NATURE'S FIRST GREEN IS GOLD, HER HARDEST HUE TO HOLD. HER EARLY LEAF'S A FLOWER; BUT ONLY SO AN HOUR. THEN LEAF SUBSIDES TO LEAF.
The only way Orestes can ground himself is observing, with an analytic eye, the natural beauty that surrounds them. Autumn has fallen heavily upon Amare Creek. In the later edge of day, the forest still brims with the sounds of light and the deciduous leaves are alight with nearly unimaginable colour. The entire forest is a fire of reds, oranges, yellows. The autumn leaves cushion their footfalls, and spiral lazily down the creek’s current. They are bright flashes through the mist that otherwise obscures the details of the creek and, with that elusive mist, Orestes discovers the entire area subdued with a kind of magic, a kind of quiet intent.
His thoughts stream as the creek does; endless; misted over, as if in a dream. First there is the self doubt, the eternal nagging of you should be with your Court now, at this time, not here, with yourself—
And yet Marisol is the one pleasure Orestes has allowed himself in Novus; she is the one thing in his life that strays from rigid duty, despite duty ironically being what brought them together. He steels glances at her through the trees, though they travel at a trot and not quite together. Orestes has not done this intentionally; no, instead the journey along the creek had become a sort of game, a dogged race between the two. At times Orestes dart’s closer to brush his lips against her neck, her flank, or to nip softly at an ear. Then he is away again, rushed with colour and noise, until—
There is a clamorous waterfall and the sun has shrouded itself in the hands of twilight. The colours, which had been so vibrant moments before, seem more subdued as Orestes comes to a walk; the waterfall obscures the sound of his breathing; it obscures, too, his thoughts. It is here Orestes closes the distance between them, tentatively, step by step. His eyes are upon her with a sudden intensity, one he has not felt before and likely will never feel again. His stomach is gnarled and he feels, suddenly, as if this is the only life he has ever lived.
He is silent for an extended moment; long enough that his breath begins to still, and his heart begins to slow, and whatever worries or fears he has are carried away with the sound of the water as it falls into itself. He stays a stride away from her and says, quietly, “‘I am too alone in this world, and yet not alone enough to make every moment holy.’” The poem returns to him and this time, this time Orestes knows his timing is right. It is there, in the way his heart beats so loud it rushes in his ears like the creek. "’I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing, shrewd and secretive.” It is now the world’s golden hour; and around them the mist swirls, lit the sun’s dying rays. Orestes does not think too long or hard on how they are surrounded by the seasonal death of trees; or the way his heartbeat, so loud and firm, is a reminder of his own fragile mortality. No, he presses closer and when he does so it is to extend his lips to the hem of her wing and run them up the soft feathers. He has never touched her there before and while not exactly sensual, the gesture has more intimacy in it than perhaps any he has shared with her before.
“‘I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will as it goes toward action; and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things… or else alone.’” As he speaks, in a voice belonging to bedrooms, and sunlit corridors, and the rustle of the paper in his study it becomes increasingly clear the secret things of which he speaks. “‘I want to be a mirror for your whole body, and I never want to be blind, or to be too old to hold up your heavy and swaying picture. I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.’” Orestes moves from the feathers of her wing to the almost delicate spots beneath it; for those within his reach, Orestes’s brushes his lips against them and then turns inward, toward her ear. At the small of it, he continues: “‘And I want my grasp of things to be true before you. I want to describe myself like a painting that I looked at closely for a long time, like a saying that I finally understood, like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother. Like a ship, that carried me through the wildest storm of all.”
Perhaps the poem is impersonal, written by another man. But for Orestes’ it says all he is too inelegant to express. It shares the simple fact that for him, a foreigner, Marisol’s kindness and intimacy had grounded him from the first time she sent him a letter. The sea tells me that she knows you, she had said. And: If there is a day you need to come home, Terrastella’s shores are open.
All along, that promise had stood: all along, Orestes had found comfort in the shared burden of leadership, of knowing what he had felt in it, he did not feel alone. And that after, after all that had transpired and would transpire, there was a place waiting for him, a home, a person who for some reason (and oh, there are many reasons) his Soul reconciled with. And somewhere, the promise had transformed from an assurance to a desire. Somewhere, Orestes had folded back the layers of an impenetrable wall; he had seen the warmth of her grey eyes and come to understand the pain, and sorrow, and fear that could govern her. There is a part of him, now, that wells with the desire to be a salve to these things: to show her not the self she sees, self-deprecating and always punished, but the Marisol he knows. The beauty and grace with which she exists; the tenacity and steel that has allowed her to sacrifice, and sacrifice again, for her people.
