No, she is wearing the face of someone she once knew and now remembers as if in a dream. Boudika is seal grey, dark at each point and dappled on the shoulders. Her body is so faded it is almost white and her eyes, well, her eyes are the same shifting shade of blue as the deep sea, just beneath the surface, just beneath the light that tries to penetrate and can only go so far. It is a face she loves, or had loved, once—years ago.
Boudika is in Solterra for the tournaments, or so she says. She participated in a matched fight one morning with a native Solterran; she had not used her magic, and it had ended in a draw. It felt strange fighting in another’s body, and stranger still fighting in one that was meant to be a pacifist.
Then, of course, Boudika goes to the festival. She does not drink or dance, but watches. Not quite from the shadows, but from the fringes; it feels a little like hunting does. The entire time Boudika is aware she is being followed; her trail is not subtle, and the curiosity—and horror—on his face is so thinly veiled. He, too, remains on the fringes. But his place in society cannot deem he become a shadow; and so he dances occasionally, or laughs when a citizen approaches him.
But when Boudika peels away into the darker corners of the citadel, she knows he will follow. The game is ancient; cat and mouse; predator and prey. Only, there is no telling who is what in this dance.
The citadel is massive and nothing like Denocte’s. But Boudika knows if she wanders long enough, she will find exactly what she needs. There is an opening onto a patio that hangs off the cliffside, decorated with various hanging plants. More importantly, it faces the ocean to Solterra’s rear. With the wind blowing right, Boudika can even hear the rhythmic crash of waves. It feels, a little, like home might. But the arid desert could never be her home.
She stands there for an indiscriminate amount of time, waiting; but she knows he will find her and when he does, she will be wearing his face from another life Some of us have not forgotten, she thinks, what it was to be tied to Oresziah, and the Khashran, and the black cliffs. Boudika is surprised to feel… anger. She had been so relieved, at first, when the rumours of his survival came to her; and then that relief had become anger.
At last, his footsteps echo across the marbled floors. She can feel the weight of his gaze, as she has always been able to feel it; the weight of stones, of seas, of the entire world. All in a man.
Go quietly; a dream
When done, should leave no trace
That it has lived, except a gleam
Across the dreamer’s face.
I think I would like some pearl wings, myself. Maybe not to fly with, I think, at first, but what are wings good for if not flying, and why could they not be both pearl and sinew and feather? There must be a way to do such things. Someone hidden deep in the underground markets - perhaps in Denocte, or Solterra - who could make me wings of pearl. It might hurt, but ah, what doesn’t? Drink does, in the end, and so does too much dancing, and not enough love. I have done well performing here and there, but steady coin (or perhaps the motivation, the desire?) has escaped me, and to buy such a thing - well, I imagine I would pay more dearly than I would like to.
Great things come at great costs.
The statues, of course, are of excellent craftsmanship and mysterious origin. The now-famed stallion gives me pause, as I, like others, wonder who he could have been, and feel a stirring within me. No one can name it. Not even I. It is the tables of things that I find myself standing before, wondering if it would be rude to push aside this or that and observe what lay beneath. Some are more brazen than I, but it seems wrong; were they not all artistically and intrinsically placed? Is their movement by others, effectively, a natural result of their being there? I resolve that it is not my place to decide and so I do not touch them, but peek over shoulders and around necks to see what others have revealed or brought. Bits of material, stones and cloth and the like, and bones - of what I do not know - make up most of the pile, as do the baskets of tools beneath. Someone places a mask from Isra’s masquerade, yellowed and dusty and stained. Someone else - an adult - places a girl’s doll.
It is one of those things that inexplicably gives you pause and leaves you with very little control over its effect upon your countenance. My throat tightens, and my lips tremble. Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. The gesture was simple, innocent. I cannot say if it is love, or vulnerability, or the infinitely possible stories that lead me to this reaction on such occasions. The doll could have been hers. It could have been her daughter’s, or sister’s, or grandmother’s. It might belong to someone who passed on - her own child, the storyteller in me insists. She is gone by now, of course, and I must look away from the doll to prevent myself from bursting into tears. Hours or even days later, I will think upon this, and my reaction will be the same. If I saw that doll here again, my reaction would be just as visceral. I do not hope to sing of this. It cannot be described. The violin's wail may do a better job than any words of mine.
I can be found where the song goes, that much is true. No one has to guess; those who know me could say as much and those who only know what I do could as well. These are not two separate groups, anyway, I only divide them for my own sake. At other times, in other places, these are two; here, they are not. I ponder at how such things befall me. “Oh, to be beautiful,” or “Oh, to be talented,” or “Oh, to be a wanderer,” are all disguises for the truth. I wear them like a rich aunt’s finest coat. Most of us do, I hope. It makes me feel a little less alone, to think that.
