is this a natural feeling or is it just me bleeding?
He wasn't sure what pulled him towards the common plains, but Lasairian suspected there wasn't much of a difference as to where he stood or traveled while the air was cold and the ground layered with snow. There would be harsher winds here, in such an open setting, but Lasairian wasn't concerned enough about the chilled wind. The meadows weren't all that much different in that respect, though it was the area he had come to know a little better, think of as more secure. But Lasairian was more interested in the sight of it all here; the ways it almost felt like standing on the highland plains again, though even those days had been rare before all of this.
Lasairian hadn't often slipped away from the Bheo even that far in his youth, though he had done it here and there just to see the world beyond it. It truly had felt like an entirely new world to explore, but it had also seemed lacking in so many of the qualities he had sought out while he was young. It still probably was, but Lasairian had chosen to leave his home, telling himself it was for his own good, that his well-being relied upon going. He still believed it, even now when he was further from all of that, from where he had thought he was willing to go. This was further yet, an entirely different direction to step into.
Yet that was what made it so safe from his own concerns of giving into temptations he shouldn't. This was better, because he doubted he would be found here, because who would look in this direction of all places? Of all instances? No, Lasairian doubted that anyone would look here for him. It wasn't the type of place anyone would suspect he would be. Which was why it was such a good cover, why he wasn't fighting against it. Just trying to sort out how this could ever be any kind of home to him. He did not feel it, yet, but he supposed it would take time. Adjustments had to be made, and he was doing his best to make them.
Getting homesick, though, was still a burden to deal with, but he was. Slowly and in small ways, and perhaps in small doses of facing it like this. Looking at the plains and remembering how close to home it was, just that hop and a skip away back then. Lasairian had never been one to show any signs of wanting to leave home -- that had always been Seoras, his older brother -- but in that came more of a shock to the community, that he would leave as well. Of this he was sure. He had been fairly content there, but there was always a breaking point, and that had come to him sooner than he had thought it would. One little mistake made, and he felt the need to leave.
So he had, and all of that had led to this. Standing here, feeling the chill through his fur, still sharp against his skin. Feeling the absence of the magic he had once known, and needing to know how to reclaim some of that. He was reaching for it, urged to keep going, keep learning. He wasn't going to give it up. He couldn't go there, could not fathom such a thing. But today was for memory, for trying to heal his emotional aches, the gaps left within himself from leaving, from ending up in a place like this that he had never dreamed he would fall into. Here he was anyway, and coping with that was not the most easy pill to swallow.
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is this a natural feeling or is it just me bleeding?
He was soaked to the fetlocks and chilled by the melted snow that had been around his hooves, unsettled by the current quiet that surrounded him. Lasairian was quite honestly unsettled by a lot of things going on of late, but only because settling into all this was less easy than he had imagined it might be. He knew that this was as obscure as anything else he could have stumbled into, a good distance from the Bheo and all the things he had grown up around. Yet it also held something familiar to it in a way. Something that caught his attention enough that he did not want to continue on from here just yet.
If there was something to learn here, more offered than what he had known before, then Lasairian wanted to pursue that. He wanted to soak up what information all those library books held, anything that had anything to do with his keen interest in magic. Someday he would hold it again, because the absence of it was like a missing limb, a missing half of his heart. Which was unfortunately cut into so few pieces -- figuratively -- that there was most certainly nothing left to it here and now. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing; maybe this was what he needed. He was oddly okay with it, at least.
His goals were simple enough; carve out a place for himself here and learn. Soak up the knowledge that he could get his hooves on, find a way to gain magic again, work on his healing skills, and otherwise just try to live. Lasairian would always want to push himself forward in these things, undaunted by the setbacks and strangeness of what was shoved in front of him. If he could get through the years of yearning back at court with no relief in sight, then he felt he could get through anything else that life decided to throw at him. A new place and the many losses? Lasairian was still standing.
It might be a chilly place to be standing at the given moment, but he had made it this far, took away his own temptations, and look at everything with a different mindset. First, he needed a spot to call his own, a place in which to store gathered herbs and cultivate plants. If he could manage that much like this. He was still sorting the mechanics of how to be this thing, what changed and did not. It gave him insight and appreciation for what he no longer had, and what little he could still grasp of what he had once been. He was determined to make the most of this.