And that is where they are Bound, he thinks. That is the crux at which Orestes will become a martyr, to show her her sacrifices are worthy, and beautiful, and so is she.
“Marisol.” He says her name like a prayer. He is so close he can see the way his breath disturbs the fine hairs at her ear, upon her cheek. “I pledge myself to you. Beneath the moment where our gods touch, where the sun sets and twilight embraces him, I pledge myself to you. It is the first pledge in all my lives made not of duty, but of love. I am yours.”
What he does not say, because he does not believe it adequate: And you are mine.
The reason he has grown to love her as she is, despite her sense of duty, despite her fears and anxieties, Marisol belongs more solely to herself than anyone he has ever known. But Orestes does not want to belong to himself, no.
There is not enough time in his last lifetime for that.
“I am yours,” he repeats, and the sun blinks out on the horizon. The sky turns the colour of indigo silk and Arabian dreams, and Orestes’s voice becomes the trees, the waterfall, the wind.
I do not know when, where, or how my contempt for my family transferred to my contempt for everyone. Once—perhaps even mere months ago—I would have enjoyed the festival greatly. I would have drank. I would have fought. I would have danced until I lost feeling of myself, my body, my mind. And I do those things, now, but I do them as a ghost would; with a ghost’s expressions; with a ghost’s commitment. I am there and gone, within the crowd and without, a stalking panther upon the ornate marble dance floor. The gypsy caravans are full of unique and strange wares; I try on a leopard-skin cloak and stare at the double rosettes upon my shoulders. My own, and some slaughtered wildcat’s.
Then I leave; I slam back mead and festival beer and, when that is not enough, I steal a flask from a woman in a lesser noble family. I slept with her once, I think, and that is why she is so flirtatious when I approach, and smile, and laugh with her; but then I am gone into the crowd, a shadow in the throng of celebration. The smells of strange foods permeate the air and wherever I walk the music of the gypsies follows me.
I do not come awake until I leave the Sovereign’s citadel and follow a band of rovers; they are a group of men, foreigners with one of the many invited caravans. They had been semi-brawling in the center of the festival before the soldier’s escorted them out of the citadel. No violence, they had insisted. But they had raised enough noise and interest there were several other citizens in pursuit. I recognise a fight club when I see one; and it does not take them long to arrive at a pueblo house with a yard fenced with the trunks of desert shrubs. They leave the door open. The light from within spills out into the street; I take it as an invitation, and only confirm the openness of the club when I see the symbol above the doorframe. A half-sun sigil, run through with a scimitar. The Pits.
By the time I make my way to the backyard of the adobe, they are already brawling. The yard is lit with torches in each corner; and the faces, backlit by the flames, seem ghoulish and strange. I am smiling before I even enter the ring; I am smiling before I approach the ring-keeper and ask to enter a brawl.
My blood is singing, singing.
In it: the mead, the beer, the hard liquor.
It is the first time all night I feel alive.
My fight is short and brutal. There is only one rule, tonight. Don’t kill him. And so I don’t. I draw it out against the pegasus I am pitted against; we come together and then crash apart, forces of nature, full of teeth and fury. And oh,
I am alive. Each blow excites me; each blow awakens something dormant, something hibernating, within my soul. I am not distraught when I lose, knocked to the ground and pinned by his hoof until the night blackens and I awaken to find myself hauled to my feet by a trio of men. I am laughing.
Blood cascades down my face from where he split my brow. I could leave, but there are members of the Pits now, passing liquor and placing bets. No, I think.
I might just stay forever.
"Speech." || @Anyone!
we are born like this, into these carefully made wars
On my body, the grace of shadows and in my heart: all Hells
There is distant music playing. The notes are drifting like boats over the mirrored surface of the Lake. The star strewn sky is reflected in bright dots of twinkling silver. The heavens, adorned in midnight array, paint themselves upon the canvas of the lake. Festival goers come with golden-lit lanterns bringing warm licks of colour to the cool, autumn scene.
