Novus
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Novus closed 10/31/2022, after The Gentle Exodus

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Abel
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#1

A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY




The desert is a little better after dark. 

Gone is the punishing sun, the hard stare that makes sweat bead down his back regardless of the breeze, that makes him wonder if Solis is still there and watching. (Surely not, surely if any of the gods still cast their eye over Novus one of them would have spoken by now, struck them all down). 

In the dark it feels almost as cool as Denocte, though even when he closes his eyes it is nothing like home, not without the scent of salt over everything and the distant sigh of the sea. He misses the alleys he’d known, the cast of each shadow memorized, the torchlight and the bonfire-smoke. At least in the darkness he can forget his name. 

For tonight he is only an enforcer, only one more of Raum’s followers. He stalks the windswept streets and most of them are empty. It is hard to argue with a Ghost, he thinks, and harder to argue with a monster - even the thought of the basilisk sends an instinctual shiver wending up his dark spine. 

He finds as he walks that he is learning each corner, each intersecting street. He finds as he walks that he doesn’t mind the silence, even with the way the wind moans as it follows him, the way it tugs his hair like a mother might. 

Abel rounds a corner and there she is: tall and slender with a face pale as a moon. He can tell from here how young she is (never mind that he is only a boy, too - he has not felt like a boy since he was weaned). The bay lowers his head with a soft huff of breath, stirring the sand beneath his feet, silver as powdered glass in the starlight. And then he makes a beeline for her, his silver eyes empty empty empty, and stops just short of her shoulder.  

“It’s after curfew. You shouldn’t be out.” Even Abel is not sure if it is rebuke or warning. 



@Evangelina


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Evangelina
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#2



she is alone in this cruel, cruel world. there is nothing here for her, except miles upon miles of sand, and the sweet-rotting stench of death; that clings to her delicately-toned frame, like the lips of a possessive lover. she is persephone lost within an underworld of darkness; and behind her slender body, brews the autumnal storm, as dark and as black as hades.  she feels like a lamb in a world of wolves, with her innocence upon their slaughter mouths; stained red, by her blood.  o it hurts to be a victim. it hurts to be yet a child, lost, alone and constantly afraid.

yet her heart is a storm where warsongs rage on, and she, it's only survivor.  her heart has always been a storm for the violence that rings like wicked melodies in its visceral depths.  can you feel the cry of her loneliness?  can you see the crystal sheen of her dried tears?  it's the howl of a wolf that makes her body cry out like beautiful poison in the night. she is a child of the moon and her body sings like a gothic melody in this shadowed trance.  o but when she breathes, how it hurts to breathe.  she feels the ice in her bones, cleaving her heart into a thousand, million pieces. it hurts.

each shard feels like hot glass piercing her organs, as it drips like holy poison in her veins. she feels the dried tears upon her cheekbones, welling as a river before it dries as sticky blood upon her beautiful, porcelain flesh.  her sadness drips with all the doctrinal hunger of an angel, cooing from the edge of heaven, lost without a halo. her sadness is a song for the way its lonely hunger sings like a wild predator across the harsh depths of her winter gaze.  she is desperate for the touch of moonlight across her flesh; for the taste of a warm breeze to coo upon her skin; for the warmth of another's breath, fluttering hot and gentle,  upon her cheek. anything for comfort and softness, to soothe the torn worlds of her broken heart.

he appears to her like a shadow then. a reprieve to her despair.  a prayer.  a promise.  a dream. her broken heart mends and perks up just a little when she sees him, him, him.  her heart opens up like a flower too blinded by the moon's rays.  thirsty for its carnal abundance. she feels her heart pulling together like ice-flows, caught on the pacific current; the cold water, churning in her viens, as her ice, pulsates with the arctic sharpness of her magic.   there is a hunger in her gaze that drips of honey and shadows and sweet innocence. he appears through the sultry moonlight, a shadowed trace of a ghost. the lithe contours of his body, illuminated by the rimy caress of pale moonlight.  he is a young boy about her age, yet all the whispers filled between them, howls with a universe of knowledge and awe.  he speaks with a soft pressing purpose, yet she can taste the accusation in his tone.  she can see the chilling emptiness, of his gaze; far away and as distant as the moon's ethereal company.  was he even here? would this spell break with a kiss?

