The seasons shifted more quickly than he could grasp. If he could sink his enamels into the flesh of time and haul it backwards, he would. He would change his destiny with that one simple move. He would not have been born to the noble house in Denocte. Reinhart allowed his hardened stare to remain on the swelling crowds. He studied the ebb and flow of the streams of bodies shifting in the streets that served as canals from beneath the proud stone walls of Solterra. His mind swirled with thoughts about the time he was wasting. Reinhart had not meant to be here for so many months. He had treated his time here as something of an extended vacation, out from beneath the watchful eye of his father. He did not doubt the eyes of Solis had replaced those of his father. He would much prefer to deal with the ire of a god than to listen to his father spout one more lecture at him about how his orientation was the single worst, an all-consuming horrible trait he held. He scoffed at the thought and disappeared into the shadows. He joined the flow of bodies from the shores that the shadows had made.
Reinhart was still a citizen of Denocte, although he had half a mind to spend his days in Solterra. He traipsed to the makeshift-markets of traveling salesmen that had set their wares up in various booths decorating the proud city of Day. His tongue itched, and his heart ached for the love from his father he could never have. For the recognition as a son, he would never earn. The taste was bitter and dripped like toxic mercury down his throat. The silver tongue melts into the streams of equines chattering and ogling the wares of the merchants. Reinhart spotted a booth with a brilliant red and purple scarf, with golden fringes. There was an intricate inlaid gold pattern strewn across the scarf as if it were trying to mimic the stars of the night sky. Reinhart approached the booth, a woman stood enclosed within the station. She had many scarves and wonderful items and trinkets, but he had eyes only for the scarf. Reinhart was short on money, he always was. That didn't stop him from making a life here and running among the other ruffians who claimed the streets. The thief allowed his charismatic smile to make an appearance as he came to a halt beyond the borders of her shop. He gave a silent nod toward the scarf to let her know that he wanted to see it.
"Are you the weaver of this? It looks as though it could be sunset at the Day Court, or the streams of stardust in the night sky." Reinhart complimented the intricacy of the scarf. He had never been interested in fabrics, but this had captured his attention. The buzzing of his tongue began as his smile widened. He wondered if he could earn a free gift for himself before his departure from Solterra. The woman denied being the weaver but said that she was connected to them. Reinhart's eyes began to swirl as his lips parted to spin seas and serenades. "I don't suppose you would reveal your connections. Smart business. I suspect you've traveled through many courts and world to collect all these wares you have to trade. Is it just you? Impressive feat. I wouldn't have the patience. It looks like you're popular too. Is the Festival treating you well?" Reinhart wove words, as though he were crafting an expert story. He was. Urged in the right direction by the magic he did not know he possessed. When the woman turned around to speak about her favourite item, Reinhart disappeared into the crowd.
Posted by: Kosephone - 06-14-2020, 12:33 AM - Forum: Archives
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Kosephone
Fresh air ran through her nostrils as she closed her eyes. Taking in the freedom and all the smells around her she could hear the herd of bison snort and bicker nearby. The lullaby songs of birds mingling among their mates surrounded her. It was mid afternoon and the plains were teaming with wild life, everyone had someone. A partner, a friend, a baby. Her mind pondered where she would go from here. The smell of another horse nearby was drowned out by everything around her. After finally deciding to open her eyes she stretched her body. Her three time a day daily regimen consisted of extending and retracting her muscular back legs, then her front. She would then rotate her head in a circular motion once or twice. Occasionally she'd hear a satisfying crack which she welcomed. These stretches kept her agile and sane.
She remembered her elders would say a horse alone could not thrive. Yet, thriving she was. As long as Kosephone stayed near the bison or other herd she almost always had a lookout for predators. The birds helped a lot too. Quite often they sounded the alarm even before anyone would notice a cheetah or leopard was on the move. There was something peaceful about being a loner. Not having to meet certain expectations was a plus but she missed the occasional drama and disputes. There's nothing like watching a spat with a mouth full of kale. the tobaino began munching on the brown grass- imagining fresh kale between her kissers. Her guard was down but she was fearless for the moment. Soon she would have to be on the move again.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
She once hurled sand in Zayir’s eyes here.
They had been playing as children, rough-housing, testing their edges against the mettle of one another. That she had not meant to do. The bruises and scrapes, the kicks and bites and bloody noses. Those were gifts. Those were part and parcel of their cutthroat relationship growing up. They were laughed off, or they were argued over. Or they were left as great, looming, seething silences that went on for days and days, darkening the gardens and halls and streets between them until it was deemed enough.