At the moment, Lasairian was inspecting the meadow, mapping within his mind where he suspected certain flowers and herbs might grow once the snow all melted away. He wasn't really sure on any of it, just guesses thrown out there, wondering if he might be right when all was said and done. Time would tell, but he could not be sure how long the winter season would continue on for. Not without asking or looking for documents that might state how weather worked in this place. More to learn, and Lasairian was all for that. After some meadow mapping, of course.
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Cold wind tangles in Septimus’s mane as he walks the streets of the Night Market. It’s early morning; dawn has just swept over the horizon, painting it in pale pinks and dusty oranges. It looks entirely different in the Markets during the day. When darkness falls, they feel magical, like something that exists outside of the horrible, mundane reality of mortal existence. Without the stars and the dark, however, it becomes blaringly obvious that the streets are just streets, the minstrels just minstrels, the market stalls just market stalls, and the lanterns just lanterns. He finds them impossibly dull, and he wishes that he could leave – but it’s snowed since he arrived, and he’s more than willing to lean on the hospitality of his hosts until the weather is a bit more amiable to travelling long-distance.
One of the tiny dragons that inhabit the markets flies out from an alley, gleaming like a sunset-colored jewel in the newborn light; it lands on a barrel and begins to nibble at what looks like some strange piece of red, lumpy fruit, little tail twitching back and forth eagerly as it grasps the fruit in its front paws. Septimus opens his satchel, thanking his lucky stars that this land didn’t deprive him of his telekinesis, and pulls out his notebook, a jar of ink, and a quill. He dips the tip of the quill into the jar, and, with a flourish, writes “Pygmy Dragon – Novus, Denocte” on the top of the page.
His quill dances the page as the shape of the dragon begins to take form. The little creature seems to notice that he is watching it, and it preens, insect-like wings outstretching to catch and glimmer in the early-morning light. He sketches their leaflike veins, tries to shade the wing to capture the translucency, the way that the light gleams little stars into the thin chitin. He outlines each scale, each spine – and, in the absence of color, scribbles a short paragraph of description in the far corner. Satisfied, he holds the book open as he walks, murmuring his soft thanks to the little dragon as he passes.
It flaps its wings, purrs like a kitten, and presses its nose up against his before it disappears down an alleyway. He watches it go, letting a soft laugh escape his lips.
In the absence of his magic, he has to let the ink dry on its own, so he holds the pages steady and up to the sun as he moves down the streets. They aren’t very crowded yet; he wonders if the Denoctians wore themselves out with all the drinking and revelry that seemed to have occurred the night before. (They seem like a happy people, these Night denizens.) He basks in the morning light, and the relative illusion of space, although his legs are freezing from the thick layer of snow that he’s trudging his way through; if he could fly, this wouldn’t be an issue, but the buildings are too close together to take off.
He exhales a long breath of white and leans back against one of the walls, pulling his notebook down to eye level; a few little streams of ink have smudged, but, otherwise, the drawing seems to be dry.
Septimus feels ill-contained in this space, with its narrow, serpentine streets and artificial gleam. There are beautiful trinkets that line each and every passing stall, and they catch his eye as he walks, his wings jerked in at his sides and his steps hounded by the sort of tension that overtakes a wild animal in a cage; no amount of resplendent beauty can distract him from the way that the walls are too tight, the way that the roads guide his movements, that, even if he wanted to, he does not have enough space to fly in these back alleys. But they are beautiful, lined with moonstones that gleam like silver chips of fire in the light of cast-iron lanterns that cast the shape of strange, fantastical beings (dragons and trolls and phoenixes and chimeras and wisps) on the dark pathways. The bob in the winter wind, stirred by the chill. (Before he stepped into the city, when he could still see the sky, he saw distant tendrils of clouds on the horizon, a mar in an otherwise pristine sky; the court is not covered in snow tonight, but he suspects that it will be in the morning, so he might be forced to remain longer than he intended.)