o he looks wise for such a young boy.  she wonders if this was just one of his lives, and if he'd lived many lives over and over and over; if only he knew more than her.  she wonders of what monsters creep out at night.  she wonders because she is still a child that looks at the world with hungry, curious eyes.  naive. trusting. innocently open.  "But I'm just dreaming," her voice floats towards him, an ethereal whisper of ache, of longing, of infinite tenderness.  there is an angelic coo in the way her syllables drift and sing.  her voice is traced with eleven beauty for the ephemeral way they caress her smooth, ebony lips. obsidian lashes, fluttering thick upon her pale cheek, blink away tearless melodies.  

"there's no harm in dreaming." her whisper trails over his flesh as she gives him a tender ghost-touch, with her lips near his brow like an unspoken plea. a soft whisper, from one girl to one boy. she wonders then if he'd like to live with her in a kingdom of dreams.  a kingdom where no curfew should exist. with nothing but the stars and the sigh of an aching silver moon, riding softly upon their backs.  "the stars are so lovely tonight.  can't we stay out for just a moment longer?"



@Abel









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Abel
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#3

A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY




Abel could tell her how not to be afraid. He would say: expect the worst. He would say: give up, go along, bend your head like a reed in a storm and the storm will pass in time. But he would know at the same time that it might not help, in the end; hadn’t the last storms flattened everything, hadn’t they ripped the roots from the soil and baptized them in saltwater?

He can see the dried tear-tracks that gleam on her cheeks; he remembers their trails from his own. The little paths they carved, the taste of salt at the corner of your mouth, so that when you licked your lips later you had a memory of weeping.

Now his eyes are dry as sand. Now his mouth is a canyon carved in rock.

There is something strange about her. He has learned the desert night is cool, here on the cusp of autumn, but when he comes near to her the temperature dips, a kiss of winter. Yet Abel does not shiver, only blinks, slow, and pictures himself home, a trembling dawn, the first frost of winter on the grass. His body leans toward her, unbidden; stiff-legged he steps away.

Dreaming, she says, and he wants to ask Why? Of what?

Instead he bends his head away from the cool breath of her whisper, which makes him think too much of Denocte. They are alone on the streets; moonlight cools the cobblestones, makes the stark walls of the city softer. Lamplight trembles, caught in glass. Abel knows there is harm in dreaming.

“It is not dreams that walk the desert tonight,” he answers at last, and his voice is tight and grim, and that is how he knows he feels sorry for her. The boy shakes his head without looking up at the stars, constellations telling stories of dead heroes and dead monsters. “Yes. For as long as it takes me to escort you home.”

Escort. Like they might be courting, just a boy and a girl walking together beneath the starlight on a desert night. Just dreaming.

Here is where he should show his teeth, or press the hard ridge of his nose to her shoulder and push. But Abel does not touch her; he still hovers just out of reach, eyes pale and pitted as the moon. Shadow and light and dead barren ground. “Let’s go.”



@Evangelina


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Evangelina
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#4



her heart aches like violence beneath her skin.  her heart aches like a wolf that pines for the soft embrace of a full moon.  she wants to feel the moonlight across her flesh.  she wants to drown in that silver embrace, full of awe and horror and sweet, sweet wonder.  she wants to run away from them all. run far, far away until there is nothing left but the heavy sigh of stars upon her lips and their infinite galaxies, descending her curves as the estranged darkness might.  there is a bruise in her heart, that swells like the rotten sugar of spoiled pomegranate seeds.  she has tasted these pomegranate seeds.  she has tasted cruelty, despair and loneliness; and the cruelty of this world, has made her anxious, bittersweet and so very, very hungry.   she is the sweetness of roses, turned silky black by a lack of motherly tenderness.  o, but could she be death, too?  could she make others suffer, just as she had suffered?  would it feel good?

