and he keeps waking up
but it's not to the sound of birds
Winter’s bite is all too familiar to Grey. He wears it on his skin and in his blood like a half-dead man, frosted and blue. It brushes its fingers over his curves and nips fiercely at his heels, but it doesn’t bother him. He wanders down the quiet, early morning streets like a spectre. The few equines that pass by are cloaked in heavy fabrics to ward off the chill, but he bares the subtle sparkling crystals on his skin to the sun.
They all look at him like he is crazy.
Perhaps he is. Perhaps, whatever sanity he’d had was left on that mountain in the winter.
His hooves scrape against the stones underfoot like a waning cry, carried away by the wind. His breath does not make clouds in the hair before him, his sides rise and fall slowly. Oh, he might be alive, but some days he does not feel it.
Somewhere, he hears a coughing. Perhaps some child, come down with a cold. Grey begins to think that the only kind he could ever love is a god, because he would probably make anyone else, anyone mortal, sick. This is his curse in life, to have the capacity for love but be unable to give it away. So he shields his heart beneath layers of ice and frozen skin.
To any passerby he might just look like a spectre, but perhaps he truly is one.
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone
Asterion almost does not recognize his sister when the flash of gold catches in the corner of his eye like a tear.
At once he turns, a cry of warning already forming on his tongue, but it never passes beyond his teeth. Something has transformed Florentine; she is not the sad and bruised girl that has walked Novus for months like a flower crushed by summer heat. There is no mistaking her - he has never met a girl so gold, could never miss the shape of her wings or the bright purple thick in her hair - and yet this is a sister the bay king has never met.
Oh, she gleams against the blackening sky, and even without her dagger (without her magic?) she cuts a figure of power and awe. Here is the queen that Dusk had looked up to, here the princess of a world intent on destruction; he had never doubted her stories but he has never so readily believed them as now.
For all the magic that lives in him, it is not a word that has crossed his mind since seeing that billowing cloud of ash and darkness. Destruction, and the gods, and another disaster in a parade of them - all these things he had thought of, but never wonder, never awe. Not until now.
He lets himself remember, as he crosses to her (and the shallow water of the beach parts to let him by) the day that they had met. The storm that had blown in then, proceeded by lightning that splintered the sky and ate up the shadows, by thunder that shook the trees and made their leaves shiver beneath the drenching rain. How alive she had been then, and how remarkable - and how his heart had leapt alongside her own. Asterion lets himself turn his back on the terrible darkness to press his muzzle into the crook of her throat, the curve of her cheek; he presses the star-marked plane of his forehead against the soft gold of her neck and inhales the scent of hyacinths.
When he leans away again there is a new shine to his eyes, like some spark in her blood has caught in his own.
"What comes next?” he asks his sister, and there is no fear in him even as he wonders and how will we survive it?
I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone
Asterion does not notice what’s happening behind him until the dragon rises up out of the sea.
At first he thinks it’s a summoning of his own magic, as the water stirs in a frenzy and foam froths up from some great creature beneath. But as soon as the head and the arc of wings breach the surface his heart holds in his throat in awe (in a little fear) and something in him rises as the dragon does from the sea. Oh, he is glad Fable is not the same dragon as the last that ruled over Denocte. There is something terrible about that beauty, and about the power just as present in each gleaming scale and inch of membrane iridescent with water.
But right now Fable means hope. And when he turns at last from that growing mountain of ash to see the unicorn giving wings to each clam and crab he wants to pledge himself to her, to say I knew you would not be broken. Instead the Dusk King says none of these things; he only greets her smile with a deep nod and a look as black and fierce as her own. There is a rainstorm at her back, now, sweeping in from over both of their courts, but the only moisture in the air is still the mist from the waves as they dash themselves against the beach.
He does not ask her what hells she has traveled through to be here, or how she had escaped from Raum. This beach was no place for his own guilt, or the shame of his inaction; and anyway, perhaps none of the before matters, for here they stand now. Instead he goes to her, as Cirrus’ wingtips flash in the faltering sun and she calls the other birds away. Asterion touches his muzzle to hers with all the care and caution of a wild thing, and is glad her skin does not smell of smoke.
