[P] light a match, watch it burn

[Targwyn]

She hadn’t realized just what sort of uproar she was walking into, but the moment she arrived in Day Court, she could sense that something was brewing on the horizon. Something here was unsettling those that lived here. There were whispers in the street of someone who had killed the Day Court’s queen. Whispers that the stallion who had done so was mostly unwanted and unwelcome in this court. So naturally, the mare was interested. If the people didn’t want him here, then she would fight to keep him here. After all, this was just the sort of chaos she wanted to encourage.

She walked along the streets, eying those that called this place home. She could tell the ones that were fearful of what was to come, those that were angry about the turn of events, those that were ready to rebel, and the few that were uncertain. Their whispers and body language told the story their words did not.

It wasn’t long before her wandering lead her directly in the path of the would-be dictator. She had seen this sort of take over before and dictatorship and fear was all that would keep this place in line. He seemed like just the wort to get the job done.

She comes up alongside him, falling into step with him. She does not draw attention to her position. The only thing that gives her away is the flick of her ear towards him and the words that leave her lips, destined for him. “You’ve caused quite the uproar it seems.” Slowly she turns her head to look him fully in the eye. “I’m rather fond of uproar.” She says nothing more, allowing him to take what he wanted from her words. She wasn’t necessarily on anyone’s side, but she would always favor those that were looking to disrupt the natural order of things. He had potential. She would give him that much.

@Raum

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 


She emerges from the crowd in white and red and verdant green. All is still before her, all echoes with her steps. Raum watches her come through he steel blue eyes. He sees the darkness of her, the glare of something bright and hot and dangerous in the flare of the blue eyes.
 
Raum is walking, slipping through the crowds like quicksilver. They part for him like the red sea and flee before him like rats. Some spit at his feet and he pays them no mind, some try to ingratiate themselves with the new king and yet others try to fall away into nothingness, to hide from the Regime’s eye.
 
Then the girl, the one with crimson lips like blood and a face white as bone, draws up beside him. Beneath the wash of her ebony hair she looks upon him and from her lips pour words like mischief and ruin.
 
You’ve caused quite the uproar it seems. I’m rather fond of uproar.
 
Then does Raum look at her, and his gaze is enough to harness the power of his monster. It is enough to turn all to stone. Time drips away like water from the chink in a dam. Ah, how long, how long until that dam bursts and Raum bright chaos raining down like a flood from the gods?
 
His blue eyes hold her like electricity, they spark over every inch of her torso. In every part he finds her wanting (but he finds everyone wanting, most of all, himself).
 
“Do you?” Raum asks, soft and menacing, a croon from a monster not yet seen. The crack in the dam grows and Raum falls still as stone creaks and Legion’s skull lifts up.

---

@Targwyn

[Targwyn]

She honestly does not expect him to notice her or to even care. She’s learned that not everyone appreciates her sort of madness. Many cannot find the beauty in how she looks at the world. They want to see happiness and love and hearts and flowers. Such things made her nauseous. Others, preferred to see the world run by dictators where only death and fear run rampant. Targwyn is a bit of a different breed. There is something else that fuels her, something far more chaotic.

And when their gaze meets, she knows she has his attention. She can already feel the way his eyes watch over her, sizing her up and determining her worth. Eyes flick to his bonded, the snake only drawing a pleasant smirk across her lips. She does not dwell on the creature who’s eyes are covered in silk. Instead, she turns to his master.

His question is that of confirmation. He wants to know what her true intentions were. While she did not serve anyone or anything, she was not opposed to working with the man in order to have her own goals met. She did not think their agendas were too far misaligned. “Aye, chaos and uproar should be my middle name.” Her words are thick with truth and her body language tells him that she is not lying. She means every syllable.

She turns from him for only a brief moment while her eyes rest on the others who walk amongst them. She sees the looks of disgust, the way they pool together against their new king. She sees the way some others gather with awe and wander. There are two sides to those within this court and soon, she felt, this court would erupt with civil war. There was something beautiful about it, something that made that crooked grin all the more mischievous. “You know, they say madness is like gravity…” Her eyes turn back to lock with his own. An only when she has his full attention does she continue. “…all it takes is a little push.” She cannot help the way her lips part and a chuckle escapes them. Just the idea that she can help push this court into madness has her body alive with electricity. Just knowing that she could help be his catalyst was all she needed to feel alive.

@Raum

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 



Her green is poison, as fatal as the smile that curls her lips. Her red is the blood smeared across a fed monster’s lips. Her eyes are glaciers sharp as knives, reaching for the sky.
 
