The name touches something in the back of her head, a memory that has gone buried, a bell rung just barely. White Scarab. The signa is familiar enough it feels like a long-lost friend, and O sears it into her brain again and again.
It reaches her on a warm wind as she plods around the abandoned forges at the edge of the court. They are stale with disuse and covered in fine amber dust; their fires have long gone out, and surplus tools lay half-buried in the sand - sickles warped into waning moons, chunks of mottled ore, wire brushes encrusted with old rust. O shuffles her hooves through the bright sand, winds tightening circles around the forges and ovens. She tosses the hurlbat in so many casual arcs, comforted by the weight of the steel in her telekinetic grasp, and wonders absent-mindedly if this is where it was forged, before it ended up in the oasis and then in her hands.
If someone forged it, or something. A deity, an ousted king, an old god.
Anyway, it hums just like her heart.
She is poring over a particularly damaged poker when the card hits her shoulder. She startles, and turns to look; already it has been partially obscured by the ever-shifting sand, and she has to dig it out with a small, dark hoof to look more closely. It is round-edged and perfectly black, and the scarab in the middle gleams bright against the dark and the sand, and when O sees the text that reads follow the signs she almost, almost smiles.
The card zips up from the sand, nestles in the pocket that usually holds her axe. The hurlbat follows.
She twists her hair away from her face and turns toward the Arma mountains.
-
By the time she finds her way into the markets it is blackest, deepest night. Lamplight kisses skin. Tall buildings blot out the tiny twinkles of stars. Hoofsteps click on the cobblestone and murmurs are passed between mouths and O slinks like a coyote between the crush of bodies, narrow hips and shoulders shifting to fit, eyes roving watchfully. The card is still tucked against her side. She almost feels it burning -
It burns hotter and hotter and hotter, until she wants to scrape it away, but she turns a corner and there it is, and it’s worth it, when she sees the building.
It rises like a little moon over the spires of Denocte. Grand and bright and pale, O wonders how she hasn’t noticed it before; she is not well-versed in the streets of the Night Court, but could not possibly be dense enough to forget something like this. It glimmers like a pearl, shines like a fire. A little palace, strange as it is to call it that, against all the grime and dark of Denocte. Her step slows. Lanterns shudder from their scones. In the dim light O shimmers in and out of visibility like she is no more than one of her father’s card tricks.
The door is inset with a little onyx scarab. O draws to a stop and stares at it, at the little beady eyes, the too-detailed wings. For a moment she pauses, as if in deliberation of whether or not to knock. But she is merely gathering focus: she magicks a gauzy cloak around her shoulders and neck, glittering like sunlight on water, insubstantial as gossamer. It seems to make her skin twist and shift from gold to black and back again, a mirage in the dark, and when O finally does push her way through the wide doors anyone who looks at her would see not a girl but a conglomerate of shifting colors and parts, only vaguely yearling-shaped. The hurlbat at her hip turns briefly into a branch of hemlock.
For all her courage, O takes her time to adjust.
It is dark. Dark enough she has to blink to see properly, that the pattern on the lavish carpets seems to twist and bite like so many serpents. It smells faintly of jasmine, smoke, something similarly dark and bitter.
O raises her head; no one has noticed her entrance, or if they have they’re too distracted to say anything about the girl who shimmers and twists like an optical illusion.
i can't undo what i've done
i can't un-sing a song that's been sung
It was the black pegasus youth that had told Grey where he was, after he’d inquired. After the boy had frightened him enough to nearly send him tumbling into the river he’d been walking along. After coming upon a glowing golden pool that had cursed his vision, and the fear that the shadows were coming alive. That night had been long, though not the longest the unicorn had ever experienced. He reserved such titles for the night after his sister had been murdered. And the night he’d almost died.