Word spread fast of the fireflies and their blankets of light. Poet to poet, and in this manner I am one of the first to know, but that doesn’t mean much because everyone told everyone else, and so we are all here, together, first to know. Not even the children clamber over each other to reach for the light; we are united in song and beauty and a deep deep love. I sing, of course, and have only left the violin elsewhere so that she is not broken by a careless dancer. I dance, too, and the fireflies fall in strings over and under and around me, the river set aglow as they turn my dappling to mirror-light. I only give pause when my merriment leads me to bump into another. ”Excuse me,” I sing, melodious and slow, so the fireflies cover us both. I think not of drowning in the river-water, but in the light.
White flowers, a-bloom on the vagrant deep,
Like dreams of love, rising out of sleep,
There is a melancholy that lives in my heart and it will not, will not leave. I sing to it, and I dance for it, and no matter how much I perform, how raw my throat becomes or how sore my legs are, it is there, unfathomable, lonely, and dark. There is nothing left for me here, and though I daydream, I know there is nothing for me there, either. I have not found what I am looking for, as I have not found it since Then, and I suppose I must keep looking. I know not when my people will come for me, and I wonder if it will be after I die. Perhaps I ought to board a ship and be gone; what does it matter to a Benevolent, anyway, travel is travel, but these are false words. To travel with a troupe is everything to my people. I obsess over it, now, as I always do before I leave, before they come back to me and I go home with them. But I cannot go home. Home is here, and not-here, but it is not the home in my heart. No. There is no home in my heart, and if there is, it is empty.
So I think about the certain religions of the world as I pick through the meadow, wondering if it would be possible to keep my clumsy hooves from trampling some precious and unseen life. An insect, a blossom; they are nothing to us. What would it mean for them to matter? We would fear treading upon the earth, as certain sects do. We cannot levitate, or at least, I cannot, and those with wings must find somewhere to rest (and who is to say that hapless insects are not flattened against a pegasi’s breast or whipped to death by feathered wings, without the “highest form of life” being none the wiser?) Can any of us be innocent of murder, when it is impossible to stop its occurrence? I am no soldier, certainly, but how often is such mass murder a choice? How often do we truly have a choice?
I sigh, and watch the children tumble by, the stardust puffing into the air like pollen, drifting on the breeze to settle elsewhere. Children are innocent, and they do not care what is crushed beneath their hooves. Should I care, then, who is lost without me? We must all come around, eventually. It is not my duty to ensure that everyone does; as I said, I am no soldier, and have no duty.
The sky is purple. I long to sink into it, and disappear.
The sun had just started to peek over the horizon and the first sounds of birdsong fluttered through the wind. Radek had found a nice tree to sleep under for a few hours before continuing his journey. Typically the stallion did not travel alone but the companions he'd had with him the last few days had other arrangements. It had been tough to part ways the night before; Radek was so rarely on his own he didn't know who would get to hear his angelic voice. The world would be deprived until he found another traveling companion.
He had no particular destination. He had been home just a few days previously and had seen his father and mother well. His sister was off doing her thing and hadn't been home in many weeks. He was thinking perhaps of heading to the Dawn Court but figured he would just let his hooves travel where the stories were and see what and who he could find.
As he stretched his neck and flipped his head, he blinked the sleep from his eyes. Watching the sunrise was always his favorite part of the day and he greeted Solis with a whinny. A few birds chimed in to herald the new day. It took a few steps to shake out the drowsiness but within minutes he was trotting along at a leisurely pace, watching out for the world around him. The planes stretched out far, meaning food was in good supply and he should be able to see anyone coming from a long way off.
[[Great Tempus help me that was such a bad first post on the site I am sorry :( ]] @OPEN
I am the daydream, bring you faith and conviction
I am the nightmare you've been crawling through
She finds herself back to where it all started. The very shore she first met a woman of gray who turned out to be a kelpie. One who Lu pissed off so much that she was dragged down into the ocean and turned.
It feels like ages ago that she was someone else. A mere mortal with a broken wing who would never fly again. She was still trying to find a purpose in this new land and had just reunited with Abraxia. The dragon nuzzles her side now and she can feel her longing through their bond. She knows Lu is called to the sea now instead of the land or the sky, but unlike Lu, she misses the old days.
Back in their homeland, they would fly together and look down at the world below them. They both felt powerful then. Yes, there are some days Lu misses that too, but things are different now. She loves Abraxia with all her heart, but she's not sure if she would trade this new life for the old. The taste of blood is too sweet for that. She is a predator now who enjoys the thrill of the hunt. Surely the dragon must feel that too and can understand.
It only seems fitting that she finds Anandi here again. Not surprising at least, since they are near the outskirts of her Court. Maybe Lu came here on purpose, maybe it was their bond, maybe she will never know.