it's the darkness that embraces her now.  the darkness whispers into her ear.  the darkness bleeds around her like the arms of a doting mother.  the darkness cradles her soul and holds her.  she is Persephone and these walls were her hell.  she is a child that is meant for happiness and springtime, and yet all she has ever done was taste the coagulating embrace of shadows. they took my life.  they imprisoned my heart.  they killed my soul. she inwardly cries out, yet her lips cannot form the painful words.  she wants to weep upon his shoulder and yield beneath the chill of his unfathomably, cold eyes.  she wants to grab his wrist and drag him into the darkest corners of the underworld, where she may whisper of her heartache and share with him her fears.  she wants to tell him of the unrelenting loneliness that devours her from within.  would he follow her into that black abyss of grief? would he yield to her girlish whim?  would he cry for the murder of her innocence? would he open as a rose might open, surrendering to the first stirrings of dawn across her flesh - or would his breath, his touch, his arms, his embrace; would they all feel as empty as the caress of his dead, dead eyes? she wants to bathe in the stars of their surrender.  she wants to breathe into that temple of need.  she wants to fill his bones with blackness and ice.  

o how she wants to wrap herself against his arms, press her lips to his cheek and whisper into his ear, that she is made for darkness, too.

she hides her pain behind walls of childish indifference.  she hides her fear behind barriers of stoicism and icy despair.  she hides the ache that burns in her chest, hoping her wounds would go away by mere breath alone.  she hides that urge to collapse into his arms. to tangle her fingers into his boyish hair and hold him close as a mother might.  fore deep down, she is wounded and lost and so very afraid, too.  she is hungry, and for all her broken innocence, she feels as though she is trapped, suspended in time; forever churning in the storm, that was her malevolent little heart.  her innocence is dark and tainted in the blackness of death.  even her lips, for all their child-like tenderness and beauty, is smudged in the grey shadows of hunger and despair.  did he find her beautiful like the moon? did he find her soft and miserable?  did he want to save her?  even now she aches the way a child aches for an embrace.  yet her heart is too frozen to reach out and call for help.  her soul, as cold as the ice that burns in her veins.  we could be free.  her heart whispers out to him.  we could be free if only you'd let me in.  her lips want to say.

in that moment between the silence and the tenderness, a tenderness that folds around them like the wings of an angel, she desperately searches his eyes.  she wonders what it's like to see through those cold, silver eyes made of death.  her lips tremble to form words, but none shall fall from her lips.  her lips curls upward into a delicate sneer that is half-miserable and half-childlike and yet so full of beauty and wonder. her gaze cries out to him like the silent screams of a butterfly.  her eyes were too-piercing; an ice-hot shade of the most violent, most pale and perfect blue.  her eyes seems to tear at his flesh for the piercing way she looks at him.  but it's his voice that cuts into her skin like a blade.  it's the sharpness of his tone that wraps for heart like the violent thorns of a rose.  was he here to control her?  was he here to save her?  did he truly not understand how important it was for her to dream?  in her dead reality, dreaming was all she had.  she did not want this.  no, no, no.

"I've seen nightmares, too."  she breathes the painful confession upon his skin.  her gaze drops to the apple-red bruises that ravages her delicate body.  even the closeness of him, makes her ice pulsate, violently.  her whispers were soft, laced in elven tenderness; yet there burned a hunger in her ethereal gaze - malicious, stormy, like the ice that crawls hot and frigid through her bones.  she whispers into the darkness seething between them, and some part of her heart dies with him, too.  it's the pain of an animal that grips her chest and tears, clawing with raw nails into her soul.  she wants nothing more than to stay out here among the shadows, with nothing but the silk moon and the stars and the galaxies draped across her curves.   in the night, it's all the silent things and obscure animals that pine for her.  in the night she is alive and free and whole.  she is a child of the moon, and he cannot take her away from its darkness.  he cannot take her away from her dreams.  her underworld.

