The meadow is immaculately groomed, obvious care having been taken by someone, or something, to trim the shrubbery into measured angles and smooth, flat planes. The emerald green grass is cut short and with perfectly even edges to separate this small staging area from the rest of the forest and thin wisps of fog drift up from the dense turf, dissipating around chest-height and making everything feel small and close, limiting the mules visual field to a mere meter in front of his nose.
Though he can't see the source, he can hear whispering, voices and syllables too low to sort into words or phrases from where he stands, his oversize ears swiveling fretfully. Restless and unsure, he paces back and forth along the threshold of the clearing, unnerved by what he's heard of this unnatural place, that it's an entrance to a shifting, labyrinthine path that appears only once annually to those who enter the whiteout. They say there are tests, mysterious gifts, and an enchanted tree at the trails end, but they also say that the dead speak to you along the way, ancestors and lost loved ones and those who would pass on wisdom or warning.
Having just recently seen another such wonder on the Eleutheria Plain, Willfur's eager to explore more, almost painfully curious, but the stallion hesitates. He's a stranger here, born far away and too young to assume that either of his parents might have passed on yet, or that they would even appear here if they had. He worries that it might seem disrespectful of him to enter, irreverent to whatever unseen powers act behind the scenes. What right does he have to come gawking and asking questions when a native might only have this one, brief chance at closure, or peace, or... well, anything personal and meaningful, anything more than a purely academic interest.
He sighs, too wary to go on without encouragement, but too entranced to give up so easily. "I don't suppose I could ask for a sign of permission?" He tries softly, one ear tipping forward, guarded, but hopeful.
With most questions of a spiritual nature he assumes that intent is more important than execution, but he's only just begun to read the many tomes describing Tempus and his children in the Dawn Court library. He's not familiar yet with what manner of deities rule over Novus, other than that they are very real and very present, both novel and untrodden ground for someone accustomed to religions based entirely on personal, unsubstantiatable faith. It's both fascinating and terrifying, so for now at least, he'll err on the side of caution, even if it does strain his composure.
Azrael is drawn to this place, with its carved-out grasses and light-lit paths. It is a place of wonder, a place of eerie brightness, and the star in him delights in the light. As he walks along the shadowed sheaves of long summer grass, his own body casts a turquoise glow, only adding to the allure of the festival. He is quiet - respectful and deferent - for this is not his land to walk upon… and yet there is a welcoming aire to the celebrations, Delumine’s doors flung open for visitors to come and enjoy their landscape.
He knew very little of Delumine, having drifted for most of his time in Novus among the mountains and the stars of Caligo’s court. What he knew was only what he had read – that Oriens’ people were scholars and lovers of nature. Perhaps then, Azrael’s own presence would not be so far-fetched in a place such as this, as he walks among the revelers. He stops only once or twice to stare at the autumn sky, noting that the stars seemed further here, drowned out by the brightness of lanterns and candlelight, but still he feels at peace.
Not far away, children play, and women sing to the spirits of the forest. Azrael watches them for a beat before moving onward, a sparkle in his turquoise eyes as he regards the stardust world, reverent as always for the magics at play in Novus. He travels the length of the runic signs in the meadow, speculating as he goes about their meaning, even as he stumbles upon another in the maze. Murmuring a quiet apology, his cyan gaze locks onto the stranger, and he manages a greeting smile.
“Good evening.” Azrael’s voice is even and soft in the din of celebration. “This place sure is something… have you seen the likes of this festival before?” It was small talk, and awkward small talk at that – but Azrael had nothing but pleasant acknowledgment to offer the stranger, as dark as he was light in the night.
It feels strange to step into the meadow, after wandering the forest for so long.
It seems to him as if he blinked and then winter were over, and spring were gone, and had taken summer along with it. As if the flowers had only bloomed for a weekend, and he were too busy to tell them of their beauty. It was the first spring he had gone so long without seeing them. One day the trees were unfurling their fresh, green leaves after a winter that had seemed like it might have gone on forever; but then the next day they were already trading in their verdant robes for ones of red and gold. Ipomoea was afraid that tomorrow he might wake up and find only a forest full of skeletons again.
A unicorn had told him once that seeing the first spring flower each year made the whole winter worth it. But he had wasted his spring away as if it had never happened, and now winter knocked on his door again.
So he steps away from the forest at last, and when he comes upon the first light-flower that looks more like a star belonging to the night sky, he makes a wish upon it. And as he lowers his face to the flower, close enough to brush his cheek against its unfurled petals, it sings a promise back to him. For the first time in what feels like far too long of a time, Ipomoea smiles.