The sand thing had been an accident.
Her bitter, venomous temper had manifested itself in the swill of sand that gathered in the air around her legs, bent to the heaving pulse of her volatility and emotions.
That’s gone now. Stripped from her, stitch by stitch, until she had been reborn a different woman entirely. A breathing, blooded body, moored of mind to a dead underworld, carried like a bony passenger back into the land of the living. It had taken and taken, and now the Traitors had more to answer for than just the untold years of her life and the way they had cast ghosts into her body like she had been nothing.
Like she hadn’t held a shield and spear to their backs.
Like she hadn’t called them brother.
The dunes lay, inanimate formations of senseless particles, beneath her, cleaved from the arcane seam they had once shared. She commands them no more.
The Viper Slayer weaves through the clutches of palm and cirus trees, verdant agave and pale, mauve sage, that wreathes the bright blue pool of Vitae.The giving-waters of Solis, the altar upon which life descends to genuflect with dripping mouths. She does so now, dropping her head down to drink and to ponder the strangeness of her being here at all. The sun glints hard and hot off the burnished copper of her serpentine neckpiece; crawls the tight, militant geometry of her body. Her wings are tucked tight against her body, her stony, blue eyes are somehow both distant and alert, both here and there.
Alive and unalive.
But it is the slip of sand, the purchase of hoof on stone, the brush of skin and feather against rough bark and thick, rubbery leaves, that draws her from her worship. Her ears tip, nostrils flaring, water drops down her throat as she raises her head to observe—You. “Cairo.” Her voice is flat and severe, but the small smile that tips one side of her umber lips is vaguely amused.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
She tumbles through the dark.
(So dark. Gods. It’s so, so dark.)
From one flickering, eidolic pool of oily lamplight to the next, in lurching, hitched steps. Every couple of minutes, she throws herself against a rough stone wall or cracked marble sculpture to breath. To breath. For the first time in… ilinaa el’ariiff—forever—she breaths. She breaths in dust and bone and centuries-old air. She breaths out a viperous coil of sputtered curse words, each more vibrant and inventive than the next.
‘A-a-arjun! St-t-top right t-t-here y-y-you S-Solis-d-d-damned f-f-fiend!’
It echoes.
It tells Cyrra just how big their tiny hell had really been all along.
She sucks in air and turns to squint into the charnel void—
‘D-d-don’t’t you m-m-move. Y-you’ll p-p-pay f-for w-what you’ve d-d-done.’
The Viper Slayer does not flinch at what she sees, though it turns her stomach. Her nostrils clench tightly, ears pinning back tight against her crest, against the mess of dusty hair and burnished copper rings. Her eyes narrow in venomous distrust, muscles coiled like serpent-things, tight under the pale horsehair and grime. He is thin, each bone making itself known in lewd detail below the paper-thin russet of his dull pelt. He shakes, each and every restive inch of him. The spaces around his eyes are uncomfortably sunken, shaded in dark, bruise-purple, hemming a wide, demented gaze.
(I know you… Solis help me… I know you, brother.)
He stumbles closer, breaching the sill of flame-light. His breath is rank. It smells like mothballs and rot. He looks diseased. Why does he look diseased; why can’t he see who she is and is not. Cyrra snorts and straights herself, a Herculean labour itself, her shoulders and knees aching from disuse. At that moment, her hard, searching eyes finally catch the violent glint of rust-worn iron in the light, a proffered promise left between them. Her breath slows. Her heart quickens. Her eyes fall on him, lips twitching. “Step away…”
His lips quiver.
He’s crying. Tears trail down his gaunt cheeks as he takes a step closer, the rusted dagger coming to press against her pale throat just above the twisted copper of her neckpiece. ‘T-t-the Arete w-w-ill h-h-av-v-e their r-r-revenge y-y-you b-bast-t-tard t-traitor!’
She swallows. The tip of the blade digs into the bulge as she does, drawing blood down her throat. “Don’t do this...” But she can see. She can see it in his eyes, the way they waver between here and there—between this and the next. The price he has paid for his—their—nemesis’ treachery has been grave. She watches as his thighs twitch, eyes pass to the place where his blade kisses her flesh open.
She yanks the dagger, less gracefully than she is used to, from his telekinetic grasp and plunges it into his left eye until the hilt meets the brow bone. He shudders and heaves forward as the Arete pulls it loose and steps back, his body collapsing at her feet.
Silence.
Dark.
(Halim. That’s it. Your name was Halim.)
She stares into that stygian depth, blood spattered hot and thick across her chest and forearms. She lets the dagger go absently. It clatters to the ground beside Halim and the nauseating, metallic twang echoes into eternity.