She remembers being pulled down into the ocean. She remembers her body being constricted and water filling her lungs.
She remembers being left to die.
As Lucinda approaches along the shoreline, Anandi's head is turned away from her and she notices a mark on the woman's neck. Maybe it had been hidden before by her mane, but her hair has fallen just enough to the side that it's visible. She knows Abraxia had tried to save Lu before and it had not been pretty. There's no doubt in her mind that it's a scar from that encounter. It makes her laugh.
"You will always remember this, won't you?" she asks, her voice sickly sweet. "When you left me in the sea… and now you have a horrid scar on your neck." Her laugh only gets louder at the irony of it all. Next to her, Abraxia watches with untrusting eyes. It's also fitting that Anandi is scarred, just as Lu bears the scars of her own past.
No, that's not quite right. Everything is distinctly, definitively, different here. Yet strangely, after so much difference (and, let’s be honest, so much summer wine) it all begins to seem almost similar. So much so that as Dune looks at the field with its many-blooming lights, the novelty of it all fades to a dim sense of familiarity. Wonder withers to apathy.
It is an evening just like any other. This one in particular may have more brightness, but it’s all the same show. The sun will always rise and fall; the waking world would fall asleep, and then wake once more. In a few days he would be home again, and in Solterra, just as in Delumine, countless strangers would long to be relieved of the terrible burden of their money.
Dune is their savior, or could be. He ambles among the festival goers, shaking his very small sack of coins to call attention to the wares in baskets slung over his back. Most of his goods tonight are for eating. Festival foods from Solterra: Sun cakes sweetened with sage honey sit nestled among candied cactus and agave-smoked sugar cubes. There are other items too, of Dune’s own making: little creatures, mostly dragonflies and butterflies, crafted from scrap metal from the forge. (he sometimes helped tend the fire and even, on very rare occasions, work the metal. The scraps were his payment for this hot, exhausting work-- the smith was not generous with the temporary help.) Deeper in the basket are other delights, recognizable only by a particular sort of client. To advertise these hidden wares, Dune wears a golden sun painted on his forehead, right between the eyes, to mark himself. He didn’t know how exactly these networks worked-- he was only the mule-- but those in the know would recognize the mark and know him as a dealer in black market goods.
Now, Dune doesn’t pay much attention to politics, but he knows a sovereign when he sees one. It helps that none of them were ever plain, like him. They caught the attention, held it. They warranted remembering. He certainly would not soon forget his encounters with Orestes and Ipomoea-- and it is precisely these memories which makes him wary when he casually meanders towards Antiope, jingling his coin and glancing at the sovereign sidelong, like a wounded dog. The act was a winning one-- he landed many a sale this way. It was hard to say no to someone so pitiful.
Dune had a very natural suspicion of those of higher class, yet he hoped, and indeed had reason to believe, that she was a generous queen.
At first, there is nothing. The nothing is a grace unto him, having left the bustle of the festivities far behind – they drone and pipe upwards of jolly things, their tunes fading into their distant meadows. Here, the solemnity is left to the rustling of leaves and the howling of a misplaced gale. Erasmus finds comfort in that – as he does most things that are oft quiet and dark, dark enough to dream. But o! What folly it is, that those dreams do not take flight; they are fettered to reality, and upon each waking slight come plummeting thus. Tonight, it is hard to say whether it is a dream or a vision that calls him to a place. There are voices in the mist, and while shadows shift behind the hoary sight the subject of their nature is much for the imagination.
When he arrives to that grand, leaf-mouthed entrance unto the Viride Forest, an old man sighs.
“No one listens.” he says simply, as if to no one at all. Erasmus does not answer, thereon the point of its vague notion, and moves to the vining web of greenery towered high above. Its thicket is starless, the moon consumed by entangled boughs that shake and quiver with soundless bluster. Each leaf beneath is a crunching and a scattering that seems to all but liven the echoes that climb up the barks of the old trees. And somewhere, he hears a vagrant song as soft as whispers, and checks to be sure the jovial meadow festivals were far behind.
The mouth to the forest gapes and grins, and beyond another step, seems to close behind him. He does not think much to contemplate the livelihood of forest walls that breathe and taunt. Though he does, when he treads softly through the halls of his predecessor's memories, find a familiarity to a particular jungle strung with ruby-eyed birds and shifting black mirror waters. Somewhere within that memory burns a bright hot moon with teeth, and something tells him that these places were an untrustworthy sort, but these things do not reveal themselves to him.
Or so he thought.
