you shouldn't have to pay for your love
with your bones and your flesh
A hunt, the court whispers amongst each other as he passes, every being pressed close equally for warmth and the gossip it brought. They pay no mind to the deer-like boy with whispers of Solis and his challenge, and those who rose to face it --
a pale stallion, with horns like a bull, someone else whispers, and he thinks of a not-so-lonely night on a mountainside, of an understanding that had almost-but-not-quite been reached between two boys who thought too often about death.
“The Gods don't often give easy quests,” He whispers into the air between them when their paths cross, anxiety humming beneath his skin in a familiar anthem, the dragonscale around his neck gleaming like an oilslick. He knows too well how fickle the favor of the divine could be, how treacherous their hunts and their games would be for the mortals who dared to join in.
“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
----
In Denocte it's not one raven that appears but many.
The sky is littered with them and it seems that almost every roost in the entire court has been emptied of its citizens. They dive down like black stars and the world is alive with the whispering songs of all those bird-feathers and it clashes with the music in a darkly lush melody.
Some horses look up all those ravens and their scrolls and wink knowingly at those closest to them. Some of them already know the secrets carried in those scrolls even if they cannot guess at the words still tucked away.
One unicorn, tucked away in a hidden garden, smiles when she looks out over her court and watches all the ravens land like wishes.
Here the raven's aren't coordinated in their reveal. One is distracted by a pygmy dragon who snaps at all that shiny golden paper. Another has landed too close to a fire and he screeches when an ember catches on a breeze and brushes against his perfect, black feathers.
But eventually they all use their wicked beaks to untie their scrolls and that unicorn on the roof laughs to hear the silence, before all the noise breaks over it like a wave. Nothing has ever sounded as lovely to her as that sound of joy tainted with a little caution.
The letters on these scrolls are as black as night and stuck through with pieces of silver glitter. The ink looks like the night sky, like a dream made into language and eternally caught on paper.
Soon the night will be at its shortest hour
But lament not my shadows
-- and my stars
For the moon will swallow up the sky
And even the sun will not chase it--
down past the mountains
We will rise to meet the summer,
unafraid of all the mysteries that it carries
We are dreamers, and every night
no matter the length of the hours
Belongs to us.
Let us remind them,
what wonder the darkness brings.
There is no blot of ink at the bottom of these scrolls. Denocte needs no hint but the ink and that joyous laughter of a unicorn that peels out like a bell-toll over the capital.
Gladly do they share their joy and their secrets with all the citizens of all the others courts currently mixed in with them. Tonight with the letters they are only mortals readings words, there is no division.
“Twilight fell: The sky turned to a light, dusky purple littered with tiny silver stars.”
----
At first it seems like a strange thing to look up and see a dot of black on the horizon just as the sky turns from blue to dusky pinks and golds. A quick look might suggest a bat and on further thought perhaps it seems another strange animal bred from broken god-magic that might bring with it another disaster.
But that speck of black keeps drawing closer and soon it's not a bat at all but a raven that breaks through the clouds and land on a half-rotten log that was washed up from the floods. And as soon as it lands three other specks of black break through the horizon. Each one picks another location and each carries, on it's leg, a golden scroll.
A closer look might reveal that this particular scroll on this particular raven looks almost water-washed. In the dusky light it's almost more rose-gold and copper toned than the gold of signos. It's no less lovely for the faded look of this scroll, it's almost prettier for the strange paleness of it.
Fitting for the court who is half here, half in another court.
At once all the ravens pick loose their knots and the scrolls flutter like golden leaves to the ground. Once free of their burden all the ravens take wing and fly away, out past the clouds until the coming dark hues of the night swallow up their inky feathers.
How silly it seems now to think that they looked a little like bats.
Each of the scrolls catch on a breeze, unroll and the words shine and glow like embers of a dead fire.
When the darkness tolls its shortest hour
When the sun fades in the sky
When the spring ticks away like the final hour
And the moon burns not like winter but silver sunlight
Then the path will be revealed in fairy light
And stone and gold will guide your way
Come to me at the start of summer.
There is no signature on the letter. But maybe, just maybe, the blot of ink at the bottom looks a little like a crescent moon.
“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
----
At first it seems like a strange thing to look up and see a dot of black on the horizon just as the sky turns from blue to dusky pinks and golds. A quick look might suggest a bat and on further thought perhaps it seems another strange animal bred from broken god-magic that might bring with it another disaster.
