Dark hooves beating across the ground rhythmically, ebony mane and tail flowing behind him with the wind from his run, wings folded against his side, the stallion carried forward through the lands. The winter air was biting, cold. It frosted the hairs on his muzzle white, a stark contrast to the deep black that covered all but his brilliant blue eyes and the horns upon his head. He stood out here, a black patch among a sea of white and green. He was in the forest, the setting sun tinting the snow hues of indigo and crimson. This land was new, strange to him, and something, perhaps it was a scent in the air, the sounds, a feeling that crawled under his skin, but he could tell it was different.
Slowing his footsteps to a two-beat trot he continued forward. Now he could scent the water, cold and icy, buried in the aromas of pine, earth and snow, but he could tell it was near. Slowing again to a walk, he moved forward, huffing, the icy breath upon his muzzle turning to warm mist in the air. Lowing his head, he took a drink of the icy water, silently. It was cold, but the movement in the water, flowing ever towards the ocean left some of it for those who thirsted for a drink. Snorting, he took several gulps, ears flickering, listening for noise in the surrounding forest. He was in unfamiliar territory, he was in a new land, and he was on the alert. There could be danger anywhere, and he did not want to be off his guard. Dusk was when animals hunted, and he had no plans to become someone's snack.
Raising his head again, thirst quenched, he scanned the area, the dusk almost turned night now. He should find shelter. He could figure out where he was tomorrow.
Notes: I hope this was alright... Also no posting table for this boy yet xD Word Count: 312
She says nothing tonight. For once, nothing leaves her lips, nothing but the air forced out of her lungs. She has gathered with the three others tonight, gathered with them and ready to instill a little anarchy into Denocte. She doesn’t know the court she’s been sent to destroy, but it matters nothing to her. She doesn’t care about the lives she will be ultimately ending, about the pain and agony that will follow such an act of devastation. She only cares that this is the first step towards something more, something much bigger than she could have ever imagined. All she cares about is that she was a part of the catalyst that was soon to start a series of events that would change the world of Novus once and for all.
She takes up the rear of the group, following behind Able, Tuolouse, and Rufio. Her steps are quiet, her neck arched, her ears alert, and her senses on fire. She wears a cloak, a black silk cloak that only appears to darken her hide. Despite the low-lit evening moon, the cloak helps to hide her more, to hide her where her face gives her away. But they do not know that she has a little trick up her sleeve.
They pause just outside the boarders, waiting patiently in the brush for the changing of the guard. She is silent, her eyes keen on the guards. And finally, when the time is right and their backs have been turned, the group slips passed the boards. As soon as they are past the guards, Targwyn finally lets her lips curl into a smile. This smile is malicious, dangerous, and speaks of her excitement for what she is about to do.
But now the time has come for them to each go in separate directions. Tuolouse and Abel go to the left, Rufio straight ahead, while she steers towards the right. When she is just out of sight, she pauses to change over her cloak. Slowly, she removes the silk cloak, turning it inside out and draping it over her whole body. The cloak swallows her, covering her in invisibility. The enchanted cloak renders her invisible. She is not upset that she only has one cloak. After all, she will not get caught. It was up to them to ensure their own success.
She slips onward, heading towards the food store that she was assigned to destroy. It does not take her long to find it and slip inside. Once there, she pulls out several matches, lighting them and placing them in several areas. As each bag of grain begins to light on fire, she stands there, watching her creature for a moment or two, before she finally slips away and heads straight for Solterra. It is only after she is miles from the boarders of Denocte that she finally removes her cloak of invisibility and reverses it back to the black silk that she had started the mission on. Not once does she wonder if the others are successful. Not once does she care if they are caught. Her part of the bargain was finished and it was now time to return to the canyon and to see who was smart enough to make it out unharmed and unnoticed.
OOC: Anyone is welcome to respond to the disaster, but Targwyn is LONG gone so she will not be responding to this thread.
TRY TRY YOUR WHOLE LIFE TO BE RIGHTEOUS AND BE GOOD wind up on your own floor, choking on blood--
The streets of Solterra are quieter than usual.