He hears the shimmering thing before he sees it – it hisses through the parched leaves, shakes the smallest boughs with its hurried force as though secretary to chaos, exhausting speed for stealth. Just as he steels himself, muscles recoiled like a guarded viper, the great luminescent bulb bursts through a plating of browned leaves and pauses where it finds its audience, bobbing smoothly in suspension. It hovers for a moment, swirling like a resetting compass, and before it can be touched careens back down the path it had previously cavorted. Erasmus, or the thing that is, has not accustomed himself to the more hostile elements of the Novusian continent, and therefore loosens freely from his tight bound muscles to watch in spectral wonder.
It pauses once more a ways down the path, bobbing pleasantly to itself once more, and it speaks in a way without words that bids him down the narrow road. It is dusty and cleared, save for the occasional imprint of a tensed hoofplace that sank in softer ground. Erasmus obliges its cordial welcome into the darker depths of the Viride, none the wiser.
She glows. Her heavy strands of black hair slide /
like serpents over somber, blood-red plush.
☼
Dawn had come quickly, rousing her from the restless handful of moments her eyes had managed to slide shut, her body heavy against the loamy earth of the plains. Her night had been spent trekking towards a sliver of the Oasis that splintered nearest to the border of desert and grassland, and she might’ve returned to their meeting place sooner, were it not for a rare, impossible encounter; a brush with familiarity. She’d paced her limbs ragged, sweat sluicing down her spine by the time she returned to the narrow valley bordering Delumine, her trembling body hidden within a fringe of rare trees. Her intent to witness Avallac’h’s midnight behavior was forgotten, the plan stamped to ash by the errant thoughts that blundered, rampant, through her mind.
It was all she could do to contain her breath and to lasso the wild things that threatened to devour her. When she’d at last fallen asleep, her bicolored hair a mess around her heavy head, the moment between resting and waking had been as swift as a blink.
She was exhausted, her hoary eyes haggard, but it hadn’t stopped her from gathering her legs beneath her with urgency. When she’d found Avallac’h, not far from where they’d parted the day before, she had hardly spoken a word beyond gesturing for him to lead onward. Heedless of what shadows of memory awaited her in the forest, if any, she needed to know—she would know.
And she would possess the tiny facets of joy that rarely accompanied the scent of bark or the rustle of branches. That was all she thought of as they entered the woodland, the satire of her antics the night prior drained away.
☼
Viride Forest, as it happened, was not the spread of pale yellow birch that she had hoped for. It was not full of the nuances that had filled her thoughts with rare, begrudgingly precious gems since awakening from within the tomb—and they were certainly not the trees that had accompanied her throughout a decade within a stasis. The disappointment wafted from her in waves of discontent, the bitter tang a constant accompaniment to her purposeless steps. She followed Avallac’h, never betraying (at least in words) that she hadn’t found what she’d wanted.
Forget it had been her brusque instruction the day prior. So far, he had stayed true to her request—her command. Whether he continued to do so, she couldn’t be sure.
And though she presently lacked the vigor to care through the haze of her exhaustion, she knew she would give him even a grain of truth unless he offered her the same in return.
For now, she only walked—a stubborn, aimless streak of sunlight within the winding paths of the forest, as silent as a ghoul, as misplaced as a horned snake upon the mossy bed of a forest floor.
The trove she sought to unearth was not here. And yet still, she pressed onward.
☼
The longing never faded, the purpose never ebbed, and the forest—much as the one in her dreams—felt endless. By the time they came upon a narrow clearing, meticulously cared for, she was deaf to all but the lilting song of her heart that beckoned her ever onward, filled to the brim with a permeating sense of solitude. The ache of emptiness cut deeply into her heart, her fatigue overwhelmed by the bitter ire of feeling.
This was not the forest of her dreams, and yet—
And yet the branches seemed to rustle with whispers where she’d paused, having drifted a few strides from her companion’s side (though she hadn’t been companionable to begin with).
The grass was friendly, even to a woman such as she, and it tickled her fetlocks with knowingness. The cupping hand of the wind guided the tilt of her jaw to look down a tunneled path, stretching forth endlessly with its spirals and forks, as kempt as it was wild.
Do you hear them?
The scarred black of her lip curled slightly, her hoof suspended in the air. The darkness of the tombs had convinced her of madness—she would not let this forest do the same.
And yet…
They’re only the voices of the lost. Some say they only sing to those who are also lost.
She hated that the ache within her chest grew like a bloom, its branches winding through her ribs, its seed burrowing within her heart. She hated that she stepped forward, more a girl compelled by a fairytale than a woman beholden to the sun.
She hated that she tilted her head towards Avallac’h, her body drawn to the path, her hooves sinking upon the soft dirt of its threshold.
"Avallac'h," she called.
Since their meeting a day prior, her voice was finally soft.
“Did you hear that?”
If he had, perhaps it would mean that he was lost, too; it would mean, for that singular variable, she was not alone.