Tenebrae stands in the midst of the wishers who each hold their lanterns tight. Children close their eyes and hope for things superficial and things so surprisingly deep. Adults cling to their lanterns as if their wish might be something more, magical, capable of a miracle. To whom do those wishes go? The monk wonders. Who is the one who decides if they are granted, and how? Tenebrae thinks of his goddess. Was Caligo good enough to grant wishes? He is beginning to think not. How many times has he wished he were not so sinful, so desperately, terribly in love?
Maybe it was time to lay a shallow, pagan wish upon the wind. The Disciple would light his lantern and let it drift where it may. He would let that flame do what it so desired with his wish. The monk moves past a makeshift altar. The shadows adorning it tremble when he does not think to look at the shrine. They whisper terrible things into his magic. They are full of warnings that limn his blood in moonlight prayers. Darkness still prays where this monk no longer does. They writhe in agony as he collects a lamp like a pagan and lights it with a prayer as shallow as a wish. He does not send it to his goddess or even any deity.
Tenebrae releases the lamp into the sky. It struggles to rise in the breeze, as if burdened by his sin. The lake blinks as she watches the lantern slowly ascend. The stars are weeping, or maybe the sound of their crying is only laughing? Do they know how he is falling away? How he might already be gone?
His faith bleeds black drops of blood upon the moonsoaked grass in his wake. He is a man ailing. His love makes him sick. He thinks he is ready to renounce his goddess. The altar he passed is trembling. It topples in the wind. His shadows seeth across his skin and worshippers flock to righten what the wind full of wishes has wronged. But the monk does not turn to witness the breaking nor righting of his goddess’ altar. The fallen monk merely meanders slowly on along the dark bank of the lake.
The night welcomes him, for he will always be that: a child of Denocte. The music falls away behind him. The sounds of the shrine being righted are swallowed by the gentle lapping of water upon the shore. The Lake welcomes him and as the distant lanterns rise in an arc above him, he wanders out into the shallows. He does not stop there, but lets the water pull him out deeper, deeper until he submerged in the black of the lake’s embrace and her star-strewn sky. The water cleanses him, of everything, or so Tenebrae hopes. It washes from him dirt and the vestiges of the sins he has let loose upon the wind.
When the man emerges from the lake, it is to a golden form upon the bank. He looks at her and knows that what the water has washed away, she will paint back across his body. She will paint him in love and sin and sacrilegious thoughts and hopes and desires. Elena, gilded in sunlight and wanting, taking desire, has come to find him, he knows, but she is looking at the stars. Which one has she truly come here for? Him? Or the stars he invited her to stand beneath, here beside the water.
Tenebrae will make her choice for her, he thinks, as he steps up the bank and his shadows descend upon his flesh as the water spills from him like tears. The monk, the man moves to her, enchanted by the gold of her skin. Caligo’s gift is soldering his veins into his soul and yet, already Elena’s fingers are there, reshaping his heart, his soul. His moons blaze white with divine rage. Their light illuminates her aureate skin, spotlighting her as one who leads him astray. The half-moon sigils almost burn him yet he moves to her, a moth to the light they cast upon her skin. He presses his lips upon the smooth column of her throat letting them rise a heated trail up, up along the elegant arc of her throat until he meets her upturned jaw.
So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a gravesite and making real the dream of the one its living roots embrace: A dream once lost among sorrows and songs
In the garden the air is full of the sounds of tools carving at stone and wood and bone. Amidst the echoes and so close to the start of the path, a forest boy sits and carves whitewood. The material is soft, it feels as warm to his as skin. There is a careful art in the way he carves. Though his skill is lacking, his talent is clear. He looks to his work and stops himself from looking back to the start (just a few metres away) where a horse rears, its mouth agape in a scream - a scream Leo hears in his fitful dreams. It looks, to Leonidas, not like a stallion at all, but a woman, distressed, frantic. She has lost something, or someone. Her scream is an echo all through the garden. He carves his own echo, for he thinks it might help stop her crying.
The antlers he makes, are how he thinks his own look. But his mirrors have only ever been living water and his unskilled talents with the tools are not enough to stop the statue’s antlers looking like living water too. Each tine ripples with the invisible wind, or maybe they tremble at the mare’s scream?
