Amber, sea salt, cinnamon. Even post-disaster, life still thrives in Denocte’s dark.
Lamps glimmer weakly from their sconces, wet silks drape the stalls. Coins flicker in and out of sight from wallets and gold shimmers like sunlight off strangers’ necks. A lonely kind of string-sound wails from somewhere down the street, beautifully silver and awfully sad, and Marisol slips through the dilapidated markets with all the grace of a rabbit in water: uncomfortably stiff, too unfriendly to be Terrastellan, too awkward to be a Night Court native. She wears the otherness like a second skin.
Those gray eyes watch the world carefully, distrustfully. Constantly she is watching Denocte’s dark corners for the wrong silhouette, for a stranger wearing blood. Rarely does she even think of looking out for her fellow Terrastellans, too distracted by her fears to be concerned with those she halfway-trusts, and so it almost shocks her to find a familiar face in the markets.
In the deep-dark, in the throng of people, in the softly-whispering crowd, Mari sees the shining of a star and almost turns away. Where a month ago she might have gone up to the sovereign with a smile, now she fights the urge to spit at his feet. The only thing that keeps her moving is the sense of duty that follows her as closely as disaster seems to follow Asterion, a concrete weight in her chest that she dreads for the way it drags her toward him, nagging, insistent.
Knitting her eyebrows in half a frown, she extends a wing in a little bow, as contained as it is sarcastic.
Asterion, she says coarsely. Even for the commander the tone seems a little sour.
Posted by: Shrike - 09-29-2018, 10:46 AM - Forum: Archives
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Her body was not unlike the part of the mountains that the dragon had burned: made new by the past months, a map of fresh scars, rake-marks that told no story except that she’d survived.
They still itched, reminders of her most recent brush with death. She’d been lucky, she’d been careless, and the knowledge of it burned like bile low in her belly. How many times would she have to be saved?
(Sometimes, when she dreamed, she saw Calliope above her, eyes full of a strange sorrow, before she bent and like a blade drew her horn across Shrike’s throat. When she felt it open like a tear in fabric, weeping red, she always woke, full of shame.)
Up and up she wound, to paths less-traveled even now at the end of winter. Shrike did not fit in this world, could not find a place between the glances Raymond and Calliope shared, would not sleep within a city of stone – and so she wandered, lean and irritable, hunting something she could not name.
Never before had her knowledge of not belonging eaten at her like this. She’d spent her life a vagabond – why should it trouble her now?
Here near the summit it was still cold enough that what would be rain lower down was a thin snow, though few flakes made it through the canopy of bare branches and thick needles that scented the air with pine. Her muscles were warm enough that she did not shiver, and the wind was a moan up above. Beneath the boughs, where there were no shadows (for all was shadow) it was almost peaceful, the only kind of cathedral she knew.
But still she was wary, alert. She could afford no more near-misses, especially not alone; the not-memory of her previous death itched worse than her fresh scars. So it was that she saw the cat before it saw her: a clouded leopard, moving as softly through the forest as a shadow-creature. The paint mare froze, one hoof still poised, and simply watched, almost in wonder. It was hunting, but not her; its yellow-eyed gaze was turned away, focused on something she could not see.
A sudden crack of a branch made them both startle, and when Shrike glanced back the cat was already gone. A dark ear twisting back, the mare turned to find the source of the noise, her muscles taut beneath her thick winter coat.
It is snowing as he walks the streets of Denocte, his shadow soft beside him on the cobblestones. It is not the fearsome kind of snow that blanketed the desert, borne by unnatural winds; it is a soft and lovely fall, less like ashes and more like hope. It is beautiful.
For the first time since their arrival in the city of starlight (and now Asterion has seen how it earned its name) he is alone, and grateful for it.
Even Cirrus has let him be; the gull is only a dim presence in a corner of his mind as she joins her fellows on the cliffs alongside the crashing winter sea. Despite the snow the streets are full of color, though the bright blues and yellows of the flags are muted by the flakes, and each step he take leaves a small half-moon print behind him.
Asterion can feel himself healing: reknitting after the stress and weariness of the last few weeks, the tension and the terror. He had never paused long enough to mourn, to worry; there had been too much to do. Again and again he had used his recently-returned magic until the ocean inside him was nothing but a tidepool, a puddle left behind by something far stronger and stranger. All of Terrastella had given everything they could.
And none of it had been enough.
