we will travel this life well worn
no matter the cost, no matter how long
Eulalie walked alongside Somnus through the halls of the citadel, conflicted. She wanted to comfort him, to let him know that everything would be well and that they would get through this together. But, she also wanted to demand answers from him as she thought back to his spoken warning when they had been standing in the courtyard: ”Do not trust him.”
The ivory woman wanted to give him space and time to process as they walked, in relative silence, their hooves marking their steps throughout the castle. Their guests had been welcomed, given rooms, and were no doubt now wandering the court as they pleased. Eulalie had a feeling however that Somnus might be having an eye kept on Atreus for all the fanfare his arrival had come with; and not the good kind.
She did not know what to think, did not know how to feel. Clearly there was a history that Eulalie wasn’t aware of, and the way Somnus so clearly, so blatantly, did not like Atreus worried her. Especially for their son. If she was not to trust him, how could Regis be entrusted to his care? What if this man was the only one who could aid them? She couldn’t help but wonder if he actually would.
Once they entered their rooms, alone but for their son, sleeping behind another closed door, and the presence of their bondeds, Eulalie turned to look at Somnus. Her dark eyes took in the expression on his face, the way he stood. It pained her to see him so deeply affected by this, but in truth the anger he had displayed also frightened her. She looked at his verdant green eyes and remembered how like ice they had been. Then, unable to remain quiet any longer she finally asked. “Brother?”
Pavetta wore her best; intricate clothing and delicate jewelry that had been locked in a floral carved wooden chest that gathered dust in its disuse. She could not remember a time when there had been a happy enough occasion to wear and flaunt such finery—not after the events that had befallen Novus as of late.
It was like a breath of fresh air (free of the smoke that had plagued Dawn Court for so long) to feel the luxury of velvet on her skin, to feel the way the tassels swayed and flowed when she moved. She wore the burgundy velvet that draped like spilled wine across her shoulders and flanks and glittered like stars beneath the moonlight. The delicate circlet on her brow dripped with rubies and pearls. Gold anklets around her slender ankles made a sound like wind chimes as she walked.
Her mood was serene and her expression soft, like a still, glassy pond in the middle of the Delumine forest. Not even a ripple stirred the surface. She had sipped the plum colored wine earlier from a crystal glass and it was like tasting heaven and felt even better—surreal ecstasy that filled her with a sense of contentment and delight. Most of Delumine’s supply had been destroyed in the fires and she could not recall a sweeter taste on her lips.
She explored the dreamlike rooms alone, content to be in her own company for the time being. She wandered into the underwater room and for the second time in her life, felt like she had been transported through a portal to another dimension, to another world. A world of dreams and unexplored things and of blues and greens and dancers twirling and whirling on the ballroom tiles.
Fish of vibrant colors and flowing fins, velvety translucent gauze flowing like the sea along the marble walls. She was transfixed, watching the golden fish hover serenely, altogether unperturbed by the lingering guests of the Night Court Masquerade. She wondered how they managed to ignore the stares, the unwavering scrutiny. Pavetta often felt like a fish in a glass globe. Would the feeling ever go away?
a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse,
creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---
The silence was soothing. Comfortable, almost, as though it wrapped about his gilded frame like a heartening mantle or a lover’s embrace. These halls… Archaic tomes lined the walls, rows and rows of books situated upon shelves of natural wood, concealing the largest collection of knowledge and secrets that Novus held. Many overlooked these vast hallways and wooden arches, scoffing at the notion of visiting such an ancient place, thinking it petty, or useless… But Somnus knew. He knew, and he understood.
With vast knowledge came vast power, but it was not the power that he sought. Instead? It was understanding. Knowing. Learning. He, a studious-minded fellow from the days of colthood, never found himself too old to read and learn. There was nothing wrong with slipping away for some time into the grand Library, smiling and nodding to the fox-like keepers of the Library. Seeing them made him think of Milo, Regis’ playful young fox kit, and the thought filled his heart with joy.
With the pleasant thoughts milling about his head, Somnus ventured to the large, common room. From there, he wove through the hallways towards the specified wing for Delumine’s rich history proper, bypassing bookcase upon bookcase of tomes and scrolls situated as far as the eye could see. The sounds of his hooves scraping against the ground echoed throughout the otherwise silent Library, and Alba, curious Alba, fluttered on ahead.