There's always been something fascinating to the mule about the way light and color take on such an ethereal quality when surrounded by contrasting darkness, so it's without even the slightest forethought or hesitation that he trots toward the meadow, eyes fixed on its carpet of phosphorescent white and periwinkle blue blossoms, curiosity and a joyful wonder his only driving forces.
The roughly oval space is utterly transformed, a layer of veiling shadow sandwiched between starlight above and the flowers dim glow beneath, their light most intense in the blooms centers and fading to a pale gleam toward the tips of their petals. Lowering his head, the stallion takes a moment to examine them closer, noting the grainy texture of the glowing substance, as if a powder of some sort had been poured over them to create the glimmering effect, rather than a natural process of the plants themselves.
Overenthusiastic, he presses his nostrils too close and inhales a choking breath of powder, the dry particles irritating his airway and making him sneeze forcefully. "sh-CHEW!" Snorting, he rubs his muzzle on one knee, leaving behind a gleaming smear that visibly fades as he watches. "Oh!"
Well, it doesn't taste like poison and he can see the silhouettes of other equids moving about the meadow who have presumably been exposed to the blossoms longer than he, so the risk of a bad reaction is probably low...
With a feral grin and his knees and hocks held high, the mule prances through the flowers, coating his lower legs in a bright, light blue radiance that flares and fades with the movement of his steps.
Noam follows the sound of music, the bark of laughter that coalesce from the palace. The heavy scent of beer and spices that begin to accumulate, assaults his sense of smell. The taste of equine lays thick in the air, heavy and crude – it feeds into the nausea that sticks behind his throat.
Reminds the stallion of iron and copper, of the earth.
He knows not why he follows the tail of the flute, or the cadence of the drums. Or why the light irritates his eyes when the sun has fallen several hours ago. The streets are filled with foreigners, just as much as they are overflowing with citizens. But there is a calling that brings him closer to the castle’s gates. A phantom touch, that places an unusual, gentle nudge forwards.
The air remains heady and energized with a familiar fervor within. Fills him with adrenaline, for an enemy he cannot see – and shadows that mean to do more, than bite his ankles or pull his hair. He mistakes his beating heart for the drums that ground the music. Takes refuge beside a column and leans a shoulder against the cool brick.
He can focus on their movements at least. The dancers, as they sprawl across the floor ahead. They smile, others grin while a few are entirely lost in the motions. Some fumble, while the practiced dancers contest with each other – and in a flurry of motions, be it grace or raw ineptness – they are elevated to a higher place. Is it joy that shines past their eyes? Or is it merely a result of adrenaline, the physical labors pressed against each other that results? There are pairs who delve into some other world, where their breath consumes one another, and their limbs entangle in a coordinated embrace. Not unlike the entanglement of soldiers, seeking purchase of flesh and the draw of blood. There was rhythm to the chaos – if one could fathom the technique, the game.
The sparrow steals himself away before he can catch any lingering eyes. Avoids being drawn in, for the creeping fear he might lose his footing – and reach for a dagger instead of a hand.
There is something wrong with these halls. With the jovial nature of the festival, and the foreigners that bloat the streets; the wears and trinkets that are traded or purchased. Some might have called it progress, a steppingstone into Solterra’s future. Noam did not have a name for it yet.
He passed by a stand and grabbed blindly for an ale. An arched opening led out to the starlit sky, offering a way out of the stifling cage behind. Noam pressed his chest up against the barrier of the stone lookout. The sparrow’s eyes sharp, as they regarded the various lights flickering in the distance. Hints of where the other parts of the castle led further on. Perhaps a barracks of rotating men and women, just as blind, just as deeply invested in the sands and the stifling heat of the summer.
Did they revel in their king? Did they adore him, too?
Were there secrets still – chaining men to their ideologies, and keeping children silent by the whip.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
She doesn't care about him anymore. (Elena believes this as she has mastered the fatal act of believing her own lies.) She had ignored the warnings, pushed past them as if they had been nothing but light branches of a willow tree. He had left her. Fell through her cupped hands like water. Then he came back to her, saved her as some kind of acting white knight. She would not succumb to him. He could not cause her to falter.
She was born bold and brazen, restless.
But it is more than that, too.
She is insatiable.
There was always desire in her bones, longing for what she shouldn't take. But Elena had also been born sweet, compassionate, empathetic. Sensitive to her own emotions as well as those of others.