He follows the trail cut into the tall-summer grass, and for once does not wonder where it might lead him. He is not thinking of blood and bones when he comes upon the cherry wine sitting in a goblet - nor is he thinking of baptism or communion when he pours from the wine and washes his throat with it. All around him the lights are shining brightly enough to chase away the worst of the shadows, and both the forest and winter seem far enough away to be a dream tonight. With each step he takes that leads him deeper into Illuster, deeper into the light-flowers that laugh in the wind and tickle his sides, with each step not-star he lowers his muzzle upon he sheds another worry.
And soon enough, the flame inside of Ipomoea’s heart is beginning to swell again. After so long of it flickering and stuttering and nearly putting itself out, he almost doesn’t recognize the feel of it.
He watches for a while, as the musicians play their flutes and the fireflies settle against their skin. He watches from the shadows of the forest, because he has almost forgotten how to separate himself from them.
The forest leans in all around him, pressing branches and flowers and leaves against his skin like it would like nothing more than to turn him into one of them. He almost wishes they would - his heart already beats in time to the murmurs of the sap deep buried deep in the trunk, his roots are already sunk as deep as the roots of the trees. Ipomoea does not know anymore how to be anything but a vessel: for anger, for magic, for change.
So when the first few fireflies drift towards the grove of trees he watches from, and brush their wings against his skin like a dozen freshly-made promises, a part of him wants to shy away.
He wants to turn his head from them and duck back beneath the trees, to forget that things like magic and wonder and hope still exist. He wants to pretend he’s still hunting, still searching for a purpose that goes beyond creating flowers just to make something beautiful. He knows of course that there would be no point of fighting if it were not for hope - the same way he knows he has fought for so long now, it almost doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
His heart starts to beat dully, echoing in all that empty space inside of his chest.
The notes of the music start to rise, and the fireflies begin to drift away.
And he begins to drift away with them.
His heart starts to feel something like a song, rising and falling with the music. And his legs start to move in time with it, alternating slow and fast, weaving and flowing with the sounds of the flute to guide them. Ipomoea can hear his blood rushing in his ears, but above that, beyond that, he can hear the river. Each step brings him closer, brings more fireflies settling upon his skins, brings that sliver of peace he still clutches somewhere in the deepest parts of himself closer to the surface. And as he starts to dance, he starts to feel something like a king again, pressed in close beside his people.
It is only when the sweat starts to darken his skin and two dozen fireflies rest upon his crown that he sees her. He recognizes her at once, even with the fireflies floating between them and demanding any attention he has to spare. Her dappled tones are framed softly with the gold of the lights and the blue of the river, but it is her.
“Corrdelia!” he calls out to her, and is already stepping through the small gathered crowd towards her. And as he tips his head back and laughs, if only for the simple pleasure of being alive and well despite the shadows that linger still all around them, he can almost excuse the way Hasta slumps on her shoulder.
eyes that fire and sword have seen
and horror in the halls of stone
The night has been uneventful; a still, hot night where the heat is so oppressive Jahin can hardly breath--the kind of night where sleep is a brief respite from the unforgiving sun in these summer months. Even the linen curtains remain motionless. The air is heavy and humid. Jahin lies awake, distinctly aware of the lack of a breeze in the room. Sahar lies coiled in the windowsill, aglow with moonlight.
When the earth suddenly begins to tilt and sway beneath his hooves, Jahin feels like he is intoxicated, teetering in a surreal abstract of reality diluted heavily by drink. But Jahin has had nothing to drink this particular night, as he often refrains from such activities out of habit (he dislikes feeling out of control and despises the haze that clouds his mind and slows his reaction time).
He rises unsteadily from his simple straw bed in his personal quarters, attempting to discern whether this drunken feeling is something he is imagining or if the earth really is roiling beneath his hooves. Sahar hisses, voicing her immense displeasure at being jostled about. Egg is cracking, she says. He isn't sure what that means--she often speaks phrases and sentences that he can't understand, but he guesses that she is remembering the traumatic night when he found her and the remains of her brothers and sisters crushed by wild dogs. He stands still for a moment, ears flickering attentively, nostrils flaring.
The silence is incredibly pregnant and soon gives away to the rattle of pebbles clattering across the sandstone hewn tiles. The lanterns hung on the walls flicker weakly as the glass clinks against the walls. Just as he thinks So I’m not imagining it, there is a frantic rap-rap-rap at his doors. Sahar coils around his leg and across his withers to nestle in the wild threads of his flame-like mane. He crosses the distance unsteadily, moving awkwardly like a newborn foal amid the groaning of the earth as it bucks and sways beneath him.