Still the water keeps its distance from them both, still a swell of waves waits to answer his will. His lungs follow the rhythm of the water and his heart drums at the cage of his ribs, the least steady part of him. “I have always felt braver beside a unicorn,” he says at last, and turns his gaze back on the black cloud before them.
Perhaps the wind would shift, and blow all that death out toward the open sea. Perhaps there would be no monster, no ruin at all, and what they face is only chance and weather. Asterion hopes so.
I am the fire, I am burning brighter
Roaring like a storm
And I am the one I've been waiting for
Screaming like a siren
Alive and burning brighter
I am the fire
It was subtle, at first, the changes of her own body. Israfel honestly thought nothing of it at first, but then it happened. One morning she woke up in her chambers and noticed that she was rather round.
Winter was upon them so it was only natural that she put on a little bit of weight, right? Her body was preparing for the long freezing nights and the short days. The length of her coat had grown quite a bit this winter season, managing to hide a bit of the strange, sudden weight, but there was no doubt that the Warden was a little bit rounder than she remembered being even just last season. Denial, of course, was her first reaction, because the other alternative was beyond terrifying.
”... You haven’t been eating that much,” Solaris said, her words both welcome and obnoxious as she glided in lazy wide arcs around the Sun Daughter’s head, ”Not enough to gain that much weight, anyway.”
Israfel’s pink lips twisted up in a snarl and she narrowed her eyes, staring daggers of fierce vermilion up at the Phoenix. “Then what else could it be?” Wisely, Solaris chose not to answer.
In the back of her mind, however, she was somewhat certain that she might know. Judging by Solaris’ own sidelong looks and knowing glances, the Phoenix knew as well. It had been awhile since she and Ulric had shared that passionate, frantic night together at the creek, just the two of them chasing the meaning of ‘hope’ beneath the cover of darkness. It was fleeting, and they hadn’t seen one another since then, but the blue roan was on her mind like the plague.
Leaving her chamber that morning, Israfel moved through the halls of the citadel at her usual confident pace, cloven hooves drawing her along at a cocky sashay. It was a cold morning, the freezing grasp of winter in full swing, but the Sun Daughter wasn’t bothered by the chill that lingered in the hallways. Her body ran unnaturally hot, and as she carried herself down the halls her body seemed to steam beneath the cool air. Stopping a nearby soldier that straightened upon seeing her, Israfel inquired where Asterion was. He thought for a moment before answering.
’I saw the King leave just a bit ago, heading towards the cliffs. Try there?’ It was as good of a place to start as any. Thanking the soldier and leaving him to continue his business, the Warden pressed on, navigating the halls of the Dusk citadel by heart. By now she knew this land like she knew her own body. Although with the most recent developments, perhaps that wasn’t the most appropriate of comparisons to make. Regardless, she soon stepped outside and stretched, allowing her wings to fan out with a few cracks from her shoulders. The chilly air was a nice reprieve and soothed away the sweat coating her brow, but soon enough she pressed on, stepping out into the cold morning and moving casually through the snow. It was only when she was a good distance away from the citadel itself that she took to the skies, kicking up snow during her take off.
Overhead she soared, the cold air making her eyes tear as she searched the white coated land pass by beneath her very hooves. It didn’t take too long to find him, an earthen stain upon the otherwise crisp snow-white of the cliffside. Tucking her wings close, Israfel dove down, down, down, stretching her legs out to brace for landing, her hair windswept and terribly unruly. Landing with surprising grace but kicking up a considerable amount of snow and ice, the Warden jogged to a halt a few paces from the Dusk King and grinned, mist curling from her rose-kissed lips. Beneath the sheer drop of the cliffs, the waves churned and crashed against the stone, creating a pleasant ambient noise to her ear.
“Mornin’.” The greeting was said easily enough, called between the brief distance between them. Gilded wings came to rest upon her round sides and Solaris lowered herself to her bonded’s croup, the massive Phoenix nodding her head towards Asterion in a sign of respect. “Just the man I was looking for.”
Anatoly could not tell you what the stronghold had been like before Raum, before "Madame Fia", before so many others. He could not tell you that once the walls stood unblemished and gleaming, that once the halls were rich with adornments and its denizens dripping in finery. He could not tell you that once it was a place teeming with life, with laughter, with love. He could not tell you much about the Day Court’s heart at all.