The air is so thick with incense and woodsmoke that it makes his head spin, as though he is dizzy with a kind of intoxication – and the sound! All around, singers and minstrels make their way along the streets, and dancers twirl, so quick and dark in the dull light that they might as well be streams of silver and gold, characterized only by the precious gems and metals that so often adorn their graceful forms. He wonders if the markets are always like this, so bright and so much. He is allured by it. He is repulsed by it. His heart threatens to pound through his chest, sped by the noise and the cold and the overwhelming movement, wherever he looks.
(He thinks that this is another symptom of his newfound mortality. He is being so easily charmed and strung along, buffeted by his mortal blood; if he still had every piece of his soul, he would not have lingered nearly so long on this place, which is not altogether different than dazzling marketplaces he has visited before. But there is a gaping hole where his wildling blood used to run hot and brilliant red, and he is scrambling to fill it up with something, and his mortal half, like most mortal things, is grasping for heat and light, for a flickering beauty – anything to stave off that absence.)
His antlered head feels too heavy. He dips into a darker alleyway, breathing in the cold, and tries to clear his head. The light cast from the lanterns pulls at his legs like chains, but he stands stock-still in the shade as the first flakes of snow begin to fall, so fragile and small that you’d be forgiven for missing them entirely.
(He must ask himself what he regrets: his lost magic, and his lost fae-blood with it, or his stubborn pride that will not allow him to embrace the half of himself that is becoming his whole.)
@Nestle || your choice <3 || gregory orr, "his dream: the black tree/thirst" "Speech!"
As he does not have much of an option in the matter, Septimus has made it his goal to endeavor to enjoy the experience of being in Novus.
It is an entirely foreign continent to him; before falling into Denocte, which he’d been informed was a kingdom dedicated to some goddess of the night, he’d never heard of it before, or seen the name in any of the (many) books he’d read. He hasn’t decided yet if that is good or bad. He’s unprepared, and he’s sure that the realm will be full of surprises, but it does appeal to his sense of adventure to explore a place that he knows nothing about. He is a relatively cheerful creature by nature, however, and prone to looking on the bright side.
(And, if he allows his positivity to slip by so much a fraction, he is sure that the weight of his newfound mortality and the void where his magic used to be will come crushing down on his shoulders.)
He’s heard of a library in some place called Delumine, and it is his current quarry. (He isn’t so sure that he hasn’t gotten lost along the way; he was given directions by someone, before he left Denocte, but he doesn’t have a map on him.) Apparently, this library (and he has been told that it is a very unusual library, at that) has the largest collection of knowledge in Novus, and apparently this Delumine, which is dedicated to some god of the dawn, has an exceptionally large population of scholars. If any of the nations in Novus could help him regain his magic, he suspects that it would be that one. He’s heard a bit of the other two – Terrastella, known for its mystics and medics and a group of warrior-pegasi, was dedicated to the goddess of the dusk and stood directly to the west of Denocte. Solterra, a nation of warriors, and the court of the god of the sun was apparently to the north, but he was advised against visiting, because the land was supposedly in political turmoil. The rumors he’d heard had been enough to turn his stomach. Delumine was to the northwest. He’d made his way out of the mountains that shielded Denocte and made his way parallel to the desert. Supposedly, the entrance to Delumine was a great forest, and he thought that he’d seen trees in the distance, but he’d traveled enough for one day, so he’d have to save that theory for the morning.
His wings sweep out to catch the air, steadying him into a comfortable landing as he drops down into a frostbitten plain of brown, wilted grass. It would be his luck to stumble into this realm in the middle of winter, wouldn’t it? He thinks he’d like the spring much better; the cold bites into his coat, especially at night (and it is night), and most of the foliage is all but dead, while many of the animals have either migrated or hunkered down for a long winter’s hibernation.