He flings open the door to a young soldier with wide, fearful eyes. He recognizes the filly as a trainee from some of his night shifts. The ground quakes in earnest this time and Jahin and the young cadet fall to their knees. Jahin grits his teeth, struggling to regain his balance. A lantern crashes to the ground; wails of desperation and fear are carried through the open window in a sudden breeze that makes the linen curtains swell and recede like a ghost.
“Follow me, sir,” the cadet gasps at last, struggling to remain standing. Jahin nods, grabs his spear from above the doorway, and motions for her to lead the way.
To say Jahin is not prepared for the sight that greets him is an understatement. Sahar peers between his ears, curious and excited by the commotion of the city and the shuddering moans of the earth beneath their hooves. Cracked egg, she repeats with earnest.
“It just--it just opened up, sir,” the cadet says in a trembling voice, eyes wide and nostrils flaring in alarm. “My brother is down there! It--it swallowed him!” She can’t keep the tears from falling, but Jahin commends her for her efforts. Indeed, the earth has opened like the jaws of hell, seeking to devour and swallow Solterra whole into the black abyss yawning below.
“I’ll find him. But I need someone else, someone with a lantern and yarn. Bring me a volunteer.” The young cadet bravely steps forward, but Jahin shakes his head. In a soft, gentle voice he says “Not you. I can’t take a trainee. Find someone from the walls.” He cannot find the words to lie and tell the young soldier that he will bring her brother back alive, when in all likelihood her brother has been crushed in the onslaught of rubble and buildings collapsing into the rift. She nods frantically and gallops away, her hooves clattering lightly through the churning rubble like a deer.
Jahin stares into the gaping abyss, wondering what might be awaiting him in the deep below. Jahin must have lots of yarn, Sahar hisses in his ear, lots and lots of yarn.
J A H I N look at last on meadows green
and trees and hills they long have known
Isra and the garden crown
"Fireflies. Fire flies. Fire, fly”
There is an echo of magic in the air, the same dark delight that hangs in the jasmine smoke of Denocte every time the moon rises. It covers my skin like satin. It welcomes me home as much as it begs me to fall deeper, and deeper, and deeper in the blackness.
And I want to listen, I want to cut open my skin and answer the magic with magic and the darkness with sea.
But it is not the magic that brings me to the river, nor is it the roar of a distant waterfall (where the river plummets into the meadow) that echoes not-quite-right in my ears. I am looking for a trail of poppies, or posies, or lilies weaving along the rock shore. I am looking for thorns and willow-trees spring ing out of boulders. I am looking for Ipomoea who had once learned to be brave with me as the sun rose dew-gold over the tips of our weapons.
I am looking for the man with desert in his heart and flowers on his crown.
I follow the soft purr of the music, and the steady glow that flickers just ahead like a fresh-placed horizon. The stones stay just stones as I walk (although mica rises in their cracks like water) and the grass remains just grass when I walk further from the water. Tonight my magic is silent, awed perhaps by the weight in the air in the itch under my skin that is chanting hurry, hurry, hurry like a black-sea song.
When I see them, the fireflies lighting holy lines across the mortals singing and dancing by the shore, I am glad I listened to my eager blood and my hungry magic. I do not remember deciding to join them, but between one blink and the next, I am standing knee deep in the water beside the singers. The water whispers against my skin, begging me to lay my head beneath it and let it carry me back, back, back to the sea.
The current is still whispering to me when I deny it and lift my nose into the air thick with magic and flickering fireflies. And when I exhale I turn the molecules of the breeze into glitter before the fireflies lay themselves around my horn like it's a garden instead of a weapon.
It is surreal to be in Solterra's citadel. It is not as he remembers it.
Nothing, it seems, is as he remembers it. Oh, they've tried to explain. They've tried to tell him of the end of Zolin's reign, and Maxence, Seraphina, Raum, Orestes. A list of names that mean very little to him. They've tried to say, you were hidden for ten years and he wonders why it is no one questioned when the screaming sands stopped, and Zolin's reign of torture beneath the citadel within the catacomb crypt had gone unanswered. Of course, someone said, the child soldier's happened after your disappearance, and they go on to describe the fates of orphans, and the lost, and abandoned--
And Zayir's thoughts derail, as they are wont to do lately. Since his emergence. Since daylight spilled across his face like a christening, a rebirth.