Grey stands now within the walls of what he has come to know as the Dawn Court. Somehow, through pure luck, after endless days of journeying, he’s managed to find himself in Novus. And the word reminds him of the last time he had seen Amaranthus, when the god had told him to seek Novus, where he would discover his purpose. Still, the unicorn stands here and does not know what he is meant to do. He thinks of Amaranthus and wishes for the warmth of his embrace, but knows that by not trying hard enough Grey is failing him.
He looks up at the bright autumn sun and try as it might, it cannot reach past the cool of his skin, cannot warm his heart. In the light, the frosted crystals on his body sparkle gently but do not melt. He turns away from the sun and instead gazes out over the crowded market streets. It seems the equines of this kingdom are taking advantage of the sunny afternoon. It has been so long since Grey has been among so many others that his skin begins to crawl slightly with the thought of pushing his way through.
He breathes in and his chest aches with a gaping sort of emptiness, and he can only hope that whatever Amaranthus believes is here will fill it. The man’s ghost white eyes close for a second, preparing himself for the onslaught of sensory information he is sure to undergo. When he opens his eyes again, he is gratefully aware of the absence of darkening on the edges of his vision. That, at least, is working in his favor. He takes his first step into the crowd and hopes that perhaps he might come across someone who can again point him in the right direction.
It crept upon them like the kiss of the tides on ocean beach shores, a gentle lapping pressed into the edge of their consciousness. The trees split themselves into indiscernible patterns and boughs bent low into the underbrush surrounding them. The day was fading, and it was the hushed threat of night that whispered sweet nothings into the ears of any still lucid enough to pay attention. They were but muted sounds that brought a hum of fear as they pushed the dying light out of the spaces it slept, a warning call to any who knew its words. But she never learned their songs; in her travels she never flew into the skin-crawling sense of danger like that which lurked in the shadows of the forest. And so though the sun was setting and the wind picked up to bring a chill to the air, she was unaware of any danger that might have wished to show its darkened face.
It had been but moments in the face of eternity that the weight of her wings dropped her into the swallows of whatever land she stepped into. She had seen many faces and bodies and sights in the time since she disappeared from her small village; useless knowledge of gods that didn't show rattled in a mind built for that one purpose. Everything about the world outside of which they existed was kept from her, all the views and wonders and miracles held out of reach of a child that knew of nothing but the lives of ghostly figures. She waded through the long-limbed trees that seemed to grasp her close and have no sense of pattern, and as her thoughts swirled aimlessly around she had appeared to lose her way. Night was creeping in and darkening out the already-muted atmosphere--she would have kicked herself in dismay at her negligence had a snapped twig not sounded nearby.
She should have been alone, but the noise alerted her to the possibility that someone had found her. Her footfalls ceased as motion halted, ears pricked high in vigilance. She knew nothing about murders, about a monster that lurked just behind the curtains of the weeping branches. Even if she had, she probably wouldn't have believed it to be a monster at all. "Someone is watching." Her voice was low, simple, a slight roughness to the otherwise curved edges. There was a sense of a hidden wolf, a serpent, a silent thing sitting still in the cover of the shadows.
It is dawn when he arrives, sky sweating away moon, replacing it with sun: the clouds turn from silver to purple and pink, and Elchanan’s pale skin twists and turns like an opal under the sunrise. From the ground it would be impossible to see him, so well do his light-blue feathers and multi faceted coat blend in with the churning sky. That is a kind of power -
But then again, he cannot fly forever.
Elchanan tucks his wings to his sides and tumbles forward. His head ducks, his legs fold in, and in only a moment he darts from from the highest fold of the sky to the ground below, the wind roaring past his flattened ears, squinting against the eye-watering wind. The land below becomes less of a dream and more of an obstacle. It rushes up toward him in an artful mosaic of red and green and brown, swirling and turning as he goes diving like a falcon.
Despite his momentum, he lands easily. The ground outside the caves is still soft, and his small, dark hooves are practiced at finding purchase even at high speeds. As his first limb reaches toward the dirt, Elchanan flares his wings to their full length and pushes them back, back, back against his shoulders so that they scrape against the wind; he hits the ground at an exaggerated lope, lets his wings relax, and settles into an easy stride a moment later as he trots toward the entrance of the caves.
