☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "The mouth was open / stretched wide in a call or howl / (there was no tongue) / of agony, ultimate / command or simple famine. / The canine teeth ranged back / into the throat and vanished. / The mouth was filled with darkness. / The darkness in the open mouth / uttered itself, pushing / aside the light."
It’s cold – almost violently cold – on Veneror.
Winter is different, in Solterra. In Solterra, winter only chills at night, and, even then, the chill does not have much of a bite. Here, the wind is so strong that it could nearly knock me from the narrow, winding path up the mountainside. Here, the wind is so cold that it buries itself in my bones and lingers. Here, the wind has a bite that makes my teeth hurt. I proceed up the ice-slick stairs regardless. My hooves slide beneath my weight almost every step; the unsteady movements leave a perpetual sense of unease gnawing in my chest, as though, at any moment, I could fall off the side of the cliff and tumble-
down
down
down.
For what it is worth – although I come from a family of priests, I have never been religious.
I’m sure that things like faith used to matter. I’m sure they used to mean – something. But now that we know that the gods are real, now that we know that they exist, and now, most of all, that we know of their fickleness, I see little point in worshipping them. My slow pilgrimage to Solis’s alter is not a matter of devotion (I am not sure that I am devoted to anything); it is a matter of obligation.
So – I am picking my way up the icy slope, incense and matches hovering in the air alongside me, in spite of the cold.
Ishak is just behind me. I know that he didn’t want to go. The weather on the mountain changes quickly, and, at this time of the year, it can be quite dangerous; blinding snowstorms, vicious hail, sleet so slick that it will send you cascading off the mountainside. Still, I have made this trip every winter before this, and I don’t expect that this time will be much different.
I make this trip every season. You would think that I would have a better grasp of where we are on the mountainside, but I can only say for sure that we are high; I have no concept of the miles we have left to climb, nor the time it will take to reach the peak. (All I can say with confidence is that I am hoping that it is close. There are always fires burning at the altar in the cathedral, and the reprieve from winter’s biting chill would be welcome.)
In the distance, dark clouds are blooming on the horizon, thick and heavy with moisture; I grimace, noting the direction of the wind, and risk a look back over my shoulder at Ishak. “It looks like a storm is moving in,” I say, tilting my head in the direction of the clouds. “We should search for somewhere to wait it out.” Veneror calls to pilgrims, no matter the season. There are plenty of shallow caves and hides on the path up the mountainside, often with supplies left behind to aid fellow travelers.
All we need to do is find the next one.
@Ishak || questionable quality starter RIP but Ilu || atwood, "projected slide of an unknown soldier"
I’d picked them myself, earlier today, because Rook had been out doing Rook things and the bush I had found had looked promising. The berries had been red, like raspberries, and hung down in fat heavy strands. I’d even waited until a cardinal flew down from the canopy and pecked at one, before it'd twisted it off the vine and choked it down its throat.
Of course, I hadn’t waited to see if the cardinal would drop dead to the snow.
I have never felt hunger before as Ma’s only daughter and Elder’s only granddaughter and feeling it now, a wide-open mouth at the bottom of my stomach, has made me irrational.
I should have waited for the bird to die. Or, I guess, to live. I should have trapped it and waited.
But the cardinal is gone, either dead in a snowdrift somewhere else or perfectly alive and perfectly hopping—perhaps only I am affected by the red berries because the Goddess is angry I hadn’t offered some to her first.
If I had a mirror, I could check if my face is faintly green, or if my pupils are blown out black and gaping, like the mouth in my stomach that begs to be fed. I shouldn’t have listened. I fed it, and look where that got me.
I know that I’m close to the capital. We’d passed it last night, skirting around its bubble of light and city sounds and sewer smells. I’d told Rook that I would visit after an evening of rest; he’d said that I was bluffing, that I had lost my nerve when I had smelled it, and especially after I had seen the rat as large as a cat crawl out from under a pile of rubbish.
Angrily, I'd informed him that I hadn’t thought cities would smell so terrible, or host rubbish-digging vermin. He’d laughed, and for once it hadn’t sounded like a keening wail. (It meant, I'd realised later, that he’d been genuinely laughing. Instead of using it for something, like a squalling infant when it wails for its mother’s attention.)