His hooves touch down on the hard, ice-packed ground with a soft thud. He shakes out his mane, plastered to the dark curve of his neck with cold sweat, and glances around. During other parts of the year, he suspects that the grass is quite tall, but, for now, the landscape seems barren, populated only by a few barren, spindly trees, sticking up here and there. There are some dips and valleys, but they are not especially pronounced, and the largely-flat ground leaves a stunning view of the night sky; he is a bit uncomfortable at the prospect of resting out in the open, so far from any noticeable civilization, but the view of the night is almost enough to make up for it. The moon is huge and exponentially brighter than it seemed while he was in the crowded capitol of Denocte, and the stars stretch out from horizon to horizon, innumerable and brilliant. It is probably bright enough to sketch, and the prospect tempts him. (His notebook and quill practically burn a hole in his bag at the notion; he could make a lovely star-map, with this sight.)
However, Septimus knows himself well enough to know that if he begins to draw, he won’t be able to stop or move on until he’s finished, so he contents himself with the assurance that he can return later, once he’s found his way to Delumine and found a map.
He can still enjoy the sight. Septimus pulls off his glasses and places them in his bag then settles, wings closing in at his sides, and breathes out a cloud of white, his stare upturned towards the stars.
Isra and the winter tale “It was magical, this snow globe world.”
T
he snow is falling like pale stars around them and Isra is wishing on every single one. She's wishing for the spring, for trees to bloom heavy with fruit and the meadows thick with wheat. When the storm gets thicker and the wind howls Isra is still there wishing on flakes of snow that are as varied as all the citizens of Denocote.
She turns to look at Illu and thinks that she could drown herself in wishes for every soul in her care. In her bones her heart trembles each time she remembers soot and fire. It cracks each time she thinks of how the girl looked upon the shore once. Isra's still trying to force all the tattered shreds of herself into some pattern that still feels like it belongs in the skin of a unicorn.
But when she looks at the shadow of Fable's wing draped over their heads like a shield from the snow, and the way Illu's eyes reflect a near by bonfire, something aligns. It feels a little easier to feel like Isra the queen, instead of Isra the weapon or Isra the missing. And it's easier than that to feel like Isra the mother.
The winter feels sweet on her tongue when she smiles. “Do you know why it snows?” Her eyes dance like the sea in the summer. The question in her voice is a promise of the thing that has aligned inside her. When she looks out from the canopy of Fable's wind she can seen things dancing in the snow. Small dragons are singing old songs in the flurries. Smoke is twining between all of it like a flock of snow-snakes guarding all the secrets of the flames and the snowflakes.
There is a story on her lips and this time, there is no sadness if the world to leech it out from like drops of unwilling blood. It's humming at the back of her teeth like the winter wind humming through their manes and tails. The story wants life and Isra wants to give in to every demand.
Fable drops his head down to his child and his unicorn, because like all dragons he is always longing for another legend to make him feel a little less like the only one left.
Smoke still lingers in the city. Despite the fires having been put out hours before, the smoke is thick and settles between the buildings. It burns her lungs. She is covered in ash and soot, a testament to her attempt at trying to save what she could from the burning food stores. Finnick lays exhausted on her back, his wings clinging to her charred fur. She can hear the wheeze in his voice and she knows that it will take healing to get his lungs ready for flight again. She hates that she has put Finnick in danger, but deep down, she knows the eagle would not have done anything differently. He was just as much of a fighter as she was. He knew his place and he knew that Denocte needed him. He was a hero in her eyes.
The exhausted pair meander through the city, their pace slow and without any sort of direction. Her body was screaming for her to return to the little home she shared with Metaphor, to take comfort in his company. And yet, her heart could not bear to take her away from the citizens which she was growing to love with all her being. She could not leave her fellow Night Court citizens in their time of need. How could she cuddle with her lover when others had lost so much? It didn’t seem right.
Snow was still falling and her eyes looked up at it fell. For a moment, she couldn’t figure out if it was snow that was falling, or ash. It was probably a mixture of both. The ash collected on her back, the snow melted away without thought. Her heart ached for Denocte. The food that was supposed to last them through the winter was mostly destroyed. Some of it was saved, but it would not be enough to feed them. Denocte would be at a disadvantage. Whoever was behind this attack knew that would be the case. The warrior in her told her that this was only the beginning, that a secondary attack might happen now that they were tired and weak.