As he was thinking, before:
Nothing is as he remembers it.
The palace is polished for the occasion. Noblemen and commoners alike have been invited, and Zayir is astonished to see a gypsy caravan within the great hall of the keep. The marble floors are immaculate, and upon the great room's dais rests a number of lively musicians. They are playing something Zayir does not recognise, and even the music sounds strange.
It feels, almost, as if he is looking at everything from underwater. It is familiar, but strange, nearly unrecognisable. This is not the same citadel he had known, and grown up in, with Lady Marcisa Arisetta in her flowing gowns and King Havieel a stern presence about the halls; no, the current Sovereign is much flashier than that, and a foreigner in addition.
Not of a land like Leisha, no, a sister to Solterra. No, from the sea. Or so they say.
Zayir is offered champagne by a servant and he denies, further surprised to be reminded they are paid employees and no longer slaves. Very few wear collars to express their station in life. He eventually wanders through the dancing, and the bright lamplights and floating lanterns and noise, noise, noise like a river rushing over him--yes, Zayir eventually wanders to a quiet garden, just past the festivities, where for a moment he tries to see the stars. He does not remember how long it has been since he has seen the stars.
But the night is cloudy. The stars are sleeping.
His ears continue to ring with the music. He tugs his cloak tighter about his shoulders, and tries to steel his nerves. He had thought--and Zayir knows it was a foolish thought--he might have recognised someone. An old friend, perhaps. But there is no one at the party he knows.
Zayir thinks he should feel shock, or confusion. Perhaps even anger. Instead, with a guitar and voices rising out behind him, he feels empty. Empty like a dry well. Empty like a dead thing, like carrion torn up for all it was worth. When he turns abruptly to go inside, with a speed and intensity characteristic for him, Zayir was not anticipating another horse to be entering the garden. As he turns he collides sharply with another horse. It knocks the golden laurel at his brow askew, and dislodges his cloak from about his shoulders. Zayir reels backward.
"My apologies." He says curtly, and avoids, momentarily, eye contact.
If they do not know him by face they may know him by reputation, and that is something Zayir is not ready to converse about. Aren't you one of the soldiers from the catacombs?
There was a strange bite lingering on the breeze as the jet black mare made her way southward. The abrasive scent of salt was foreign to the young desert dweller. Barely out of her foal-hood and already she wandered a strange land, far from those she had once known. The wandering wasn't new to her, she had been born to a nomadic people who never did stay in one place too long. It was tiresome however to never had a solid home. Some might say home is wherever those closest to you resided, but that was a bunch of hogwash in her opinion. She had longed for someplace she could sit still and wake up each morning looking at the same sunrise. That's probably what had brought her here despite not even knowing where "here" was. To say rumors of a strange magical land and the promise of a new home had lead her there would have been a lie. Truth was Regina had simply ended up there by complete and utter happenstance. Some would call it fate, others dumb luck, she was too busy being distracted by the strange yet oddly pleasant sensation that lead her forward.
Forward she moved, eventually her delicate ears beginning to pick up a sound to go with the smell. It was a far off, faint crashing at first but as she continued to move forward soon it could only be described as a mighty roar. Emerald eyes grew wide with a mixture of awe and fear when she finally came to stop at the edge of the rocky cliffs. "What is this strange, strange oasis? It looks like it goes on forever!" She'd never seen an ocean before, never even stopped to consider there'd be a massive body of water somewhere so full of salt that one couldn't even drink it. Head held high as she squinted in an attempt to see the other side she stood there in utterly stunned silence. It was both breathtaking and terrifying all in the same instant.
((Sorry, this is one of my first rp posts in a long, long time. They'll get better I promise! I just wanted to introduce her before I need to go make dinner. Anyone/everyone welcome!))
In the fading of the light and the quiet of the night, the glowing statues reigned supreme.
Looking into the stallion’s eyes seem, to him, as akin to looking into the pits of hell as all the artists described them: bright, fiery, hungry. An inferno waiting to consume. Even now the flames dance greedily along the carved-marble face, their light turning every line every hollow, every chisel to a living, dancing shadow. It is hard to look at anything else. The rest of the world fades away, a background of muffled hoofbeats and whispered words that made the statue seem all the more salient, almost-holy.
For a while, Ipomoea stares back in silence. For a while, Ipomoea stares back and thinks he ought to throw his head back in that same rigid arch, and open his mouth to reveal those same flashing teeth, and scream in a way the statue never can.