For a while I sit in the snow and weigh the chances of me dying if I don’t go into the city and find medicine. As familiar as I am with death—as dubious as I am, sometimes, if I am truly alive, when I had been born dead—I am still faintly afraid of dying, or know that I should be afraid of it, and anyway Elder isn’t around to catch my soul and keep it for me if I ever lose it.
It is this realisation that at last sends me stumbling out towards the outskirts of Terrastella. Beneath my mask the stench is only faintly bearable; if I don’t die from the berries, I think grimly, then I will die from inhaling the city.
When I make it past the gates—guarded, enormous, and made entirely of something harder than rock—I duck into a shadowy space and take out the small leather pouch I keep tucked in the eye of my mask. I hold my stomach, dump out the gold coins and necklace of sparkling sapphires Elder had slipped to me, and try to recall what she'd told me.
“Exchange it in Terrastella. The necklace will fetch a fair price, and keep the gold for when things are truly desperate.” I know how much I should get for the sapphire necklace, since Elder had made me memorise the conversions of various currencies, so that I would not be swindled. I remember saying to her darkly that anyone who dared swindle me would regret it.
I remember her chuckling, and shaking her head.
The sapphires rattle together like a can of loose teeth when a wave of convulsions rocks through me. Shuddering, I spit into the grey churned sleet and am relieved that there is no blood.
But I cannot buy medicine before I exchange the necklace. For that, I need a buyer. Glaring up at the sky, I send a prayer to the Goddess that the berries will not kill me before sunset, before stepping back out into the jostling streets.
@Luvena | speaks | 'dead' is written here like 20 times please bear with me
It is not often a man has the opportunity to become a living work of art. I suppose, in some respects, my station for the party is a gift; I am entertainment and entertained. I cannot understand the artists very well for their lilting accents; but I learn to understand the strokes of their paintbrushes, and in their flashing mirrors (they brandish them, proudly, with each new work upon my body) I flash a smile back.
They have covered in me in gold, and red, and the mural of their work is entangled in the natural rosettes of my flanks—I am a serpent and a battlefield and a monolith. I have a face of painted eyes and an angel's frightful wings, tonight. I am at once more beautiful and more terrible than I have ever been before.
The crux of this, of course, is that I must also be entertainment. I must smile prettily at those who visit the artist’s corner in the wide courtyard; the night air is pleasant, and nearly brisk with winter’s influence. But I enjoy it. The music from the party drifts toward us, a lull beneath the rhythmic tones of the artist’s conversations as they work upon a trio of peasant brothers. I turn away and gaze beyond the fence of the courtyard, out, out into the night. I wonder what lays beyond—
but there is someone else approaching, and with the artist’s preoccupied, I suppose it is my Princely duty to engage them. I offer my most brazen smile—and, highlighted with the artist’s work, I am sure it is quite striking. “How may I help you?” I ask, but my voice is velveteen, my voice is bedroom poetry and silk sheets. It asks, instead, can I take you to bed?
I offer a wink for good measure, assuming if nothing else the gesture might make their night. It might make me the most memorable of the Princes, for my brazenness, for my indifference. The smile broadens. "Unfortunately for you, the artist’s are otherwise preoccupied. Although, I have to count that as my fortune. What brings you to our party, then?”
"Speech." || @Anyone!
dark summers are honeyed and sulky, full of pomegranates
THE WET GLASS, AND THAT CLOUD which is slowly taking the shape / of an astonishing idea
The reflection to Septimus’s left is bloody.
The Septimus-in-the-mirror’s mouth is dribbling blood; there is some concoction of feathers and skin caught between his canine teeth. Distasteful manners, really – he might be an omnivore, and he might be fey-blooded, but that does not mean entirely disregarding matters of personal appearance. It isn’t as though the reflection can hear him, but he gives it half a roll of his eyes and says, “I believe you have something in your teeth.”
The mechanics of these strange stones are interesting, at least – if somewhat insulting.
Some kind of illusion (malevolent or apathetic; it is hard to tell), he assumes. He’s seen the type; in the Wilds, it is rarely so obvious, but, like will-o’-wisps, they make you doubt your own eyes, and, more importantly, yourself. Septimus is not sure that there is any kind of intent behind these strange reflections, but he’d like to find out, and, if there is an answer, it might well be further in the labyrinthian expanse of spikes and spires.