Up ahead, she sees Isra surveying the damage as she had done. Despite the disaster, she could not help but smile. Her queen was home. She steps forward, careful not to jostle the weakened eagle who lay lifeless on her back. “Welcome home, Isra…” Her voice was soft in volume, but rough in tone. The effects of the smoke were ever present. “…it is a shame you had to come home to this.” Her voice is solemn. She hates knowing that her queen returned amongst devastation. Only home a very short time and now had to be ready for what would happen next - organizing the clean up and preparing for a secondary attack. That was not the sort of welcoming party one wanted.
As he arrives at the walls of the Day Court, a sigh lifts from him like smoke. It is arid relief, something warm that mingles in the hot air and begs for shade. The sun is high now, high over him and the walls, the palace in the distance whose spire glimmers as it peeks from over the ridge. Sweat beads on his back, hangs like dew drops from the golden twine that sags over his mane in drooping rich cobwebs. As he raises his head the corvus skull chatters against his neck, rattling against the badger jaw and bird bones, all tousled in a breeze that is far too brief. He was born to the dry air – gasping and wheezing and begging for a soft breath in the brushland dust – but this was different. This was cloying, near suffocating. The desert sand sprayed with each gust and caught on his tongue until it was rasp and spittle, more gristle than muscle. Even in the winter Solterra offered no mercy. And yet, it was a spectacle. His eyes roved the stone walls turned gold with a touch of the sun, crept along the crags and fine lines that could hardly fit a hair between the bricks.
Here, the shadows shrunk beneath him. They gathered in a small, rounded silhouette that hunched back from the sight of the sun, writhing and hissing in a pool of greyed sand that slithered about his hooves. The daylight bore upon him like a vengeful god, and he could not but help to loathe the place entirely on this initiation. He felt as though even the night here was unwelcome, and it could not have served him any better to return then.
No, this was now.
Here in the merciless hot pit of monsters and death and otherwise unwarranted peril – his path was here, it was stead, it rolled out before him like a carpet unraveling at the fringes. The sun ticked over him like a damocles curse, and it grinned for his scorn. And in its challenge, he found promise. He strove again, wandering along the curves of the mammothian wall, uncertain of where their gates lied and who stood at them waiting for him with polished spears. This would not be simple. Though he doubted he smelled anymore of the incensed markets of Denocte or the heavy cologne that lingered in the Scarab, he couldn't guarantee that it was any less obvious where he had spent a year. These days lost in Solterra were just that – days, and while he smelled of the red canyon rock and antelope furs and teryr blood, devils knew one another outside of hell, and Raum was no exception. So was his pursuit straight for the throat, as always. With teeth and irons and bruises and knives – knives – what good was a warrior with no weapon? Useless here except for cunning and courage, which at times he wondered if they were just masks for foolishness.
Each footprint stirred sand from its resting place, sifted through each labored step as the grains burned along the scrapes on his legs. The walls seemed to stretch on endlessly, and to which corner he could not devise worth wandering, every glimpse of the future was wavering in the rippling likeness of empty miles. All gold, all dancing on the horizon with the pretense of eternity (like taunting daylight tip-toeing the edge of wealth, a chance of glory on the sharp of a blade). He considered stopping a time or two, turning back and heading home with empty hands – how often did he do this? He could not remember when it was last – but the whispers that told him to do so were too willful, too arrogant not to disobey.
And then he saw it – silhouettes that broke the dancing, uncertain line between sky and sand. They fell out of the wall like crumbling bricks, hesitant and animate as they turned back to the sunlit city then scurried south. Riches, rags. They ran as if they had stolen the eye from a king. Erasmus narrowed his eyes to watch them pass over the sand, not even stopping as they spared a second to observe his shadow in the golden hot terrace. He strained to see their faces. To see if it was fear, depravity, and wondered if they even existed at all.