He is too new to know any better.
Something stops him, though, before he can enter the darkness completely. A sound - a rustle in the trees - Elchanan raises his finely-carved head high and looks around with huge dark eyes, ears flickering as he tracks the movement and its sounds all around the clearing. He misses the weight of his staff against his ribs. (It’s behind him in the timeline a little bit, still stuck in the portal or something.)
But he also does not quite know how to be afraid, and wouldn’t use the thing on a stranger even if he could.
The library was a dramatic change from his usual scene as of late, its interior hushed, uncrowded, and eerily quiet. It was a jarring contrast to the streets of the Night Court, where everything and everyone was hardly in motion, and the music played so loud he could hardly hear himself think.
Here in all the silence that was Delumine, his thoughts felt uncomfortably loud inside of his own head.
The scent of Denoctian spices and perfumes still clung to him, wafting through the otherwise stagnant air in a trail behind him as he walked. His scarves whispered against his sides as he moved, hoofbeats landing so quietly on the earthen floor that he made hardly a sound as he went. Aside from the library keepers, who hardly stopped to acknowledge him, he was alone. Dust stirred as he walked amongst the aisles, scanning the titles half heartedly. Toulouse wasn’t sure yet what he was looking for - only that he would know it when he saw it.
And so far he had yet to see it, or even a glimpse of it; there was not a single hint that he was headed in the right direction.
His diamond-shod hooves clicked gently across the floor, wine-red tassels bobbing along his scarves with every step. With the beginnings of a frown making itself present on his face, he stopped before yet another bookshelf, as dusty as the last had been.
Green eyes slithered across the titles, lingering only briefly on any one. Yet again, each of them failed to pique his interest. Is there nothing worthwhile here?
A quick glance around told him no one was watching. And so he reached into the pockets of his scarves, and drew from them a coiled snake. Its gemstone eyes glinted in the dim light, golden scales shining.
“Avekne.”
At his whispered command, the snake came to life. It lifted its head, tongue flickering past its lips to taste the air. Toulouse studied it with interest as it twisted through the space before him, hovering at eye level. He held it up with his telekinesis, so entranced by the snake’s movement that he hardly noticed the footsteps approaching from the other side of the bookshelf.
the motherland don't love you,
the fatherland don’t love you.
so why love anything?
the faithless; they don't love you
the zealous hearts don’t love you.
and that's not gonna change.
ut deo.
@mateo
partially recycled post, hope that’s alright c’:
Isra in burnished gold
“Hers is a timeless life weaving through other longer lives like a flash of lightning in a clouded evening sky.”
T
he wall is looming before her like a mighty beast made of stone. It's red and dusty and Isra almost feels tiny standing before it with the desert stretching on endlessly behind her. For a moment she looks at it, for a moment she doubts herself. What does she know, after-all, about war?
But she knows how to move like a a cobweb in the breeze, invisible except for the feeling of it gossamer thin but consuming. She knows how to be as thin as a shadow stretching out too far in the noon-time. Isra knows how to be a ghost, a mist on the sea that starts slowly until it's a fog that blinds and swallows ships whole. Once, she was invisible and today she'll be nothing more than another body in the crowed, supposed but never known.
Overhead Fable is flying circles in the heavy, low clouds that would have promised rain back home. Isra doesn't know what they promise in this place. Here and there a flash of a wing cuts through the clouds, but it's gone so fast it could be nothing more than another vulture circling and searching for a corpse. It's clear on the other side of the wall. A image of the wall appears in her head, from the other side and there are no guards watching this corner of the wall near the poorest part of the city.
Isra turns back to the wall that's looming-- until it's not looming at all. Not anymore.