He drifts between mirrors, largely disregarding the images found within; some of them are familiar, some of them are exact, and some are a twisted, ugly distortion. He wonders if there is something different to the material composition of the different shards, or if there is some difference in their - theoretical – enchantment. If so, what could it be? It could surely explain the discrepancy in image – but, of course, magic often defies explanation.
(It is part of why it is such a fascinating subject. Although Septimus has lingered in Novus for quite some time, now – and not necessarily by choice -, he hasn’t even come close to grasping the rules of magic in this place, if there are any at all.)
Septimus leans in close to one crystal, squinting at the material, lips quirked. It is difficult to make out exactly what it is composed of, particularly with his reflections obscuring his view, but, even if he could see it more clearly, he isn’t sure that he would know what it is. It doesn’t look – or move – like any material he has ever seen before, in all his (many) years of travelling, and he finds himself wondering what it would look like under a microscope. Surely, it would be fascinating.
He does not have a microscope, at the moment, but he can find one later… if he can find a way to take a sample of the stone. He could try to use his antlers, he supposes, but the stone is probably much harder than they are; he isn’t even sure if a blade would be able to chip a bit of it off. Perhaps he could find a shard that is already broken, but he hasn’t seen any, and he feels like he has been walking for quite some time – even when he finds the crystal broken, he rarely sees the pieces shattered on the ground. Even if he can find one, that doesn’t mean that he will be able to take it back to the mainland with him. In the interest of progress (and his own curiosity), however, he is obligated to try.
The Septimus across from him has antlers twined with emerald-green vines; he thinks that he recognizes them from his childhood, but it has been many, many years since then. How nostalgic. He doesn’t allow his gaze to linger. He needs to find a shard; if he does, he might even be able to use it to break off bits of the other crystals, to see if they differ in material like they do in reflective quality.
open! || he's, uhh, literally just vibing. "Speech!"
AND THERE'S NO WAY TO ESCAPE THE VIOLENCE OF A GIRL AGAINST HERSELF
This place is a graveyard.
This place is a graveyard – and she still isn’t sure why she’s returned to it.
Ereshkigal perches on her shoulders, strangely silent; she has that damned look curled across her beak, Seraphina is sure, though she does not look at her for confirmation. Their reflections in the mirror-like shards of crystal ripple as she moves, chasing after them like shadows on the wall. Ereshkigal is a shape-shifter, in one lion-mawed and winged, in one chimeric and scorpion-tailed, in one thousand-eyed and flaming, in one an unrecognizable and tentacled mass. She is always similar to herself, but somehow looking at the other-Seraphinas is more horrifying than looking at the other-Ereshkigals.
She sees – reality, fractured. Recent. She doesn’t look for long; this is not where she wants to think of how she has spent her last few weeks.
She remembers the first one she saw. Still-collared. Still-young. Her features illuminated in the multicolored light of the stained glass windows that used to occupy the walls of the throne room – the ones that were broken and melted down in the Davke attack. She looked at it, and she was sure, somehow, that she was looking at herself the day that she had taken that accursed throne.
It is far from the worst of them, or the most frustrating. She sees herself as a child, dead-eyed and bloody, mimicking her movements. She sees herself a year ago, bony and aching, half-starved and mad-eyed. She sees herself as emissary, herself as queen, herself coated in a layer of blood and ash, herself suspended in those rare moments of peace that she can barely recall anymore; all the goodness is clouded up. (She is quietly sure that it used to be there, in the spaces between each jagged tragedy – but she can only see the spikes, not the lulls.)
But. But. But - the worst ones of all are the ones that didn’t come to pass. There is a Seraphina with a golden crown on her brow rather than a mass of metal scars, an aberration that she would never let come to pass; she is older, and wiser, and the wrinkles around her eyes seem strangely kind. There is a happy Seraphina walking opposite her, lips upturned in a smile that she couldn’t hope to mimic, a certain lovely fondness in her mismatched eyes that Seraphina – the real Seraphina – can barely look at because she cannot imagine it settling across her own face. (A Seraphina that loves on the left, and loves freely, loves with a love that is not borne of duty or obligation or snipped at the bud before it could ever reach blossom.) There is a Seraphina who never removed her collar, staring her down with haunting, dull eyes. She regards her for a moment. Sometimes she misses the apathy, even longs for it. It was easier.
