Dust yourself off, girl, keep your chin up
You wanna hold a gun but they made you a pinup
A
utumn days are spinning away into winter ones like grains of sand. I've always thought it was strange, how the desert both changes and doesn't, a new shape every day but all its old bones are the same: the dunes, the canyon, the city, going on endlessly, crumbling and rebuilding and crumbling again like any of us were meant to be here at all.
Then there is we, a family crumbling, too, like so much sandstone. I wonder if this is our fate, to return to the sand that had borne us, to fall to pieces until we are no more than another old bone buried out in the desert.
I would never admit it, but to think this makes me sort of sad. It would not be so hard, to embrace each other like brothers and sisters. It would not be so hard to look in someone's eye and feel something that is not our carefully cultivated apathy or our tepid politeness or our-- anything.
I think this is why I prefer the servants, watching them cook in the kitchen when I rise for the morning, sit among the baking nut bread and oranges sliced into halves and pretend that they see me for what I am and what I am not, which is more than I can expect from any of us. (Myself included, though I loathe to admit it.)
I don't expect to see him when I do. It is like looking at a stranger, like there is someone that is not my brother skulking through the hall with his eyes--too blue now, blue enough to make me feel sick sometimes--far off and distant. He looks like one of our statues, I think, something unreal examining something equally unreal, like he's looking into a mirror and not at stone carved to suggest something like him rather than be it.
I didn't realize I had gotten so used to the estate without him. I didn't realize that I missed him, like I miss all of them, until I am looking at Adonai and I do not recognize the man he now is.
"What are you doing?" I call over his shoulder. My voice is quiet, and smooth, but I don't know if it's to keep from startling him or to keep from being heard at all. "I feel like I haven't seen you in years."
In spite of my disdain for that practiced patience, the faces carefully drawn into inoffensive lines, I realize mine is one of these, now.
I wonder if it's because he feels like a stranger.
i go red hot like a demon
i go ghost for no damn reason
stupid boy think that i need him
I
n the street, someone is laughing. Below me there is an ongoing festival, Solterra's tribute to the oncoming winter, a celebration of warm days and frigid nights, not much different than every other frigid night. Overhead the sky is smeared with red and purple and blue, with just the crown of the sun still visible above the horizon. It is an orange sliver in the distance, ringed in red-- and i can see all of it, from here.
Perched on the roof with my neck stretched over the low wall, and its edges pressed into the skin of my cheek, I feel more like a proper beast than any other time. It is easy to be a cat from here, hunched over in the dark, watching mice scurry by. I am obscured from the street by the glow of a lantern on the other side of our estate wall, I think, just a silhouette behind it, crouched low in waiting.
At least this is what I decide, as the minutes tick by and I search faces for recognition, or even just eyes, turned up my way.
There are none. I breathe sharp enough that it makes a sound, the sort of sound our father would have been mortified to hear, inelegant and petty and crass-- and slide my head from its resting place, floating back through the door like the ghost that I am.
If I am self absorbed, if I am vaguely narcissistic, it is only because as I descend the stairs toward the office, there is a feeling growing in me that I am perhaps not here at all. I sometimes wonder if I am a ghost, especially these days when our family is so bitter and broken. I wonder if I am really dead, and have been dead for so long I've forgotten just how.
Maybe I died with our mother. How can one know?
If I am self absorbed it is because my self is somehow fractured, I think, or at least not working properly. There is still a rock on my stomach when I knock on the door and push it open before the single servant in the room can be sent to do it for me. I step into the room with a rock in my stomach and a calm smile on my face and say--
"Pilate, I'm surprised you're not at the festivities."
And, looking at him, looking at a face I have literally known my whole life, that hasn't changed except to become sharper as it grows-- I feel real again.
ell hath no fury like woman scored. I read that, in a play once. I think of my own family, and how we handle, well anything. I wonder if Hell can still know a fury if its silent.