His statue’s wood is pale in his grasp. It is almost ivory - almost bone. There is a quietness to his statue, though the boy’s energy brings it to vivid life as he carves wide eyes and a long mane into his echo’s pale, wooden skin. The grains of the wood run, as if like veins, filled with golden blood. It seems fitting, gold upon white. The boy picks up paint brushes from the nearest basket of tools. He turns his statue’s antlers into rippling sunlight.
Wanderers pass him, studying the statues, gazing at the talented work and those less talented and yet carved with love in every chip and cut. The flowers sway and his cheetah sighs beside him. It seems to fall as still as the wood within Leonidas’ grasp. Sometimes he thinks his familiar is but merely wood too. The cheetah is like a shadow, it follows him, yet never speaks. Leonidas, king of the wood and master of his shadowing cheetah, does not think he has ever heard the animal speak. Yet boy and animal sleep as if they are just halves of a larger piece of art, broken away, lost.
But that is the thing, he does not know what he has lost. He thinks he might know what the screaming mare has though. He finishes the carving. It is of a small filly whose antlers mirror his own, whos pose feels familiar - so familiar that he carves until it is perfect. Then, on a whim, he looks to his still cheetah shadow and carves a cheetah as young a his, its body still round with baby fat.
Then he stands and ambles warily back to where the mare rears and screams. Gingerly he places the statues upon her base, he flinches when her screaming stops. He breathes a sigh and dares to look up. She is still and her screams no longer echo in his ears.
@Maret <3 So glad to write these two together again.
tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again, how it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses. it's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio, how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. look at the light through the windowpanes. that means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable.
The night is full of a wild, primordial energy. The smell of hard cider and mead permeates the air, along with the ever-present woodsmoke and incense characteristic of Denocte's cityscape. The night is alive with festivities; jack-o'-lanterns sneer from household alcoves; lanterns gleam from balconies and some, made of paper, drift up in a celebratory kind of way toward the stars. The streets are heavy with it; with the vivacious life of the city Boudika loves. The effect is nearly intoxicating as children run, fully costumed, through the streets and adults, too, peer between the flames of bonfires in grotesque or intricate masks. Boudika chooses this place to offset the severity of their last several encounters; and, more importantly, the festival is so full of smoke, incense, and the odour of festivities that the sea seems (for the moment at least) a very distant memory. Yet as she walks side-by-side with him, her mind is drawn inexplicably to one of her first memories of Novus.
It had been when she was still searching for Orestes, staring out at Terminus sea—before Amaroq, Isra, Tenebrae, anyone and she had thought, the sea is the only thing I’ve ever feared. Tonight, it is different. Tonight, she is a nothing but a girl, and the sea is where she goes to make her bones not ache and her body weightless. There is no trident at her side; no kelpie guise; no ocean to flee into. There is only her skin and her restless legs and her soul too large for her body to hold, screaming, screaming, screaming—
She is afraid. Not of the sea, no, but of the man beside her. They walk so close through the crowd that their shoulders brush; that he is able to bend his lips a little to whisper something in her ear that is lost before Boudika can register it. There are a hundred incomprehensible shapes clashing within her, the instincts of a plethora of animals; and she cannot listen to any of their voices. No. Not tonight. Not after every one of their meetings have ended with blood shed—
Not because she fears he will harm her—no, at this point Boudika is uncertain if he even could—but because… well, there is an atypical flush to her cheeks and a girlish brightness to her expression. The setting illuminates it; transforms her girlishness into something faelike, and nearly wicked. Boudika's excitement is thinly veiled; and her nervousness is even less thinly veiled but, instead, simmers just beneath the surface of her composure. Boudika glances around readily; the crowd; to him; the moonstones engrained in the streets; an alleyway; a horse with a painted face; children in streaming, silken costumes; small terrestrial dragons spitting flames as if in laughter. The sights are endless, and nearly overwhelming, and before she can help herself she is pulling Tenebrae along with her into a narrow, dark alleyway. The light and noise is muffled between the two buildings and they are forced to be pressed so, so close. It is nearly impossible to distinguish who's breath is who's; and then they are out of the alley and beyond, into a much quieter alcove.
