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

All Welcome  - [ASTERION] One year later -- Almost.

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Turhan
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#1

bone to rune


The evening was cool as it exhaled into all the cracks and holes of his mask, the horns whistled at the tips, and his wild mane of prayers and spells rattled superstitiously as the prairie winds billowed through.  Every dusk was like this, and Turhan came often to do exactly as he was doing right now.  Basking under the twilight stars, following the various grazers until they led him home, to the swamp.  Turhan had adapted to his surroundings and had come to rely very heavily upon them in his old age.  With his mind slipping and his eyesight already gone, there was no betrayal in trusting the other animals that co-existed with him in the same plains and swamps. 


The wanderer rested patiently while buffalo grazed beneath the bright stars and sleepy dusk evening.  The grass moved like airy silk even in the dim light -- and Turhan did not need his eyes to see to know how beautiful all of it looked.  He had been doing loops for several seasons now and his habits were like that of a very senile dog who simply followed its master and waited for the next prompt.  Calves wrestled and cavorted about, their young voices making Turhan ache for a younger age when the Ilati had been circled together more tightly.  The old man shifted in the cool grass and gazed out over the open plains, but saw nothing but darkness and empty thought.


Another approached carefully from his left, in the pale glow of twilight Turhan seemed to be bioluminescent with a salve he mashed out of dank cave weeds.  Swirls, dips, and dots sprinkled an otherwise deep cinnamon-black body that dissolved into the ebbing darkness.  There was ritual pained onto his face with bone-white powders, striped most curiously with red and black slashes over his nose.  When he turned to glance over at the stranger, it appeared that the Elder had dipped his nose in bright blue and yellow paint.  Why?  


He couldn't remember.  


Lowani, Mlendo. He greeted in his own way, pirahna teeth sharp and bright and so terrible looking with the smile he offered.  The dead bird tied around his neck was interesting enough, but the deep, musty smell of copal and myrrh made breathing feel gritty with dust.  Or maybe he was simply that dusty with all the dustings of dry paint all over his body.  The wind shook at the strings of prayer bells and bird bones that were tied onto either side of his face, ribbons slapped and flittered and trilled whenever the breeze turned steady against them.  


"How can Ntaji envy us -- they are the ones that are free."  Turhan croaks, he pays more attention to them than he does himself or this stranger who stands beside him.  He is too old to be hostile.  Too close to the end to be afraid.  He is Vespera's now, there is no contempt within him to bother with his hidden prejudice against the Outsiders coming to him.   He sucks and chews and messes with his lips, his old decaying teeth hurt and are incredibly itchy and sore all the time.  The whiskered fool gives a rattling sigh and steps closer to the other horse, his resin powders almost suffocatingly thick between them even if it is just for a moment to ask him something strange, 


"Tell me about the sky -- won't you son?" 

T U R H A N
skull to dust



@Asterion    I belieeeve Asterion asked 'Giaccomo' if the buffalo envied them...









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Asterion
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#2






For all his love of stories and dreaming of heroes, for all his worship of bravery and boldness, Asterion almost turns away when he is near enough to see the mask.

It is a fearsome thing as any he has seen in this strange country, and the wind makes a symphony of it. It moans and murmurs, clatters and whistles, and the bay stallion is startled into a pause. But he is both curious and polite to a fault, and it would not do to turn around now.

So he stands at the edge of the stranger’s space, trying to disguise his wary fascination by splitting his gaze between the roaming bison and the man-or-myth that sways beside him in the gathering night. The man reflects the stars the way a slow river did – in whorls of light that shimmer and glow. Asterion’s own twilight pattern was a weak comparison to this painted creature, and at first (as his mind scrambles for other stories, other explanations) the bay wonders if there had been some festival he’d missed.

Just as he is beginning to relax again the stranger speaks, and Asterion straightens at the unfamiliar words, the voice all gravel and dust. Oh, those teeth – he wants to shudder but does not.

Hadn’t he just been thinking how tame, how idle this country was?

Hadn’t he wanted a discovery made, here beneath the waiting stars?

Asterion is no coward, and this is only an old man who wore his own music. The bison were not afraid; neither would he be.

He relaxes then, and dips his head respectfully, not yet knowing the gesture can’t be seen.

Almost he misses what the stranger says then, for he hadn’t been expecting words in his tongue. His dark muzzle turns sharply toward the man (priest, his mind says) and his darker eyes study each line of bone and stripe of paint.

And then he cocks his head, turning back to face the giant creatures. In a way they are like the stranger – both of them make him think of remnants, things that don’t fit in this world of silks and stone towers. “You’re right,” he says then, and the soft of his voice just sounds like another bell on the breeze, or a whisper through bone. And then: "You don’t count yourself free?”

He himself was bound by meetings, by duties he’d been given, not requested; by loyalties of blood and circumstance. But surely this man, this mystic, was bound by no one?

When the old stallion shifts nearer, Asterion does not move away. He bends his muzzle nearer, softly inhaling all those strange scents that no more overpower him than the perfumes he’s run across in the capitol. Around them the night-insects begin their music.

The question draws his attention up, where the settling dusk makes a worthy roof for such a man as the one beside him. Almost he asks what the stallion wants to know – but instead he blows out a slow breath, and counts what stars have made their debut.

“It looks like you,” he begins after a pause, and watches a nightjar cut through the fabric of the evening. “Thick with color as the sun goes away. There is a band of clouds in the north, streaks of violet and rose – I think it will grow cooler, tomorrow. Perhaps rain. There are some stars emerging, a particularly bright set overhead, shaped like an arrow. But I do not know the constellations here.” A pause then, as the breeze lifts once more and sets the man to his strange song. Asterion’s gaze drops back to him, and he wonders if he can feel the press of it from beneath his strange mask. “Do you know them? Their stories?”  




@Turhan  hope you don't mind 'em long!

if you'll be my star*












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