It is perhaps one of the last truly warm days before winter comes. Already, I long for summer and our frequent trips to the beach house on the coast. Days where my brothers and sisters and I forget our lessons and we are children once more. Our grandfather comes with us, no longer staying in his own large home, his own wife passed just two summers ago. Granny Colette had been a fine woman in the Foster family. Not born a Foster, married one, just like my father, but a Foster all the same by our standards. She was quick to judge and play favorites, but she was also warm. If you went up to their own beach house early in the morning, back when we had been small, you could wake her up and she would have the servants make warm biscuits, as many as you wanted before everyone else woke up. She took us berry picking, saying how us Foster children didn't know how to get our hands dirty while she lavished in diamonds and silks.
She took us to charity events she planned, let us dress up and put on her jewelry and dance on the floor as if we were grown ups. Snuck us each a sip of wine, saying not to let the red stain our lips.
“Know how to mourn with dignity,” my mother had said at the back of the church at the funeral of my grandmother. Everyone kept coming up to us, apologizing on our loss. “It is the Foster way.” As if keening on your knees were in some way, crazed As if their dignity was so astounding—that it could eat away the pain. I still cried when she died, in front of the mirror, with no one around, those big, fat, ugly tears. I have never looked less like a Foster in my life and it was—freeing.
My quill scratches against paper, making notes of alleyways for another map, another improved map of Terrastella for the Foster library. The map I carry has the basic components of the city, all the main streets, the main shops, even side streets and smaller boutiques and bars. But there are these places, forgotten, tiny slivers where life bleeds red and hot. Dusk Court offers the lavish lifestyle, it is even so upfront about its swamp, but there are places they would rather be swept under the rug. I have heard of Night Markets, if never having been, I wonder if it is the rug where everything we sweep ends up. I wonder too how many jewels have been accidentally pushed away.
I move down quieter corners, where I get stared at because I am unfamiliar, or they recognize me and wonder why I am so far from our libraries, our mansions, our money. I draw the alleyways like they are veins from the heart, to the extremities. We concentrate so much on the heart the we forget where the blood must go, lose blood to the arms and the legs, the fingers, the toes, and we lose something we so easily forget how much we need.
I wont let any piece of Terrastella be forgotten.
Another alleyway, this one bustles with life, I am noticed about as much as one would take care to look at a brick wall. This world is loud.
I love it.
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Caspian
ude Addlestone did not want to get out of bed. He pulls a reluctant glance at the clockface across the wall and stifles a groan that he knows won't get him far; it is 4.15AM and if his father bursts in to find his youngest son tucked still beneath his wool sheets, he'll be handing out fifteen belt-licks across the knee like presents at a party.
He rises, blinking sleep from the crook of his eye, bothering not to run a comb through his unruly auburn curls. Dock labourers were hardly known for their polished fashion and Jude, even at the keen age of two, was no different. His father always said the harbour left a mark on its men: they did not need to make their own.
Awake now and resigned to the day ahead, Jude grabs an apple (bruised from the games of catch it had endured) before weaving through the disarray that was the Addlestone kitchen come morning. He flies out the door before a hand could twist his ear or worse: burden him with errands -- out and on he disappears into the blue dawn.
It is 4.35AM by the time he reaches the docks and the sun is knocking with knuckles too wide for the water to hold. The waves dip and shiver; they rage against a light that seeks to steal the secrets they keep. Denocte has always held the southernmost tip of the isle as her treasure and it is not hard to see why. When the sun meets the sea, when each giant must lose something of itself, the clouds seem to hold their breath. Jude does not think he will ever tire of the sight of it.
----
The first ship of the day comes into port at 7.00AM sharp and by now Jude is sweating. As he swings the last case of freight down onto the loading bay, he steals a glance at the vessel as his comrades guide her in. He has seen it before, once, perhaps at the beginning of last winter when the leaves underfoot had finally turned grey. Tarin, a big bull of a stallion, bellows into the morning air and slowly the ramp begins to lower. And that is when he sees her.
A girl -- no, a woman -- standing against the plum-red sky with hair that reaches her hip. A woman with glasshewn horns and forget-me-not eyes and a face that opened something in his chest. He swallows. She moves. Why does he recognise her skin? The curve of her cheek? The way the world sinks as she steps onto Denoctian soil, as though it had been waiting for her all this time.
