Isra of the wordless tale

“I can't go on, I'll go on.”


Of course she is in the room that looks like the sea. 

Everyone is looking for her in the gardens, at the mask covered tables or perhaps in a corner weaving a story to anyone brave enough to listen. Only those who know her closely might thing to look here, but tonight they are all off weaving their own adventures. 

Tonight Isra is alone. 

Although perhaps, she thinks, this room feels a little like home and a little like drowning in gold and green and strange, shifting light. The silk winding about her neck (hiding the still there wounds) and flowing down over her shoulders before pooling at her side looks as if it is made from the walls of this room. Each stitch glitters in the low-light, and there are a million of them, and each stitch curves to make a scale. The sheer fabric ripples like fish-skin as she moves beneath the hanging aquariums. 

Each ring of her hooves across the marble rings like a bell. She fills the room with a melody that only she knows the words too. Over and over she moves between the walls with the light streaming through the suspended orbs of water reflecting on her horn. Eventually she starts to hum a low, sad tune and her skin feels alive with the electricity of it. 

Isra hums and thinks of the sun and how a dune of sand might swelter and burn beneath it. She thinks of metal flowers and blood as red, red, red as the color of her heart. Ghosts, dragons, thunderbirds and drowning: she thinks of so many things and each makes her tune a slower and lower. A tear falls down and glistens faintly on the fabric rippled around her hooves and her dance falters just a little. 

“How strange,” she sobs to the quiet room with only fish to keep her company,. “that I have no words for this story.” There is nothing here but shadows and scale to answer her back, not that Isra expected any reply at all. 

But then, there is the sound of hoof-steps in the hallway and she blinks back her sorrow and her song and tries so very hard to look like a queen instead of a unicorn hiding the mark of teeth across her throat. 

@Avilius

Isra in the church tree 
"I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps." 



She did not make it to the lake the morning after she sailed along the sea inside her bones and inside Eik's bones. 

The next morning rose, pinks and pastels, and it was the loveliest morning this part of Novus has ever seen. Every nocturnal horse in her court was happy to crawl from their beds, blink back the crust of their eyes, look at the sky and whisper, never has there been a morning that had more promise. That morning there was no denying that all the early hours felt like gold-dust on the skin. Some even whispered that time stumbled over his breaths that morning. 

But Isra was not at the lake that morning either, and she saw nothing of the hopeful dawn and the way that her court of dreamers loved it so. 

It's not until the third dawn that she manages to make her way towards the lake. She has no trail to leave this time and the one she left before has long since withered and died. Only her hoof prints lead the way and they drag though the dirt and muck until there are lines between each of them from the tips of her hooves. And even then there are hundreds of other marks in the spring mud and her own look no different than the rest. 

Isra hopes that Eik will still find her. It's a wild, rabid sort of hope (the kind that burns and smolders and consumes). 

By now there are tents flapping in the dawn wind and horses gathering at the pathway that splits the lake. Each of their steps rings like a metronome and pushes her onward to the dark sanctuary of a willow tree far from the water's edge. No one notices the queen slink like a shadow between them and no one notices the blood crusted on the fragile curve of her throat. Isra blinks, trembles, and thinks that it's better this way, better that they are all free to fearlessly enjoy the beauty of the second most lovely dawn. 

For now they don't need to know that a monster walks among them and their own queen is is so very afraid (deep inside where she will never let them see). 

When she walks between the branches and silken leaves of the willow each of them lingers on her flesh like a kiss. The hollow pit of her magic fills just a little, summoned up from the dark of her by the way the willow seems to want something. To dream, she thinks, it wants to dream as I do. 

So she curls down into the soft, muddy dirt and listens to the metronome of horse hooves on wood and gold. Each step has her eyelids getting heavier, each bubble of laughter makes her lungs feel heavy and her heart weary. On and on it goes-- laughter, ringing hooves, laughter. 

And it's not until Isra surrenders to her dreaming that her magic crawls out from her skin and travels like an army of caterpillars up the bark of the tree. Each satin, delicate leaf turns to glass and each leaf changes to a different color. Up, up, up the magic travels until it's not a willow tree that hides her from view but a church of light and glass, wood and color. 


@Eik

THE START OF THE MAZE

Tonight the night settles strangely, almost uneasy and unsure, as it bleeds away the last bit of brightness from the day. They stars seem almost duller, almost pale as bone when they settle in the sky above the maze. Tonight the maze in the brightest thing and it drowns out the silver-glow of the moon with firelight and other wild, glowing colors. 

Fires blaze beside the entrance and it looks darker for the bright setting of it. Shadows gather in the cracks of the hedges and are broken up only by a splash of color when the fires catch on a breeze and shine across a speckling of white flowers that look almost like stars. The maze looks almost like something that belongs in another world, a throwback to a time when gods were rabid magic and they created the world to look like their dreams and their nightmares. 