He does not. But oh, how he wants to.
And it is in silence that he turns away, and begins the familiar garden path. Each step is already ingrained into his memory, written into his bones (how many nights has he paced this same path, unable to sleep? Too many, Rhoeas would tell him). But tonight, tonight there are countless statues, countless carved faces, countless glowing eyes to watch him. He stares back at each of them in turn, like a dying man finding salvation in their looks of pain, and joy, and wonder. And he tries not to think of the way each one looks and feels a bit like him, like walking through a graveyard of memories he thought he had laid to rest, only to look around and find each rising from the ground as one -
The banquet table stands in the middle of the garden, a thousand glowing lights around it drawing him near. The moonlight falters and stretches around it, and when he tips his head to look at the bits of bone and driftwood scattered about he sees only blank faces not yet carved, bodies not yet given form, eyes not yet opened. The magic in him starts to tremble, but in this garden of silent things there is nothing for it to nourish.
Still, he steps closer all the same, close enough for the lantern-light to embrace him like he belongs there with it. And still he picks up a mass of tangled driftwood, and a carving knife, and holds the two together like he could maybe know how to turn a dead thing beautiful again.
But he only stands there quiet, and still, and unable to bring himself to make the first cut.
It is not until hoofbeats come to rest behind him, and still the driftwood lies untouched, that he sets the virgin knife back upon the table. For a moment, as a girl at another table lifts her finished sculpture into the air, and all those around her cheer for it, he is quiet. But then he clears his throat and without turning around, asks the stranger, “If you could make anything in the world, if in the blink of an eye your hearts desire could be given flesh-“ He sets the driftwood down next, and fingers a scrap of sandpaper instead.
my hands reach for her, but she cannot be anchored. she belongs to no one, to nothing, to nowhere.
She is a pool of longing and pain, of loss and gain, something old and something new, something entirely unlike the stained glass put in the fire before they'd all left. Now, she needs a sieve to sift through all the minute facets of her emotions, laying them bare under a LED light, tweezing out flaws like glass from a wound that festers, full of puss and poison left too long unattended. Bit by bit they roil beneath the surface of her shattering pond, wishing so desperately to be heard, to be known, to be seen.
But Moira Tonnerre hates being a spectacle.
To be a Tonnerre, to be a woman, to be a child of that family is to be seen, not heard; to be prim and perfect, to present a face to the public that is as cold as ice, harder than bulletproof glass; if there are any faults they are hidden just as all the rabble of the family is swiftly cast aside.
She will not be another casualty of their cold war. Her steps are echoed by his, and he is quick behind her, so close that the heat of golden skin nearly presses into her trembling side - should he touch her again she'd surely shatter. His very nearness is draining and exhilarating, eliciting responses she'd rather bury a hatchet into than let see the light of day. Stiff lipped and bright eyed, Moira marches forward without uttering a peep to the man that is her golden ghost, her nightmare and every dream. Pale hair brushes the tips of her wings and she shivers, casting a glance to Michael that would shatter stone or melt it, but he does not falter.
Steadfast, sturdy, a companion returned with glue guns in hand and ready to pick up the pieces. The phoenix does not ask what battles he's seen, and she does not dare whisper of her own unbecoming. There are secrets they both hide in the crevices of their skin, lying in the hollows of their collarbones, tucked neatly into the pleats of their hair. Some demons only come out when libations are plenty and tongues waggle loose.
Once, she lost that battle with him.
Once, he was hers by the moonlight.
That once is gone.
Moira murmurs briefly to a guard they pass, asking for extra blankets and pillows to be brought up to her room before sweeping into the hallway that will take them to somewhere more private, perhaps too intimate, but she is weary and she is tired and the only other home she knows are the walls of books and shelves of stories that would take her further than Michael could ever dream of going. So she does not go there, does not turn into the well-trod path to the library that would soothe her more quickly than any cup of tea or midnight tale. Instead, she glides through the doors of her chamber, pacing over to the wall to put up curtains and covers over splattered canvases, covering the part of her room that might be more of a disaster than anything she is right now.
Bookshelves line another wall, her bed with its billowing black curtains of gossamer and smoke take up the back center of the room. From there, she rules over her domain with a hawk's eye and iron fist. From there, hidden from the world, she is safe.
Moira does not retreat, she turns to Michael and watches when he places a plate and loaf of bread on the table she reserves for occasional meals that Neerja forces into her and heaps upon heaps of books. With a raised brow, she lets silence be their only conversation.