Perhaps it was dangerous to be soft. But how could she have been anything but when Elena was born smiling at the world and the world smiling back at her? And how could she be anything but soft now with eyes that bright? Elena had been born from love and with love. Love so fierce that she swears, her first image of life was the explosion of it in beautiful colors. A love unable to be contained and so they placed it inside their golden daughter. The only difference was, where their love was sure, strong, solid, they were wise with their hearts and practiced in the art of affections. While Elena holds this powerful emotion in her chest, unsure of how to manage it. So it spills out from inside her, uncontrolled, latching onto any who come too close.
And Tenebrae just kept getting far too close.
He hurt her, and she swears she will not go back to him.
Little girl, little girl, you bad, bad liar.
There is a loneliness since that day at the hospital. It has plugged its cold hand into her chest and wrapped its sharp hands around her heart. A loneliness that was not made any better when she fell off the cliff side like Icarus down from the sun. Elena’s paper wings were never meant to fly, and the bruises covering her are a not so gentle reminder. The glacier eyed girl is thinking perhaps it would be good to be strong. Strong like a silver queen she once knew.
Perhaps Elena had never admired anyone more than when Aletta had gone off to battle to protect Murmuring Rivers. Valerio had not come back to them, and a stallion was knocking on their door, ready to rip everything away from them. ‘Rule by my side,’ he had told the grey mare that Elena had grown up looking to as a second mother. But Aletta had not stepped down, she had not simply lowered her head and tucked her tail ready to run. Aletta had risen from the wildflowers of Murmuring Rivers with far more beauty and strength than any Phoenix in its ashes could ever harness.
Silver blue eyes rove the shelves of the library, overwhelmed by the selections. Where does she even begin? With Caligo? Monks? The sun and the moon? Elena is lost as she weaves in between shelves, her golden head moving as she half heartedly glances over all the titles before her. Elena sighs then before turning a corner. “Excuse me,” she says politely. “I’ve traveled from Dusk to do some er…research.” She is hesitate to say just what (who) has brought her to Dawn’s library. “How do I find the topic I am looking for?” She asks, before the sunlight girl smiles to the stranger, Tenebrae’s hunger lightens in her blue eyes.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
“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 desert has never been able to keep its secrets from her. Not when she drags them into the dunes with a primordial savageness each grain of sand understands. And perhaps this secret, the black-center of Solterra, is one that leaked into the magic of the earth and made monsters.
It's with the monsters that she comes to the black-center. Things made to devour mortals race in the dune below her hooves, and sand-storms gather like a storm in the clouds billowing up like hounds at her heels. Eligos gallops shoulder-to-shoulder with her, and their lungs heave with the howls rising like soot from their lips. Here there is nothing for them to devour, or hunt, or chase until their hearts are hanging on the edge of a cliff.
Here everything is already dead or dying.
The city is quiet as they cross the stone gates guarding the heart of Solterra. No guards try to stop them, perhaps inspired to silence by the shine of Eligos in the moonlight that has been whispered to them in nightmares. And there is no one to follow as they make their way to the jagged scar in the sand and stone. It doesn't matter, not with the bones singing to her like sirens below the dirt--
Not with the way all the ancient death is calling her home.
She does not care why the bones are here, nor how much the long rotted flesh that once sheltered them suffered. It is enough that they are here, shining bone and diamond white in the firelight surrounding the entrance. It is enough to hear the song in the silence, the low hum of decay and dust echoing like the heart of the earth. Their footsteps are silent as they follow the thrumming chant and their shadows blend into the darkness like a tangle tomb sliding between the others (sentient instead of still).
Thana continues onward, listening perhaps to the bone-song and her heart-song, as the darkness grows blacker and darker, and thick enough to choke on. Even then she does not stop. A faded banner flutters like a blossom in the wake of her movement. It is the banner that makes her stop when she finally reaches it.
And when she lays her cheek against it, and turns it to dust, Thana starts to hum the song of the catacombs. The darkness is not silent then..
It is purring, and hungry, and awake, awake, awake.
An expansion of lungs drawn taut, a bow upon a string, as a hazel body shifted against its bed. Not linen and silk, never the plush comforter of some broad, extravagant spread. She woke as a snake in its nest of sand, the flare of her nostrils drawing in grit, until the grind of her taut jaw punished grains of desert beneath her molars. Hardly a lady rolling from her chaise, her body turned harshly upon the tomb in which she lay.
Death surrounded her. A perimeter of wondrous, fatalistic splendor. The catacombs were a dim lit vision, cast into light by the moony saucers of her dizzied eyes. The lie of her dreams unraveled like thread, spooling at her feet in tattered silk, as though her unconscious self had fought to free her from its tangles. She was trapped in a web, ensnared within the mirages of a Solterran mage.