Alongside the maze tents flap in the breeze and when a strong enough wind rolls through with the promise of a summer storm the night sky sounds as if it might be alive with bat wings and raven wings. And oh, for a moment the world is alive with magic as if the center of Novus surely hides in the center of this sprawling and strange maze. 

Just as the last bit of light fades into black Isra walks out from the dark entrance of the maze. Her smile sits like the night, a little uneasy and unsure, and it waivers like a hummingbird wings when she looks at all the horses that have gathered. She pauses, inhales and shakes away her fear until her horn almost seems to glow with the reflection of the fires at her side. 

Her voice does not waiver or bleat and it rings clear as a bell through the sound of the flapping tents and the crack of the fires. “Welcome to the maze. When you enter reality might seem to shift and change the deeper you go into this new world. There will be choices aplenty, go alone or go together but please be brave enough to go.” Here her eyes shift towards the gathering of the Benevolent, and she dips her head in gratitude, hoping that the audiences eyes follow and catch on their motley group as her own do. 

Of course she could not do it alone, the traveling magicians did most of the work. 

But looking at the queen it's almost easy to see the sweat still gathered on her spine and the way her skin seems to hang almost loosely in exhaustion. And for a moment it's easy to wonder, how many pieces of the night queen have been stolen by this maze?

Isra shivers in the next breeze, eager to rest just a little while before the bravest of those gathered makes it to the center. “To start there are four paths and one might look more familiar than the others. Not all of these paths will lead anywhere. So choose wisely and above all be brave, and remember how to dream.” The queen says nothing more and her voice fades out to the sound of the fires and the breeze and perhaps the bit of song that drifts out from the dark entrance of the maze. 

Her expression as she watches the first horse enter that yawning darkness looks a little like joy and a little like sadness. 

The Start of the Maze

The dark entrance of the maze splits off into four different directions, each as lovely as the last and each as strange. 
 
THE FIRST--

The first path opens up directly to the left. At first it seems no different from the entrance, all green hedges and well-trodden ground (strange, that it's been traveled before), but then! Then there is a great, budding thing before you, and pathway seems almost alive with light and above a is a fresco. Clouds gone soft lavender and blush, above a trumpeting flower bud, taller than a horse. Nothing happens for a moment and it's uncertain if this is the final thing this path was leading to.  Golden-lit clouds shift on the fresco above (it could be canvas for the soft texture of it). And strangely, for a moment, the light shifts downwards like rays of sunlight. It is in this moment that the light touches the unopened petals and they begin to open. It is not without fanfare, there is the twittering of earliest morning birds and distantly, delicate woodwinds. 

Slowly, the red-pink petals peel themselves from the center, opening up to reveal what you must think to be some foreign goddess; though not one of Novus she is certainly similar in grandness! On a wide-open morning glory she stands, but so light is her form that the flower does not bow. Morning glories in the shades of dawn spill from between her ears, down her neck, her rump, becoming one with the bloom on which she stands but at what point it cannot be discerned. She is both awesome as a god and soft as a blossom, her height distorted by sheer glory, but, perhaps, she really is so tall. Her lashes are long and white, nose fading to the same pale ivory as her tiny, cloven hooves. Her eyes are large as suns and glow with youthful fire; it may be now that she looks to be only a child. And yet - she stands tall before everyone. She glows in the colors of fuchsia and buttercups, and when she speaks her voice is sweet as honeysuckle.

“Greetings, dear maze-goers,” she pauses, either for effect or a balloon of air into her fresh-petal lungs, “Welcome to the path of the morning glory. In moments you will go forth into the unknown and face both peril and beauty alike, and at times - both. If there is something you wish to ask of me, do so now, but know that I cannot answer all. If you wish to turn back, now is the time. After this point, you may not be able to find the entrance again.”

THE SECOND –-

In this part of the maze the hedges grow vibrant, slick and deep-green. The sun (from where? Magic? Something else?) beats down hot on your back, and there it is - summer solstice, midday-high-in-the-sky and it’s turned the world to gold. Dried-up grass and hard dirt are scuffed up by maze-goer hooves, again it's easy to wonder, who walked here already. Ahead lies a fathomless hole in the pathway, longer than it is wide, and infinitely black should you look down into it. A cicada buzzes somewhere unseen. Sweat dribbles down necks and flanks. 

Oh, how odd that the world seemed golden before.

Gilded sunlight  begins to pour out from the ditch, bathing the clearing and out of place sky itself so sunshine yellow it might seem as though Solis himself has come up from the underworld - but no. Scarlet, curling things peek out from the endless depths, now alight, near blindingly but not so one is blind to the show! Rising, rising, the deep red turning to saffron and there, they are flower petals! As they fully unfurl they are almost as wide as an entire rainforest canopy and for a moment all the leaves seems to swallow up the light. Two petals part, just enough, and out steps a blazing orange and white and yellow mare. Glowing pollen floats from her form, dispersing light throughout the shade. For a moment, it sounds as though every cicada that lives close by is screaming. Then - silence.