Raum drinks in every inch of Targwyn, there is no part of her he will leave unchecked. To not know this creature is to let insanity slip in unguarded. Raum had heard the whispers, the tongues and lips that tell of his own madness - a madness for power, a madness for his deeds. He is a madman and they name him so with fervent voices and hungry eyes. Yet when he beholds this girl, this creature of a madness more plain and obvious than his supposed own, the Ghost wonders how he could ever be mad at all.
 
But mad they name him and so mad he shall be.
 
His electric gaze does not flicker as she makes her bold statements with that poison smile drip, drip, dripping her madness upon the earth at his feet. He does not smile in answer to hers. He remains unmoved, unswayed, yet imagines himself if madness is like gravity, warming himself in a bottomless grave, the red of lava rising up to meet him. How deep could one fall?
 
“If you are so mad, then tell me why I should not kill you here and now. Madness is a liability I have no time for.” Each word is lead, each words is sharp. They descend as shrapnel and bullets and Raum has no care for the wounds they might inflict. Beside him, Legion rises, that great skull and its sharpened beak parting as strings of poison link between its terrible fangs. “Make yourself of use to me and you might keep yourself from a bottomless grave where gravity may pull you where it wishes.”

---

@Targwyn

[Targwyn]

Targwyn has never been one who appreciates the feral gaze of others upon her own body, but she says nothing to him. In fact, she does not even let on that it bothers her. Ever since she was a child, she had been looked at as if she were a freak awaiting the arrival of the circus. In a herd as plain as the one she had come from, it was no surprise that someone with her strange markings would be seen as demonic. Perhaps that is what started Targwyn down the path she was currently on. Perhaps, even, things would have turned out differently had her family shown her the least bit of love and respect. Now, she doesn’t understand those words.

At his words, her eyes follow his until they meet. Did he really think her as mad as the mad hatter? Surely not. Then again, he did not know her as well as she knew herself. “Ah, but you have misunderstood.” Her tone is neutral, but the way she starts off her words said as if someone has made a grand epiphany. “I am as sane as the next person.” She pauses to make sure that she still has his undivided attention. Because after all, what she was about to say could be what draws him to her…or what pushes him away. “I am a vessel for madness and chaos. I bring it where it was once not present. But no, I am not mad.” She wanted nothing more than to see other succumb to insanity. She would never take credit for it, but she would ensure that madness took hold and grew from a small seedling that she planted into a grant oak tree that would live on for hundreds of years.

She is about to leave him with parting words, but he is quick to threaten her (or at least as she sees it). The stallion before her claims that she can live should she be of use to him. Little did he know that Targwyn lives under no one’s iron fist. “I live under no king and I serve no gods. Should our interests align, I will work with you, but not under you. Do I make myself clear?” There was a reason that she had chosen no court to call her own. She was a lone ranger, a wanderer of worlds and a taker of lives. She had not lived under a king in years - why start now.

She stands tall, her eyes still resting on the silver stallion and his pet. If they were going to have some sort of working relationship, then perhaps they should start off with formalities. “You may call me Targwyn.” She will not respond to anything other than her name. In the same hand, she will call him by no other name except his given name.

@Raum

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

What comes from the moment when madness meets madness?
 
Raum has heard their whispers: mad, madman, madness. Each word is a dog at his heels. He feels their teeth upon the swell of his fetlocks. But he does not care, he bears the weight of madness with ease. It almost slips from him like water from a duck’s wing.
 
She says she is not mad, that she is as sane as the next person.. He might laugh. He might have struck her down and wiped himself clean of her blood and carried on – it would be easier, gods his life would be so much easier. Yet bexley’s laugh, her loud voice proclaims him mad and he might have cared, once, whether he is or not. Yet now, proclamations about his sanity do not concern him. Let the masses believe what they will, they all still fall in line with his command or suffer.
 
Oh, suffering. He feels it as well as a soldier feels the first blade that runes them through. He feels it with the clarity of the sky splitting open and the sun tumbling down, wild and out of control.
 
She is speaking and he watches her, silver and sharp and utterly unmoved. He is the statue before which she performs. She leaves no stone unturned in proclaiming all that she is not and affirming all that she is. She is not mad, she is a vessel for madness and chaos.
 
Ah.
 
Is there a difference? Is there a difference enough for him to care? No one brings madness and chaos upon peace and calls themselves anything but mad. He does not even stir as he realizes he has defined himself too. Well then, Bexley Briar was right. Raum is mad. Raum is crazed. Raum is the monster with the jilted ideal. Raum is the beast hunting, not for food but blood and death. Not because he must, but because he can.
 