’What are you looking for?’ The question came innocently enough, manifesting itself as Alba’s voice in the back of his brain. The Dawn King’s verdant eyes lifted to focus upon the barn owl’s gliding form just above him, a golden brow arched.
“Anything, my dear,” he began, careful not to speak too loud. This was, after all, a Library, and it was common knowledge to always keep your voice down. “One is never too old to learn, and I find that there is still much in regards to Dawn Court’s very own history that I know little of.” That, yes, but Somnus found that he had simply begun to miss the library. He felt at home here, tucked away amidst dusty shelves and olden scrolls filled with words penned in nearly forgotten times. “But if you must know… Anything written by Simon the First. It is his words I hope to find today.”
Reaching the wing dedicated to Delumine’s history, Somnus took a few moments to browse the shelves. Eventually he settled on a dusty old tome, pulling it free with a good deal of caution with his telekinetic abilities. For a moment, a single moment, he thought of the time that he had unintentionally flung a book at Kasil, but quickly allowed that thought to fade. Now was not the time to think of ghosts. Instead, he clutched the book close to his chest and retired to one of the reading cushions, settling down with his knees drawn close, and began to flip leisurely through the book.
Nearby, Alba settled upon a branch and closed her eyes, content to nap while her bonded divulged in a book.
Like a seal he spends the daylight hours idling in the shallows, occasionally diving deep to twine himself in the kelp, to wander across the seagrass without touching a hoof to the ocean bed. Only once the sun has set does he drift in with the tide, surging pale and quick as a wave and fading like a glimmer of moonlight into the forest to hunt.
Though he loves the moonlight hours, though he suffers under the hot glare of the summer sun this far from his frigid home, it eats at the kelpie that it must be so. He should not be the one in hiding. But this place is still too new to him, and Amaroq can be as patient as a glacier until he understands if there is danger, and where it lies.
It is a rare day that drives him further inland at last.
A summer storm has swept in from the sea, a wailing wind that lashes the waves up against the coast. If it were not for the rain that came along with it Amaroq might have kept to the depths, but the downpour is cool against his shoulders and along his back as he stands amid the stones of shore, and he is ready to taste something other than salt on his tongue.
There is no sound but the rain against the leaves as he disappears into the darkness of the forest, the air heavy with the smell of brine and petrichor and pine. He moves pale as a ghost beneath their boughs, silver as the rain and white as the foam of the waves. Despite the cool rain on his back, frost draws patterns on his skin, and his breath is a mist.
No part of him blends in here, and yet he hunts.
His prey do not know he is a predator; they smell only a horse, and only the sea. The saltwater washes the blood from his skin like a mother’s tongue. To the hare and the foxes and the deer he is only another unicorn -
and oh, how the beasts of the forest love unicorns.
So he can already taste the copper on his tongue when a doe crosses his path. She pauses midstep, uncertain in the rain, and turns her dark and liquid eyes on him. Amaroq arches his neck like a prince; the tip of his horn dips graceful as a saber. Her wariness falters, and she flicks her large ears at him. Between them, in the little current of rainwater washing back to the sea, ice begins to form filaments like pale cracks.
“Come,” he says in a voice like new snow, “let me see you,” and she bobs her head but takes a step toward him. Still Amaroq does not smile, but regards her with his pale and empty eyes, and she halves the distance that separates them. Oh, he is ravenous now, and his teeth are sharp as he runs his tongue across them, waiting, patient. She is near enough he can make out her eyelashes, even in the rain. Overhead the wind is moaning still and if they had shadows they would soon meet -
There is a crackling of limbs, the snap of a branch. The doe flinches and bounds away, her tail a flag behind her, never looking back with those dark-moon eyes, and Amaroq snarls like thunder and lashes his tail even as he turns toward the source of the noise.
A figure stands there, equine, dark with the rain and the shadow of the trees. Though frustration and hunger flex leonine claws within him he only stands, silent and pale, as ice crackles around his feet.