It is midday, and hot. It is always hot in Solterra – even in the winter, in spite of the rare gusts of cool that come and go from time to time, in spite of the blizzard that ravaged the landscape only months ago. Flies buzz. In the distant, the low, hissing hum of the wind across the sands is barely audible. A few months ago, you would not be able to hear this howl inside of the walls of the capitol. Now, Solterra is hushed – her people muzzled by the monster that sat on the throne, wearing horseflesh. (They speak of him in whispers. He has aligned himself with the Davke. He sunk an entire ship of people, didn’t he? And his lover, that fire-girl. They say she burnt up on Veneror, burnt herself. Someone found what was left. Heard it in whispers. He exiled the Regent, didn’t he? Where did she go, that golden-girl, that Bexley Briar – to lick her wounds? He killed her lover. Did he make her bleed? He makes everyone bleed. And what about Denocte? Does he want us to go to war again? And we remember how it looked, how people would disappear and never come back; how the stalls in the market grew empty. How you would see people drift, on the sides of the road, skeletally thin. And our children. What did it do to our children?)
Everywhere there is residue. People grow thinner. They disappear altogether.
And she is the jackal at his heels, ravenous. She stalks his spies. Kills his soldiers, his guards – without much remorse, save maybe a few tears shed in the dark, when no one is looking. These are her people. Perhaps they are only trying to survive. She is a knife, well-carved and cutting as steel, colder and redder by the day. Violence erodes her like sandpaper; it grates her nerves. She – a girl, delusional – had thought, for a moment, that the violence might be over, eventually. If she fought for it. If she only did enough. But any faith that she had when she began this venture has disappeared like ashes on the wind, leaving behind nothing but an ugly black stain and the memory of smoke; her idealism lies like broken glass all around her, sharp and reflective. There will never be anything else for her, and, even when this is over, she will never be free from what she has done, or what she failed to do. More people are dead; more people are dying. Disappearing. Gone, far from her, out of her grasp – and, every day, it seems that fewer are willing to stand against the blood king, the silver shadow in the throne room. Then they will die like cowards, perhaps she thinks, because she knows that he will never stop, not with Denocte, not with his supposed allies, not with Solterra – not until he has seen the world crushed to dust beneath his hoof, and it will be no different from the deaths of the brave. She wishes that she could be like Isra, to proudly and blatantly fight the Blood King and his followers; she has heard about her stint in the market. Even with her magic, with her sharp objects and her training, which has never saved her from horrible things before, even with all her years of experience as a leader, she is still too weak to stand alone, to stand in the light; she is resigned to the darkness. (She knows that she will not be Solterra’s savior. She was its ruination. She. Raum. There is no difference; she let him in.) She has no illusions about her own heroism, or the heroism of her followers; she has already seen some of them dead. (Or turn traitor. The thought of Caine makes her skin crawl with disgust, her lips curl at the tips with a tension that borders on resent – almost at herself for being so easily deceived, rather than at him. Still a foolish girl, so easily twisted up and in on herself. Perhaps she’d compliment him on it, before she slit his throat.) At best, he will die. It will not undo the damage that he has already done, will not bring back all the things she struggled to create, will not salvage the lives that have already been lost.
(She thinks of Rhoswen, and something inside of her begs to sob, but she is far too numb to cry. She cannot cry. If she cries, she has already lost. She buries the heart inside of her and smothers it until it is quiet.)
Hope takes years to build. She watched it waver, then fall apart entirely, in the space of months.
She will find a figure that she is seeking on the streets, and she will scribble up a note, sheltered by the relative safety of alley walls; she does not want to provoke the guards. Once written, she will let it drift, twisting her mind around the thin scrap. The slip of paper will slink like a snake on the wind, twirling and sinuous; if offered nothing more than a passing glance, it certainly appears that it is merely being buffeted by the breeze, but, if you follow it with your eyes for a moment or two, you might realize that there is something deliberate to those serpentine movements. The letter will bob and drift until it hangs suspiciously in the air in front of El Toro, lingering tentatively for just long enough for him to grab it.
A look at its contents will provide a simple: Look up.
If he does as the letter requests, Toro will find himself starting at a dark figure in the middle of the alleyway, shaded by hanging canopies and tall buildings; though she is wrapped in a great expanse of golden scarf that largely obscures her features, if he meets her eyes from across the crowded street, perhaps he will recognize their bizarre, jewel-bright hues. She stands like the reaper, deliberate and solitary, then turns on her heel, disappearing down the alleyway with the slightest nod of her head.
The implication is clear. Follow me.
Eventide parts for Rhoswen like the red sea; leaving the passage bereft of sound in her wake. She watches the glitter and flicker of fireflies swimming in the big black natatorium of this winter-night. She sees the great shadow of the mountain and she knows its beauty like she knows nothing else in this cold, sweet world. It is by no accident that she beats this travelled pilgrimage high-high-high into a crowd of cotton clouds that shine through the lightless dark. She wonders how many times she has walked this path; she wonders, too, of how many times she will never again walk this path. Too many to speak of -- she knows infinity cannot be named. The fireflies begin to drift closer, as though they can hear the silence in her bones; as though their morbid curiosity could not be contained. What kind of woman was filled with silence?
