Rhoswen wandered without purpose or design. At first she had sought to purge the troubles from her mind, harnessing the desert's scorching heat in attempt to cauterise the purpled wound that was her angst. It flared and flamed, gnawing at her bloodstream, and no matter how deep into the golden sandstrewn abyss she walked - it refused to heal. So now she took to Ruris instead, allowing her legs to trace a map unknown; following the archaic pattern of the sun as it rose, hung, and fell. Her oh-so grey eyes had turned to ash and stone where once there had been hurricanes, for she is lost again. Again - the word rolls bitterly across her tongue. Life seemed to relish in dealing the copper maiden difficult hands. Once a fallen angel in Denocte, now a mistress of deceit in Solterra. If Maxence unearthed the truth of her treachery there would be hell to pay, blood to be spilled. She knew he would come for her, and yet still she could not find it within herself to forsake Raum. For, although she was Solis' daughter through and through, there was no forgetting the origin of her birth - born not in daylight but under the magnetic cover of night. Her family were made of moondust and starfire - they knew nothing of the golden rhythm of her heart; it was a song they would never understand. A gust of summer wind tore across the sheltered creek as Rhoswen came to stand upon it's gentle banks, looking down into the heart of the river - looking, desperately, for answers.
A whisper is forgotten on the breeze: "What am I supposed to do?"
lovely little thing of red and gold traversed the lands without thought of destination — wandering, lost even — through the wilds of the neutral lands. She traveled under the dry heat of summer once the winds had finally turned; the soft promise autumn slowly churning in the air. But it was not time, not yet, for Solis still ruled the skies with an iron fist. The air was thick and humid without shade, as the little filly of golden-red moved, finally seeking solace under the cover of trees. She kept no track of time; instead, she trotted with a more carefree mind, dapples of sunbursts dotting her skin as she moved ever deeper into the woods.
A shiver ran down her spine as she traveled deeper, the temperature dropping several degrees. Halting, with a delicate poised hoof in the air, she sniffed and pricked her ears.. there. The soft churning of water rushing over smooth rocks was not far in front of her. No, in fact the source of the sound was quite close. Her throat parched, cracked and rough like sand paper, Mila licked her lips as she strolled through the thicket of flora.
Bursting through the thick of leaves and branches, her surprise was unexpected and tangy on her tongue as she looked upon a most-familiar face. Glad in the rose-colored tint of copper pennies, the older girl had the filly's heart swelling with every new beat. "Rhos," she exclaimed, unable to hide her own excitement. No viperous remarks, no poison coating her words. Uncommonly kind, Mila surged forward to be closer to the one who was like a sister to her, unbound by blood. "What are you doing here?"
The summer wolf stiffened at the sound of hoofbeats decorating the nearby earth, her shoulders squaring combatively. Rhoswen was not a warrior-queen, but oh, she could fight, that was for damn sure. As a teenage girl she'd found herself in several spats with other fillies - that's what happened when you wore the eyes of almost every young man in the nation; not that her violent tongue had ever helped her cause, either. She had sparred, briefly, with her brothers too, but Rhos had always known they had used a lighter-than-normal touch, much to her indignation. But that was a long time ago and the thought now of having to claw her way out of a situation was an entirely unpleasant thought.
As the greenery parted, however, revealing a most familiar face and pale flaxen hair, Rhoswen breathed a sigh of relief. Mila, just Mila. All bone and limb, the young filly swallowed up the air; her velveteen skin kissed by the sunlight, for even Solis could not deny this child's budding beauty. This was the second time they had met in recent times, following the bizarre encounter upon Veneror Peak, and Rhos would lying if she said she was not grateful for the coincidence. It was always a pleasure to reunite with a people she had once called home. The older mare stretched out her swanlike neck so that her muzzle gently brushed against Mila's cheek, the nostalgia of her sugary fireborn perfume filling Rhos' nares.
"Twice in one week - anyone would think you were following me, Mila." A glittering smile to hide her inner anguish; how tempting it was to brush aside the girl's question. "You've grown," she murmured almost absentmindedly, spiderleg lashes brushing against her high cheekbone, "how is everything back home?" Home... an untruth these days, but oh, how easy it was to fall back into old habits around old company. "Not missing me too much I hope."
er heart was a mad, caged little bird beating against her ribs as she watched the older girl -- her sister, almost, without the boundaries of blood. The excitement coursing through her veins was sweeter than any drug-induced high from one of her non-lethal plants, but as bitter as her multitude of poisons stashed in a library of glass vials. Rhoswen's scent was heady with the sun-baked perfume of desert sand; a musk that had her stomach rolling with the reminder of where she herself had come from, and where the ex-Crow before her now resided.
By choice.
Twice in one week - anyone would think you were following me, Mila.
Had she been any younger, or without her memories and upbringing stealing what little innocence she had, the gold twin would have stuck her tongue out at such a comment. Instead, she rolled her eyes, pursing her lips at the thought of their meeting on the temple's Peak. Such an interesting gathering of night-blessed shadows and wraiths of day; and a certain quarrel between a lady knight and warden. Very interesting indeed.. especially now that as she looked back, her mind began to wander and ask why her older kin would have found herself on the mountain in the first place.
You've grown. How is everything back home? Not missing me too much I hope.
Mila could not hold back her scoff as she stepped back back back; adding distance between the girl of copper and her of flames. Invisible leaches drank the excitement burning in her blood; the sharp taste of suspicion joining in it's place. She raised her chin, looking at Rhoswen through thick lashes and narrowed eyes like emerald daggers.
"Home? You ask of home now, Rhos?" she accused, her gaze downcast at the blades of grass beneath her hooves before turning back to the girl again. She slowly built a wall of granite between them, asking herself why why why. Why was she here? Why did she leave in the first place?
