world. A world he is frightened will swallow him before he gets the chance to be come the sun in someone else's sky. Before he gets the chance to finish his life of adventures. Aerie spots something as he moves.
He has seen and crossed the steppe between his previous location, and where he was going. He has pressed himself forward through a creek that carved its way around once proud boulders. Aeranas has come to kiss the sea, and he sees something black slicing its way through her powerful waters. He wonders what has created such a path. One made of obsidian, and upon it is a line of quartz. It is a strange sight, and it sparks something to life in him. Though it also sparks a sadness that has yet to leave him, he is very aware of the empty space on around him. The light is fading, and a warm glow radiates from his scarf. As if it speaks to him to indulge his thirst for adventure, as if his grandmother is urging him to carry on. The warm glow soothes his sadness slightly as he begins to move towards the strange bridge. It smells like the ash that falls from burning torches. He steps onto the bridge, it has a firm texture. But it is rough around the edges, much like he is. Aeranas watches the moon rise in the sky for a few more moments before he races on spindly limbs across the black bridge into the unknown. It is his first adventure, near what he hopes is Novus.
There are no torches to light his way, only the light the moon pours over the world below. He is bathed in the warm glow of his scarf, and races like a ghost across the silent bridge. The sea does not protest his intrusion of her space, but her breeze kisses his skin. She sends he love to him from a distance, much like he believes his grandmother does. Each time he faces a fear, he can almost feel her beside him again. For a short time, Aeranas imagines that she is still with him. Laughing as they race into the great unknown that has no horizon. He only stops to catch his breath when his daggers sink into the sand of the beach on the island. The world around him is very still, as if someone has taken a snapshot in time. Aerie pauses his journey to catch his breath, and to study the surroundings he now finds himself in. The sea remains still, she dares not sing her song this night. Something seems wrong, though he cannot place his hoof on it. Aeranas smiles to himself, he is happy to be a ghost in a strange land. It is a comforting feeling, for his bones know no home. Aerie nestles into the scarf upon his neck that emits a gentle glow as he peers at the sea beside him. He is not ready to continue his adventure just yet. He has time.
"Speech"Thoughts
@Septimus @Sirius Open | First Aeranas post! I tagged you both in case we wanted an adventure group! | 642 Words