Tarin thrusts a chideful shoulder into Jude's flank, urging him to crack on, and for a moment the boy glances away. That was all it took. When he turns back, yearning and hungry, she is gone. Lost to the crowd and the life of the court he loved. His heart sinks, and he wonders softly, if she had ever been there at all.
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
Dusk.
He cannot help but think of her in this liminal hour now. He thinks the twilight might be forever changed for him. All because of Elena. The dimming of the sky was a time he relished. He always looked beyond the ebbing light and toward the blooming dark. It bled like ink, sinking its fingers into everything. Darkness consumed the light it swallowed it, just as Tenebrae was made to do. The monk swallowed down darkness like water, he smothered it. Elena made him need it. He swallowed light like water no longer because it was part of his existence, but because he needed it, like his body needed water. Elena made him need her. She had come to be even more than that. Oxygen. But Tenebrae, ever the pious man was determined to choke. Anything to remain loyal to his goddess.
Yet here he is - a choking man - walking through the twilight and looking not for where the darkness consumes but for where the light still gleams, golden. He wanders through the sun’s final moments, feels the warmth of butter-yellow light upon his body. The trees sigh, their boughs creak. Tenebrae feels that noise within his bones. He carries a weight too heavy for his bones to bear. His soul is crushed. It has not felt whole since Elena, since Boudika. There are pieces of him missing.
He turns from the light and feels the way his wounds twinge. They feel hot and wet, as if their grief is still too acute to heal. Not yet his whip wounds weep. Not yet they sob with his tattered soul.
Yet… How can his soul and his heart feel at once so utterly broken, so utterly mutilated and yet so utterly complete? It seems to drift upon wings, carried upon an elated wind, until he remembers what he has done. His religion steals the wind, his lack of faithfulness sends him falling. He has been so terribly, terribly unfaithful to his god, to Elena, to Boudika, to himself. His whip wounds weep, they are multiple in number - he could double them, triple them, but it would never be enough.
The woodland thins. Trees fall back into a small clearing. Nestled into the woodland the crumbling stone skeleton of the old Night Order’s keep juts out like old weathered joints. He has barely taken in the holy ruins before he hears the sound of another stepping up beside him. He does not look to see her. He knows it is Elena. His heart both falls and rises, it makes his stomach clench and his whip wounds ache. This place is littered with memories of the Night Order but the monk’s mind is filled with memories of the night beside the lake.
He turns to Elena, drinks in the gold of her - like the sun, like salvation. But salvation is shadows, or at least it should be. Tenebrae reaches for her, as any ailing man would, and presses his brow upon hers. He breathes in the scent of her and remembers, everything, for the last time.
“Elena.” He cannot help the way her name sounds like a prayer, like hope. He wants to fall into her and never resurface. But he cannot. “I am glad you are here,” it feels like a lie and a truth both at once. He dreads her presence and yet he turns to her, less a man of shadows than a plant seeking her as its sun.
Brick by brick, you build your self worth on what shaky ground you can find. Sometimes it's easier than others-- your uncle has been gone long enough that the soldiers flitting their way to the shop ask for you, see your face and the bright orange of your crest and look at you with a startling sort of clarity that you'd never experienced before. Sometimes you take their order-- a dented breastplace, a new spear head, detailing on gauntlets or quivers or (rarely) bags-- and it fills you with some of that old sense of knowing, more than you know almost anything else, that this is you: Hugo Arkwright, the Maker.r
This is one of those days.
You are humming away at your counter, carefully tooling leather to pass the time. You peel off one thin, tan ribbon at a time, watching the outline of a cobra, scales and all, surface from the brown mire of the panel. Outside the cold autumn sun is high and the wind is blowing crisp red and brown leaves down the street. Inside it is warm and dark, as it always is.
In between, where you often find yourself, there is you: tall, black and gray and white and orange, and singing, loud enough that heads turn as you pass. You try not to imagine they're looking because you sing so rarely, anymore. You pretend it's because it's bad--which it still might be--and not because it is shocking.
Truth be told, it's a little of both.
As the the last curve of the last beveled scale falls away, the little blue girl wanders her way toward the shop.