Part of the wall, arched and barely higher than the point of her horn, is no longer stone. On the ground there is now a pile of diamonds, ankle deep. They feel cold and sharp against her fetlocks as she moves through them into the Solterra capital. She hardly makes a sound as she moves towards a flag waving outside what seems to be an empty house. Isra smiles and takes that flag between her teeth. She rips it down.
Once it hits her back it becomes a shroud of silk, burnish gold with obsidian buttons that she latches at her chest. In that shroud of silk she's just another body dressed in the color of sand. The chain around her leg becomes a band of silver strung with amethyst and ruby. There are small suns etched in the metal between the stones. She looks like nothing more than a plain, bay unicorn. There is nothing special about her with her chain gone and her scales covered up. Isra cannot help but think this might be how she would have dressed if it was Eik who brought her here.
It's war that's brought her here though, and she shakes out any thoughts of love and softness. Now is the time to be cold as ice and sharp as a blade. She walks towards the heart of the city and reminds her hooves to move like a slave instead of a queen. It comes easy to her, the low head and downward eyes. Most nights she still dreams of the lash, and brutality. Now she's glad for the nightmares, she'll welcome each shard of steel they drive into her heart.
Each time she stumbles across a family, slat-ribbed and full of hopelessness she pauses. She directs them to the wall, whispering “Go south, follow the wing in the clouds. Take some of the diamonds with you. Buy a new life. Go and go quickly.” Over and over she pauses to send families away. She doesn't tell them to go to Denocte, but she hopes they will.
And each time she walks close to a pillar or a sign about rations and loyalty she pauses to turn the stone below it to a metal flower. Each time she leaves that message for Raum something sparks inside her, something vicious and poison. She wonders how long it will take him to hear of the metal flowers growing in the stone, bright yellow and charred black. Will he see them and think of Acton? Or will he think of her?
The center of the capital is still a way off, but she doesn't let her stride falter or the war waiting, dark and electric in her gaze dim.
open to anyone! | "speaks" | notes: anyone from the raugime is welcome to come harass her, or someone can just chat with her.
Lysander wishes this city didn’t remind him so of home.
Oh, not of Terrastella, or the ever-changing riftlands before, but the home that had been his as a god. Grapes and laurel, white terraced cities and the sunshine gleaming off the sea; he had been so close to returning.
He sees, now, why Florentine had been so drawn to Denocte. It beguiled, it seduced, it was proudly itself - it was a dark queen with a dusting of bright scales and magic in her veins, it was a gypsy king with dark curls and a wicked smile. It was not safe - but then, it didn’t pretend to be anything else.
And yet with Isra gone (Isra dead?) it is all wrong, the shadows too long and the whites of everyone’s eyes showing in the scant and wavering light of the bonfires. Lysander doesn’t miss the eyes on him, or the ones that won’t meet his own - until the girl. It begins with the bump of a shoulder in the crowded market, a flash of green eyes brighter than his, a smile like a sickle moon - and the card. You’re looking for something, she says, and maybe you’ll find it here - and then she is gone before he can speak, a vanishing act a magician would envy.
For the first time that evening Lysander smiles, and examines the card. It bears the image of a scarab, and a brief inscription, and he considers it for a long moment in the wavering darkness before he looks up to scan the buildings that lean crooked as broken teeth in a grinning bruised mouth. And then he starts forward again, dark from shadow to shadow save for the bright curve of his antlers, searching for signs of a girl or a beetle.
She hadn’t been wrong. He is looking for something - but what man isn’t?
It takes him some time to find it. But the Night Court is nothing if not true to its name - the constellations have hardly turned, dim as they are above the wreath of bonfire smoke and open cooking-grates. The darkness stretches on and on, particularly here in the death of autumn, when the dead leaves rattle like bones along the cobblestones and morning is always a long way off.
But Lysander does not feel cold at all as at last the door yawns open to admit him, and far below the spires he steps from the shadows without to those within.