Truthfully, the Mors had been his first and only home, and of Solterra he had only had cause to roam the wilds: the desert, the oasis, and on rare occasion the canyon. What use had a simple man such as he for capitols and crowds of stuck up pigeons? Well, times had changed.
Mama had taken him to courts more impressive than this one, taught him the dances, draped him in just enough gold and soft yarn tassels to gentle his edges until he belonged. This one, where the commoners scurry past, head down and cowed, where the soldiers march through, arrogant and smirking, where the King rules the roost and those who do not fear him flock to his calls like so many blood drenched sheep? This one is easy to fit in.
Proud enough to keep the commoners from making eye contact, charming enough that the soldiers take him to be an ally and allow him passage without looking too closely. The balance he must keep isn’t a delicate one at all, and so he weaves through the many halls, memorizing architecture and turnoffs and glancing just long enough at passing rooms through the corner of his eye to ascertain the ones of note. Nothing to see here, he knows where he is going, just stretching his legs after the evening meal.
Maybe, if he’s lucky, he’ll catch sight of the King himself, or else the man’s prized basilisk where it is less likely to consume passersby. It would be good to know the face of the King he has set himself against, the scale of the creature he may one day be unlucky enough to face. Descriptions just aren’t enough for this sort of thing. Imagine the tragedy if he were to accidentally strike down Raum’s double? The King would surely take the death of an otherwise innocent man as one warning too close to home.
No, that simply wouldn’t do. Best to keep these things discrete until the knife digs in.
The woman landed, her limbs weak and her body exhausted. It seemed that she’d been flying for ages and finally, she’d seen something besides darkness. The lights, seemingly endless amounts of them, had drawn her from the clouds and now, finally, her feet touched ground. But, as relieved as she was to be out of the air, she was suddenly overwhelmed and mesmerized by the scene around her. Equines of all colors and sizes rushed past her, children laughed and she even thought she’d caught sight of a .... dragon?
But, even though she’d found civilization her heart pounded within her chest as she eagerly attempted to free herself from the crowd. The anxiety that clawed at her insides caused her breath to quicken and she felt ill. The crowd, she had to get out of the crowd. But then, suddenly, the scent of ash met her and she wrinkled her face at the foul aroma before she found the source of the stench. It had drawn her from her own mind and she welcomed the distraction as Cassilyn’s eyes moved over the ravaged shop and a frown found her lips. Who would have done such a thing? That was someone’s livelihood, someone’s hopes and dreams. How dare they.
The woman caught herself, how had she grown so angry over something she didn’t know or understand. She shook her head for a moment and found herself once again thrown into the fray of the crowd.
The lady in white lifted her aching wings and created a perimeter around herself as she pushed through the crowd. After she’d struggled for what seemed like eons, she’d managed to find a small nook in the market where she could finally breathe for a moment. And in that moment, she was able to appreciate the beauty of her surroundings. Not only were the citizens exotic and extraordinary, but the architecture and even the street baffled Cassilyn. The jewels, they twinkled like stars and the colors were as rich and welcoming as the night sky. “Where am I,” she asked herself as she rested quietly in her dark corner. Never in her life did she want a warm bed, a book and a cup of tea more then right now. A girl could wish for home but that didn’t mean she’d find it here.
The cold breeze hastily caressed her skin with icy fingers and the woman couldn’t help but shiver. Cassilyn eagerly pulled her wings closer, the feathers puffed out and acted as a sort of jacket. It was frigid, the night brought on a truly remarkable frost and the silence that rung so loudly in her ears seemed to stretch on for ages. The only sound present across the prairie was the crunch of snow beneath her hooves. It was quiet here, so quiet and lonely. The solitary organ inside her ribcage ached as her pale verdant eyes moved across the vastness before her.
The fallen queen halted and allowed her eyes to travel upwards to the heavens. The stars twinkled brightly, the crispness of the night elevated their beauty. The woman sighed and her breath appeared as a cloud before her and suddenly, the sky erupted before her. On the horizon, the air danced and swayed, the colors rich and exotic. Blues, greens and purples reflected off the shiny, ivory of her skin. The beauty enraptured the lonely girl who watched in the snow. For a moment, the cold seemed to fall away, a warmth blossomed in her belly and spread throughout her bodice. The bliss that suddenly filled her was so unexpected that a smile spread easily across her velvety lips.