There is a fountain, sparkling, crystalline. It sings into a night full of stars and smoke and magic. Boudika is instantaneously breathless; earlier in the night, the small garden courtyard belonged to a restaurant. But so late in the evening it is left quietly abandoned, with only the fountain to chime in the dark. There are lights strung across the archways and open courtyard; reflecting as the stars do in the trembling, flowing water.
Abruptly, and with little tact, Boudika admits: “I’ve never done anything like this before.” Her voice is loud in the quiet place, nearly abrasive. But it is the truth.
A romantic excursion, shared between two people. No, Boudika has never come close to experiencing such a thing—at best, they consisted of stolen moments between herself and Vercingtorix before she told him the truth of herself. It had been when Boudika had nursed him back to health after his fall from the cliffside—when she had read to him, and brought gifts and updates on the affairs of the state. And that—well, that had not been like this, with stars and lanterns and all the potential for something gentle, and meaningful, and kind.
Yet, Tenebrae’s admission of being a monk is still fresh in her mind; it makes Boudika weary. This is, perhaps, the most like a girl he has ever seen her. Her hair is uncharacteristically well-kept, free of gnarls or seaweed tangles. Even the garish stretch of her mouth—with the help of her magic—has returned to the semblance of a normal equine’s. And, with a bit of irony, there are roses tucked behind her ear. With all that she knows now, Boudika feels almost sinful. Her costume is not ornate; in fact, it is hardly a costume at all. Boudika is wearing the golden warrior paint of her people; arcane; tribal; specific. There are lions painted on her haunches and her hair is braided with bright, metallic ribbons. Her tail, too, is full of bells and ribbons. Her horns are painted gold and everywhere it gleams, and gleams, and gleams. She finds that, with the excitement of the crowd, her breath comes more quickly than she had expected; she looks at Tenebrae in the stillness, and measures him with hungry eyes.
They are a girl's eyes; not a kelpie's. They are eyes that hunger for a different kind of flesh
And in that sinfulness, there is an aggressive, unfamiliar appeal. It is the kind of adrenaline that belongs to the hunt, the fight, the climb. Boudika cannot help it when she leans tentatively close, surprised at how shy she is without the sea. She can smell him; clean sweat; Denocte’s woodsmoke and juniper; the clean, fresh scent of the spring where the monk’s dwell. Boudika abruptly presses her nose into the nape of his neck and inhales. The gesture is almost primordial; not quite claiming, but… there is an edge to it that disguises her girlish shyness.
Boudika hates herself for thinking it, but Tenebrae almost, almost smells like home.
“I—“ and then she laughs aloud. “I don’t know how to act around you when we aren’t trying to kill each other.” The admission is delivered humorously, but still; there is an edge of truth to it. Yet, the idea of violence is almost relieving in comparison to the hurt he could bestow. Boudika, the water-horse, is not fragile. But the girl beneath, the girl who has waited an entire life for love; well, that is a different matter entirely.
Boudika steels herself; she steps away from him, several steps back, until the fountain is behind her and he stands silhouetted by the alley they walked through. Her heart catches and she hates herself for it. Her heart catches, and she is afraid. Somehow, Boudika moves past it. She begins, "Tenebrae... did you know, when I first came to Novus, I swore away violence?" Once she is past the introduction, Boudika feels her courage rally. She flicks her head just so, and the ribbons cascade in a metallic ripple to cover half her face. "I was done with being a warrior. Instead, I became a dancer." Those early memories of Novus are welled with a loneliness like a black hole; but there is also a fierce independence within them, a becoming. Boudika doesn't realise it until know, but she has almost missed performing.
Quietly, in a voice that belongs to bedrooms, closed doors, warm sheets, Boudika says: "Would you like to watch?" It is in that moment Boudika understands there is more than one way to be hungry.
Posted by: Elena - 06-30-2020, 11:17 PM - Forum: Archives
- No Replies
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
Regret is a familiar sensation. It wraps itself around her bones, presses into her veins, branches out and through her. She can feel the way it crawls up her throat, the pressure. She is used to it. She is used to the bitter taste of it on her tongue. The feeling is no stranger; it makes itself at home in her chest, curling into the curves of it without hesitation. It is almost comforting to sit with the weight of it, a stone in her belly as the autumn breeze begins to lace across her back. It is almost comforting to recognize the old friend come home to roost.
