IPOMOEA

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t didn’t take long for the ground to resume its shaking, for the world as they knew it to crumble into pieces. Tremors still wracked the ground, as if threatening to split the continent in half at a moment’s notice—but they didn’t. The entrance alone was knocked down, but the clearing was left untouched.

Po could only hope the outside world was also still intact.

As the rock and dust settled, all thoughts of the statue and the arguing left his mind. All he could see were the brilliant blue feathers of his bonded, and the shy smile of the freckled girl whom Po had left him with. 

As much as he would have appreciated Odet’s calm and steady presence right now, the boy was glad his songbird was safe outside of the meeting. He would just have to be strong without him.

“Eye-Po-Meah, will the trees bend for you?” Eik’s words brought him back to the present. His cerise gaze fluttered down to his ankles where the dandelions continued to grow and spread, their petals soft against his skin. A frown tinged at his lips. “I’m not sure…” With a glance at Somnus and at Orion, the flower-crowned Regent made his way slowly to the walls of wood and stone that held them in. He felt so vulnerable, walking alone. “But I can try.”

For a moment, he tilted his head back—and up, up, up, until his neck was craned at an uncomfortable angle so that he might see towards the tops of the trees. It made him feel especially small, looking up at them; he wondered if this was how ants might feel. ’Is this how Tempus wants us to feel?’ He had heard of equines who had tried to make themselves like gods; there were fables of those who were rumored to have achieved it. Certainly Po himself did not feel like a god right now… but he could see how others in this room might, with their easy and unwavering confidence.

The trees whispered to him as he pressed his muzzle against their bark, their energy chaotic as it thrummed through the connection he formed. They felt so solid and stubborn; impenetrable, even. The plants seemed to push back against him, as if already defying his unspoken question. His wings fluttered unsteadily at his feet in a nervous dance.

Summoning his energy—and his courage—he directed a single thought towards the tightly knit grove of redwoods: ”Let us through... please.”

---

@everyone | "speaks" | notes: gosh idk what this reply is, but I love Eik <3

CYRENE

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he earth shook with the anger of a god scorned, hairline cracks spiderwebbing along the ground as rocks tumbled like marbles from above. The shouts of Tempus’ children waned into a slew of broken syllables as the world crumbled around them, and Cyrene wrenched her eyes tightly closed with a grimace.

She coughed as the dust settled, a wing ghosting over her watering eyes as the trembling finally subsided. Amber eyes fluttered open, only to stare, horrified, at the damage strewn like shattered bones in front of them.

The entrance was destroyed.

They were trapped. Sealed away behind stone and bark, cloaked in visceral darkness. Like a tomb — and Cyrene had no intentions of playing a corpse.

“Why intervene now?”

Seraphina’s fury sucked up all the oxygen in the chamber and hurled it back out in a hurricane of chaos and wrath, and Cyrene’s heart clenched as she watched the tears trace silver paths down the Sovereign’s heated cheeks.

Was this the change Tempus promised? A white-hot flame licked its way to the center of Cyrene’s being as the angles of her face tightened in bitter anger. Was this the peace he so desperately wished they find?

Achieving peace by locking them all away like they were children sent whimpering to their rooms. Achieving resolution by forcing them to suffer together like they were soldiers in need of a common flag. She scoffed, her breath hot enough to scald, as she broke away from Dusk’s pillar to chase after the silver and gold of Solterra’s sovereign and second.

The gods had sat atop their celestial thrones for far too long, to commit such comical oversight.

“When we make it out of this mess” — because it wasn’t a question whether they would escape or not, it was only how — "I’m never looking at a goose the same way again.” Her smile was something unearthly as she quirked a brow at Seraphina, as misplaced as a butterfly in a ravaged battlefield.

Her own special form of rebellion.

A crimson wing prodded steadily at the places the queen had missed, testing for places of weakness. It was only then Cyrene noticed that she could see, clearly at that, and her eyes followed the light as an astonished stare came to a rest on the blues of Bexley Briar.

She knew of Bexley, of course she knew of Bexley. Not just from her duties as emissary, but because Solterra’s newest regent had a tongue more wicked than sin and a beauty to bring men to their knees.

