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Elif
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#1

elif



Elif had never seen snow before these last few months. 

In her brief and sun-drenched three years of life, she had never left Solterra. Not even with the use of her wings had she ever touched a feather to the air of another court; her heart had never strayed from the golden city and neither did she. 

So when it first began to fall, it was easy to think it was the end of the world. Ash would have been more likely in these wind-swept winters, but ash did not melt on your tongue, or pack and shift beneath your feet. She hadn’t been sure what to make of it, at first, but Altan, around for one of his fleeting visits, had drug her into a snowball fight in front of the palace. 

It had been years since she’d had that much fun. 

Most of it is gone, now, but there are still blue-shadowed drifts of it in the places where the canyon walls prevent the slanted spring sunlight. Out of the corner of her eye, it doesn’t look too different from sand - a little too cool-toned, but the shadows lay the same on its surface. 

It’s next to a snowbank that she lands, radiating enough of a chill to raise a shiver as she flicks dry her wings and tucks them to her sides. From the air, this box canyon had looked indistinguishable from the many others that spread like a maze through Elatus, but Elif sees now that it is not the same at all. 

The sand and dirt here has been packed tight by countless hooves, and there are grooves worn in the stone. As she walks further in, each hoof step echoing, the stench of sweat and musk becomes unmistakable, as do the stains far darker than any seam of ore. There are dusty barrels stacked beneath a shallow cavern in the canyon wall and ahead of her there is a narrow passageway, the only proof that it led anywhere a small bleed of light. Beyond, there is the faint sound of voices. 

She is certain that this is the place her brother was killed. 

Elif sucks in a breath that burns from the cold, and steps into that brief darkness. 





@Veer

“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”













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Veer
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#2

WE ARE DIVINE 

At first Veer thinks it's a ghost that emerges from the shadow. The figure seems made with the spectral skin of horizon sand, where the sun set and brushes the dunes with an almost sort of sadness. The wings seems to be not wings but shadows. The only thing that gives them any light at all is the reflection of the sun where it creeps through cracks in the stone.

He's glad he didn't light any of the torches, gladder still that he's golden and noble during the daylight.

But Veer is not made for foolish thoughts or spectral beasts that wonder the daytime and scream for justice and retribution. To him the dead are dead and he's still alive, as all victors are more alive than any other creature in this world. His eyes are hard as he watches the ghost come. That gaze is a weapon, gold  melted down to a liquid that will pull back all the flesh and lies from the world.

Like a conqueror he smiles when the ghost first comes close enough to see skin instead of grave-dust and feathers instead of cobwebs. His teeth are a flash of white in the darkness and his eyes seem like two wolf eyes, peering out from the shadows of the stands when she crosses the pit sand.

And oh! When he sees the expressive arch of her neck, the delicacy of her feathers he laughs and shakes out any lingering tension from his feathers. She is no ghost, no haunted thing that has him tasting phantom blood on the backs of this teeth.

She is a treasure. She is gold, cursed perhaps but still worth something. And something is all Veer needs, for he wants everything. He wants to devour up the world and make it his.  

“You are lost.” Veer looks down at her from the primitive stands (carved by clever black-market merchants) where he lounges on dusty satin pillows like a lion who cares little for the end of the world that screams in snowflakes outside his cave. His feathers seems like a blanket of night when he lifts a wing to block the few cracks of sunlight leeching in from the wall at his back.

Deeper in the darkness another monster waits, and Veer quiets him with a grow low enough to be nothing more than a rustle of his wings and ring of his chains. Not yet.

 

a breath of soot into these lungs




@Elif









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Elif
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#3

elif



The path slopes downward.

Elif is not afraid - so she tells herself, even as her heart seems to echo louder in the semi-darkness - but even so she pulls a little wind in behind her, a breath of cold, clean air against her cheek like a ghost’s caress. Anyway, it is not a far path; she is only submerged in shadow for a few breaths (she does not care for the feeling, does not like being underground and separated from the sky - like being swallowed up by a snake) before the light is on her hooves, and then her slender forelegs, and then the slopes of her shoulders and her fine-boned face.

It takes her a moment, then, to see him. She must blink back the sunlight, however limited it is in this place, and at first when her eyes make out his shape he is nothing but black.

He was killed by a black pegasus. You need know nothing further.

At once she tenses like a mongoose before a cobra, like a hawk about to stoop. Her thoughts are not thoughts but flashes of gold, sparks of flame that ricochet off the blackness of him, that circle around the carved-out space they are in and wing back to her, no less urgent or angry.