At once he is swallowed up by silence and warmth; Lysander does not move as his eyes adjust to the candlelight above, and he breathes deeply of incense, of wine. If Denocte is a foggy dream of home, this is like waking from it to his own bed and it is a sweet kind of pain, the kiss of a silver knife. He sighs into the darkness -
and finds he is not alone.
Lysander is not altogether surprised to find the girl again, and his grin is returning as she drops into a curtsy. You found us, she says, and takes the card he offers.
There are many eyes on him as he travels rich carpets in and in. He can feel them like trailing vines, and pays them as much heed (Lysander knows the rules of this kind of place; he has followed them and broken them himself throughout a dozen centuries). As he goes he drinks it in, the tables with the spotless dealers, the ornate walls that seem to flicker and change in the candlelight - and the patrons. Some begged to be seen, some went to meticulous length to be overlooked, but all of them had a shark’s appetite in their gleaming eyes. The once-god understands; he is hungry, too.
But thirst is an easier thing to attend to, and at last (he could spend a dozen hours, wandering these rooms, discovering secrets like the gilded patterns on the walls) he finds the Lounge. A blue-swathed server settles him at the edge of the room, with glimpses of the gambling floor below, and incense and tobacco smoke curls up like an offering to the pin-pricks of the candlelight stars.
Lysander asks for wine, and leans back into the shadows, and lets his eyes fall closed like autumn’s last leaf drifting down from a dead limb. For just a moment he allows himself to breathe in, and imagine himself home.
It is hard to forget there is no ichor in his veins - but tonight, wine would do just as well.
you fester in the daytime hours
boy, you never sleep at night
@Toulouse feel free to disregard all the establishing scene text xD but I am excited for this!
As dusk falls in the streets of Denocte, the sounds and smells of the Night Markets dimly climb to a roar, a gradual sort of glee that lifts from a dull hum along the cobblestone. The rats disperse and congregate in their otherwise dens, long slipped from underfoot of the many who fall in line to traipse the gilded paths. Twilight passes along the corridor and slips between the crags – the alleys, dotted with the unknown, slip quiet breaths beneath the pretense of shadows. They pass on like smoke, lifted and weary, as fickle eyes scatter the retreating daylight and settle easily upon the patrons who litter those roads pleasantly unaware. It is a variety in tow – the rich, the poor, the orphaned and the privileged, where between them a penny or a bushel spared sets them apart in their griefs; and their value. Those webbing breaths sigh then to find a heavy purse or satchel, and from sigh come quivering lips and twitching fingertips deft and nimble, steps light and sweeping until they are a faerie sprint between unsuspecting bodies, all equally warm and well fed and ever so clueless.
But it wasn't him that strayed from the alleys that afternoon, zig-zagging the enterpreted throng of wealthies that all chattered and chuckled and carried on as if nothing phased them. This evening, he felt, was well enough to be enjoyed from the perspective of one satisfied with himself in whole, however falsified the image was. There was always more, a need for more, a hunger for more, endless want, tameless desire, more, more, more, screaming into the void with frothing lips that were chapped with ravenous craving.
This relief was short lived for the not-prince of the Wilds, (as it should be, relief was an unattainable splendor for the wicked) but he did not know until he was well into the deep of the marketplace. There was no reason for him, he of all ghosts who loomed in the paved streets, to be singled amongst the many. In a sea of ingenuine royalties, he is a shadow among them, a far cry from their decadent showcases of extravagance – he was invisible. Of sorts – surely a gaze or two strayed to where he walked, their tedious eyes falling over the strains of gold that he naturally beheld, stricken over his shoulders and veining from his chest like cracked marble inlaid with precious glimmering stone. Their eyes carried to his sharp features – regal, handsome, youthful virile whose tenacity was matched with a darker tone. Indeed, shadows clung to the sharpest points, so that when his eyes met theirs they could not help but feel the chill of his disdain wash over in a subtle wave. Despite his anonymity and lack of such flamboyant expression, there was a magnetism of one set of eyes that did not find him simply easy to look at.