As the incline steepens, as her blood begins to slow, as the world sheds its skin and burns anew, Rhoswen begins to see all the magic in her life she could never have seen before. Perhaps she had borne different eyes; eyes that were not her own -- that saw bloodrage in a sunrise, that saw hatred in love, that saw guilt in a child.
Sabine.
The earth bends beneath the gravity of her pain. The mountain comes alive (screaming, writhing) for it cannot bear the mellow tragedy of girl unloved by a mother. And Rhoswen cannot bear it either; she would not be here if she could. It is an old story; one that belonged to a thousand girls, a thousand mothers, but that did not make it any less hopeless. For when the woman presses her gaze upon that summer child, through eyes that were not her own, she can only see the bludgeon-blue in her stare, the sick-silver in her skin, the amorphous ungodliness in the way she moved and breathed and lived. She could not love a thing like that.
She is a being without soul. A monster, a cyclical mirror-image of the pain that tore her arteries apart like plastic. It is all too easy to blame Him for this dying death that lives in the cages of her heart and Rhoswen is too jaded to fight that good fight -- she knows her fire is all but burnt out by the hand fate had deigned to deal her.
But she has one more pyre to burn.
As ancient rock melts into marbled stone and the slope leaps into step, Rhoswen slows to a halt upon the staircase leading to Veneror's hallowed cathedral. How the blackness weeps. It baptises her over and over again, as though it were begging her to stay, as though it could wash the sins from her brow and make right from her wrongs. She smiles, bright and tired. She knows it is a kind lie; she has spent six years lying and there is nothing upon this mortal earth that could keep her from the truth at last.
One, she is turning. Two, the church swallows her. Three, Solis sings. Four, Caligo watches on. Five, it is time. Six, she is scared-scared-fucking-scared. Seven, her head is full of faces. Eight, Reich - Rhaegar - her mother - her father - Acton - Aislinn - Seraphina - Eik - Bexley - Sabine Nine, Raum. Ten, Raum. Eleven, fire.
And when she starts to scream, the Gods looking on cannot tell if it is out of relief or regret.
The flowers are a whisper of glass and sharp things as he walks amongst them. They make up a song, a thousand voices rising together with the wind to tell the story of the star-dusted boy walking amongst them. Even his bell chimes in, a mezzo-sopranic singer to lead them all with its clear ringing.
Sirius doesn’t understand the words they sing; but he understands their meaning well enough. There was no word for heaven nor for earth, for gods nor men; their’s is the song of freedom, of mystery and revelation. The entire universe is laid out bare before him, his for the taking, his to explore. Monsters and nightmares be damned, he had left them behind in the forest, replaced them with a field of wildflowers carved from gems, sprinkled like terrestrial stars across the churned up fields.
Tonight it was all about him. There were things to see here, things to do, things to be. He would be them all, if he could.
He stops amongst the flowers, feelings their cold petals press in against his skin. He’s never seen anything like them before; he dips his head low, their facets filling his eyes with a thousand colors.
Sirius hasn’t seen much of the world; but he’s seen enough to recognize the magic coating the land he’s stumbled into.
“Where am I?”
His voice is soft; when was the last time he’d used it? It’s rough with misuse; like a sheet of paper that’s been crumbled up into a ball and tossed away, with torn edges and sharp creases. It feels impossible to unscramble it, to lay it out smooth and ready for use again. He swallows thickly; his throat feels strange, as if it, too, is rejecting the foreign words he speaks with a fickle tongue.
Maybe he was meant to be silent after all; isn’t that what he’d been told? Words were for commands, and commands were for the masters.
Except he has no master now.
The leather trailing from his forelegs is a testament to that truth, the endings torn and frayed. If he wanted, he could unbraid those strands and cast them off for good; yet he doesn’t. They hold on for dear life, their grasp tight about his knees, his crux and his salvation.
His life and his death.
moondust in your lungs
stars in your eyes
you are a child
of the cosmos
my spirit's veering flight
like swallows under evening skies.
The bonfire reaches high into the sky, stretching and stretching towards the stars that are twinkling so far above them. Samaira stands with the heat of the fire on her skin and looks at the stars that she wishes she could touch. She can fly so many places now that her wing is healed, and still so much is beyond her reach.