“How long can you sustain your magic for, Bexley?” A stone wiggled under her feathers as she asked, and she frowned thoughtfully before pushing it harder. "We should work quickly, while we still have your light.” She nodded towards the others who had gathered, all of them puzzling how to put their own respective magics — or lack thereof — to use.

Guidance from the gods? Too late. Five hundred years too late.

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"speaks" | notes: cy's a fan of solterra's entire regime (also the first time I actively struggled with the word limit rip)

Oh the echoes of arguments ring in her ears like the clamour of clashing cymbals. Her gaze lifts to catch the wrath of the gods, blazing with the bright of a flare star. Their shared anger, however, is but a flash, brilliant and bright. It sears the Dusk queen’s skin and is gone in a second. Its only remnant is the lurid red glow, lingering in her gaze– was that all the wrath of the gods was?
 
Their squabbles are no different to the mortals that Tempus tries to unite. “Would it not be wise to unite your children first? There is no god here worthy enough of our following. If they cannot find agreement themselves – how can they ask it of their followers?” Her chin is lifts in defiance, her gaze as sharp as her dagger that threatens to split the skies and send the gods falling from whatever plane they reside within.
 
How many worlds had she been to? How many gods had she met? The Time-traveller girl is too jaded – she has seen too many gods to ever again see them as divine. She has stood beside too many to ever wish to call one hers and bend her knee. Not even when Vespera’s voice rises above the rest is Florentine stirred. Not even then does her heart warm with love for Terrastella’s goddess.
 
Seraphina is wildfire. Fury falls, bright and devastating, down each silver cheek. Florentine watches Solterra’s grief painted upon its queen’s face. Laughter, as furious as Seraphina’s anger and as ugly as beautiful Cyrene’s smile, gathers in Flora’s throat. She casts a hidden look to her brother for now she understands his tales of too-righteous gods that sought to unite their people in cruel ways. It was in vain then, would it be now too? In silence the Time-traveller girl regards a Time god who cannot even unite his own children.
 
As Tempus’ earthquake groans and rattles the foundations of his mountain, as the gate crumbles in with a roar of shattering stone and a gust of swirling dust, the gilt queen stands like a statue. In the darkness that follows, she catches the flash of Bexley’s shadowed eyes before light pours out from nothingness. Beneath the glow of the girl’s new magic their eyes catch.
 
Bexley’s pain is still a lance in Florentine’s heart. No appropriate words can be spoken here, not now. But in the silent space between the gilded girls, in the blue-purple of their shared gaze, words press in all the same. They are private and warming and so full of love.
 
As one the regimes all test the rubble. Magics meld and drift and flow. They push and pull, the air static with unearthly power. With ears tight upon her poll, with petals falling to adorn the rubble, Florentine moves to stand beside Cyrene and Seraphina. Her brother, stood close by, is a comfort with the warmth of his star-strewn skin. A smile curls her satin lips for Florentine had once before loved a star-born boy, but it had been the wrong love and the wrong boy.
 
Her own telekinesis moves to aid Cyrene as she loosens a stone, her dagger a warm, insistent press upon her chest. “I could open up a window, one so close to the sun it will hopefully melt the stones.” The fae-girl says slowly, wonderingly. Releasing the dagger about her throat, she raises it high above the pile and presses it deep into the air. A cut forms, thin and bright and wicked hot. Florentine does not dwell too long upon it, not when she replaces her dagger and rejoins the effort of pulling stones free.
 
Amethyst eyes roll, gleaming in the dark as the words of the Night Court’s Emissary ring around them. It was a jarring contrast to the fury of the Day Queen and the quiet sincerity of the Dawn Court.  All the same, Florentine’s lips tip into a smirk, devilishly playful and wickedly sharp, “That can most definitely be arranged, boys. I even know who to ask...”  Her eyes tip up, settling upon Bexley. The scar is lit upon her face and for her comment Florentine is full of apology. However, the Dusk girl is not blind. Ahead of the meeting only a few could have missed the way the Solterran girl watched and met with the Crow who wronged her. It seemed attraction was a strange and twisted master.