Those eyes did not pass briefly. They clung to him, like a hawk clings to a mouse. And Erasmus is no mouse.
For a while he strayed, aware of the feeling – that unsettling heat that rides his spine and creeps up the curve of his neck, whispering in his ear. you do not belong. You should be dead. it calls to him, and suddenly the blood in his veins too, call to him. The superficiality of the world around him suddenly is deadened to that particular gaze he feels, and in his peripheral he drinks in the spectator without visible concern, while his flesh is ignited with the deluded thousand pinpricks of beetle bites, prickling like a wolf's hackles. And then - “You,” it calls louder than his mind, but not loud enough to turn his head. “You!” Louder now, it matches the uproar that rises in his skull and the fury that tears through to meet it. He is aware of a few other other eyes now, eyes that turn to snatch the source of the yelling and then singled to its subject – but surely not him? They pass back to the markets, and Erasmus is invisible again to all except one. And yet, “Erasmus!” He does not look, but he cannot stop his ear as it snaps back to catch the desperation called in his name – and it is as though his eye has grown wider, or perhaps he has actually turned his head, or he has grown a miraculous set of eyes that behold all from behind his horns – but he can see this spectator better now. He is roan, dusty but not disheveled, as though the sheen of dusk marks him nicely, holographic and cool. The man is severe, dressed well but not with the regality of those who surround him, disgusted with his proximity. His choice of fashion is remarkable to none but Erasmus. He is of the Wilds.
Erasmus's gait is smoother now, he suddenly realizes – a canter, but not nearly fast enough to cause concern of those around him. The man is still calling – his name follows him over and over, but it is just a whisper now, thrown beneath the furious blood that boils to the surface and pounds in his ears. The wind bursts against his chest and the night asks if he would like wings? It is a jest, some part of him half laughs while the rest screams. No dagger, no bow, poor child. A soldier without a weapon is as good as dead. You should be dead. You should have drowned. He turned his head finally, escaped from the collection of witnesses in the Markets, and a dagger scrapes against the bridge of his nose. Searing pain – hot and sudden and petty as a papercut, the blood dribbles down and collects at the corner of his lips. The hunger returns.
His mind catches the dagger as it slips past him, and his hooves skid into the grasses, upturning the damp soils. Like clockwork the moment is broken down for him, as all his battles are: he pivots, and with him pivots the dagger, rough and new and horrible in his grasp, it is some artless piece of work that he assumes could have only been carved by the poorest blacksmith who dared call himself one in all the Wilds. It was nothing like his dagger that was swallowed by the sea, smooth and beautiful and sharper than a gryphon's claw. But it moves with him still, however reluctant it is, and as he turns he watches the man too, skid but feet from him. He can see him fully now. All arrogance and brawn and brut-ish grins that surpass the immediate tinge of terror that slip into his eyes now as he watches his dagger turn against him. Erasmus does not miss the bounty paper strapped to his side, he knows it well. And as he brings his gaze from that bounty picture to the face of the hunter, he plunges the dagger into the man's chest as deep as it will allow. It is not deep enough – it is blunt and poorly made, and seems to cause nothing but discomfort and awe.
The hunger crawls up from his gut and rises like fire in his throat, and as he clenches his jaw, he can feel the rage tunneling through like a massive current. He is a spectre, a wild creature of conjured shadows that shift and swim in the dying light – and nestled beneath their shade unclench his fangs, caught in the glint of the moon. He digs deep, deep enough to stifle the hunter's agonized cry, deep enough to feel his pulse between his jaws and pounding in his skull. And he drinks. And drinks. And drinks. And there is nothing, then. The body becomes too heavy, and he releases as it collapses to the ground with a solemn thunk. His tongue lapped where the blood remained, pooled against the softness of his lips and dribbling down his chin as he admires the dead. The initial shock is a cool high – it moves over his body with a shiver, and the consolation that rises to greet him is bittersweet. For a long moment, his mind is quiet for once in a long time, and he revels in it. But the dark creeps in through the cracks and edges, and bids his wares with a cold touch. Habit calls him again, and he loots the limp body, shredding the bounty paper to pieces.