Day-lilies sprout at her feet, bouncing up from the dry ground fully-bloomed and incarnadine. She looks far less murderous than the conjured sun, but her lashes are short and brittle-looking, coat slick with sweat and her sparse mane is curled and damp. It may seem this is a path of summer instead of day. 

This summer mare speaks like wildfire. “Welcome to high-noon, maze-goers. You have chosen the path of the day-lily. In just a few breaths you will be thrust forth into the maze, a winding puzzle of trials and tribulations...but, also, great beauty. You may turn back now if you wish. Should you stay...you will have no such opportunity again.”

THE THIRD--

The cloth draped across the maze seems to grow lighter as the path goes deeper and deeper into the maze. Long stems bearing papery yellow blossoms reach for the legs of the horses who have traveled this way. Some blossoms are pale pink and are perhaps crushed under-hoof on occasion, though most are relegated to the base of the hedges. The surroundings here seem dim, gray-lavender painting of clouds dance on that cloth overhead.  It is certainly lighter than it was at the start. 

Before you opens up a wider spot in the path, all blooming with the yellow and pink-and-white little flowers, and while it seems the picture of spring or summer there is something like a chill wind blowing. The hedges are no longer shiny and green, but rather, they have gone orange and red. Both evening birds and migratory ones sing now, and crickets scatter the clearing, playing their tunes. 

At the center of the little widening is an enormous flower bud, dusky pink and sleeping sun yellow, petals like tissue paper, but hale in the dusk-autumn air. Slowly, quietly, the petals unfurl, revealing a mare colored bubblegum and butter, petals pouring down to feather her feet and stems growing up again to encircle her wide legs. She is powerful and all muscle, and could be charged with shooing out the day and ushering in the night. Her mane and tail are entirely made of blooms, and a few float away to glow on the damp ground. Her eyes shine dimly, half-sun half-moon, neither sleeping nor awake. She smiles, but it is not a lover’s smile. It isn’t a killer’s, either. 

Then the mare tilts her head, voice jumping and swirling like a leaf caught in a wind tunnel. “Good evening, dear maze-goers. Your first decision was not so difficult, was it? I am the obvious choice. The evening primrose. Congratulations for choosing correctly. The maze ahead may be frightening, and you may find yourself awestruck or running for your lives,” she glances up at the fabric sky, and the light of it has gone past the hedges, now, and says, “Good luck. I hope you didn't have questions.”

THE FOURTH--

For a moment this path seems very much like a plain, boring path. The hedges rustle in the wind, the night gone cool. It's a relief from the early summer heat. All is well, the only odd thing is bitterness on the air and the scent of unripened tomatoes. For a moment it might seem unnerving that everything here is so 'normal' when the queen promises dreams. This path has only green leaves and a sense of impending doom. But as the path continues it grows darker. 

And darker.

And darker.

 It is as if a weightless black cloud has descended upon the maze, bittersweet and opaque. Leaves and stems, flowers and buds start to reach into the path. Then a mist rises up from the ground, and this is clear, for it is silvery in the dark and laden with stars. It goes no higher than stomachs of most. The bitter scent in the air grows stronger. 

Suddenly, it is as if the ground is moving, and every there is movement a stem snakes from the ground and up through the star-mist, blossoming around shoulder height but delightfully uneven, some tower over hedges and others tickle against ankles. The blossoms are nightshade, though unusually colored, glowing violet and yellow-green. 

As the flowers reach closer to a curve in the path, their light intensifies, revealing a shadowed figured in the center of the mist-meadow. She steps into the brightest lights and not a single flower is crushed beneath her hooves - it is as though they made way for her. Her face is veiled with fabric like the night sky, twinkling stars and moons and planets throughout, but you can see two glowing white eyes, large and without pupils (like moons) Her name and tail are deep purple, almost black, and glitter with the tiniest of lights. They spill out onto the ground and it is impossible where her hair ends and the shadows begin. Black fabric is draped across her whole body, but it goes purplish and iridescent in the flower-light. Huge petals spill from her back to the ground,  and when the fabric slips great wings of nightshade flutter at her sides. 

When she speaks it is as if her words permeate the air itself and it's almost hard to see her in the gloom. Her voice is like honey and singing crickets, katydids and unfurling blooms. “My fair maze-goers, welcome to the path of the deadly nightshade. It is my pleasure to welcome you here to this maze, but if you wish to leave, now will be your only opportunity...Should you intend to stay, as I hope you will, great rewards could be yours.”

INSTRUCTIONS

Please reply below, order doesn't matter and you can post as much as you want. At the bottom of your post that picks a path please just write in bold which path you took so it's easy to reference is order to post the next round and tag the correct characters in the paths. 

This round will end December 20th

Otherwise enjoy and please message @nestle here or on discord with any questions. I promise the other rounds won't be novels. 

Credit to @Muirgen for the four pathways!