Even though she hadn’t yet made it to the library she’d heard so much about, this seemed worth the many miles of travel and her tired wings. It was almost a dream, it reminded her of tales of heaven and it reminded her of The Brothers. “How lovely,” the woman whispered as she continued to stare up at the lively night sky. The lights moved so freely, the dance effortless and the alabaster woman hoped that one day she’d be able to do the same.
@Ipomoea
OOC: Still a little rusty but it's so nice to be writing her again!
Link to the required Amare Creek "Fade to Black" thread:Here
How many total threads have they interacted in?One, two, three
What is the current IC season? Winter
Are you using any items? If the dice don’t roll in our favor – Ulric has a healthy pregnancy on his account, and there is a choose gender on Charlotte’s account.
If the parents are of separate Courts, what parent will the foal live with? Israfel
If the conception is successful, do you have an RPer for the foal(s)? @Katherine
Is there anything else you'd like us to know? If the dice fail, I will purchase a guaranteed pregnancy item. Thank you!! <3
Brother, my sentinel, the tempest is upon us
We are now each other's responsibility
Ard was no stranger to fear. Most of his life spent prior to the stagnant peace of Novus had been moments of terror followed by hours of many more. Fear and pain were constant, but nothing, no amount of cruelty, torture, or terror could hold a candle to the all encompassing horror that he was experiencing.
Erd had not come home. Erd always came home.
Hidden away in their chamber, Ard had waited all night for his brother to return from his errands. He hadn’t slept, waiting desperately for the familiar ’click’ of their chamber door opening and seeing his brother step inside, that goofy, dumb grin on his lips. Except… He hadn’t. The door hadn’t clicked open, his brother hadn’t walked through, and Ard hadn’t seen that stupid, dumb grin in almost ten hours.
Panic set in and replaced his blood with ice. The young warlock wasted no time. He had already wasted enough. Frantically he tore from their room and searched the court but found nothing, not a single trace of his missing twin. Heart thumping wildly in his chest, driven by desperation and rage unlike anything he had ever experienced before, Ard stormed the keep. He was an indomitable army, twelve hands of unbridled rage and resentment, of bitterness and spite, and not even Marisol, Theodosia, and Israfel combined could hope to stop him.
Nothing could stop him, not until he found his brother.
“Halcyon!” The demanding scream tore through his unused throat, the bellow grating and cracking as though tumbled through river stone, echoing back at him in the empty air of the frozen winter morning, “Theodosia! Marisol!” Were they even here? Ard felt like he hadn’t seen them in days, weeks, months, maybe. What had happened to the proud and infallible Halcyon Unit of Terrastella? Would anyone hear his cries?
”Halcyon!”
Mouth parted, Ard could taste blood on his tongue as his lungs heaved in gasping breaths. His throat was not used to screaming, not anymore. It was not used to talking. What a sight he truly made, the mute messenger of the Halcyon, storming through the snow and the silent, peaceful morning to rain hell down upon his enemies, wings and feathers fanned and prepared to take flight at any second, turquoise eyes wide and rolling and shining with hysteria. Nothing would stop him from finding Erd.
She almost drowned, once.
It was years ago, now, in a maze conjured by Tempus. She couldn’t swim. (It was starting to feel as though the gods had never been much good to her.) A monster, this…strange, bulbous thing made of oil or ink, she couldn’t tell, or maybe she just couldn’t remember properly anymore - it chased her over the edge of a jagged, sudden cliff, and she went tumbling down, down, down into a black, silty river. For a few minutes, she thought that she would die. The blackness was inescapable and suffocating. She knew they wouldn’t find her body. She knew that they wouldn’t even look.
When she thinks about it, Seraphina knows that she didn’t really start to believe that she was significant until – Maxence. The first time she’d ever - known - that someone would care if she lived or die was when that Teryr threw her across the canyon, and she bled and bled, bent and broken against the rocks. But she survived. And he saw something in her. No one else had, not really – not beyond something that they could use. Maxence was the man who’d made her his Emissary, his judge and his justice – who’d trusted her wisdom and her guidance. He’d wanted her. No one else had ever wanted her for anything.