He withdrew the blade, though it didn't seem much use to him, it was worth pawning to the shops that bothered to scrape the barrel enough to barter for it. It was still hand-crafted, and he had a silver-tongued way of glorifying things far beyond their own expectations. He also selected a sun talisman from his person, whether it was his own or something he found off another hapless bounty, another item of no more use to him than a bartering chip. Even finer were the coins he rattled from the satchel and stuffed in his own, pleased with the winnings. But the most curious of all – he carried an odd card, one that didn't seem to quite suit him. Erasmus flipped it back and forth, admiring the art on it, his brows furrowed as he analyzed it. The stakes are high, but the pot is full. Will you try your hand tonight? The inscription was cryptic, and moreso the words beneath it, but what appealed to him the most was the insignia of a scarab on the front. As he stared at it, he remembered seeing a dark stone scarab placed somewhere in the marketplace, but the memory was brief and insignificant, some image stolen from time in one of his wanderings.
----------------------- THE WHITE SCARAB -----------------------
The moon was high in the sky when he found the doors of the White Scarab. It was waxing and half full, gleaming down with a grin that smiled fondly upon fortune – and upon his own fortunes, he was sure. It flowed against the knocker, pooled in the round semblance of the beetle's wings, glimmered in a soft reflection of the alleyway lit in the lunar pallor. His gold struck from the dark, webbing and distorted in the mirrored stone. This, this, he recalled passing while he traipsed the quiet corridors during his frequent meanderings through the streets of Denocte, eager for explorative conquests, eager for food and drink and whatever pleasure awaited him in its stead. How odd it was, that he had never cared to linger his thoughts on such a place then, long enough to truly see – as he now observed those spiraling towers, windowless and intimidating, exotic. His gaze flowed over their height before resettling over the knocker, and he is underwhelmed to find that there is – in fact – no true knocker. There is nothing for him to grab onto, no knob or ledge or lever that he can see, and so for a moment he only stands and considers.
It is quiet. Too quiet for any place of particular circumstance, unless it was a trap or abandoned stead. The vague description on the card could leave that determination on either, and he wasn't all that interested in discovering the former. And if it was abandoned, then why? The door was clean and the knocker polished, the street's dust clapped with what looked like many hooves other than his that both led in and out. But how?
He slid the card back out of its keep and flipped it once more, but the way in which it blocked the beams from the moon revealed a slot he hadn't noticed. Erasmus paused, considering his first two assumptions and the grave possibilities of one, and looked back to the card. It displayed no note of aging, the edges were as sharp and unfolded as any mint card, and it seemed as though a pretty care was placed in its conception. Not too old to be owned by an abandoned lot, and far too quality to be in the possession of a measley gang for their lure and holding. A few quiet breaths rose and fell with his chest as he thought, the gold scythes of his eyes running over the card a minute more before he slipped it into the slit.
A soft click, and he drew back as wings struck out from the knocker's sides, and the doors gaped wide.
Calculative eyes peered in through the darkness, and his lungs readily breathed in the perfume of incense that enveloped him at once. “Come in,” bid softness from the dark, or the breeze itself – that as he stood, caressed past him in loving stroke, slipping from the roll of his chin that was still faintly stained with the taste of blood. Against his better nature, his body moved without his knowing – his muscles flexed and strode, his hooves plodded against the stone tile beneath him and shirked of reluctance even as the doors clattered shut behind him.