They dropped something as they ran and he picked his pace from a fast walk to a trot that lumbered over the soft, heaving sands. As they disappeared into the southern gold that descended into distant red, his trot moved to a canter. Perhaps he had lost his mind. Dehydrated and overheated, running was the last thing his instincts would beg of him – and they now screamed out to him like a chiding parent. His blood boiled, raking his veins with razor teeth. How dare you. But he was gone to the wares of a sensible man – he was a boy, curious and flighted to the conception of mortal blood from the golden stone. How could it? How could stone birth flesh? Was his mother right? Was he a stone that fell from a god's eye and grew like roots in the belly of a hungry serpent?
Even curiouser, the sand glimmered with a pearlescent sheen that scowled at him from a distance now.
It broke the monotony of gold and tan and heavy hot sunlight.
It was diamonds. Hundreds. Thousands.
They did not pour from the wall but pooled as if they were a stream, a river of diamonds that fell from the wall like the bricks had been encumbered with such pressure that they split into a thousand little jewels. They spread like veins through the sand, he could see them from afar – they resembled a tributary of glistening silvery waters spilled from the sun. They did not break through the wall no, they were the wall, and now they weren't – Isra.
As he came upon them now he slowed and ran his eyes over the wealth. He remembered the way she shifted the ground beneath her. Pearls. Gold. Cinder. The way she dripped rubies and silk from a door made of mausoleum stone, an effortless press of magic that spun riches from the air. He remembered now. His eyes rose to the sky and searched out seaweed scales, serpentine shadows. There was nothing. How long was this here? How long had it been since Isra had wove her magic into the stone, and ripped from it the most precious thing it could be? Who had seen?
He crept forward, his shadow lunging from beneath him to pry at the diamonds and their glistening grins, with a grin of its own. It rustled within him, hearty and pleased. But his eyes were trained on the crater that was made, a crater that still dripped here and there with gemstones that seemed conceived right from the mortar. It resembled a geode, and he admired it as he took careful steps to its maw.
One.
Two. The breeze stirred, a couple more plopchinkchink from the diamond-studded wall.
Three.
Four.
Five. He misstepped, a diamond slid from under his hoof and he caught himself quick, pausing. Listen.
. . . Nothing. Five more steps.
Six.
Seven.
Eig-
A muzzle popped through the geode crater, and Erasmus froze in his steps. First a nose, then slid out a forehead, wide eyes beneath a bushy forelock whose gaze crept in awe over the tumbled riches. That was, until it fell upon the looming silhouette that was Erasmus. He was midstep, neck arched and shoulders low like a prowling wolf. And as their eyes met, one met like a hawk and the other like a timid mouse. Before a word could leap from his mouth, the stranger was gone. He closed the distance quickly now, no use for stealth when the thing would surely alarm the first soul it found to the wall that crumbled to diamonds and the dark man who stood at its border. He broke through it and took an immediate right, stole away into a path that promised the least resistance. There, somewhere in the distance there that he closed swift as flight, he found an alleyway that threw a shadow over him. The first trace of mercy that bid him any welcome. His bones eased, his blood ceased its boiling raze and lounged comfortably, soaking deeply the dark that tread over his spine like a cool bath.
He waited until he heard nothing, and then he moved on. There, the man possessed of gold veined granite slid from the alleyway and into the quiet of a village tensed with something he could not quite understand. But he sought it anyways, his ears upright and forward, open to every whisper and baited breath that tailed the breeze. Anything of quicksilver and blue, anything of Raum, anything that dared breathe of the villain king of Solterra.
Seraphina watches dawn rise over the Elatus with red-rimmed, shadowed eyes. Her hair has fallen from its braids, or she didn’t put it up yesterday; she doesn’t remember. Her scarf whips around her, buffeted by the winter wind, – which holds just the barest hint of a chill – and she doesn’t feel it. It is a red dawn, a sailor’s warning. She wonders what that means for a desert creature. (She can barely call herself a girl, anymore.) Above her, Ereshkigal flies in slow spirals, a speck of darkness against the otherwise bloody sunrise. (Bloody, bloody, bloody, why can’t she think of any other descriptor for red?) She used to see hope in the sunrise. She used to see god in the sunrise, making his slow arc across the sky. And where was her god now?
