Vercingtorix hears the man he stole the Soul of rules this city.
He cannot help but wonder what it must be like, being reigned by a Sovereign missing a fundamental piece of himself. They have done studies, in Oresziah, on the effects of Binding. The way the memory begins to fade; on the island it is slower, a transgression of years. He can imagine, however, without the magic tie to the island that Orestes must already be gone.
Now, he must be a golden shadow of who he had once been. A ghost.
Vercingtorix, surprisingly, does not find much pleasure in the thought. Nor, however, does he find guilt. He, as a foreigner, watches the going-ons of the marketplace and eventually passes through the center of the town into a region beyond. The lot is clearly owned by someone, but they must have enough land this particular parcel is of little concern. There are overgrown gimlet eucalypts and fierce understory of blue bush daisy.
He walks among the blue bush daisy until he finds a well. And once there, he hauls the water to the surface and begins to drink from it. A bead of sweat tracks it way down his neck, and the midday sun glares like a celestial eye.
What it must be like, he wonders, to be in a place so unlike home? Solterra is like nothing he has ever seen before, and, somehow, it speaks to him.
no escaping what is coming
eternity of being nothing
There had been one thing most awful about her pregnancy besides the nausea, and that was her having to avoid the bar.
If someone asked Morrighan if she had a drinking problem, she would deny it, but it could very well turn into a bigger issue if she's not careful. There had been many nights she spent here just thinking and thinking and thinking. Some nights it was about Al'Zahra, some about Maeve, some about herself.
She'll often get stuck in a loop of when she told Al'Zahra the news. Her stupid little vulnerable heart was full of so much hope to start a family and maybe having some good in her life. How wrong she had been, how so very wrong. She was a fool to think Al'Zahra cared about her in any way besides just some fun fling. She was a fool to think she was special in the woman's eyes. They knew nothing about each other. They didn't know what the core of their souls looked like or how their hearts ticked. They only knew the lust and fire and smoke. It had been all passionate in the moment, but that was it. It was just a moment, nothing that ran deep.
Did she want that? Morrighan does not know. She doesn't even know why or how she's supposed to raise a daughter. One that is so full of light and life that makes Morr realize just how much she's lost. Did she ever hold that childlike innocence, or was it taken from her immediately by the war and the need to be a soldier? Did the fire consume it, never to be seen again?
She looks at Maeve and sees who she could've been. She looks at her and sees another fool. She does not want her daughter to turn out like a failure.
Failure.
The word repeats in her mind as she takes the last sip of her third drink. Her thoughts are becoming scrambled and her vision is blurry, but she can just make out the couple sitting nearby. They are close, they have that look, that stupid, lovestruck look. She looks over at them with wildness in her eyes.
"Yeah, don't get used to that. It's all fun at first and you think it's forever but then they rip your heart out of your chest like some fucking plaything," she spits - literally spitting on the floor as she talks. The couple is utterly repulsed. "None of it's real! None. It's all lies." She is rambling now and her speech is slurred, but she orders another drink anyway. The bartender looks on with concern at just how obviously drunk she already is. He warily fills a shot glass and passes it to Morrighan. Fortunately for him, she doesn't notice the difference.
"Bullshit, it's all bullshit," she mutters and guzzles down the entire shot.
Fuck you, Al'Zahra.
She took Maeve to Dawn Court for some festival and they were supposed to be back by now. With Morr's luck, she probably lied about that too or lost her daughter who knows where in Novus.
The seagulls are careening toward the sky in a wild spiral. Vercingtorix recognises a feeding frenzy when he sees one; it starts out at see and with each push-pull of the waves it draws in, in, in, and hits the shore. The seagulls continue to careen wildly, like a children’s top spinning, spinning, spinning—he can hear their cries from where he rests at the junction where the forest meets the sea.
He is somewhere at the end of Viride Forest, at the mouth of the Rapax where the sea gushes in. But he is looking further down the narrow stretch of beach; further, and further, where the rocks give way to the body of some creature he does not recognise. Eventually, Vercingtorix walks toward it. He feels empty—not powerless, but empty—without his old fishing spear. Naked, more vulnerable than he would like. But he retains the most natural of weapons; they weigh at his head, they strengthen his neck, and he feels the way that when he dips head just so they jut forward.