The corridor was dark, dimly lit by the cascade of a few candles, and through the darkness he could see that the place was far from abandoned – and if it was a trap, it was a wealthy one, well decorated. And somewhere within he could hear the hum of conversation, not whispers but true conversing, casual syllables that he could barely make out until he found his way into the den. He paused, and he thought that he had felt someone brush past him – but when he looked there was nothing, only the candlelit corridor that seemed to move with the dancing light from the burning wicks. Before him lay extravagance, one sort of luxuries that he had never encountered before – and he thought, this may have been something he would have known, if he cared for the lavish lifestyle of royalty. But the Wilds could never have afforded such gallantry as this, they were a small tribe in a realm of vast nothing. They knew nothing but the warring tribes and the brushlands that went on for as far as you could see. Even the deep of the woods were scarcely traversed, and it was a wonder to them that Erasmus could have ever survived.
At his left, a slender woman arrived, dressed tastefully ornate, and he almost expected to see a look of disdain in her gaze as she looked him up and down – as he didn't care much for fancy 'drobe, and he didn't have the mind to even braid his long mane except when he needed it out of his way – but nothing changed, and her expression was effortlessly delighted. “Your pleasure tonight?” he almost couldn't figure out whether it was a question or an offer, but he supposed it was the first. A brow raised, as did his chin, regarding her from above with scrupulous inspection. “what is this?" And almost directly – “Follow me.” a quaint grin, and she turned from him through the den. He followed her, admiring the architecture and playing his eyes over those who enjoyed their stay. Many seemed to occupied to acknowledge him, which pleased him well enough, whether in their drink or food or gambling or romance. She led him through the Floor, through the Lounge, and briefly exhibited the Rooms and their manners, detailed their expectations for his stay and clarified that wealth was to be had where wealth would roam. The coins in his pocket jingled merrily, and the girl was pleased. With no further questions he bid her off and took his time to wander freely, though secured his sights on the risks of the Floor.
The Floor---------------------------
Erasmus found an open table and pried the Dealer for an explanation of the rules – each player is drawn five cards. You bid your fortunes. And you hope for a good hand. Satisfied, he seated himself at the table and laid down the antler-hilt dagger and a few gold coins. That provided, he waited for more players and offers, his half-moon eyes warily scraping from silhouette to silhouette as they passed through the room. At his side he clutched the bag tight, well full with fellow coins and the gold sun pendant that were hungry for the table.
always one decision away from a totally different life
-- ♕ --
You taught me the courage of stars before you left.
If she closed her eyes, the sound of her broken wing upon the floor was not feather over wood at all, but a brush across a painted canvas. Such a thought, of vibrant colour and graceful lines, made something beautiful from a wing so terribly twisted. Could she dance? Move as if her body were the artist and her wing the brush and the wooden floor the canvas? Could she?
She does not know, so she tries. The girl moves to a rhythm of twilight and the chime of evening stars blinking awake to watch a girl move like a comet. Florentine twirls across the floor – and watch how her wing swirls too! Dust lifts from the floor where gilded feathers drift. The lazy grey clouds twine with her dancing feet and rises like up, up, up as glittering stardust. No gravity could pull it down, not when the girl’s good wing reaches, reaches, as if ready to pluck the moon out from the sky.
Florentine still has not opened her eyes, for to open them is to see the way her wing does not straighten. To open her eyes is to see the way it hangs, twisted and wrong, like the fall leaves upon the tree. Does her wing also wait to fall like a leaf from the bough of her shoulder? She prays she might keep it.
Ah! She presses her eyes tighter still and dances, dances, dances. She begs for a queen who can make anything from nothing. Might then her falling petals (cascading like tears from her mane – for Flora’s eyes have already shed too many tears) turn to glitter and stars? Might they be filled with something other than grief and pain and worry? Might her wing turn straight and right again?
There is a music that fills her ears and it is the sound of hooves, the sound of laughter, the sound brushes and trees and twilight winds. The music draws a smile upon her gilded lips and on she dances, through the moonbeams falling from great lattice windows. The dust follows her like a veil and still Flora does not dare open her eyes. Down the hall, down the hall the slender girl dances listening to the walls that sing of her song and whisper of a wing upon wood.