You've seen her before; you've seen everyone before, you think with a hint of resentment, it is just that they never quite remember you. Everyone remembers Rickard. They don't think of little Hugo, Charlie's age when he was in the back of the shop, hammering steel. They don't remember your careful attention to detail, your heart that would swell as you passed a new dagger to the front and watch it practically sparkle in the shaft of light through the doorway.
You wonder where that Hugo went.
Today you are as close to that Hugo as you get.
"You're... Charlie, right?" You smile at her. It looks genuine. It feels genuine. It sort of catches you off guard. "What are you up to?"
And when my time is up, have I done enough?
Will they tell my story?
Gritting down a wince, Caine rolls his shoulders back and forth, back and forth, the pain florescent, until he realises what he is doing and stops. A line of bright blood oozes out of the sutured flesh, down his leg, and into the wilting grass.
He has descended halfway down from the Veneror, and he thinks—though he doesn't know, with any certainty—he is approaching the border of Dusk. It is difficult to navigate, when everything is so close together. When trees loom above you instead of shrink below you, a ripple of green, red at the edges. Paths fork in and out of the forest like snake tongues, strips of brown against green, and with only a glance and a tilt of his wings he knows he is flying north, towards Solterra, or south, towards Denocte, or southwest, towards the marshlands of Terrastella.
From the ground, he knows nothing except that paths eventually end somewhere.
For a time he walks, ignoring the way his blood marks his passage like a trail of melted licorice. He could try flying again, though that would only tear his scars open more and Caine knows that doing so would not be ideal.
He has slit enough throats in the past to know how vital blood is to the body.
It would also hurt, and while he has never been averse to pain, when there is only himself and the little spotted rabbits that dare to peek at him through thorny blackberry bushes, they are too small and flighty to work as good distractions.
There is one looking at him now, its pink nose wriggling nervously in the air. He extends a wing out towards it. When it flees, white tail bobbing, he cannot help but feel a stab of melancholy.
I should have brought bandages, he thinks to himself dryly. The top of his wings are coated in blood. But he has only his shadow cloak, draped carefully behind his wings so that blood would not seep into it, and the cloth is entirely too fine, entirely too magical, to be used for such a benign purpose. It would be like using Saint Volta to gut a rabbit.
Sacrilegious, Caine thinks, and his mouth quirks into a glancing grin.
His head bobs heavily on his neck. He has walked from dawn and it is now near night, the sky painted in sleepy lavenders and pinks. If he squints his eyes he thinks he sees Terrastella, its ivory gates shining like a beacon at the end of the road, where trees thin to rolling meadow.
But it is still so far, and his head is heavy. Groaning, Caine presses his cheek into the trunk of a maple and breathes in the sharp, honeyed scent of its sap.
When he closes his eyes, he imagines himself wading knee-deep into a sea of blood.
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
Tenebrae weeps. It is not just tears upon his cheeks but sweat trickling down his spine, stinging as it seeps into open wounds. His back is a garish lattice that gleams ruby red slices in the lamp light. He walks as if the wounds do not ail him. They do. But the worst pain, the worst wounds are invisible, unseen. Though their agonising effects tear the man apart.
The sun gleams with her midday light. She bathes the holy mountain, reaching her rays of light into the mouth of Caligo’s temple. Though she searches, the sacred area is empty, but for Tenebrae upon his knees. He is far, far out of the reach of Solis’ seeking sun.
Dark, limp anguish bends him low to the ground. The weight of his foolishness is too much. Always the monk has been reckless and now he pays for his misdeeds in blood and tears and a broken heart. Tears drip despairingly upon the floor; black as ink. They write his every sin upon the cold stone ground. Ever the sunlight reaches out to shine light upon them.
Tenebrae cannot see for his tears and remorse and even if he had dared to lift his head and look upon his goddess’ altar, he would not be able to see it for the messy grief that films his eyes.
Is there any vow he has managed to keep sacred? This temple is full of his memories. In one he is a boy, pledging himself to his goddess. He swore to her and only her. Has only been a few years and already he has become distracted, defiling himself with the desire for women? So many have gone before him, monks in their older age who have never dared to even consider all the things that Tenebrae has done. Why him? Oh foolish, wrongful man.