What catches her eye, really catches her eye – as she turns a jagged corner, avoiding a toothy mass of crystalline spikes that poke out from the wall in a veritable trap – is the massive, unblemished chunk of crystal across from her. This reflection does not mimic her. It lies in a heap, like crumpled paper, and she can barely see something white growing near her fallen muzzle.
She shudders; shivers run the length of her spine, and she can’t seem to stop them. Her teeth chatter, hard, and Ereshkigal is laughing, but she can’t tell if it is in her head or aloud – either way, it echoes, raucous.
It’s wretched, seeing herself bleed out in third person. She looks at her reflection, jaw gritted, and she feels a bloom of resent pulsing up inside of her chest. Her eyes train on the bloody gash across her cheek, dripping a puddle on the muddy ground, and then on the crop of moonflowers – pristine white, where they aren’t splashed red with her blood. They are upturned towards the sky, and only barely visible. She resents them. She resents them, with their open-white faces, like she resents the way that the moon stared down on her as she lie bleeding out, like she resents the man who did that to her, like she resents the entitlement that bred him-
(But, then, it was the night queen who saved her. How ironic.)
She forces her eyes away from the sight – she has never been good at looking away from things – and keeps walking.
(She cannot help but look back over her shoulder before the shard is out-of-sight; the surface is broken in her wake, lined with hairline cracks extending from an impact wound in the center.
Her mind can do awful things. She must always silence that second heart that pulses and throbs within her, keep it still – she knows that, but it is much harder to do than it used to be.)
She presses forward, a cascade of white hair trailing behind her like a banner of surrender.
@Bexley|| physically I cannot stand my anticipation for this thread "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
She had intended to spend some time in isolation; and she did, for quite some time. (It is not so difficult to disappear in Solterra – particularly when so much of the world already thought her dead.) But Seraphina had discovered years ago now that life had a way of never quite going the way that she intended. It is perhaps morose and unfair of her to say that her life had more often taken unexpected turns for the worse than for the better, but not every unexpected twist was a terrible one.
Case in point: when welll into her self-imposed isolation, she had been contacted by a familiar face, though not one that she had ever anticipated seeing again.
--
She steps out and into the salt-and-murk air of Terrastella, and she takes a deep breath of the wind. Ereshkigal is quick behind her – a beat of dark-feathered wings and a rush of red-yellow eyes and she is there, coming to roost on the leather armor that protects her shoulders. It is early winter, now, and, though the cold is not biting, it sets Seraphina’s teeth on edge; she is used to the scalding warmth of Solterra, which rarely cools too substantially, even on winter nights. The rest of Novus is different.
The last time she was here, she thinks that it was winter. She recalls – in a soft, gauzy blur – lighting candles for her dead. (There are so many.)
Winter kills like a desert summer. Dry, browned grass crunches beneath her hooves; the trees on the border of the fields have lost their leaves, and their branches have darkened, as though smudged with ash. That said, the rest of the world is still alive. Birdsong emanates from the fields, abrupt and lyrical, and small insects hop from blade to blade in the grass below. If she looks up, she can spot the white belly of a dove, swooping pirouettes in the sky. She feels Ereshkigal shift on her shoulders, dragging her worm-tongue across the curve of her beak and her blade-sharp teeth, and, before she can leap into the air after the dove, she thinks a harsh, Stop in her direction.
Of course – it is no good to try and persuade the demon to stop. Ereshkigal does as she wishes, whether Seraphina wants her to or not, and, besides: she knows better than to try and stop a hungry predator from seeking prey. (It might be crueler to do otherwise.) The vulture is off her shoulders in a flap of massive wings that stir the grass and ground below. Above them, the dove lets out a sound of panic, and Seraphina watches, for a moment, as she tries to escape into the woods.
She gives a soft sigh, then looks back over her shoulder – back towards the tear in reality that brought her here. The creator of the tear had not been slow to follow her, and her gaze steadies on her golden form, rather than the gory scene playing out in the trees. It is strange to see her, almost, but perhaps stranger to see her here, all honey and lilac.