She wishes nothing more that he would come and find her, soothe her. She had wanted him, desired him, and that need was burning her alive. How does one be soothed by the one causing them so much pain? She winces at the heaviness in her heart. There is, admittedly, still a part of her mind that is clinging onto bis of hope, not matter how many times she has tried to eradicate it. Yes, there’s the smallest fragment of hope that still flutters pathetically in her golden chest.
Elena has thrown herself into her work. Busy hands, busy hands. She heals, collects, learn, provides therapies, treatments. And now it would seem her duties were going to extend beyond the walls of Terrastella. It is the only explanation for why she is being guided through the desert by a Soleterran soldier. It is no secret the deserts frighten Elena, maybe it is the vast emptiness of the land that reminds her of a time when she could not see and Elena drowned in the sameness of it.
She was once a diplomat.
A politician of the mountains of Hyaline. She aided in negotiating treaties and alliances, though she never enacted war. Elena spent as much time outside of Hyaline, traveling to foreign lands as she did within it, greeting those who stepped across the borders with intentions other than making Hyaline their home. As a healer, Elena had learned to be diligent, kind, not be to judgmental, and compassionate. Politics—they taught her different lessons entirely. She learned to hold her tongue in the face of wanting to speak her mind. Elena trained herself to be careful with her words, to make snap judgments on another and go with her instinct. Show little emotion, be too quick to be kind and you could be taken advantage of, be too cold, aloof, and you could wind up with too few alliances and your home ablaze with enemies you never knew you had. The golden girl has come to find that she quite enjoys Elena the medic more than any other role she has played. She wants to hang onto her, but as she continues moving across the sand, she feels that old (yet terrifyingly familiar) skin of Elena the diplomat reaching through, curbing her tongue and sharpening her eyes.
The journey to Day Court had been long and to get to the capital would be longer still. The soldier that leads her is near silent, he said his hellos, offered no name, only that he was to be her guide and that the sovereign was expecting her and awaiting her arrival in the capital. Elena tried to start a conversation, tried to joke, teasing that all Solterrans must be expert sandcastle makers, but his responses swayed to be a mixture of half hearted grunts and disgruntled one word answers.
Despite her companion’s lack of enthusiasm, Elena finds ways to entertain herself, even if the activities she chooses is not altogether calming. She knows little of Solterra and even less of its leader. Its residents proved elusive, as least to the golden girl. She conjures up images of the land, buildings made of red stone, hidden amongst sand dunes. Its leader are and imposing, stern and direct. What would he think when he saw the little blonde girl, this so called talented healer, striding into Day Court. Elena’s stomach clenches with apprehension. She smells of wild cliffs and sea spray, she is not made for sand and scorch. What would he think of this stranger in his lands?
“Welcome to Day Court,” says her companion with a slight bow of his head. Elena offers him a ghost of a smile on trembling lips. “The sovereign waits for you just up the way, in the great palace,” Elena tries to say thank you, but it falls silent, a short blink of blue eyes is all she can offer the soldier that had kept her safe as they transversed the sands. He disappears just as quickly as he had appeared to her and Elena loses sight of him in the crowds. Blue eyes point ahead as Elena steadies herself, grounding her body and trying to brighten a smile on her face, while a feeling of disquiet sits behind it.
She enters the palace, the sun reaches through a great window and stretches against her golden skin and for an instant, Elena could be mistaken for a Solterran, but the moment quickly passes as the fragment smell of wildflowers clings to blonde locks. Another Soleterran is there to greet her, it seemed she was expected, and leads her to where she was expected to be. She finds him waiting for her, and he looks nothing like what she expected and it provides her a breath of relief. Never the less, she could tell he could be much more imposing should he choose to be, but perhaps it is in the familiarity of a golden coat that lets her make her way towards him, confidence held between her shoulders. “Orestes,” she says, offering him a bow of her head. ‘There is nothing lost by showing respect, but there is plenty to be gained,’ comes the wise words of her godfather, echoing in her head with something she imagines to be pride. “It is an honor to be in your court,” she acknowledges and she tastes sand on her tongue, but it is not bitter like she would expect. “I am Elena, of Terrastella.”