The carcass belongs to a shark. Vercingtorix does not go near enough to disturb the feast; he hangs back, in the shadow of the trees-to-the-beach. He is a figure there, dark and silhouetted against the backdrop of foliage. He waits to see what else the carcass dredges up from the sea; even from here, he can tell the thing that killed the beast had teeth and strength enough to tear chunks through the shark’s thick, primordial scales.
Somewhere far off, he knows the sun is rising. But not here. Not yet. The early morning remains cool and dark, and he appraises the scene as one appraises a hunter’s trap; with mild, morbid curiosity.
Vercingtorix does not know when, exactly, he lost himself. But he has, and it shows in the hard detachment of his turquoise eyes. Once, he would have approached the scene with a squad of other soldiers, if not a platoon. He would have been flanked by infantrymen with their spears poised and ready.
Now, he is alone. The wind tosses his mane into his eyes; and Torix tosses his head, to dislodge the strands from where they obscure his view. The sea shushes up against the shore, and the shark’s blood continues to colour the sand. Torix sees, now, that the kill is still steaming. Still hot in the crisp, autumn air.
YOU RESIST
STRANGERS UNTIL A STRANGER MAKES THE OLD HUNGERS
BRUTALLY WAKE
When Dune opens his eyes, everything is white and blue. The first thing he sees is the sky, a shade of turquoise so bright it gives the impression that the sun is on the other side of a thin blue shell. The first thing he thinks is this is a nightmare just waiting to happen. The blue is begging to be cracked open, skin peeled back like a hard-boiled egg. God (and maybe the dreamer, maybe not) only knows what lies on the other side.
The next thing he sees, as he lowers his gaze to the earth, is the city. It is huge and sprawling and made, best as he can tell on first impression, entirely of white sand. It is deathly quiet, and again he wonders what nightmares might be waiting here for him.
The young stallion steps forward into the white city, noting the smell of the sea despite the lack of a breeze or any kind of ocean sounds. He quickly finds that the streets he first thought empty are not-- there’s just no one alive. Instead statues line the streets, carved with exquisite detail. He leans in closer to one in particular. The stallion depicted is rearing up as though about to attack, face twisted in anguish and terror. Dune loses track of time as he looks at the statue and its remarkable detail, until the sudden awareness of another presence-- it must be the dreamer-- pulls him out of the spell.
The bay whirls around, ears pinned defensively and body coiled like a snake waiting to strike. Judging from his reaction you might think he was the dreamer, and she the intruder.
e lingers in the prairie longer than he should, long after the tolling of the midnight bells signal an end to the night.
The smell of spices and lavender and bonfire smoke still drift across the ground as smoke, the sound of hoofbeats pounding the grasses flat (pounding his heart flat with them). But the music is fading now - just the lingering strains of a lone lyre playing as a shadow of the tempos that had once reigned over the other festivities - and with it, all of Denocte seems to quiet. A pair of mourning doves descend in the spaces between the booths, walking side-by-side as they look for left over bits of bread and fruits.
It had always amused him how different his court was from Denocte; how those of Delumine would just now be rising to greet the day, even while the night court was at last slipping between their sheets. There was something fascinating about watching the court at this hour: it felt like he was looking in on a private part of their lives, a part often unseen by the rest of Novus. A couple weaving through the festival stalls exchanged a passionate kiss before parting ways; two young stallions supported a third friend between them as they stumbled off to a shared home; a mother stopped to buy a sweet pastry from a merchant’s stall, which she split between two drowsy-looking children. It was another side of the night court, a side he felt oddly privileged to witness, making him feel a certain closeness with the southeastern realm, rather than apart from it.
As the mare herded her children back towards the city, Ipomoea approached the merchant. The pastry window was mostly-empty now, and fewer treats lined the miniature shelves; but still the man smiled at him.