But before she can act, can move her leaden, burning tongue, he lifts a wing and his true color is revealed. Her eyes adjust and he is not black at all, but a brown richer than any soil of the desert, and bronze, and molten gold. When she blows out a breath the wind sighs with her, relieved.

She might have smiled, then, had he not said what he did.

Her gaze had been straying, making sense of the place she’d just walked into, but it flickers back to him at his words, and her chin lifts, defiant. “I’m not.” Only a girl’s voice, but a girl with bloody knuckles, with tangled hair, with her jaw set. A girl who hates to be told what she is.

He should frighten her - because of where she found him if not for the simple fact of him - but he doesn’t, not reclining like a fat housecat. He looks at her the way all the noble men do and she has no patience for it. “I’m looking for someone.” A man in black.

With borrowed nonchalance she shakes her head, and hardly a wisp of her severely-short mane moves. The scarlet collar is a familiar texture around her throat, a comfortable embrace. With a thought to the prayers sewn there - bravery, honesty - she steps further out into the arena, and nearer to the stranger.



@Veer

“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”













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Veer
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#4

WE ARE DIVINE 

It is her defiance that turns his interest from something lazy to something fiercer, something as deep and dark as a moonlit desert dune. All that darkness runs through him veins of molten gold through flesh and he burns.

And so he unfolds before her. Each movement is an art of barely controlled violence. First he stretches up on his legs like a lion from slumber and even that lazy gesture seems almost wild in the still darkness. His wings when he shakes them both loose sound like silken rain, a chanting religion of feathers and wealth and almost gaudiness. The arch of his neck could be an ancient sculpture made of ageless bronze, an ode to the fearless warriors of another time.

Veer unfolds and he is perfection.

His hooves echo on the  roughly carved stone steps (part of his thinks he rings on the stone like the echo of time and of god). Every step she takes forward is mirrored in him, left hoof for left hoof and wing for wing. He wonders if she can see how he reflects her, how each movement seems grander when it comes from his flesh and bone.

“Liar.” The two syllables are dry as dust and as soft of velvet. He coos to her like a wolf to a lamb and his teeth look like pearl coins instead of fangs when he smiles at her. “Only the lost would be foolish enough to come here and call it searching. There is no one here for you--” Veer pauses and lifts his wings up, up, up until he is the golden sky arching over their heads like a halo. “but me.” He is the only thing here, him and her and that beast hiding in the shadows with feathers and beak that breathes soft enough for him to call it the wind and nothing more.

Veer slows his lungs to match the song of her. His smile arcs like a scythe across his dark lips when he moves close enough to feel the blazing heat and fury and defiance radiating off her like a fine steam over a morning lake. “I could help you.”The offer comes out lazily as if he's a devil uninterested in the glory of her wild, mortal soul.

 

a breath of soot into these lungs



@Elif









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Elif
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#5

elif



Her gaze had been hawk-keen on her surroundings, the crude benches carved from canyon stone, the still and dust-dry arena. But the barest flicker of movement draws her eye, and she watches as the gilded stranger rises.

Elif is glad, then, for the unnatural cold, for it gives her a reason for the breath to stick in her throat, to burn like ice when at last she inhales. It is nervousness that has her falling so still (save for her blood, hot hot hot beneath her skin, and the bird-fast beat of her heart) but not the kind that is hand in hand with fear. It is the nervousness of when she was a girl taking her first dare, the nervousness of fly higher, fall faster. The kind that made her eyes shine, vivid green as spring.

He moves solid and grand as she moves light and quick as sunlight on water; he moves like her shadow, stretched too tall by a low son.

But Elif stops dead when he calls her a liar.

“I am not.” And she looks down her nose at him, though he towers above her, dark and forbidding as a dust-storm on the horizon. She does not care how big he is, how cruel the slash of his mouth or how gleaming his gold. “You know nothing of me, to tell me what I am.” Her eyes gleam in the slant of sunlight that filters in, now he is not blocking it with his wings; his own gaze is hooded, dark as thick amber. Still she does not shy away from it; it is not fear she trembles with, high-strung as a racehorse with the wind in her blood.

A wind that blows toward her like a caress as he arches his wings up and up, as if he might close her in. As if he could capture her with feathers and threats like she was nothing more than a songbird, rare and frail in the desert.

She is about to challenge him, then, but the wind loves her, and it warns her. Here in this pit where little breeze should stir it brings her a scent other than his own (which is unsettling enough, blood thick as ichor and rich warm gold). A scent that is half-cat and half-eagle and all predator, and only then does Elif breathe in the sharp and bitter tang of fear and flick her eyes skyward - only for a moment, but long enough to judge the time it would take her to rise up and up beyond the cliff-face.