The whip cracks against his spine and bites into his flesh. His shadows tremble at the sight of Tenebrae: master of his own punishment. The instrument quakes in his grasp, yet he does not lower it, nor cease with the endless crack, crack, crack. The noise cuts silence and flesh, it is a reminder - a stroke for every immoral thought. Laid low with the burden of his punishment. There is no strike that lessens his pain, his grief, his wretchedness. Does Caligo watch and know how he is unclean? Does she know that a worthless man kneels before her now, his faith too weak, his lack of self control too strong.
This is the only choice he has left himself with:
Leave the Order or renounce his ways, devote himself more fully to Caligo - if she would even keep him as a monk amidst her ranks. He has placed women above her.
Women.
It is not just for Caligo and the Order that he weeps. But for Boudika and Elena. Love, love, love. That word blistering now upon his tongue is so full of joy and yet… Oh terrible temptation. He has lead them three along a terrible path: He and Boudika and Elena. He traversed the path like a drunken man, oblivious, distorted, reckless. But he was not drunk - except upon lust, upon want.
What will it be now he has come to this time of reckoning? To be a monk or leave the Order…
He swallows her and the darkness convulses. It’s wretched black is like a noose about the monk’s throat. Tenebrae is in love and yet, is it enough? Like a fool is parcels up the box within his heart and thinks he knows the cost of shutting it away. He thinks, still high upon ignorance that he knows his feelings, he understands the costs of his next actions.
he walks like a ghost: head held high, wings tucked tight, body tense and ready for a fight. Exhaustion is written in every line of her body, every nook and cranny and crevice all the way from wilting hair, loose and flat in a darling disarray, down to the droop of her eyelids, the way her tail is not carried like a flag in the sky, but like a silk sheet dripping over the ground.
This is the Moira that Tenebrae knew in his temple alongside his brethren. A girl eaten and spit out by the world, a girl destroyed, a girl crumbling, a girl who gave and gave and gave until she just gave out. Oh, her heart beats but she doesn't feel it beating fiercely. That fire, the indomitable Moira Tonnerre is shaken by how deeply she feels felt, by how thoroughly and completely another could destroy her. In the temple, with Tenebrae and Sut and the rest of the Night Order, she was a wraith in the halls at all hours of the day and night. Skinny nose pressed against scrolls long into the hours of darkness, gentle hands were covered in dirt when the sun shone on their vast array of plants. The garden was huge, well tended, and flourishing. She helped it along as best she could, getting lost in row after row of herb and flower, contently pulling weeds, watering shrubs, and choosing vegetables for dinner.
If there was one thing she missed, whenever the man cloaked in shadows and dressed in brown asked, it was the sweets of the city.
Eventually, Moira returned from her retreat into the mountains and resumed her duties. It is here, now, how the monk will find her. Like a snake in the courts, she bustles smoothly through the halls; a Tonnerre never rushes, never seems to be in a hurry - no, they simply glide and float never appearing to touch the ground from room to room, meeting to meeting. Even though she has long been gone from her home for so many years now (three, four?) she still holds the stature of a Tonnerre in the straightness of her back, the squareness of her shoulders, the curve of her neck and coyness of her glance.
Although, unlike the days of girlhood that clung desperately to her skin for many, many years, Moira has a warmth in those once distant eyes. When she looks at another, she truly looks. They are not portraits or patients - still lives or creatures to heal - but people of her court, people visiting her court, simply...people.
The business of the day is coming to a halt and Moira feels the way it winds down. Tiredness that once plagued her, fatigue heavy on her brow, still escapes her just as it did at the temple. No matter how exhaustion loves to find her as easy prey, Moira cannot escape the call of insomnia that has her bidding others of the court goodnight as they retreat to their chambers. The halls of the keep empty and the stalls of the market grow quiet. It is here, now, in these hours of dawn, that the woman in red leaves her library and her study, leaves her warm rooms and the kitchen in the lower levels of the keep. Bright eyed, very much alive, she ventures onto the cobbled and sea-shell streets of Denocte to watch as her people find their way into the arms of lovers, parents, brothers; curl themselves tight in blankets and houses, shutting doors tight to keep out the heat of the day and autumnal breezes that are known to rush from their Oceanside trading ports.