She’d been abandoned again – by everything. By everyone. It was the loneliness that was the worst of it, punctuated by the sporadic appearances of her agents. But friends were gone. People were gone. What she thought she’d built – that was all gone. There is no one who remains, not for long, and, the moment that they leave, she cannot be sure that they will return, for one reason or another. (No one is trustworthy. No one is immortal.) There is only Seraphina and the dark, drifting, inevitable figure of Ereshkigal, watching the dawn.
Where is Solis now? She doesn’t know. Off, out there, doing something more important while his people suffer all over again, just as he had when Zolin ruled; swanning about on high. She can’t believe she forgave him. She can’t believe she trusted him. (He’s hardly the only person she can say that about – which only leaves Seraphina to ask herself when will she learn her lesson? She’s been taken for a fool again. And again. And again.)
She wonders if any of this is worth it – the nightmares, the blood, the hurt. She wishes that she could stop. “You could stop, little girly-girly-girl,” Ereshkigal whispers, the lilt of her voice bordering on a hum. “I can take your soul, you just have to let me pull it out…It won’t even hurtmuch, I promise.”
She does not respond.
The vulture swoops down, her movements unnaturally swift, and lands on her back; she is grateful for her armor, though she can still feel her curling talons through the thick leather. Her great wings remain outstretched and then, abruptly, tuck in at her sides with a sharp, sharp snap. She laughs, harsh and raucous, and it is not in Seraphina’s head this time. The sound echoes through the canyon, distorting in waves until it barely sounds like a laugh at all – rather, it resembles the brittle swish of wind through the sands, like a swarm of locusts or a serpent’s hiss. “She says that she wants it over,” the vulture observes, her voice fluttering as though she is struggling to hold in another laugh, “but the little girly-girly-girl won’t let it end, will she? Willshe? No, no, no - the little girly-girly-whirly-girly likes to hurt.” “I don’t like it,” Seraphina says, finally, baited into speech, “and you don’t want to leave this realm yet, anyways.” Ereshkigal moves forward, her talons catching in Seraphina’s scarf, and moves to bend, peering down into Seraphina’s eyes. The bird tilts her head at an odd angle. Seraphina frowns. “Strangeling little mortals,” she agrees, finally. “They writhe. Littlewormthings. I like to watch them.” Seraphina narrows her eyes at the vulture, who stares at her innocently. “I see deadlings, onlydeadlings. Nothing can be done with them, so they aren’t fun.” She smiles, then, her beak pulling open to reveal rows of sharp, sharklike teeth. “But the little girly-curly-whirly-girly-girl is wrong. Doesn’t she ask herself what she will do if she doesn’t hurt? She knows, little-girly, that she will not be anything without her hurt to drag around-“ “I have a name. You could use it.” Seraphina interjects blandly. “Mortal,” Ereshkigal snipes back.
Seraphina sighs, and, with the vulture still perched between her shoulders, steps back into the cave. “I have a job for you,” she says, although she regrets that she has to send her. Ereshkigal giggles. “Stop laughing. I want you to go to Delumine and deliver this letter to Somnus, the king – and, if possible, do it politely, then bring back his reply.” She pulls the letter out from the mess of tattered blankets that she has made her bedplace; she does not sleep much lately anyways. Ereshkigal swoops off her back and onto the ground, her talons leaving long scratches in the sandstone.
Ereshkigal examines it, tilting her head this way and that. “I will take the letter to the kingy-wingy,” she decides, smiling again. “I have seen many kingy-singy-wingys. I have not seen this one. But they did. They thought of the kingy-singy-wingy-dingy before they went red. The kingy-singy-wingy-dingy-ringy and other faces, other names. A sister. A child. A mother.” She tilts her head again. “I did not condemn them, but they were not happy. I don’t understand it.” “They didn’t want to die,” Seraphina says. Ereshkigal turns to stare at her, bloodred eyes dull and thoughtless. “Pointless,”, she says, with a chatter of her teeth.
Seraphina is quiet, for a moment. “Would you condemn me, Ereshkigal?”
Ereshkigal considers her, bouncing from one talon to another. Her head bobs, and her eyes dart. She snickers, then laughs, uproariously. It soon descends into a raucous howling, and it takes her a long moment to regain control of herself, before she looks at the silver woman, completely serious. “No,” she decides, with a wicked smile curving the very edges of her beak, “not yet. But maybe, maybe…”
She snatches the letter and then, abruptly, sweeps out of the room.