It started as a small ache at the very tip of her wing. At first she though nothing of it, thinking it only a side effect of flying too quickly through thick, gemstone forests. Then it spread to her other wing and she started to worry and fret like one of the older dragons on their world.
For a week she stayed grounded, exploring the incandescent caves and the shorelines of the purple seas that made up most of her homeland. Each time she looked up to the skies something broke in her hear. Perhaps that's why she thought nothing of it when the slow ache spread to her bones, her muscles and finally her heart.
Pomona thought she was going to die as a grounded dragon until the dream came (the dream that changed everything).
Everything in her dream was gray and rose-gold and edged in quartz. She dreamed of a unicorn and a meadow covered in fragile, thin-petaled flowers. They ran together like wildcats, the unicorn and her. They were reckless and free, free, free. And between them there rang a silent song of love, more love than the dragon had ever known in her too long life.
And when she woke from that dream her wings no longer ached and her heart started to sing that sweet song in her chest. Find me, find me, find me. It sang and Pomona imagined it was the unicorn in her dreams calling her from this world to another one.
She never looked back when she took to the sky and then out past the thick, red ozone layers of her world. A hundred universes loomed before her and an infinite number of black miles broken up only by space-dust and star-fire. Part of Pomona wanted to sink back into her world and forget all about songs in her heart and unicorns that could run as fast as she could fly. But when that song rose to a fever pitch her in soul, she smiled a little wickedly and set her course to a place she had no name for.
Stars and suns lit her way and the heat of them when she passed a little too close helped to chase away the eternal cold loneliness of space. Comets arched like dolphins above her head and all the colors of their tails dazzled even Pomona who grew up on a planet in which everything was a different color. Soon she was so mesmerized, by the beauty of this infinite blackness full of galaxies, that she forgot to be afraid of where that chorus in her chest was taking her.
Constellations acted as a map for her. First she would fly towards the brightest, largest one and then she would pick another bright one ringed by smaller, duller stars. It went like this, on and on, until seconds and minutes and hours lost their meaning. There was only blackness and blinding colors and that pulsing song.
Finally a world loomed bright blue and white and green ahead of her and Pomona knew in her soul that she had found the world of the unicorn.
She dove past the ozone like an arrow and flew faster than she ever had before over mountains and oceans and deserts that seems to go on endlessly. She only stopped when the field of thin-petaled flowers stretched out before her in tones of red and green and a purple that made her think of the seas back home. The sun felt like a blessing on her scales after all those hours of unending blackness.
And when Pavetta broke out from the trees surrounding the meadow, Pomona knew that she would have flown across a million universes just to feel how her heart bloomed to watch that horn shine in the sunlight like a sword. Suddenly it seemed as if she didn't travel very far at all.
“Pavetta” She says down that same channel that sings between them and the name sounds like a chorus she didn't know she was missing. How did she ever think that the unicorn in her dreams had no name but 'hers'? “I've been searching for you.”
Her teeth clack sweetly between her scaled lips and she closes the distance before them as if it's air she walks across instead of grass. “Have you been searching for me too?”
@Pavetta might find herself drawn to the summer blooms of the meadow just as the sun reaches it's highest point of the day. The meadow is alive with flowers and the sweet air feels almost thick enough to taste. Ahead a dragon, Pomona, lands. Something in the way she moves suggests love and excitement as well as exhaustion. She's traveled very, very far to find Pavetta. Might this be the reason Pavetta has felt distant from the world around her?
Thread requirements: 1 reply, 500 words. Please tag the RE account in your reply.
How to tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk!
Once you respond, you may begin including Pomona in your IC posts.
It has always been said that the night is a dangerous thing to love. Tonight the darkness seems more dangerous than the blackness of the night before it. Everything feels electric, charged with the fury of a storm that's just now starting to roar like a wounded lion out over the distant sea.
There is no moonlight to dapple the canopy of the forest outside the swamps, no moisture to dampen the thick bed of dead leaves and pine-needles. The sky is darker than it has ever been. All the stars have been swallowed up by the thick clouds full with the promise of rain. Behind those clouds a shower of meteors streaks across the sky, but tonight they are not for mortals to see.