Is it a weakness, that he led them with their backs to their home, seeking shelter from a stranger? Guilt like gall churns within him and he shakes his head with a sigh. When he lifts his dark gaze once more, there is a figure before him. Like the flags she, too, is veiled by the snow – but still he would know that color anywhere. She flares bright as a phoenix, and the bay’s steps falter.
“Moira?” he says, and can already feel heat flush through him, prompted by memory, despite the bite in the air.
The recent events have left the land and structures of Denocte mostly destroyed. Walls are crumbling into pathways, blocking half the roads. Weapons of the old guard lay in flower beds that will hopefully bloom in spring. Bits of glass are strew about with sharp edges waiting for foolish children or night to fall.
Everywhere you turn there is devastation but there is also hope in the bright banners some merchants have hung. Children run through the streets and pretend to be dragons perched on crumbled walls. Pygmy dragons dig through the rubble looking for anything that catches the sunlight like gold or silver might. Laughter breaks up the tears and the sounds of rebuilding breaks up any remaining silence.
Denocte is alive with whispers of recreation. Some horses brush their shoulders together and say in passing, ”We're all Phoenixes now.” The refugees from Terrastella join in and soon you can't tell who belongs anywhere else but together.
Ahead a group gathers and splinters off into different directions. Each one is heading towards a different part of Denocte. Will you join them in rebuilding or will you watch history be made without you?
in the Night Court
To some it might seem that the court proper saw little damage compared to the rest of Denocte. The water came up part way up the walls of the castle and surrounding buildings and left the higher parts of the court untouched.
But when the sea swept in and out it took so many things with it.
Doors are missing from homes and the street is strewn with mementos important to someone somewhere. Flags are tangled masses of ink and fabric and few look like they could ever be anything more than trash again. When you look around horses are picking through the debris with tears in their eyes, sobbing about all the important things they have lost.
A blacksmith has lost his forge, it's been broken and swept away in pieces. A mother has lost her child and she screams at anyone who will listen that he needs to be found. A lover has lost his soul, his mate swept under by the rushing water and he's yet to find her.
Will you help them? Will you save them?
at the Night Markets
The once glorious walkway between the merchant stalls is nothing more than piles of stones and gems. Dragons as small as mice sometimes guard them like zealots, snapping at horses who get to close to their stacks of treasure.
Banners wave from stalls, attached only by a single corner. They brush the backs of the horses that walk below. The silks range from fresh and bright to water-stained and torn and some cover up alleys that might be hide all sorts of unsavory things. Each stall is water-stained and as the spring comes there is a worry of mold eating away at the wood and the wares.
And in the center of everything Caligo's own moon carving made of stones is broken. Stones are missing from the holes where they once glowed. Without them the night sky will never be reflected again quite right.
The Markets are the pillar of the Dencote economy. Merchants and artists need the market to survive. How will you help restore the welfare of those who lost so much during the rampage of the sea?
at the shores of Vitreus Lake
It is strange to see the sunshine; stranger yet to feel the breeze carry a breath of warmth, of spring. Almost it could be a day like any other, the lake shining like Caligo’s stars, the mountains stark against the blue.
But there is no denying there was a battle, here.
Blood still stains the sand, and impromptu weapons lay abandoned next to a few battered bodies of monstrous birds. Their talons gleam, themselves as long as knives, and they look like glass with their bloodless, transparent bodies and their many wide-stretched wings.
Glass, true glass, also litters the shore and field around the lake as though the sky itself had shattered to pieces; it gleams in shards and strange twisted shapes where lightning struck the sand and performed its alchemy.
The lake must be made safe and returned to its former pristine beauty. Gather what you will: talons and wings, or bloodied weapons, or wicked, lovely glass. What might be made of such terrible, strange debris?
up in the Arma Mountains
All that remains of the once-mighty gate is rubble and dust. Torn down by Ruth the terraresque, the Night Court is able to be cut off from the world no more.
But the pass still bears strange scars of dragon-fire, splintered trunks and blackened stumps. The ground is littered with fallen logs like a game of pick-up sticks. The forest floor is barren: first the fire, then the raging storms and water, then a frigid winter have beat back any attempts for seeds to grow.
It is clear the land will wear the marks for years to come – unless it is helped.
Members of Denocte (and of Dusk, too) make the long climb to the pass with burlap bags of earth and seedlings. Birds follow them, flighty but watchful, as they struggle beneath buckets for watering and begin to clear the rubble and replant.