There is a deep yearning inside her that Samaira is not sure can ever be filled now. She’s not sure where it came from, when it yawned open, or what it is that she’s missing. Here in Terrastella she has more than she ever had before. Doesn’t she?
A gentle touch to her shoulder reminds her that she is not alone. The bay pegasus looks at Alaunus where he stands faithfully by her side, leaning just slightly against her to ward off the winter chill in the air. The young heron is, perhaps, the most wonderful gift Samaira has ever recieved, even as he mindlessly chatters in the back of her thoughts.
“...I hope they are keeping an eye on this fire, how do you think they got it so big? How long do you think it will burn for? Are you just going to stand here all night or are you going to go mingle? You could go see what all those equines are doing on the edge of the cliff. Hopefully they aren’t thinking about jumping…” Samaira laughs to herself, and a smile turns up the corners of her lips.
“Are you listening to me?” he says suddenly, a little indignantly. Alaunus straightens out and narrow his sky blue eyes at Samaira. “Yes, yes of course. You’re wondering if a handful of horses are going to leap to their deaths. My goodness, Alaunus, I highly doubt that is what they’re doing.” He ruffles his feathers and glances toward the cliff.
“Well, then why don’t you go find out…?” the heron says suggestively, and if he had brows she knows he’d be raising them.
TIGER TIGER BURNING BRIGHT, IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT; WHAT IMMORTAL HAND OR EYE, COULD FRAME THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY? IN WHAT DISTANT DEEPS OR SKIES, BURNT THE FIRE OF THINE EYES? ON WHAT WINGS DARE HE ASPIRE, WHAT THE HAND, DARE SEIZE THE FIRE? AND WHAT SHOULDER, AND WHAT ART, COULD TWIST THE SINEWS OF THY HEART? AND WHEN THY HEART BEGAN TO BEAT, WHAT DREAD HAND, AND WHAT DREAD FEET?
There was a quiet routine to the dance, one that reminded her so very much of battle. She cleaned her skin, dampened her face—stared into a polished mirror in the readying room, where she could see the dark crimson of her eyes. Adrenaline coursed through her, nervous and knotting in her stomach, her throat, and it made her hyperaware.
They painted her skin with metallic paints, just as her people had once done with gold—gold, always, for war. For the dances, they covered her face with it; they coated her white blaze in shades of gold, copper, silver. They lengthened her mane by braiding it with bright copper ribbons, ribbons, ribbons that would flutter and snap like guidons in the brisk sea-brought wind.
Yes, the longer she stared, both the more and less she recognized herself. What was this flashy thing, she might have thought, with the ribbons dangling to one side, long and silken. Her face was bright and dark all at once, responsive to light but oppressive, somehow, of her face’s true shape. Her eyes stood out in stark relief—and they were all blood, blood, blood.
Her people had danced. It was where she had learned. They had danced for Oreszi, their dark island god, the god of the land, the god that kept the sea at bay. They had danced for victory over the Khashran; for dominance over the sea; and their dances were dark, violent dances with children dressed as wolves, lions, and tigers. Dances not so different from battle; dances intended to teach the young how to fight with the intensive discipline dance could engrain.
Her guide of gypsy-like performers stoked the fires by the stage; the hall filled with the odor of woodsmoke, and Boudika breathed it in as it wafted beneath the door, into the readying room. She had heard there was a dancer in Denocte that could devour fire—and a part of herself felt threatened by such a concept, because she could not devour flame… But each and every one of her dances was derived from some lifelike memory, a battle. Upon cliff-sides, upon the sea’s edge, on volcanic sand.
The time passed—other dancers entered and existed the room, and the tribal, beating music began. Boudika closed her eyes and absorbed it—it was like a heartbeat, almost. The magic of art, she had learned, was how it possessed itself—haunting, perpetual, even if ephemeral. The heartbeat resounded in her hooves, up her legs, into her chest, into her blood—and by then she had become it, swaying, her mind brimming with a thousand conflicting thoughts. The sea, crashing against the cliff, bellowing beastly challenge toward the land—the first time she had seen a Khashran, as a foal, offered to it by her father—the second time, when she was much older, the horse far away on a beach, running more quickly and more beautifully than anything she had ever known, and now the beats of it hooves on the sand, sending up a misty spray of saltwater, those hoof-beats were now matching the music of the present, bam-ba—bam—ba.