Elif is certain she is faster than this stallion, but she is not sure about the thing that waits behind him, breathing softly as an eagle, as a cat.  

His shadow falls across her; her gaze cuts back to his face. She does not look at the smile he wears (not unlike a lion itself, utterly content in its power), and she laughs at his next words. It comes as a surprise, that rush of sound, but it emboldens her too. She snaps her tail against her hocks and tilts her head at him, as if he is only another thing at market to be bought.

“Men like you never help for free.” She says it evenly, matter-of-fact, but there is already a dare beginning in her eyes. It is too easy for her to forget the beast at his back.

Who are you, she should ask then, and who is your friend?

“What is your price?” she asks instead, and the wind sighs in her ear, and dies away.



@Veer

“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”













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Veer
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#6

the divine beasts
' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '


“Don't I?” He says between flashes of pearl teeth, as if the wealth on the words lives only in the broad slash of his smile and the redness of his tongue. Part of him wants lean forward to whisper in her ear, until his voice is her thoughts and all her own are dead and gone and forgotten. He could lick words across her brow, sing to her blood that he knows it, knows what darkness is genetic and what is nurtured.

Veer wants to nurture that darkness in her blood, to feed it like a flame until it consumes and then recreates. She could be more---

Elif could be like her brother (or at least as glorious as how her name sounded on a dying monster's tongue). Veer felt as if it was a prophecy, the sound of her, when he lowered his bloody teeth to the stallion and tore out his throat on the last syllable of her name. Elif, he wants to whisper, there is so much of your blood that I know. Instead he only catches the fearful flick of her eyes and all the awful things he could say die.

Only silence and the sounds of them live in that space and in that space he silently speaks to his monster. Soon, Najjad, soon. And his monster says nothing back, nothing more than a flash of feeling in which Veer knows they are both ready, ready, ready.

Veer moves past her then and his lips vibrate in a hum like a lion pondering what to do about the approaching jackals. Every movement he makes is lazy, and he lets his wings brush close enough to touch her, close enough that their feathers might caress, golden sun to dark, desert sand. “Does the price matter?” He asks between the soft chime of his golden chains that reflect the sun like diamonds might.

Najjad moves closer as Veer talks. His talons tap against the stone and his beak clacks together as if he anticipates the meal to come, the feast of a Pegasus. Veer can feel the gryhon's amusement in that steel channel of thoughts between them, he can feel that the beasts belly is already full and he only wants to slumber in the darkness.

But still, Veer is careful to let his breath sigh out in fear and his forces his  heart to beat a little faster. His wings flare out wildly, as if he's they prey caught before the predator. He's also just as careful to let his steps move a little faster until he's between the mare and the door as if he's planning to run and leave her to deal with the creature alone.

“We should run,” His words are almost frantic and his wings shift in a frenzy at his side and the pitch of his chain-song grows rabid. “Or perhaps fight, but I do not think I could take him alone, not if a nest has been built here.” There will be time for bargains later, his fear seems to silently say in the white-rimmed panic of his gaze, there is only living now.

All the while Veer moves back, back, back to the single, tunnel out and Najjad (who looks very wild and hungry) spreads wide his massive wings, screeches out a roar, and begins to fly towards them.












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Elif
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#7

elif



Of course he challenges her, and of course Elif lifts her chin again, baring her dark throat another inch, the band of wool around it a scarlet as bright as a cut. Each line of her is defiant as a hawk, her spine bold as the back of the desert dunes. In her ignorance (of what he knows, what he has done, the truth in that pearl-toothed smile) she is as solid as Solterra, ready to withstand.

“Nothing,” she repeats, only her eyes moving as they watch him, and her voice is firm and fierce. Oh, her tongue is a flame that will burn her someday. Be bold, be bold, but not too bold -

It is a lesson she has never learned; perhaps her brother might have taught it to her. Perhaps he had never learned it either.

Nearer he comes, a shadow or a storm sweeping across the desert toward her. Elif’s ears turn back,  dislike clear on her stark, strange features. When his feathers brush against hers like curtains sighing sighing against each other in the wind her nostrils flare, even as she takes in each dripping loop of gold along his neck. Altogether they remind her of a snake, languid on a branch - and yet warning danger.

Almost she recognizes him as a fellow noble, then - the way he moves, the way his gaze assumes ownership of all things, some flash of remembrance from a meeting or a ball - but before she can open her mouth to say anything at all she catches movement from the corner of her eye.

Never is he forgotten as she watches the gryphon step out from the craggy shadows, moving like a drop of molten gold, but her focus is only dimly on the stallion.