But that speck of black keeps drawing closer and soon it's not a bat at all but a raven that breaks through the clouds and lands stone still slick with ice in the places too deep for the sun to reach. And as soon as it lands three other specks of black break through the horizon. Each one picks another location and each carries, on it's leg, a golden scroll.
A closer look might reveal that this particular scroll on this particular raven looks as golden as the sun at the highest point of the day. There is no other color but gold and it glitters more than any precious gem.
At once all the ravens pick loose their knots and the scrolls flutter like golden leaves to the ground. Once free of their burden all the ravens take wing and fly away, out past the clouds until the coming dark hues of the night swallow up their inky feathers.
How silly it seems now to think that they looked a little like bats.
Each of the scrolls catch on a breeze, unroll and the words shine and glow like embers of a dead fire.
When the darkness tolls its shortest hour
When the sun fades in the sky
When the spring ticks away like the final hour
And the moon burns not like winter but silver sunlight
Then the path will be revealed in fairy light
And stone and gold will guide your way
Come to me at the start of summer.
There is no signature on the letter. But maybe, just maybe, the blot of ink at the bottom looks a little like a crescent moon.
“Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern.”
----
At first it seems like a strange thing to look up and see a dot of black on the horizon just as the sky turns from blue to dusky pinks and golds. A quick look might suggest a bat and on further thought perhaps it seems another strange animal bred from broken-god magic that might bring with it another disaster.
But that speck of black keeps drawing closer and soon it's not a bat at all but a raven that breaks through the clouds and lands on a lone rock with edges that have been coated in soot. And as soon as it lands three other specks of black break through the horizon. Each one picks another location and each carries, on it's leg, a golden scroll.
A closer look might reveal that this particular scroll on this particular raven looks so very like the horizon as the night gives way to the dawn.
At once all the ravens pick loose their knots and the scrolls flutter like golden leaves to the ground. Once free of their burden all the ravens take wing and fly away, out past the clouds until the coming dark hues of the night swallow up their inky feathers.
How silly it seems now to think that they looked a little like bats.
Each of the scrolls catch on a breeze, unroll and the words shine and glow like embers of a dead fire.
When the darkness tolls its shortest hour
When the sun fades in the sky
When the spring ticks away like the final hour
And the moon burns not like winter but silver sunlight
Then the path will be revealed in fairy light
And stone and gold will guide your way
Come to me at the start of summer.
There is no signature on the letter. But maybe, just maybe, the blot of ink at the bottom looks a little like a crescent moon.
It was the keening of the jackals that woke her, carried clear across the sweep of sand on the cold desert night. There was nothing to stop the sound of it and it echoed like a mourning wail through the pre-dawn streets of Solterra.
Elif, who did not sleep well in the empty house that echoed much as the desert did, stirred from her pallet and stepped to the open window. She brushed aside the curtain that fluttered there, a gauzy blue to keep the sand and sun out but let the breeze in, and looked out.
The night was black or silver, the starlight a blessing after so many nights of snow. It limned the buildings faintly, and torches flickered far away, but she could see no one on the streets from her second-floor vantage point. Still the jackals cried their ululating wail, and Elif tucked her wings and began to turn away.
That’s when the night split open.
She had seen shooting stars before, but never anything like this - a comet that carved a red path through the dark sky, low enough that it looked like it might crash into the city gates. She fell to stillness, her drowsy mind amazed that such a vivid thing could be utterly silent, and watched it arc away. She was sure she would see it collide, was sure the world would be rent by fire and noise - but it only vanished. For a moment she thought she could see the dark of the mountains against its brightness - surely that was foolishness, for when she closed her eyes the imprint of light was still there like a crimson kiss on each eyelid.
Elif stood poised as on a cliff for the length of a heartbeat, and before she could decide against it she stepped out onto her balcony and into the cold bite of the air. Another breath and she was leaping, wings spreading, aloft to follow the path of the star.
-
By dawn she was sure she’d made a terrible mistake.
Her half-dreaming flight had brought her to the tangle of Abigo caves, where half the rock glimmered as though it remembered being a star. For the moment she remained on the outside (for how would a star fall within?) but she was no mountain-goat; each foray further up the mountain was unsteady even with her wings acting as balance.