Down she goes further and further along winding streets, meandering through alleys and beside small gardens still found within the city until, at last, she reaches a pier. The ocean beckons to her like Asterion does - her heart still thundering, still storming, still shattering but quieter at the thought of him - like Michael does - he who finds her with fresh fruit (strawberries and dragon fruit, sweet apple turnovers and more) to make sure she does not die (not yet) when he's only just learned to hold her tight. It is not the ocean she looks to though, instead golden eyes find safe passage on the edge of a ship slipping in and out of a distant line of rolling clouds just atop the water. Brows draw down, eyes narrow as her skinny nose goes up.
Perhaps they would dock and trade with her people. Perhaps they would be nothing but trouble.
The tides are too low to come in safely, and so for now the woman waits with a weathered eye on the horizon.
{ @Tenebrae"speaks" notes: I hope this is alright! }
he evening is unremarkable. Typical Terrastellan fall evening. There is a warm front that finds itself blowing across the ocean, winding through the streets. It graces against my hair a little less than a lover, little more than a friend. It smells like salt and sea. My siblings and I used to pretend to be pirates when we went to the beach house. Bennett pretended to have a peg leg. We haven't played make believe in a long time. I don't even know who I would pretend to be anymore.
(Maybe a rainstorm, that makes the ship creak and rock and groan.)
(Flood it. Sink it. Destroy it.)
We are going to a charity event, always going to a charity event. Our family gives money to one cause after another. I know there are ulterior motives, we give enough money and everyone else keeps quiet in any regards to our family. We have a free pass. It is rare though to see a Foster actually get their hands dirty though.
My eldest sister braided my hair, as if I would even be noticed in a room full of important people, when really all they want to do is look at my parents. We, their children, are their accessory. Our job is to smile for the second they look at us, all ducks in a row, before we are dismissed. Still, it looks nice I suppose, not a hair out of place. I looked up at her, leggy, tall, with impossibly dark eyes and cheek bones that could cut glass and I wondered if I will ever be as beautiful as she is.
There’s no buffet, and I am not to drink until my next birthday, so I ask for a water. It is disappointingly bland. I’m used to my water with a squeeze of lemon. I drink it quickly before handing the glass back to one of the servers. They offer me wine, but I politely decline. I’ve had champagne before, for big celebrations: New Years, weddings, graduations. The first time I had it I squished my face as it bubbled on my mouth, I had just been coloring before being dragged away to this party. The next time I remembered being scolded and so I made the same face, but I made it inside my head, I had been playing in the gardens when I was brought to that graduation. Another time, I was handed the glass and sipped it, for the first time finding it pleasant, I had just finished an archery lesson. And still one more time, I took the glass and drank it in one swallow, the gardener’s daughter had just told me this was the last time she would have tea with me, she couldn't see me anymore.
She has her back turned to me, but I recognize her, it is the duty of every Foster to know the current run of politics, who is who. She is unbothered and I really should leave her alone, let her enjoy her evening, but I’ve always been a bit of a hopeless child. “Commander,” I say when I reach her. My smile still feels cold no matter how I try to to warm it. Fake something enough and you no longer remember what genuine feels like. “I…” I stutter, it’s unbecoming of me. “I hope you don’t mind the intrusion, everyone seems to be mingling and I guess I have given into the peer pressure,” I try to jest, no matter how dreadful I am at it. I blink steel grey eyes.
“I’m Isabella Foster.”
I wont remember all the details of this evening, just as I do not remember the details of a lot of evenings. Someone, one of my classmates, at my lesson tomorrow will ask me: ‘What did you do last night?’ I will shrug halfheartedly, offer little more than a simper and say “Not too much, a charity event with my family.” And then I will pause and think back:
“Oh, but I did meet the Commander.”
code by rallidae
picture colored by Elidhu
@Marisol