Poison swarmed high and unheralded in the vernacular of her finely-spun body, seeping into every vein and every pore like a serpent seeking its prey; a poison that Mila had constructed so effortlessly by the lash and lilt of wounded, wounding, lips. The young girl was not wrong - she had left them, casting herself into the light and claiming it as her own whilst her family lingered on into the night, into shadow and oblivion. Rhoswen came from a house built from spiderwebs, embellished by secrecy and magic, but to this dominion she could never belong; the wolf in her howled still to the moon but it was the sun that held her volcanic and gossamer heart. How could they possibly understand her when they did not share the same tongue? Denocte spoke in penumbra, in the silver kiss of moonlight; they could never decipher Solterra's dialect of charred incandescence, of their sulphurous dawn serenade.
"I know." Nothing but her fragile whisper bridges the gap between them. Rhos steels herself for an onslaught of anger and frustration, but instead finds only anguish. Would it always feel like this? It seemed to the auburn woman that, to find oneself you must first know loss. "I had to," she tries, her expression scrawled and unclear, "I was drowning beneath the night; it didn't matter how hard I swam, I could never keep my head above the darkness." Hard grey eyes of ash and debris locked firmly on her companion's; two girls clothed in red, so alike and yet somehow the complete antitheses of one another.
"The moon still calls to me sometimes," almost absentmindedly now, Rhoswen drifted away from the silence that hung, chasmic and despondent, "but I am not foolish enough to listen, for she is a siren in the water luring me back into her depths." Still, Rhos did not break her gaze from Mila, a whisper falling from her lips. "Do you see?" There is a fragility, an anxiety, to her voice that did not often exist, a need for someone to understand, anyone.
ittersweet poison coated her tongue, painting her lips. Burning into her bloodstream, and pillaging every nostalgic cell in her body and turning into the rage hidden underneath. Her mouth curled into a wicked, wicked smile. Sadness pinned her ears to her curved neck as she held her once Sister Crow with a gaze as sharp as daggers. Emerald and sharp and saying all of the unsaid words hanging between them both.
I had to.
She shook her head, refusing to listen, instead scoffing and stomping a hoof into the stream of water. The cold splash could have steamed against the heat blistering just beneath the surface of her skin, but it did not. Mila only bit her tongue. Her anger was a corrosive toxin, and her longing the antidote. She softened as Rhoswen spoke, her heart almost cracking as she explained. Her words, the smoke, the shadows.. she knew all too well the pull of the moon and stars. With the beauty that came with Calligo's embrace, was also the allure of darkness. She could almost taste the ash in her mouth as she remembered herself. The muscles bunched under her freckled skin loosening.
No matter how hard she tried, Mila could not stay angry at her for long. No matter that she had deserted them, abandoned them. Leaving their family for the other side of the world. A brighter world. A harsher world. A world where the Crows did not call it's scorched, sun-kissed earth home.
The moon still calls to me sometimes.
"She will always call to you, Rhos," she spoke, almost absentmindedly. Emerald orbs downcast, before blinking up and meeting hers of ocean grey. Mila knew, without a doubt, every word that she spoke with perfect, perfect clarity. Before her life had been claimed by shadows and stars, she was a desert daughter. The Twins both; cast across the endless red sands like the helpless babes they were. She could try to forget. Calligo forbid, she already had. But although the desert was her birthright, the long night was her home.
Her only home.. with a family that came with it. And she had once been apart of it.
Do you see?
Mila searched her gaze, those silver eyes, for something she could not quite name. Frustration roiled in her, but with it, an understanding that leveled every ounce of anger in her little dancer's frame. She instead focused on the dapples of sunlight on her skin, soaking up every last drop of warmth from the sky high above her, hidden in the trees. "I do see," she started, her voice soft, a whisper. "but no matter how hard you try, you will never shake Her embrace. You should know that.. you're a Child of the Night. Not even you can change that."
She inhaled, slow and silently, shaking racing thoughts hidden in the mass of her golden mane. "Why Solterra? Of all places.. why the Kingdom under the Sun?"
The hands of time held them both in her worn palms, both soothing and contorting. Mila shook her head, her viridian gaze swirling with the power of an evergreen forest; Rhoswen hardened once more, her cells crystallising with black blood. She owed the Crows nothing anymore - their friendship had been welcome, and binding, but every moon spent apart she felt that bond unravelling into an obsolete vacuum. There would always be those tender strings tying them together, but time no doubt would fray them down to the very last fibres.
"She will always call to you, Rhos."
A truth, of course. The redhead knew it to be so; for a wolf cannot ever rid itself of the lunar love woven into the very fabric of its being. Caligo might not have been her mother, but she had once, momentarily, been something close to a friend. She wondered how different her life might have been - perhaps she would have held a high position in the court, by her brothers side; or perhaps Reich might never have risen to the throne; perhaps she and Raum would have tied that final knot.
But it was never meant to be; there was too much sand in her head, too much sun in her blood. Solis could have chosen anyone from Denocte, but alas, he had chosen her, and who was she to deny him so? Mila's voice permeated her gentle musing, words burning into her silver-kissed skin. "Perhaps, I will never truly be free of Caligo, but it is to Solis I pledge my faith."
"Why Solterra? Of all places.. why the Kingdom under the sun?"
Rhoswen closed her eyes, her mind racing back to the desert. "Why does winter steal summer's green kiss? Why do all rivers run toward the sea? Because that is the way of the world and the way things are meant to be." She could have listed a thousand reason why her heart belonged to that hard hot land, but she knew it would not change Mila's perception of a place she loathed. A breath, long and low.
"If it makes you feel any better, Raum does not make my life easy." A smirk, bitter albeit tinged with acidic amusement.