It was time for her to dance. Boudika stood, anointed in oils, covered in her metallic paints, looking not beautiful but fierce, the beauty of a tigress, the beauty of a blade. She passed a series of dancers as they exited the stage, but said nothing—the music, the music, it had changed, and the beat of it was primordial, the songs belonging to a distant land of primitive fear, before fire mastery, before stone masonry, when the world was even more unforgiving. This was the stage Boudika entered, a thing too elevated for such beastly melodies.
Boudika kept her head down—and the ribbons fluttered and danced about her face, about her shoulder they streamed. The firelight danced against her dark body and every muscle stood out in stark relief. She was a corded, terrifying thing—a slick coat that glistened with paint and oil, she was all at once dissolving into the surrounding darkness and being lit, both consumed and insurmountable.
The acoustic began, a violinist that weaved amidst the drums in a halting, rising, falling keen. The drums… the drums, suddenly much fiercer, much more frantic.
Boudika began to dance.
It was the only time in Denocte she felt more than a shadow, was on this fire-lit stage, was possessed by a music similar to that of her homeland, of all the things she loved and hated. The passion animated her decorated body so that it transcended her mortal sphere—the paint, the glistening oil, the flashing, spiralling, whiplike ribbons, they animated her beyond her war-torn mane, beyond her war-torn eyes, and her impassioned, fiery, violent dance brought such turbulent fancies back to life.
The first class she had had on killing, at the academy, had ended with the instructor chastising her for her too muchness. The other children did not wish to spar with her, because Boudika did simply practice through the moves. She lived them, as though with the intent to kill even then, in class, rolling and tumbling with colt-like inelegance. It was what had one day made her an excellent fighter; she was creative, ingenious, fearless, complete. Boudika did nothing halfway, nothing lazily—and this showed now, in her swirling, her violent rearing, the way the drums and violin screamed, contested, reached a fever pitch—
and ended with the abrupt finality of death. Boudika came crashing down from a leaping rear, ribbons flying, half her body in shadow and half in bright, inescapable light—her front hooves hit the stage with a definitive clamour, sharper than a gunshot, and her head bowed in a mess of streaming ribbons.
The clapping began and Boudika, her flanks heaving in heavy breaths, bowed her head once again, and exited the stage.
——
Later, the fervour had not left her. It was not often she visited the bar at the back of the dancing hall, but she did that night. The ribbons had been removed from her mane, leaving it short and Spartan. The paint, too, had been mostly removed—except for where it clung, stubbornly, in indiscriminate locations. Her cheek, beneath one eye, smearing her chin, the crook of her neck, a shoulder—there was no telling, where.
The bartender was surprised to see her, and said as much, but he brought her a drink were she sat quietly in the corner. There were other performers entering and exiting the stage in a grand flurry of activity, a transiency marking each performance with both beauty and melancholy. This life was of such different severity for Boudika and, staring at the stage, her heart laid out there somewhere, she could not help the sardonic smile that briefly grazed her lips—oh, the liquor burned, and she felt alive.
But never as alive as she had felt with teeth at her throat, or the sea at her hooves.
WHAT THE HAMMER, WHAT THE CHAIN, IN WHAT FURNACE WAS THY BRAIN? WHAT THE ANVIL? WHAT DEAD GRASP, DARE ITS DEADLY TERRORS CLASP! WHEN THE STARS THREW DOWN THEIR SPEARS AND WATER’D HEAVEN WITH THEIR TEARS: DID HE SMILE HIS WORK TO SEE? DID HE WHO MADE THE LAMB MAKE THEE? TIGER TIGER BURNING BRIGHT, IN THE FORESTS OF THE NIGHT; WHAT IMMORTAL HAND OR EYE, DARE FRAME THY FEARFUL SYMMETRY?
He is at the library again. Just like yesterday and the day before, at his favorite table (broad and roughly hewn of a beautiful dark walnut) by his favorite window (well shaded, so that direct sunlight never streams in and harms the sensitive scrolls) with a large pile of books, a stack of good, handmade paper, and (of course) his favorite pen and ink.
It would be impractical to light a fire here, surrounded by ancient scrolls and perhaps even more ancient trees, so a heavy winter chill permeates the quiet air. Outside the sun is almost violently bright-- it almost seems mocking as Mateo's breath rises in huffs of steam.
One of the foxlike library helpers suddenly bounds in. Mateo looks up, startled and frankly annoyed to be so abruptly disrupted. He opens his mouth to say something when a familiar face enters behind the creature. The helper chitters happily at Ipomoea and then darts away again-- off to either help one patron or cause mischief for another.
