[P] he borrowed colour from the sky

[August]

A U G U S T August did not often stray from the realm of Terrastella, for his home was one of ravenous beauty and as such he truly had no need. Vespera's celestial majesty had never ceased to steal his breath like a spirited thief in the night so that under a thousand dying days he could wander forever across her creation, never feeling the fingers of boredom or restlessness at his throat. For all her grace, for all her kindness, his goddess had carved splendour into the earth; casting marshland against limitless plains against the splintering splitting sea. But that did not mean he could not appreciate the work of other forces - August was not one to sneer in the face of majesty, even if it was not his own. The world was quiet as he moved through the forests that had sprung up in the empty space between Delumine and Terrastella - they punched like victors toward the blue-glass sky and defied the disunion between its neighbouring courts with their teeming abundance. It felt wild here: untouched and untamed, not inherited by thirsty kings or hungry gods and perhaps that was why he loved it so. Was Vespera watching him now, as he wove through plush shamrock-green thicket that had been kissed by foreign lips? He hoped not. Knowing it was naive to wish her omnipotent gaze ended at the Terrastella border did not stop him from wishing it so regardless. She had seen too much already: too many times he had lurched backward into the seedy abyss of red alcohol that took from him all but his sanity, and yet at least, then, he did not have to feel the plethora of things he had felt before.  But that was then and this was now. He could not flounder like a choking child in the shallows for too long; she was gone, and he was changed and that was the way of the world. Skin the colour of molten mahogany etched into a canvas of dappled light as he brushed beneath the canopy, his hooves thudding against the soft earth like a promise of atonement. The morning chorus filtered down from on high, and as August breached a clearing he had come to know so well, he felt something unfurl in his sternum. Relief? He couldn't say. Deep within it stretched like a cat rising from a long sweet slumber and filled the cold spaces between his bones with a colour he could neither name, nor remember. But he didn't protest, for it was kinder than the clanging bars of his mind's callous attempt to cage him like a broken beast, and he knew, well, that this feeling of newness and absolution would not last long. It never did. Silently he moved toward the creek that bubbled at his feet, knowing that the falls from which it flowed could not be far now, and eased down the bank with bunching muscles that rippled and arched like gleaming waves beneath his skin. Summer was still warm in her coffin and the cool grip of autumn was kept at bay by a sun that had never been easy to spurn; the day was young and mild and that was encouragement enough for the soldier to slip into the running water to baptise himself of all the sins he had born since the last break of day. @isra Bear with me whilst I get used to him <33

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