Seraphina has never been an avid conversationalist. Fortunately, her current companion is far less reserved with her thoughts – else she is not sure what she would have done in the time they’d spent together. “How does it feel to be back in Novus, Florentine?”
☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "MOTHER SAYS THERE ARE LOCKED ROOMS INSIDE ALL WOMEN--"
Oh, this is trouble. This is certainly trouble.
When I told Ishak about it, he laughed (in a way that would make anyone a bit cross – even me, and I am hard to trouble), and he told me that he had other things to worry about. I suspect that this is his way of telling me that he is still upset at me for getting lost on the island. I can’t say that I blame him for his annoyance, but I can say that I blame him, firmly, for his apathy.
I slip through the gathered crowds, sidestepping stumbling drunks and overeager dancers. I am small, and not especially striking, and I have always been easily overlooked - I have to be the one to keep an eye out, host or otherwise, lest I will find myself crushed beneath the hooves of some far larger brute. Normally, Ishak would be at my side, but he has been ignoring me for much of the evening. I haven’t caught sight of him in hours – I suspect that he is chasing after some pointless lead, or sneaking around where he doesn’t belong.
As long he doesn’t get caught, it is of little interest to me. If he were to get caught-
(I am no longer sure what I would do about it.)
I pace down the first floor, halting, finally, in the hall of statues.
If the stories are to be believed (and I will refrain from saying whether or not I believe them), I – and all of my siblings – are as a good as living statues, too. I suspect that Pilate’s choice of entertainment is in reference to that. Any opportunity to add to our mystique, our illusion of unearthliness.
I find the hall unnerving. Unnatural. (Among my siblings, I think that I am the most accustomed to what it means to be composed of bone and sinew, muscle and fat; I spend my days intimately acquainted with spilled blood and guts.)
Somewhere, down the hall, I make out the pale-gold shape of my brother, nearly a statue himself. I dare not look at him too closely. I don’t find the sight of him horrifying (I am too used to illness to be startled by it), or even especially depressing; there is some lingering, professional awareness, in the back of my mind, that my brother is dying. It should be devastating, but I don’t feel devastated.
At most, I think that I feel frustrated, and, even then, I am frustrated more by the way his illness injures my pride than I am by the pervasiveness of his condition.
But – I shake off thoughts of Adonai, and then all the rest of my siblings. They are all quite preoccupied; most of them have set up little events around the mansion. I’m sure that I should have done something (there are obligations that come with my family name), but I thought that it would be enough to keep an eye on the health of the partygoers.
That has already come back to bite me, but I digress. I weave nervously between the servants, slipping a bit too close to the backdoors and pieces of art to be mistaken for a simple guest – or one of my more rambunctious siblings. There is a hurried tremor to my steps, however, a certain urgency where I am normally unhurried; oh, this is trouble, and I’m not at all sure what to do about it. A few of the maids eye me, their expressions inquisitive, but I grit my jaw and offer no answer to their stares. I am reluctant to disclose too much of this trouble to anyone outside of the family.
I move down the hall, searching the faces of each statue for signs of life. I know how gossipy they are; if anyone has rumors over what may have happened to that precious thing, it would be them.
Unfortunately, I didn’t bother to memorize them during the preparations. I’d hoped to avoid such spectacle entirely. My jaw gritted, I meander forward, brow creased in worried concentration; if I can’t find it, this will certainly be a fine mess to deal with -
but I have only just begun searching, and the night is still young. Surely, there is still plenty of time to find it.
open! || quick lil setup for the scavenger hunt <3 || warsan shire, "the house"
He's far too cautious an animal to approach the island while the cacophony of light and sound and vibration is still ongoing, but once the sky stops falling and the noise dies down, as light begins to creep over the horizon and illuminate the newly crystalized atoll, the mule's curiosity finally wins out over good sense and he determines to see what there is to see.
It's a short swim, but still, the novelty of events finds him squinting with each powerful stroke, struggling to make sense of the scene ahead before he's even close enough to touch hoof to soil, and when he does - finally - touch bottom, it's not soil beneath him at all, but a hard, multicolored glass that rings and reverberates against the weight of his step.