"Most of my wares are gone, sir," he began to apologize, "but anything you see here is fair game."
"Sold out means a successful night." The man smiled wider and bobbed his head. There was something warm in the aged lines on his face, something that had Ipomoea smiling back.
By the time he leaves the stand he has a small wrapped lemon cake and steaming rose tea, and his pockets are several coppers lighter. But with the distant Arma mountains brightening in the distance, and the lake shivering like a mirror nearby, winking at him from afar as he wanders through the stands, and the beginnings of birdsong echoing in the distance - the night court is beginning to feel more like coming home again.
The first statue in the garden looks to Vercingtorix like a death-throe. The head is thrown back, the marble hair whipped into a flurry of forever stilled movement. The teeth, bared in a grimace, do not gleam with the sun or the moon at this hour; the twilight basks the marble in a hazy glow of grey and blue.
There is a part of him that wishes it were curiosity that compels him forward, into the garden paths. There is a part of him that nearly convinces himself it is curiosity, and instead; Vercingtorix finds the thing that compels him is disdain. The marble emblems and nearly magical statues evoke within him the fear of the archaic, the fear of a man who has never known magic as anything save evil. This fear sours in his heart but does not escape his body as fear, no, but as disdain. He goes into the garden because he hates its statues, and refuses to fear them. He goes into the gardens not to admire the intricate foliage, the autumn blooms, or the ivy that seems to shift as if compelled with conscience—
No, Vercingtorix enters follows the trail in order to confront some inner demon, and feed it. The stallion, to him, is the end of the path; it marks the end of everything.
Another man would pause to admire the chrysanthemum and vibrant pansies; to pause and ponder at the celosia (which to him looks like the innards of fish’s gills, fibrous red and naked); or the purple aster, the violet dianthus, the sweet alyssum. Everything seems purple and red, dramatic and deep, envious green. Vercingtorix sees more green in the garden than he has his entire life combined, it feels; and the green is understated by the flowers and the strange statues (of bears, of stags, of pearl-winged doves). His homeland had been barren; rock and grass and the odd, storm-weathering tree.
Vercingtorix stops at a statue of a hippocampus. The eyes are inlaid black opal, gleaming with all the hues of fire. In a ridge down the marble statue’s back protrudes blue celestite crystals that mimic scaling; the belly, too, is covered in moonstones so bright they shine even in the darkness of twilight. A long, fish-like tail is bound with overgrown ivy and somehow the deep green begins to resemble waves in a storm.
He begins to recognise that he is not looking at the statue alone. All evening, other visitors had passed by him within the garden’s pathways. He had found none to be remarkable, until now.
The woman is demure in a way that only women can be. She hangs back and admires the statue, he think—but Vercingtorix is looking over his shoulder at her, now. There is something about her in the twilight that seems to suggest she, too, belongs to this garden; at least temporarily. She is a living statue, her skin taking on the blue note of the fading sky as if it belongs to it. She is thin, and elegant, and swan-like. If Vercingtorix were anyone else, he would admire her as beautiful; but he is not anyone else, and her beauty belies itself to weakness. The charm, to Vercingtorix, is lost.
He is and will forever be a winter wolf, half-starved, looking for the weakest link. His smile comes unabashed to his face; it is charming, and wide and genuine. Handsome, even, despite the scar that makes it crooked.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Even his voice sounds full of promise and the night’s charm. Even the way he says it seems to suggest, as are you.
Oh, and she is.
She is beautiful in the way the weakest deer is beautiful, always, to the starved wolf. She is beautiful in a way of survival, and necessity, and—well, all things that are inherently required and, at base, neither evil nor good. At base. She is beautiful as the line between them is beautiful. With her demure thinness, and her skin that takes on the sky, and the way her eyes are upon the gemstone studded hippocampus.
Vercingtorix sees the sea in her.