His panic is as contagious as a fever and she can feel the quickening drumbeat of her heart, the way it urges her feet to follow. His voice is low and rough as canyon-stones where wind whines and rushes between the cracks and almost Elif flees for the door.

But her mind is as nimble as her desert-bred body and she remembers the way he had been lounging, like a lion himself, like this was his lair. There would be no nest secret from him, not in his kingdom. And her blood is hot as an offering, and she did not come here to run, no matter what she found.

“You aren’t alone,” she says, and rises into a rear, hooves flashing and wings flaring, daring the beast to meet her.


@Veer

“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”













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Veer
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#8

the divine beasts
' Hardly has the universe stretched its wings to span '


For a moment his belly hums with laughter and his ribs vibrate like the tip of a cobra's tail. She is a bold slip of youth, he thinks (his Elif, his secret, his). Perhaps she's too bold, but then boldness and beauty and gold are the only things Veer finds any value in. So he swallows his laughter. And if he feels any guilt, to look at the curl of her throat and think of blood, he swallows that up too like the a great god might swallow up an entire ocean. It all goes down in one gulp-- one sweet, sweet swallow.

Najjad flies around them in patterns that look a little like a coils of snake. Veer doesn't bother watching his friend. Part of him isn't sure that he wants to look at anything but bold, delicate Elif and the way she welcomes battle like a hawk might welcome a mongoose. And it's not until she rises in a rear that Veer finally relents, and breaks the silence even as he moves closer and closer, under the cover of her bravery, to that tiny tunnel behind them.

“Ah,” There are theatrics in his voice and maybe a little bit of sadness. His eyes blaze against the backs of her feathers and he wonders if she can feel the burn and sting of all his secrets. “I've seen your sort of boldness before.” If she turns to look she'll see his smile taunting as hotly as the blade of a knife might tease that lovely red fabric around her neck.

Veer lifts his wings wider and wider and wider until he eclipses the only exit she knows. There is nothing for you here, not now. His feathers sing as he begins to seem so very large inside the belly of the earth. I did not lie.

The gryphon flies a little lower and the air seems thick with the strange feline-eagle musk of his mighty, golden wings. His beak curls like an almost smile and his eyes pulse on the horses below as if he only wants, wants, wants. Still Veer ignores him as if his life is so precious a thing that no beast would ever dare to take it.

Maybe she can see the secret in that too?

“Don't let it kill you.” His smile dissolves into dark violence and gold when his chains jingle almost merrily as he turns and vanishes into the darkness of the tunnel at his back. One he's nothing more than another shadow in the darkness he lets his hooves and his wings carry him away as swiftly as a sand-storm.

Delay her. He says down that channel of violence between him and Najjad.

And so the gryphon dives, landing before the only way out that she might know about. There are more, of course, hidden in a hundred different shadows here. Najjad, like the stallion before him, spreads out his wings. They say, like before, that there is nothing here for her.

Out in the desert and the sunlight Veer lets himself disappear like a single grain of sand in Solterra. Today most of his secrets will still belong to him and him alone

But only today.












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#9

elif



Any other day Elif might have watched the gryphon and wondered which part truly ruled the beast - the lion, or the eagle. Today it doesn’t matter; each half is only another predator that makes up the whole that hunts her now. It is more nimble than she would have believed, and bigger than she would have thought, and her heart is beating in her throat now despite the brave gleam of her eyes.

But when the stranger speaks her bravery falters for a moment, and gives way to something else. Even if she weren’t the kind to hear a taunt, a dare, in the mildest of words, she would have heard it now. She cannot help it; she does glance back at the knife of his smile, at the way his wings lift and blot out the pathway as if they were blotting out the sun. Elif wonders now which threat is the greater.

Oh, and his final words choose for her. Heedless of the predator behind her she wheels and charges for him, ready to strike that smile from his mouth, ready to seize the words from his breath. He is turning, too, and she is lunging after -

Her cry of frustration and anger echoes around and around the cold stone as if mocking her when the gryphon lands in a flurry of feathers and snapping beak. It seems clear, now, that there is some connection between man and beast, but the realization is lost in the danger of the moment. Three times Elif advances on the creature, and three times it beats her back in a flurry of wings and claws and teeth (yet not striking, never drawing blood). Her hooves ring out on the stone, her breath rises in great plumes with each snort, her rage is written in each bristling feather.

But there is nothing she can do but wait. And by the time the gryphon at last leaves her, by the time she is free to make her way from the arena, there is no sign of the stallion of dripping gold and taunting words. The sky leaves no trail, and the world only smells of snow and stone.


@Veer

“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”













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