Do I make myself clear.
 
Her words hang and he is not contrite. He is not cowed by her gall. He is not impressed by her assertiveness. He is not swayed by her pride. He is not made meek by any word that slips from her ruby red lips. She makes herself a liability. But, she is disposable. It is not Raum alone that any should fear, it is the machine of war behind him that smothers the sky with the belching smoke of violence.
 
He offers her nothing but stone, not his name, not an ounce of emotion as she performs before him. Then, slowly, he says lightly, “Look out for a letter.” For you are disposable, he does not say. For you are all fodder, Raum does not add. But he thinks, behind the electric blue of his eyes. Mmm, behind the electric blue of his gaze is a chasm, a place that once knew love, but now there is only rattling walls.
 
Still he does not tell her his name. Still he is not moved by her.

---

@Targwyn - her new picture is so very awesome. I love her pose!

[Targwyn]

Perhaps the difference (at least to Targwyn) between madness and chaos and those that cause the madness and chaos, is usually the individuals are unaware of what they do. A mad hatter does mad things and yet thinks of himself as sane as you or I. But Targwyn knowingly causes the madness and chaos and yet still calls herself sane. Some would consider that the same thing. Perhaps it was. Perhaps the difference was that she could control herself and her actions. She can make conscious choices whereas someone who is mad cannot. It’s a very fine line that she loves to tightrope across. One little sway of the wind could blow her either way.

Regardless of whether or not she is actually mad, Targwyn doesn’t really care about what he thinks of her or what his opinion of her on the matter was. Perhaps it was a good thing that he chose not to speak about such as issue.

However, even through all of this, she offers him a name. She doesn’t need to make herself known to him. In fact, he would probably forget her the moment he took a step away. That was fine. He walked with a closet full of skeletons. He made sure his actions were known, and thus she knew exactly who he was. Nothing he did was subtle. All of it screamed his name and screamed destruction and death. That is what differed between the two of them. They were not that much different, really. He was just more up front about his actions whereas she was a little more behind the scenes and subtle. People would hate him for his actions…no one would know she was behind her own.

“Look out for a letter.” It was all he says to her. She is unmoved by him, unexcited about a letter that he claims would be sent to her. “I have yet to establish an address, I’m sure it will get lost along the way.” Sarcasm bleeds through each syllable. She doesn’t care about a letter, no matter what it states. She doesn’t care about him, about the actions he’s done. She cares about none of it. “And tell me…why should I answer your letter, Raum.” She offers him a question, a question of why she should do anything he says. She is not afraid of him. She’d rather die beneath his hooves than bend at the knee to him. Despite his reputation, she does not fear him.

@Raum

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 


I have yet to establish an address, I’m sure it will get lost along the way.
 
Ah, there is a gleam in his eyes, yet he says nothing still. Raum watches her as a lion might an antelope foal he has no hunger for – yet. He watches her as a god might a mere mortal – as if he stands as a bridge between life and death. The friend of Charon here to bring bodies to keep his boats full and his coffers overflowing. Raum is no god, yet the gods no longer strike fear into his heart. He is the man who smiled at Caligo and offered her his knives as they whispered of vengeance in the writhing shadows of her temple.
 
Then she goes on and oh how his skull tilts as if he were a crow atop a tree leaning forward and down to better hear what the earthlings say. Yet his lips do not part with a caw, they do not pluck at lambs eyes nor steal red berries from flourishing bushes. No, Raum has long passed a simple Crow of murder and petty theft. He is no longer content with the meat of lamb’s eyes. His appetite is greater and all of Solterra knows it.
 
He has seen Solterra’s ribs, he hears the dryness of her voice, parched and full of sand. Solterra is dying and he watches her rattling breaths rising from her ribbed chest.
 
Now his beak parts, but it is no caw that abrades the soft flesh of Targwyn’s ear. Rather it is the silk of moonlight pooling in the shadows. It is mercury slipping like blood through her veins, poisoning all that it touches. “You have no home, Targwyn. You are free to roam, but if you want to come back here, ever, you will answer the letter.” And he does not say how it will find her, but it will. A crow knows every hiding place, it knows in intimate detail each and every corner of Novus. The letter will reach Targwyn, and she will answer it.
 
Then he is turning, leaving the mad mare and her bone white face, the painted crimson smile that still lays itself upon his skin.
 
“Good luck.” He says softly, because he is gone, swallowed by the night as Day turns its back upon its king.

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@Targwyn <3 Fin! Thank you my lovely - ee i am excited to see what happens with the Denocte stores!