The pegasus stares for a second, taken aback, then quickly closes his open mouth, swallows, and opens it again to stutter "R-Regent Po!" He takes a deep bow. "Were you... looking for me?" He can't imagine why that would be... unless his most recent cookie-stealing escapade with Reggie had been found out. His heart races at the thought but he keeps a brave face. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"
He does not have to fake sincerity when he smiles-- it was truly always a pleasure to see Somnus' right hand. They were not close by any means, but Mateo found that the Regent's kind nature was always uplifting... and his hair was downright inspirational.
The earth falls away as they rise into the crisp twilight. A shiver dances down his spine and his eyes tear up mercilessly; the air is cold and crisp enough to cut. Time passed strangely in that place of glowing water and warm heat; he cannot remember what time of day he entered the bright clearing, or how long he spent there. Even the memory of the conversation between the two pegasi seems, in hindsight, blurred by the glare of the water, drawn together by pinpoints of words like alaja and thank you and even no.
"Elif," she calls herself, although he can hardly hear over the rush of wind. The name lodges in his mind. There is something strangely familiar about it that puzzles him. He juggles the sounds, and the letters that make up the sounds, and grins even wider in pride as he realizes- Elif. The same letters as life, just a little mixed up. It feels like he's solved a puzzle, although he thinks that proper puzzles ought to have prizes.
She's pulling ahead of him toward the great mountain, and although neither of them had said the word race, that is most certainly what this feels like. He flaps his great wings hungrily, but they were built for gliding, and with every beat he pays careful attention for an updraft to catch. Even being in second and last place (for now) he can't help but to grin widely. Partly because he's got a nice view of her from here, but mostly he's just happy to be airborne. On the ground his height chafed his pride constantly- he was almost always the shortest person in the room, or the bar, or the great hall. But up here in the air, his small stature is a boon. With his large wings he can do acrobatics as good as any raven, and if he has the mind to he can make himself very small and plummet to earth not unlike a falcon. He does not often have the mind to, of course, because he is not, by nature, a risk taker-- unless there is an audience.
The mountain lies quite evenly between him and the horizon. He spreads his wings as wide as possible and catches the wind, lets it vault him up and forward in a delicious rush of speed. He wants to say something to his new companion-- his new friend-- but anything he would say ("Nice night, eh?" "Are we racing?") seems unnecessary. Anyway, the wind is too loud and fierce to hear much of anything else. So he simply hollers at the sky, and in response the wind squeezes tears from his eyes and whips his short mane against his neck.
- - -
@Elif finally! sorry for the wait <3 (continued from here)
He is not made for it; he is a thing of brambles and twisting vines, of thick dark loam and the shadows beneath each curl of leaf. He is a god of the forest and the vineyard and his salt is not that of sweat but the sea. He has always worshipped things reborn, things green and growing, and the pleasures that they give.
But desert is not rich or giving. It is a kind of sacrifice, vast and empty and endless. Each dry expanse cries out for water and Lysander knows they would each be sated with blood.
It is winter, and so he does not wilt beneath the baleful eye of the sun. A cold wind follows him out of the foothills of the Arma mountains, chases him into the deep red clefts of the canyon. There the shadows overtake him, and turn his burnished gold to something darker, nearly the color of the rock. The walls rise sharp and steep around him, a maze that reminds him of the riftlands - but he knows the monster that waits at the heart of this place, that he is only a thing of flesh and blood (like himself). The wind sings through the canyon spires and it is a mournful sound.
Yet the darkness in his heart is not born of sorrow or of fear. There is an eagerness in the once-god that has washed its hands in rage, that has clothed itself in retribution. When he closes his eyes in the cool shadow of the rock, he might be in a forest trail with the birds fallen silent around him, listening to a unicorn tell him of revenge.
Lysander understands, now. Perhaps it means there is no ichor left in him, only blood to salt the ground.
Florentine’s dagger still rests around his neck, a cold silver fist above his heart. Each time it falls against his chest he remembers the touch of her lips, the brush of her feathers, the way they reached for one another with hunger, with desperation. He is glad she hadn’t protested his leaving, hadn’t asked to come, though her acquiescence was unlike her.
He wonders if he will use it. He wonders what worlds it might cut, what universes it might open within the silver skin of a Ghost. Lysander wonders if his golden, laughing Anthousai would love him any less if he used her knife to serve Death, not Time.
As sunset turns the rock and sky and shadows themselves to blood around him, he begins, softly, to sing.
you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night