Were it not for that approaching storm, the forest and swamp would have been full of Ilati and Shed-stars dancing like pagans before their bonfires. Bone song and the whisper of tarot cards would have run though the night like bells, chanting-- come and see what your future hold. But the storm is coming and all the pagans and old-believers are hiding in their beds.
They know that the heaviness of this night will bring only death, only suffering.
Tonight is for predators.
Lilith of course knows this, and she alone moves through the thickest shadows below the trees. In the canopy above her squirrels snap at their young to be silent and owls turn their heads into their downy feathers so that the wolf might no even ear the whisper of air through their lungs. All the rabbits have long since buried themselves deep underground where they shiver and shake to hear the quiet padding of lupine paws above their heads.
The entire forest bows before the danger of Lilith and her teeth ache with a hunger sharp enough to make her feel like a god. But it's not her belly that aches, it's something deeper (deeper than her heart, her bones and her blood). The wolf's soul aches as if a arrow has been shot clear through the center of her. It feels as if that arrow is attached to a string that tugs and yanks at her.
Her soul whispers to her, just a little further and you will be full. On and on she walks, driven by that aching hunger. She walks until a young and foolish stag crashes through the corpse of birch trees. And then she's running as swift as the wind through the trees (swifter than the storm over the sea). Lilith runs because she's hoping the ache is a lie and it's really only basic hunger that drives her on and on and on.
But then....
Oh then!!
Euryale crashes through the trees ahead (on the same deer-trail as the wolf). Ribbons sail behind her like the loveliest shadows Lilith has ever seen. The ache in her lupine heart sharpens to a point and bursts inside her like a dying star. Suddenly Lilith isn't hungry anymore and she doesn't feel like a lonely god stalking the forest.
She only feels full in a way that no deer or rabbit could ever make her feel.
“Euryale.” The name sounds like a prayer in her mind and she hopes that the mare will hear her. Lilith prays that the predator mare will also have something bursting inside her like a star.
Perhaps it's the memory of hunger that makes her quicken and burst through the trees in a leap that makes it seem as if she might have wings arching from her fur. Lilith doesn't question what drives her to latch her teeth around the stag's though and send it crashing to ground.
It's there she waits (standing like a guard over the dying stag) for Euryale to join her and take the first taste of their kill.
@Euryale finds herself strangely hungry just as a summer storm starts to build over the sea. Strange really that she might be driven to the forests outside the swamp on a night where no moon or stars dare to shine. Everything might feel electric, as if the forest holds between a storm more dangerous than the looming thunder storm.
Just as a finds a young stag to chase her hunting will be interrupted by the appearance of Lilith. a timber wolf. But the wolf waits by her kill, waiting for Euryale to join her. Perhaps it wasn't hunger driving her into the forest tonight after-all?
Thread requirements: 1 reply, 500 words. Please tag the RE account in your reply.
How to tag this account: @*'Random Events' without the asterisk!
Once you respond, you may begin including Lilith in your IC posts.
Thank you for giving me such a darkly lush setting and idea to work with <3
Today, he's flying. Well he would call it drifting for all the effort it requires-- he's just catching updrafts of air that rise from the sea cliffs. It requires a certain skill of its own, but it is a decidedly lazier way of being airborne than what he would consider flying.
Semantics are important to him.
He loves seeing his home from up here. If you know where to look, the land tells a story. There, where the river cleaves-- that is where the great ram-horned king Rapax was drowned. They say he was such a beast of a man that the river split in two to go around him. North of there, of course, lie the dark scars of the recent fires in Viride. The sight of it twists his stomach and he doesn't much feel like looking anymore. "All those lives lost. All those trees gone. It will take decades to regrow." He sighs woefully. The sun is getting hot on his back, anyway (there's a reason most pegasi are white) and so he begins his descent back to earth in a large, lazy spiral.
As he descends he watches his shadow grow smaller and smaller, until he lands gracefully at the edge of it. By the time he is earthbound, he has forgotten his sorrow. A large stallion is standing nearby, looking down at the ocean. Perpetually bored and sociable, Mateo approaches.