Everything is glass, or appears to be. The ground is a jumble of broken chips and shards that crunch and crinkle underfoot. Great four and five sided pillars spear upward, some rising far above the clay-colored stallion's head, others only barely tall enough to distinguish from the rest of the rubble, their surfaces impossibly smooth, reflecting recursive images back at him like a carnival fun-house. The effect is dizzying, disorienting, and sometimes blinding, as dawn swiftly transitions to day and the sun lifts free of any earthly obstacle, shining down without restraint.
Claustrophobia rises suddenly in the stallion's gut, as if the images within images have actually surrounded him, captured him, though he knows it's impossible, but so many things he's seen lately have been 'impossible,' and if he cannot trust in the laws of the universe then he must trust in himself, his instincts and intuitions, however illogical they might seem right now.
Fretting, shuffling on the spot, a small sound of anxiety rises in his throat, forced into a strangled, "Hello?" As his skin begins to twitch with nervous energy.
he only turns from the bar when the liquor turns her body warm and numb. Her eyes close, ice-speckled lashes relishing the way she moves as it her joints are unhinged. Water she thinks, no longer ice. And it is true. Her heart feels melted, no longer scraping at her ribs with its every struggling beat. The alcohol has chased away the frost upon her until, at last, she feels free.
Estelle smiles as she walks. Her lips sharpening into a wicked, beautiful smirk as she drinks in the wealth of this Solterran family. She has seen the way they watch each other. With resentment and with love. She does not miss it. Still, in her day dreaming she can feel the way the Matron Tonnerre watched her, expecting more, always, always. But they were always laying their expectations upon the wrong Tonnerre. Estelle was never made to be the perfect Tonnerre they hoped for but Moira… Moira always held much more hope. She wanted, she worked, she perfected everything it meant to be a Tonnerre, even with her wings and her skin hot like fire. As Moira rose a phoenix, Estelle fell from favour.
But she would not have it any other way.
She reaches the next stall. ‘Truth or dare.’ It says, like a challenge. Estelle smiles. Would they ever believe her truths? Others had not. It was why she ended up here. Kicked out from her family, her name rendered to little more than dirt. So dirt she became when she left and wandered with Moira, pilgrims upon the road. Until the ice caught her, the ice that reached down beneath her breastbone and clutched her hot heart and froze it solid. She should have died, she knows. But instead she is here, watching another family crumble beneath the weight of their own expectations and turmoil.
“I will play.” She purrs, the alcohol roaring in her veins like an ice-dragon. I will play and my truths will at last be heard.
he had never thought about what happened when she died. Whatever she had been expecting, this was not it. Estelle never expected to feel so much. The way her heart felt to her ribs like bark upon a tree. Each breath was raw with friction, each breath was like a frigid winter raged inside her body. Frost crept its fingers along her skin. When she was dying, the pain of its touch had turned her beautifully numb. But now, in.. what? Death? Her nerves had reawoken. There is something that charges in her veins whilst the frost creeps. She can hear the crackle of it in her ears. It is the sound of running, like wild horses, their footfalls landing with the crackle of static.
Yet Estelle is not the only thing strange in death. The world is, entirely, other. It is not as the talks of mortals ever suggested. There is no sorrow here, nor repentance nor even joy. There is only chaos. The world trembles and the ground reaches up with bolts of lightning, up, up to the sky that crackles and undulates like waves. Clouds crash against each other and each is struck through with silver moonlight. The sky rages and the rising lightning spreads like a web across the sky.
The earth is slick glass and atop it crimson snow blows by pushed by a wind that breathes in time with her struggling heart. One breath, another, another.. Each pause in between is as if she has held her breath. The snow pushes along like the blood. It is cold to her feet.
There is no green here, there is no trace of an earth she has ever known. All of this place is chaos and desolation. There is no sign of life, there is nothing but the light of ascending rods of lightning…
Somewhere Estelle’s heart had stopped and before it started a great magic twisted in her veins and pushed, pushed her through a gauze veil and out into a strange limbo, a curious dreamworld. A stallion looms out of the darkness. His skin reminds her of what the world should be, dark brown, familiar. “Where are we?” She asks him as lightning suddenly bolts for the sky from beside her. It captures the silver of her skin and the frost that branches across her torso, feathered like frost and alive like electricity.
“Who are you?’
@Dune - oh gosh this is /awful/ I have been fretting about writing her so much. The next will be better. Or else I despair.