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
'Come, come my friend, for I trust only you on this journey to Night.' Katre'el whispered in the night to Dalmatia once she'd heard her old friend had returned. The woman she'd found, however, was a far cry from that which she remembered. Still fearless, still fierce, in those respects Dalmatia was the same... Although, in many other respects, her girlhood friend had disappeared.
In her shoes stands a woman of sinew and bone, wrought with tension and unease. There are worries creasing the magpie's eyes and ghosts that sit upon her slender shoulders. Years passed, Katre'el should not have expected time to be kind to the warrior. Time often never was. Still, she implored this of the ex-Vicarious, and Dalmatia could no more deny Katre'el than she could her dear heart. Once, it would have been much less of a thought-over decision. Now, there is a pensive crease to her brow, a thoughtful tilt of her lips that turn them ever downward, further than the almost constant frown of before.
"Fine," the warrior agrees.
Together they set off for Denocte, and on the road just outside of the city itself Dalmatia left Katre'el to tend to her business. Now, she's found herself by a reflection pool, or rather a lake to which would drown her if she so much as stepped foot in it. Once, she would have charged in, reckless with youth, and laughed as her Flight followed suit. They would have shed their armor like snake skins, submerging themselves in the coolness of summer, enjoying nothing less than the laughter of friends and the bonds forged by more than silver and gold, but by trust and countless battles side by side.
They were hers to protect.
They were hers.
Now, she is nothing to them. Marisol freed her, yes, but she does not ask why Dalmatia was imprisoned in the first place. She learned long ago that the woman would fall into a silence so pure and so deep that only time would draw her out of it again. No amount of plying or prying could break her shell, her armored exterior.
The woman who stares back is not wholly unpleasant, and it is the only woman, the only being that the soldier knows she can rely upon. Petty words of others mean nothing. Offers of friendship, of freedom, all of it crumbles, falls through her fingers like sand, when put to the test. Bitterness is a poison in her heart, and its hold is strong, stronger than it ever should have grown to be. But stronger than that, sharper, more urgent, is the demand for the Truth, the need for Vengeance, the thirst for Revenge.
Cicero would pay.
Everyone who took away her childhood, her Flight, her Halcyon, would dream in colors of fear and sweat when they looked into Dalmatia's eyes. She hopes they would never know peace again. Long ago, she learned to stop hoping.
Beware: I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.
@Warset | I hope this goes well c': I'm looking forward to writing with you again my friend!
She hums her swansong, soft as the wind, gentle as the rolling clouds. Juniper has been to Day. Oh yes, long, long ago. Before she met El Rey, before he held her in his arms and called her his little dove, before their souls brushed just as the night kissed the day good morning. Then, she'd fallen asleep and crashed into a pool of water, rising, glistening as any goddess-girl does, to see the eyes of a man full of questions and life.
His vitality, his curiosity, it appealed to her and so she'd stayed for a time. However brief it had been, his spell over her wandering eyes did not last long, and Juniper left in the night, disappearing as a cloud of smoke... There is only the mystery of her left to that man now.
She is an enigma to so many.
Now, in a cloud of dust she arrives again, settling hooves unto the ground, glancing left, right, and tucking her stormy cloak close. Loosely it wraps about her throat, carefully it is worn as a hood, hiding golden horns that are so similar to El rey's and yet so different. Made of gossamer dreams and fairy dust, Juniper slips among the crowds of Solterra as any dancer would. Smooth, sleek, strong.
There and gone.
There
and
gone.
At last, she comes to the ring. Comes and watches the fighters fight, watches her dark bull as his skin is torn and sweat sticks sweetly to his neck. Back in their home, back in the swamps, it clung to him differently. There, it is much more humid than in the deserts of Day.
The little dove watches and waits, and when her bull is through with his fight, she turns to fight her own battle, surging through the crowds as well as any pickpocket, at last coming close to pull him near, draw her bull's cheek to her own, and urge him back into a shaded alcove where she could better see him away from the rumble of the people. They are people who demand his blood, his sweat, his death...
Vespera teaches her to love, and oh, she does! She loves him so tightly, so dearly!
So Juniper wonders... Is it Solis who teaches his children to hate?
@El Rey | "speaks" | notes: I NEED THEM IN MY LIFE AGAIN
FAITH IN THEIR HANDS SHALL SNAP IN TWO, AND THE UNICORN EVILS RUN THEM THROUGH; SPLIT ALL ENDS UP THEY SHAN’T CRACK; AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION.