"Hello hello, big fellow!" The words are intended to be entirely friendly, but the small black pegasus keeps his distance in case they offend. "Beautiful day, isn't it?" He spreads the tips of his wings genially, although it is a gesture that may be lost on someone who is not pegasus. "We haven't met." He would remember, if they had. He never forgets a face. "I'm Mateo."
- - - -
bloopy starter for @Bucephalus and anyone else who would like to join. sorry for the wait <3
As Mateo walks down the hall, he tosses an apple up and down. There is something intriguing to the way it hovers, weightless, at top of its arc, before it begins its descent. He imagines the apple enjoys flying, because he can't imagine anything not enjoying it.
This was his morning: lazy sunlight filtered through white linen curtains, a warm breeze that brought the smell of the summer sea, somewhere the sound of music. He slept in today, drifting in and out of smokey dreams. (The air has been clear for weeks but the court still smells like the charred remains of a camp fire. He is convinced that the smell of smoke will taint the rest of his life.) Eventually he rose and shook off the dust and hangover of last night's adventures. Eventually he began to walk in search of a story, or a poem, or a song, or just companionship.
He stops walking when he sees Regis. "Hello, young prince!" The black pegasus folds himself into an elaborate bow. Right leg extended, left tucked. One wing stretched forward and the other back. It is an overdramatic gesture, sure, but its decadence pleases him.
After a moment he straightens, and considers the apple that sits cradled by his telepathy. It is small and green and plucked several moons too early, but Mateo had looked forward to eating it anyway. There was a poem to be written about unripe apples, and he would be the one to write it.
But not today. Mateo's attention turns back to the dun with a warm smile. "Apple for your thoughts?" He gently offers the green apple to the boy, floating it in his direction.
- - - -
@Regis wheee I had a random, urgent desire to start this, I hope it's okay! I purposefully left it open as to whether Regis knows him or not :)
The rip current of the often-violent Terminus Sea was unforgiving, brutal and hungry as it sunk its bony fingers deep into tired muscles. It tried its hardest to hurl the siren far away from Novus' shores, growling an angry warning as she pressed on..
And oh, did she press on. The hippocampus strained against the tide, long and slender ears slicked back against the crown of her neck and her forelegs curled gracefully against the swell of her breast. Kai pressed himself under the safe haven of her collar, his form hidden under her locks and the gentle hug of the neckband, where he was safe from the sea's violence. The crash of the tide beat her body and threatened to rip the black pearls from her throat, but the fight was nearly useless against the streamlined grace of her form.
Maybe the ocean, in all its wisdom and wild, knew something no one else did. Maybe it was right, trying to keep the phantom of the sea far from Novus.
- - - - - - - - -
Eventually, she broke through the rocky outer-lying current and hit calmer waters... For a moment, she heaved a sigh of relief, her breaths deep from exertion — but she dare not stop for more than a second, worried that the ocean will revolt against her once more. And she could see the ocean floor recede in its depth, could see the rocky outcroppings that rose from the sea bed. She knew what it meant. Land.
At this realization, her breath stilled and head tilted upwards towards the surface a couple of yards above her. Bright eyes stared at how the sea and the sky married, the refraction and shimmer beautiful...
Bubbles escaped the upturned corners of her lips and gently wafted towards the surface. With an arch of her spine and sudden, strong snap of her tail, she was propelled closer towards the shore - unbeknownst to her, towards the upper southwest mouth where the Rapax River ran alongside Delumine's southmost border and dumped into the Terminus sea. Swimming against the tide was hardly a challenge for her.
- - - - - - - - -
She brushed past the rocks that peppered the coast and mouth of the Rapax river. She felt the sharp shift around her.. from the saltiness of the sea to the brackish feel of ... well, she assumed it was an estuary? Hugging the northern most cost of what she would eventually learn is the Rapax, the inky phantom swam close to the surface, her eyes glued almost exclusively upon the sights above the water.
After what felt like miles - and what very well may have been - the river shallowed drastically. She slowed down and rolled languidly within the water, her stomach to the sky as the siren floated mere inches under the surface. Drifting slowly along a calm portion of the Rapax, she lifted her caudal fin so that it split the water's surface. A soft hum slipped from her throat as she stared at the brilliant iridescence and how the sun glittered along her scales...