And hates her for it. But, as always, his hate manifests as attraction, as a sick mockery of love, of need, because—well,
what is Vercingtorix without his hate to compel him? “Would you care to join me?” And what is there to be seen of his hate, besides his attraction to it? The way his voice lilts, in that foreign accent, and his eyes and posture open to invite her.
rip up their flesh and reveal them to be nothing but the dreamy, worldess haze of lavender and godhood with your virtue shredding teeth. do not weep when their wings thrash. do not be surprised when there are nothing but ghosts in their heart.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She is with Lilli when the world ends, watching the colors of the sun bleed across the blue sky, swallowing it whole. It is subtle at first when the earth trembles, when it rises and falls like a chest beneath their feet. Subtle, until the rocks from the peaks of the mountains of their ancestral home loosen and rain down against the peaceful valley below. The trees, their great trees, their weeping willows sway with no wind, and snap and crack.
It is subtle until it isn’t.
Until the world is stolen from beneath their feet on the guardian’s ledge, and they fall, they fall, they fall.
There isn’t enough time to say anything, not enough time to see if the fearr that etches across her face is reflected in the crimson curve of her cousin’s. There is just enough time for Elena to reach for Lilli as she falls, trying to bury herself within her once last time, feel her against her, press her brow into hers. But she cannot reach, and Elena feels nothing. She doesn't even feel like she is falling through the air, through the world, to the end. There is just enough time to wish too, that Lilli would grow wings and fly away before the dark leaps up to take her.
She wakes on the floor of her home and she is alone. It takes roughly the length of a heartbeat to notice that she is safe, in Terrastella, in her cottage beside the sea. This was the first time she has dreamed of Lilli since seeing her in Taiga when she had pulled there by a magician. Elena cannot help then the way her stomach sinks, and she thinks something might be wrong.
A sound is at her window and Elena turns blue eyes. “Noctura?” She questions the familiar creature. A letter awaits her, accepting the proposal Elena had sent not so long ago. She had tried to resist, tried as hard as she could, but she put pen to paper, and put that paper to the leg of a white dove and sent a letter to the man of stars that has so illuminated her.
Dear Azrael,
Delumine is holding a festival. Meet me by the carvings in the garden.
Warmly,
Elena
And that had been where she had struggled. She had written: Love, Elena countless times, only realizing what she had written after she had traced the l and the o and the v-e for endless moments, and realizing she needed to start over.
His response arrives and there is a sigh caught in her chest, a longing that buries its fingers in the pit of her belly. She will never know about how he dreamed of her. And how in the dream, she had walked beside him, and he had looked at her, and she had looked at him. She had smiled, without burdens. And then she had gone, into the stars.
“Stars are guides to bring you home,” Aletta had once told her. There are no stars against the blue skies and so Elena makes friends with the sun. In some ways, this is better, the daylight, as far away from Denocte as she could be. It loosens those shaking fingers in her chest so that she can remember how to breath evenly again. So that this time when she exhales, the sigh spills like water from her lips.
There is a part of her that says maybe she shouldn't do this, that this is more dancing along cliff edges, but here she invites an innocent partner into her dance, but Elena has never been able to resist going headfirst into anything. She was told this brazen personality came from her father, her godfather had always said he was a bit “against the grain”, while that grace in which she took on the world was entirely her mother’s.
She finds him, waiting for her in the garden and relief floods through her. He was as perfect in the daylight as he was the night. The golden girl walks towards him, the air tastes like fall and Elena for a moment forgets that all this is real. “Have you learned anything new from the stars or dreams since I last saw you?” She asks him, so ready to run into his arms because the distance between them feels like the distance between lonely stars. But she disciplines herself enough to slowly move towards him, sunshine skipping across water. She realizes only when she closes the distance between them that the ache in her chest is soothed. Her nose brushes against his shoulder. (So easily, Azrael always so easy to touch). “I have heard that is where all our secrets hide.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
the salt is on the briar rose,
the fog is in the fir trees;
It was a good night to be a bat.
Most of the time Benvolio went ignored, but tonight every time someone caught sight of him swooping high over the crowd, haloed by bonfire smoke, they let out a cheer. The little brown bat, shy by nature, did not care much for the attention, and ducked often to the alleyways and belfries. His companion, however, was among those whooping delight.