She was alone, save for the wind that howled through holes in the rock, a song far prettier but just as mournful and strange as the jackals’.
But then - ah! Just as the light turns pearl and pink, her gaze finds an indent like a crater in the dark stone of the mountain. A hole like a blast - like the mark from a falling star. It is too small of an opening, too uncertain of an entrance; Elif will have to find another.
It has not yet dawned on her that her first foray from Solterra might not be to the safest of places for a girl only just grown, and tired, and alone.
open to any! tagging @Ard and @Erd for ghost (?) adventures!
Isra who begged water to dream
" I have thought some dreams should never be dreamt, but I would hate a world where that was true.”
The waters of the lake look less like mirror glass in the daylight when they are green with algae instead of silver-dark. Whippoorwills tickle at her belly and the round rock feels as flat as coins beneath her hooves. Sometimes her eyes catch on the pale pink of a conch between the gray rocks and other times she smiles to watch a crab that does not belong catch a tadpole.
Behind her there still lingers the traces of war but also the traces of something else and it all catches in the sunlight like rusted metal and stained glass. When Isra turns to look with just a fragment of fear tightening down her spine she feels as if she's looking only at the corpse of a story.
“That just will not do.” She says to herself while she begs that silver pool of magic in her bones and below to her soul rise like the sea and drip from her like rain.
Someday she will tell the court it came to her in a dream. One night she'll tell a gray stallion that it really came to her when she flew and sailed on and over a sea that lived in a universes where there were only two creatures alive to walk the shores. Someday, she thinks, she will share this thing with Eik.
If she can figure how to bring it to the real from the deep dark of her dreams.
And so Isra wades into the water and her skin shivers for the needles of cold that sink past her skin and into her bones. It will help keep me awake, she thinks.
Beneath the waterline where her hooves sink into the soft waterbed the soil melts like molten metal and turns to textured gold cut through with dapples of wood. The metal and the wood stretch out behind her, back to the shore like a path to a dream space that lives only beneath the surface of the still water. There it fans out and diamonds rise up from the soil like plants to line the edges of the pathway.
Then Isra begs the water to change, to turn to mirrors instead of liquid and curl around her like a rib-cage. She begs until sweat pools above her eyes and along her spine. But try as she might the water refuses to listen and only the soil seems eager to dream of another existence.
Darkness came early to Novus, announcing its reasons with screaming wind and distant thunder that hushed every living thing within Blyse’s earshot. He felt as if he was the only creature alive then, acutely aware of each graceless step he took by the riot it produced against the silence. Only the wind kept him company, running its chilling fingers through his tangled, ivory hair as it howled around the curves of his body praying for his steps to falter. It seemed to push him back, willing him to go back where he came from—whether just to the mountains or back across the sea he did not know, but he simply ignored it over the deafening sound of his intuition telling him to press forward.
Novus had produced an abundance of mixed-messages for him since he arrived. Some he catered to, others he called a bluff—really there was no rhyme or reason to either choice, just instinct…or faith, perhaps. Truth be told, he did not care much for that word or its meaning. It called for the murder of logic and control and many things in which he held in high regard. But this new land called for some level of faith; Gods by their very nature demanded it.
Blyse drew his eyes up to the heavens, casting an ireful glance towards to the sea of boisterous black clouds that threatened the earth with its promise of perpetual darkness. It was, in its own way, a form of prayer—but not one that would please any God. His prayer was a demand for retribution without sacrifice. He desired a place in this new world and a purpose, but one that did not intermingle with celestial beings he did not wish to give his devotion to.
In a seeming expression of reprisal there came a surge of lightening, so bright it forced Blyse to pull his eyes closed in reflex. The roar of thunder came tumbling slowly after, rattling the earth to her very bones. What is it that they say? Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn? Yes, scorn would nicely define it, if coincidence would not suffice.
The backlash was quickly followed by the sound of a downpour creeping toward him from across the vale. Blyse watched as it raced across the river and through the fields; watched as the high grass bowed to the torrent and the trees turned over the last of their leaves to welcome it. It was strange to see rain move like that, like a curtain drawn over the earth. And then it washed over his body, drenching his wings and permitting the coldness to penetrate his mahogany coat to slide its icy fingers against along his spine. He drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, before taking his leave of the open fields to find a bit of cover in the mouth of a nearby cavern that lined the hillside.