And then she saw it. Vivid, inquisitive, wide eyes caught sight of a castle looming in the close distance. Immediately, she stilled her fins and re-oriented herself, eyes still glued on the impressive structure. She practically clamored to find an small cluster of rocks above the surface, onyx hooves slipping messily along their smooth surface as she pulled herself from the water.
Spectrum hair was magnificently weightless within the water, but as she pulled herself out and into the sun, it lay slick and damp against her neck — painting a haphazard rainbow mask across her face. But she didn't care. All she cared about, as she curled and uncurled her tail languidly atop those rocks, was staring at the beautiful castle in the distance.
Oh, what she wouldn't give for these fins to allow her to walk on solid land..
There were a lot of moments in his life where Ard didn’t know what the fuck was going on, and this instance was no different. For seasons he and his brother had remained in Denocte instead of joining the others back in Terrastella, an announcement that they had somehow missed, instead keeping to themselves and generally avoiding contact with the Night Court denizens. Or he tried to avoid contact, anyway. Erd, the damnable social little butterfly that he was, did his absolute best to make friends wherever he saw fit.
Ard hated it in a way that he hated most things, and in a way that had very little to do with jealousy. Or so he said.
He had no desire to remain in Denocte for much longer, and honestly, he was losing the desire, or even the want, to return to Terrastella. Little had happened there to benefit them. Oh, sure. They had met Marisol and Theodosia and had joined the Halcyon Unit, but for what good? What purpose? The whole affair did little to soothe his troubled, wretched heart, and oftentimes the young warlock found himself yearning for the freedom of an open road with no one at his side save for Erd.
His brother wouldn’t hear any of it, of course. Erd was loyal where Ard was selfish. Erd was good, where Ard was not, and it was that goodness that swayed the younger twin into staying rooted in a court he wanted absolutely nothing to do with. Goodness, yes, but mostly love and profound adoration. He would not survive without his brother.
Still, that did not mean that Ard liked the sudden, prominent influx of individuals unexpectedly crowding the Night Court streets. They came wearing elaborate masks and costumes, smelling of perfumes both foreign and native, looking akin to peacocks strutting their stuff. Ard judged them silently from the shadows, not understanding the fun they found in such a ridiculous event, but Erd… Oh, Erd, his idiotic, perfect other half, thought the whole thing was positively marvelous. They had been passing through the streets of the keep, skirting along to avoid the throngs of dressed up folk, when Erd had paused, said he would be back, and then slipped away in a billow of black cloak and taupe hairs. Then, he had returned minutes later, eager and expectant.
“No.” The single word was uttered darkly on a grunt as his gaze, narrowed slits of fierce turquoise, glared hard at his twin. It was hard to keep such a sour countenance when faced with Erd’s earnest naivety, glaring resentfully from the item offered to the rueful smile on his brother’s beautiful, stupid face.
A mask. Erd had brought him a mask. The artistic part of his brain appreciated the craftsmanship of the item. Appearing to be carved from sleek black marble, although he truly doubted that it actually was, the mask would sit and cover the eyes of anyone who wore it without covering much else of the face. Small turquoise stones had been pressed around the rim of the mask, adding an intriguing splash of color to the otherwise plain mask, and it was striking how much the stones almost matched their eyes. Ard spotted an identical mask already tied around Erd’s neck, which would take only a single thought to slip into place, and let out a longsuffering sigh.
The things you do to me, you lovable buffoon…
With notable hesitance did the silvered warlock allow his magic to stretch out and take the mask from Erd’s own telekinetic grasp, lifting it up to admire it more closely before gritting his teeth in annoyance and anxiety. He just wanted to leave…
’It will help keep you safe from prying eyes,’ Erd said softly, a statement that Ard could unfortunately agree with, ’Please, Ard? For me?’ A glance over towards his brother’s expression, eyes wide and lip jutting out in a begging pout, and Ard was undone. Without a word, he situated the mask on his face, adjusting it and carefully tying it behind his head. With another thought he pulled up the thick hood of his black and grey cloak, as well as slipping the cowl up to cover the bottom of his face.
Masked and hidden from the world, the anxiety slowly began to slip from his shoulders. Perhaps Erd had been onto something after all.