It was hard not to be in a celebratory mood. The spiked cider was certainly a contributing factor, but Caspian would have been having a good time anyway; he loved fall, the harvests and the stories of spirits, the last hurrah of merriment before the quieting snows. He’d never been to Denocte before, and this seemed like the perfect way to experience it - cool enough to make the bonfires a welcome, dark enough the city was lit by lanterns and gourds carved and set with candles. Everywhere he looked there was a butterfly or a princess or a pirate or a demon; for his part, Caspian was painted like a ghost. His blue spots were dusted white, and dark circles smudged his eyes; he couldn’t afford a real costume, but thought he looked pretty good anyway.
But the party wasn’t the only reason he’d come to the Night Court. Its reputation was as smoky as its bonfires, an irresistible draw; many of the smugglers he worked with operated from Denocte. He was supposed to meet one here, tonight - and the thought jarred him into squinting upward, searching for the moon, which was only a pale smudge through the smoke. It was hard to tell what time it was, exactly, but a good bet that he was already late.
The problem was, he didn’t know where he was going. Caspian ambled down the cobbled streets, leaving the bulk of the festival behind; the crowds grew more sparse, the buildings looked like crooked teeth and the sea gleamed in the harbor.
I’ll look up ahead, Benvolio said down their bond, and the paint glanced up to where he could faintly hear the bat echolocating. A pause, and then, last one to find it’s a rotten anemone.
Caspian grinned and shook his head, but he couldn’t resist a competition. Neither could he resist a shortcut - and so when he saw a figure coming his way, he approached them without hesitation, wearing a boyish smile and hoping they weren’t afraid of ghosts.
“Hey there,” he said. “Do you know where I can find the Surly Seahorse?”
Posted by: Elena - 07-04-2020, 10:15 AM - Forum: Archives
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take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She can feel the wildness before she even sets foot into the battles. Her empathy causes her own body to tighten for a blow, her teeth clench like she may sink them into another. She wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her commander’s suggestion. That the Dusk Medics travel to the battlegrounds to heal those who required it. Elena is a child of war, born in Windskeep when the great battles against Bloodsvale were new, when the blood on the ground was fresh. When they thought victory would be swift and easy, instead of a year and a half long war that would wage and take the lives of many, far too many.
The clash of bodies against one another unhinges her soul and she tries not to think of the wounded soldiers that were brought back, to Lovelace overwhelmed with the amount of healing she had to perform. To Melody and Shiri attempted to do their best to aid her. To Elena telling stories to those who came back from battle broken, trying to ease their heavy hearts and burdened minds in the way her own mother soothed her nightmares.
That is what she will do here, her best. Even if the fighting is for sport, (a concept Elena is still unsure she actually understands) she would never turn down someone in need of healing. If she could heal a monster of his wicked injuries, she could certainly manage to patch up a solider. Elena has brought some supplies along with her, basic herbs to soothe pain and sore limbs. There is lavender for any post battle anxiety, and chamomile tea for each warrior to bring home with them to drink when they feel it is time to sleep. Remembering when she had patched another warrior and the head injury he sustained, Elena has brought along peppermint for headaches.
She sets to work quickly but carefully and compassionately. Each fighter’s emotions hit her like a wall. There is the joy of victory, shame in defeat, guilt in harming another, and bloodlust for another battle. With the high of battle, she feels them almost stronger than perhaps she normally would. The close proximity of her healing does not provide her any solace either, instead she is forced to endure it as she works, attempting to clean onto any of her own emotions that remain, buried under the rubble. She must take a moment, a breath between each of them, a blissful minute of no emotions, not even her own, where he body stays a blank canvas before the onslaught hits her again with the next one.
So she places ice on a bruise, cloth on a gash and sends the battle worn mare on her way. She does not see behind her as she organizes he\r supplies. “I will be with you in one moment,” she calls over her shoulder before blue eyes turn to face him as her empathy snatches his emotions like a snake strike. “Hello,” she says despite herself, despite the way his own emotions fill her. “I’m Elena.” An introduction. “How can I assist you?”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