She had been a girl – young and naïve and foolish.
Maxence was different. And then he was dead. And then Avdotya betrayed her. And then there was just Seraphina. And then there were other people. There was Eik. Bexley. Vadim. Rhoswen. Eden. Leviathan. Renwick. Acton. Teiran. Jaylin. Caine. All of them lost to her, one way or another – dead or gone or turned traitor, lost by geography or motivation or the dark clutch of the abyss. She is weighing the measure of everyone that she has ever cared for, and she is realizing, as she stares out at the dark flush of the waves crashing against the shore, that almost none of them are left.
She had thought that she was changing. She is alone as she has ever been.
The sky is magnificently terrible. Dark clouds eat up every speck of blue from horizon to horizon, coating it in a melancholy painting of greys: some magnificently and terrifyingly dark and others pale as dust. The light is barely visible, behind some of the softer shades, and it sifts through in a malnourished and desaturated white-gold, and it tumbles down – across the tumultuous waves and the low, rocky ridges of dunes – in patches. The water froths. The waves clamber against the shore, biting at the sand as though they want to swallow it whole, to eat up the beach – and the shore, and the desert, and everything that lies beyond it. She isn’t sure that she wouldn’t welcome it. Oblivion would excuse her from her duty. Oblivion is the only thing that would excuse her from her penance. It would not be absolution. It would be an end.
An end is all that she can hope for. The waves creep closer, towards the dark curves of her hooves. When she closes her eyes and listens, she can hear the roaring river, and the sound of the monster closing in behind her, and there is nothing but Seraphina and the Monster, one little leap between being eaten alive and Oblivion-
(Her hope is smothered beneath those dark waves. She can no longer see the surface – and the rush is all around her, pulling her in every direction at once. She can only hope that she will kick her way to shore, and the longer she is in the water, the more that it becomes a part of her. She wonders what will crawl out of that black river, when this is all over. She wonders if it will look like her. She wonders if it will be her, behind those jewel-bright eyes.)
Her eyes snap open. Seagulls cry out in the distance, swooping into the dark water; she sees squirming fish in their beaks, struggling to writhe their way free. The wind throws them back, sends water flying out of the sea. Salt tangles in her coat, and clumps of sand; the air is overwhelmingly thick and humid, and the smell of the ocean hangs heavy with each gust. The wind threatens to pull her mane from its braids, so she unwinds it herself, letting her long, long white hair fall freely about her chest. The wind tugs it. She knows that it will frustrate her to untangle it, harsh as the salt and the wind must be, but the cool air, bolstered by a wintery chill, feels almost soothing as it runs through it.
She lets it run like the furthest edges of a trail of smoke, washed out to sea.
After Seraphina had almost drowned, she’d taught herself to swim in the Terminus. She wouldn’t dare to go swimming today – this is Kelpie weather, and it looks like a storm is brewing (she is not sure if the booming in the distance is the waves against some far outcropping of cliffs or the roll of far-off thunder) besides. She wishes that she were herself back then, years ago; she wishes that her only trouble was a fear of drowning.
But the world is full of bigger, more terrible monsters, with sharper teeth and fiercer claws. She had always thought that you were only supposed to meet one of those kinds of men in your life – men like Raum and Zolin, or like Viceroy. Men that were not men. Men that had something that was-not-man behind their eyes, that crushed and consumed and broke apart. Men that ruined her. Men that ruined her.
What did it mean that she had met three?
She paces forward, towards the shore, and sidesteps beached jellyfish and tangles of driftwood. Fragmented shells crunch beneath her hooves. She walks until her fetlocks are submerged in the surf, and then she stands and stares out to sea. She does not know what she is looking for, if she is looking for anything at all. “There’s work to do.” Ereshkigal’s voice resounds in her mind. She glances up at where the vulture circles above her, like she is some dead thing. Her wings are buffeted by the wind, but she is no normal vulture – her arc is perfectly spherical in spite of the poor weather.
She knows.
@Boudika || woof this post is dark. she'll brighten up a bit when she isn't just...monologuing, I promise. "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