Seraphina watches her go, and perhaps she sighs.
Ereshkigal likes this place in winter. It reminds her of the realms of the dead – the meadows are withered and covered in frost. She does not think that she would like it in spring. It would be too green, and she does not like the green. Better the gold of desert sands or the white of winter, but never the green.
(Some realms are, of course, green, because the mortals like it so, but she is not from those realms. She is from chalk-white and ink-black, a realm leeched of all color. There are only two roads out. She thinks that is right.)
She likes the court itself much less. It is stone, which is always preferable to flowers, but it is brighter, especially with the sun setting, and she does not like that. She circles the palace lazily, the letter clutched neatly in her talons. It had not wrinkled much, and she was pleased with herself for it. If it had, the message might have been obscured, and she would not want to have had to make this trip twice.
She circles low, swooping past the windows. Occasionally, she lights on one and peers inside; passerby scatter at the sight of her, and it makes her laugh. This only seems to upset them further, the strange little mortalthings. They weren’t meant for a beast, were they? (But there was one on the doorstep, and one with a crown. It was poetic. The thought made her snicker.)
Night falls before she finds him.
She lands on a window. A golden man is inside, and Ereshkigal decides that he – with his great wings and spiraling horn – looks right. The window is just cracked open, so she shoves it the rest of the way and swoops into the room, wings tucked at odd angles to allow her to fit through the frame. She drops the letter on the ground in front of her, and then she lands with a resounding click, tilting her head at the man. “Are you the kingy-wingy?” she inquires, with a voice that is odd and discordant, as though it creaks, bloodred eyes twitching to stare directly into his; they are pretty jewelgreen, and Ereshkigal decides that she would like to keep him.
Her beak pries open in the faintest, pulling the facsimile of a smile. Below its sharp curves, her teeth are barely visible, like little knife-rows.
@Somnus|| ereshkigal sure is a,,, gem, isn't she | "okay, ophelia," jeannine hall gailey "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
The Illuminated
“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”
She is dancing across the pathway of moonstones, and amethysts, and dragon dust.
Each of her hooves is an instrument of wonder singing in peels of metal and stone. Her body is singing like a blade on a battlefield. All her chains are a harpsichord that sounds like victory against her rib-bones and her hocks. In the song she is alive, a bit of horse, a bit of magic, a bit of wonder encased in something that beats with blood.
There is a story in each tangle of hair curling like a snake across the underside of throat. She looks like a world of magic caged, and beaten, and longing to be free. She looks like light in the darkness, slick with sweat, wild with all the forest and spice caught in her tail.
Al'Zahra looks like a song that the world did not know to sing.
But it knows now in each eye trailing her like fire trails a pillar of smoke. It knows in the way the fires welcome her home like a sister. She inhales the smoke and spice. She exhales beauty, and softness, and a little bit of wickedness. There is a summer-storm on her lips that's salted with electricity and anointed in rain. History lives in the vibration of her lips tilting upwards with a secret only she knows.
She is the oldest thing in the market and yet her skin is tender with youth. Her eyes are heavy with magic and yet her bones are dead with it. There are a hundred tangles of all the things that do not make sense twirling like seeds on the wind between this cage of flesh that traps her now.
Flesh is better than gold. Flesh can dance and gold never dies.
The door appears like magic, as if it has been summoned by wonder of the way each inch of her sings, and sings, and sings. A scarab is crawling across the dead oak like it's feasting on magic instead of death. But of course she knows there is no magic in sin (and no real magic in this mortal wreckage). She opens the door anyway with a tap of card, and there is no magic in the warmth that rises like a cage to meet the winter kissing itself down her spine.
Even inside her steps are a dance across the wood and carpet. Her song is muted now and her chains are heavy without the snow and the wind brushing viciously through them.Al'Zahra lays down on a bed of pillows in a room full of horses that know nothing about magic (real magic) and each gold link of her chains press into her like small, hungry blades.