"I have no home to go to," another whisper breathes past her lips.  she presses against him then, a push of defiance, of threat, of dare. "you can't make me."  her kiss of ice swathes like unholy prayers along his skin.  her kiss of ice wants to consume.  even her eyes seem to want to eat through his skull for the hot, burning look she gives.  there is a subtle violence to her tender touch, as if she is made of more than just girlish bones and a delicate, frail skeleton.  she wants to be more than just a broken doll that others pity and sigh and weep for.  she does not smile for him once. she only stares, allowing the ice beneath her skin to pulse and smoulder like sinister butterflies.  the ice throbs with wicked hunger, churning both promise and threat.   her black curls tangles violently along her nape, swirling with the soft, icy malice of December's kiss.  her gaze was a barren wilderness.  her gaze was a eulogy for all the violence and sadness and grief that sang within its frigid-blue.  how dare he.  "i refuse."  how dare you.



@Abel









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Abel
Guest
#5

A b e l
I WILL OFFER UP A BRICK
TO THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, BOY



If she is a torrent of feeling, an ocean of grief and of loneliness and of want, then Abel is a dead temple in the desert. Cool floors scoured smooth by sand, cool shadows waiting below a staring moon, only dust and bones and insects within.

Once, oh once, he had thought his feelings might swallow him whole - the sorrow and the rage and more than anything the way he didn’t understand. Why him, why his people, didn’t Caligo love them? Didn’t she watch them, didn’t they praise her, shouldn’t she keep them safe?

Was that not the whole reason for a god?

Now he knows there is no reason. Now he understands there is only knitting the darkness and chaos into a pattern you can use, one that keeps you fed and whole, and maybe that is why he follows Raum like a good dog.

While she hides he waits. Abel leans a little away, wary of the way cold seeps from her as from the last melting snowbank of spring, wanting that coolness and denying himself. Her eyes are luminous on him, her pale face stark against the shadows of the night. He, on the other hand, is nearly one with the shadows, save for the banding of his back and his legs like stripes of moonlight through iron bars.

He is glad to find the streets still quiet. Most listened to Raum, or maybe it was the monster at his back they obeyed; either way he is grateful they are alone. It makes it easier to meet her fever-bright eyes, easier to lean in to catch her whisper, frail and cold as a lace of frost that dissolves on his skin. We all have, he does not say. You will see more, he does not caution.

But when she pushes against him his dark lips curl back from his bright teeth. Abel does not care to be touched (Abel longs to be touched; he tries to forget the way his mother would rest her chin on his withers, would fold him into her embrace and how it would feel like a summer morning). Suddenly she is not a scared girl, not a fellow-orphan that might have been another hungry shadow running beside him in Denocte.

“Then I will take you somewhere else,” he says flatly, and all the ice in her gaze does nothing but make him cooler and more distant. She is taller than him but he doesn’t seem to care with the way he leans back against her, shoulder to ribs, and skates his teeth along her back. Abel stops thinking of anything but the road he must take to the prison, which has become a detention center, which keeps the unruly Solterrans from scheming rebellion in the dark. His gaze takes the eulogy of hers and swallows it up. Abel is always hungry, always lean.

”I can make you,” he says, but for the moment it takes the moon to pass beneath a field of cirrus clouds his gaze says don’t make me make you. Because of course it wouldn’t be Abel at all, it would be Raum, and the Ghost cared nothing for how a girl looked alone beneath the starlight, or how she felt like a breath of winter in the yawning expanse of the desert.

With a snap of his tail he presses against her, trying to push her, to turn her toward the heart of the city where a prison was also a shelter. At the same time (still with his feelings tucked away, like seeds beneath the frozen ground that would die if they were not hidden) he reaches for her ear, to take between his teeth, to remind her I can, I can, I can.

“Please don’t refuse,” he says, not quite whisper and not quite growl, but something low and soft with gravel in it.

He does not think about how he has no magic, how he is not tall or fearsome, how he has no horn or weapon with which to threaten. He has intent, and he has learned that sometimes that can be enough —

and if it isn’t there may be punishment waiting for them both.



@Evangelina


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