A distressed viper, her pretty scales starved for sunlight, the parched plush of her lips chapped and painful. Her abdomen heaved as she shifted, hard, upon the hefty weight of her side. Boneless and heavy all at once; a wild dog lost in the dark.
She groaned as she sat upright, as the darkness of her world swam into her vision. Where—where?
(Her appetite for more pushes her onward, drives her further into the catacombs as her brethren lose themselves within the winding, unending tunnels. As separate entities, as lost stars, they parade through the darkness as beacons of Solis’ light. She is but a flame in the shadows, and the darkness takes and takes—devours, until a lonely slumber fetters her to the hard floor of the tomb.
When her eyes slide shut, she is secluded; she is lost. A curse upon her tongue, a plea for vengeance, as he threads his lies betwixt her ears—
And she hates him. She hates him.)
With a tight chest, the woman forced her legs to gather beneath her. Like a teetering newborn, she swallows down the sourness of bile and the rough texture of sediment, drinking it down as though it were nectar: the desert’s sustenance for her waking, enraged soul.
How long had it been? The question was a plume among the disarray of her thoughts, a torch to beat back the frantic, gnawing worry of bewilderment. It was nearly enough to drive her to tears, if the hot press of sand upon her cheek had not sapped the dampness from her skin.
And she hungered, hungered—
Her voice was a strange interjection into the darkness as she was coaxed onto her feet and onward, compelled by the perpetuating allure of a distant star. The sun, heavy within the sky, laden with the obligation of daytime.
“Arjun,” she hissed, her voice whetted down to a hoarse blade, as though the deceiver awaited her upon the vast, unending spread of desert that lay above. She remembered that name, at least; she knew his lies, unironically, to be truth. The rest was a haze, a fog of colors and faces, and an endless litany that filled her with sorrow and love.
She was a juxtaposition of so many things, seeking the stability of certainty beneath her soles. She pushed forth, towards the mouth of the catacombs and the timorous flicker of light that beckoned her, sang to her, from the end of the tunnel.
The sun was a beacon, its rays a hymn, and she whispered the lyrics beneath her breath.
A name, her name. It was all she had.
"Hälla. Hälla."
The solitary word sang with the soft pad of her hooves.
She had waited there in the prairie, waited for whatever cruel higher power controls the void to take her back, or for the inevitable demise of the land she was placed in. Sayyida had waited patiently, like a lover waiting for their partner to return from a harrowing war, pacing and fretting the arrival of darkness and dread. Destruction had been on her heels in Nordlys, blood had stained her skin as she ran towards her people despite their rejection, towards Pyrrha despite the bad blood that had been bred into them. She should have hated Pyrrha, having been raised to hate the Abbas and their love for Cosmos, but her curiosity had been her betrayer; she had danced around those bonfires alongside the Abba without hesitation, had learned prayers to the Father. Perhaps that is what caused the deaths of her people and the extinction of the Matraan.
When several days had passed and nothing had come of her arrival, she abandoned her post among the rolling hills of the foreign prairie, and set out to explore, for her curiosity had been too overwhelming to bear. Sayyida headed north, against the gut instinct to go south, to find deserts and mountain ranges and ritual bonfires lit upon their towering peaks. And amber eyes could search for the curious little figures dancing around tall flames that spewed smoke into the night sky. But she knew they would not be there, not here, not when their god is dead and so are they. A dead religion, with no one to carry on the legacy, no one to recount the history; it was not her place to do so, didn't feel right to preach of gods she had watched die.
Sayyida doesn't know when to stop, doesn't know what she's looking for, if she's looking for anything at all — she just walks, and keeps walking. She could have gone forever, traveling across the country like a wayward soul, a nomad with no ties or possessions. She may die that way too.
Sometimes she runs, just to feel her heart rattle against her ribs, to be reminded that she is still alive as she pants and heaves, that so many others had to suffer unfortunate ends so that she may continue on. She didn't feel worthy enough, as though her people had died in vain, that their sacrifice wasn't worth it.
The scenery changes, from mountains to flat lands, sprawling golden plains rolling out before her. Slate hooves strike against soft earth, purposeful despite her wayward wandering, head held high as the crisp autumn wind pulls at her ponytail. Amber eyes are searching, seeking a sign of darkness, of black fog tumbling towards her with ill intent, for the fury of a scorned god to scorch the earth beneath her hooves. But nothing comes of it, and she visibly relaxes as the wind settles and the sun dips below the horizon. For the briefest moment, she almost feels at peace.