The air is dense and deep and dark as the bottom of forest when she wanders up the thirsty mountain. A storm is dying in the distance, thunder and hail trickling off into a cold wind. Shadows stretch out around them, the unicorn and her monster made of violence and sand, and each wraps around the bent willow trees and the towering evergreens. Rocks cry out as them tumble down the steep sides of the trail. Each cry is warning (muted when the twilight fog rolls in) that the valleys are as thirsty, and hungry, and hollow as the mountain pathways.
And perhaps if there was religion in her blood instead of death she would have sunk her horn deep into the marrow of the mountain and pleaded for safety. Perhaps she would cut lines into her sides and called the blood prayer and sacrifice.
Perhaps there is a world where she is not a blood-red unicorn with rot instead of blood.
Thana is too full of black-magic and wanting, and she is as thirsty as the mountain. She only wonders why the mortals of her court whisper of the ghosts and gods lingering in the mountain path. Tonight, in the twilight fog and the dying echoes of roaring thunder, there is only Thana and Eligos and their silent steps that promise war instead of scripture.
Together they come to the meadow carved out of the mountain peak, with the grass that is not grass at all but steel, and gemstone, and magic left behind from gods and mortals. Together they move into the hallways of marble, and the pillars of amethyst like wolves coming to the tall-grass of the elk. Their steps do not echo or rumble with the thunder. They whisper, and coo, and carry their shadows like chains and spears dragged across the hollowed stone.
They hum as darkness hums and bleat as dying lambs do.
They wander the hallways and pause to drag their noses through the dust of broken statues and altars. They etch lines in the decay with horn, and claw, and fang. Ivy withers around their necks when it falls from the forgotten archways and violets left in a vase tilt blackening heads towards them (as if they are the sun instead of the moon-black). Marble trembles and falls like stars around them as it quickens in its mortar like a century has passed with the humming war-song of her heart. The echoes sound like thunder.
Like they are calling the storm back, and home, and here, here, here.
Like they are storm-clouds instead of flesh and bone.
And their eyes flash like lighting in the twilight fog when they turn towards the steady echo of another soul in the dying church in the mountain. Together they smile, and nicker (as much as wolves can exhale in welcome instead of wrath), and step towards the mare who looks as elegant in the shadows as they look feral and wanting.
I'm the hero of this story
I don't need to be saved
Normally, autumn is his favorite time in Denocte, which is his favorite place in the world, which means fall is a near-constant festival of delights large and small.
Normally, he would be waking just before the sun (growing more sluggish as the solstice neared) to go on his morning run, then swing by the market to buy bread from Talan to share with his cadre at the Scarab. Some of the girls (Minya) always had an easier time with mornings when there were fresh carbs to greet them. After that would be a morning meeting with Charon, a check-in with some of the more influential (and demanding) patrons, a lesson in swordsmanship with Aghavni, and then a brief lunch before it was time to discuss the evening ahead.
Today he wakes alone, in a cramped room he rents by the night, and has no more money for. When he leaves he takes only his father’s sword and a small bag with a few belongings and the last of his coins. The air still smells the same as every autumn, salt and cedar-smoke and leaves crisp and bright, unaware they are dying, that they are already dead. But there is none of the old buoyancy with it, and the frost that still lays in the shadows does not look like diamonds when the sunlight touches it just before it melts away.
August goes down to the water, because what else is there to do? He turns away from the merchant docks, with their masts and gulls and broad-shouldered, noisy commerce; something about all those billowing sails make his heart ache with want and shame. He walks along the shore for a long while, until the city is only a suggestion behind him and the only line of tracks in the sand is his own.
Then, just when he thinks he might turn around, the palomino spots a curious thing.
There is a man, a pegasus, dark as a shadow and tall and slim. He is throwing something into the water, and when August draws near enough he thinks that the objects - at least one of them, anyway - are knives.
August decides not to come near enough to be really sure. Not yet, anyway.
“You, ah, figuring on getting those back?” he calls, unable to suppress his curiosity. There is something in him that identifies at once with the concept of it - because there is something in him that feels just as sharp, and just as useless, as a knife thrown into the sea.