@Sparrow // Bring whoever you like ❤ we’re just standing in a field getting rained on and feeling cynical today apparently.
Isra of the embers
"and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.”
It is a strange thing, Isra thinks, to see the night start to fade against the thin strip of blue across the horizon. All the bonfires have dimmed to soot and smoke. The treasures of the night markets have been locked up or tucked away beneath curtains of silk and shrouds of burlap. She watches the last of the court yawn, turn away and make their way back to their downy pillows and gold-dusted dreams.
Soon almost every else but her is gone, just as the pinks and colds crest above that thin cold blue strip of day. In the solitude her skin feels too tight. Isra thinks there could be a million caterpillars changing beneath her skin for the way that her flesh seems to stretch and itch and burn. And so she paces through the quiet pathways, a lone sentinel guarding the night from the heat of the day.
It's only when the black turns to golds and yellows that Isra lifts her eyes and realizes that she's not alone at all. Ahead another wanders the streets, darker than her against all the daylight. Isra wonders, as she draws closer, if the other mare feels like there is a beast alive beneath her skin. She wonders what keeps Katniss from dreaming away the day with the majority of the court.
“Katniss.” She calls out and the wind whistles out a song between the curling hollows of her horn. When she draws close enough her lips twist in a smile as fragile as paper wings. Everything is different in the daylight and their last meeting was filled only with darkness, storm-clouds and a thing circling above their heads.
Isra cannot help but think that the mare looks larger in the light when there are no shadows to swallow up her edges.
“How have you been?” Her voice is a quiet thing, thick with the start of tiredness and lingering dreams. She hopes that perhaps they might not be strangers much longer, that they might soon share something more than a dark cave and a story without an end.
Dawn heralds a solitary figure roosting upon a balcony balustrade of Terrastella’s capitol. A tawny-colored barn owl rests from a long journey, a sealed scroll tied with fine leather cord about one of her legs. She waits, watching with beady black eyes until the one she is searching for arrives.
Asterion.
The order had been clear, and she had promised to uphold it. No one but the Dusk Sovereign shall remove the scroll from her leg, and Alba had every intention on keeping such a promise. Whenever a curious equine would plan on approaching, smitten by the fine-feathered barn owl with a curious letter, Alba would balk, large mottled wings spreading outwards to beat furiously at the air as loud ’pops!’ came from her beak.
No one but Asterion, for the delicately penned words scripted inside held far too intimate of knowledge for just anyone to know.
’Dear King Asterion –
Greetings from Delumine proper. I pray that this correspondence finds yourself and your Court within fine health and far better conditions than our last exchange. Slowly the fires to the north grow smaller, and I believe that we are ever closer to finding and ending the source of our smoke-laden plague.
I pray that Vespera and Oriens both bless your land, and that you and yours recovery swiftly and with little travesty. Soon, my friend, I hope that we can exchange pleasantries in person rather than by ink, parchment, and wings. Regardless, I have written to implore your kindness, and the possible mercy of a friend and ally both.
My son is ill. He was born small and frail this autumn-past, and I fear the fires have only made his condition worsen. Delumine’s most talented of healers cannot aid him despite their best efforts, and I am searching now not as one King to another, but a desperate father to a friend. I understand that your healers are needed on your home front, as Terrastella has suffered greatly these weeks past, but I beseech you spare the wisdom and talent of even a single medic.
I have heard rumors of your great Shamans and knowledgeable Potion-Brewers. Traditional medicine and prayers have offered no reprieve for my son, and I fear that if I do not act soon, we will lose him. His mother nor I would survive such a loss. I cannot allow it to happen.
Please understand, we have little to trade in such dire times, but I swear upon my crown and upon Oriens’ great mercy and wisdom, that compensation will be made. Be it coin or resources, I will provide whatever I can.
Alba has seen this letter safely to you. I beg you allow her to rest and recover, but she is strong and able-bodied. I know you are busy, my friend. I know that you are all mourning and recovering, but please take a moment and write back as soon as you can.
I will be patiently waiting.
Best regards, your friend and ally,
Somnus.”
tag:
@Asterion
Open to everyone else, as well, but Alba will only give the letter to Asterion. :D What he does with it afterwards is up to him.