How will you join them in remaking the pass, or clearing the rubble of a gate that is needed no more?
PARTICIPATION RULES
Please tag all threads for this event with [rebuild] at the end of your title lines. Post on the board of which ever prompt(s) you choose to write with.
This event is a timed event.
Posts for this event must be completed by Oct. 31st. Threads must have four posts from a character in order for said character to collect the 100 signos bonus. Once this is completed please tag @Isra (or @Asterion if it's a dusk pony) on the closing post so that the signos can be requested from the court bank.
Also feel free to contact or message either Nestle or Griffin with any questions! Discord or PM's are both ok.
Her mind is reeling, her thoughts rum rampant. She’s here in this new land, this new place. Something is calling for her and she cannot help but wonder just who is calling out to her. She doesn’t know anyone here. She cannot sense her demonic siblings. Her heart cannot feel the closeness of Metaphor. Her heart aches for the stallion she misses so much, the one person who has been able to break down her walls and cause her to feel something other than duty. He’s softened her, broken down her armor and made her more human.
It’s a strange feeling to be so vulnerable, to feel as though you would die for one single person. It’s something Katniss has never experienced before and it was something that she was honestly afraid of. Feeling herself so vulnerable felt unnatural to the warrior. The feelings that Metaphor was able to pull from her heart had only been a mystery to the silver black mare and yet, he had found them. He had brought to light a part of her that she never knew existed.
And yet, despite how terrified the feelings made her feel…they helped her grow.
As she steps foot into the night court, she lets out a gentle calling, alerting others that she was here and that she was no threat. Unlike her usual confident pose, her neck hung low, almost as if it were a submissive action. She was not here to cause trouble. In fact, she was here to help. Perhaps it was the recent disasters that called for her. Whatever the reason, she was here.
Her gaze looks to the east, to the west, and then straight in front of her. She cannot see anyone, but she can sense that they are here. “I mean you no harm…” She still searches for the bodies of the inhabitants, hoping that someone might come to greet her. She can hardly help this court if she doesn’t know a single soul. “My name is Katniss and I’m here to help.” While she misses the feeling of Metaphor against her skin giving her confidence, she can’t help but wonder what sort of things might befall here her in Novus. Perhaps she would find purpose here…or perhaps even find love. It has only taken the mare ten years, but she is finally ready for something more.
The world had gone to shit. Between the wildfires of Delumine and the southern floods or the rumors of a freakish snowstorm in the desert to the north-east, it seemed as though the entire world had lost its mind. Was it winter? Was it spring? No one really knew anymore, despite the sages insisting that it was, by right, winter. Israfel thought it was a load of shit. Nothing made sense, and it was becoming far too much to handle.
Round and around we go, a dark little voice whispered in her head, dangerous and foreboding, Where do we stop? No one knows.
A moment. That was all she had needed. A single moment. A desperately snatched afternoon of solitary respite, secluded out among the Praistigia Cliffs. Solaris lingered upon her shoulders, the massive ivory and gold phoenix roosting with her eyes shut. It appeared as though she were napping, but the Sun Daughter knew better. Resting, yes. Asleep? No.
Clouds loomed and lingered overhead, the afternoon sky a dark and depressing collection of inky black storm clouds that promised more rain. She was so, so tired of rain… The grass beneath golden hooves lay flat and lackluster like a matted rug, the soil squishy and sodden. Everything was saturated in rain water, and in turn, everything felt far too damp to be comfortable. Terrastella had seemed to reshape overnight, the familiar landscape becoming a scraggly graveyard for the land they had once known, a burial ground for those that they could not save.
When would it stop? It needed to stop. They could not survive this perpetual rainfall, freezing and terrible. They were all exhausted and waterlogged, weakened from weeks of unrelenting flood and rainfall alike.
Vermilion eyes lifted upwards towards the dark, billowing clouds overhead. Slowly her wings outstretched, the tips of her feathers spreading outwards, reaching, reaching. A cold breeze buffeted against the Warden’s damp body, frigid and unwelcome, seeming to inch and coil beneath muscle and settle within her very bones. Israfel’s eyes narrowed, her lips twitched downwards, and a sharp inhalation was the world’s only warning before she shouted, deep and valiant and desperate, teeth bared against the white-capped ocean tops and the endless horizon stretching out before her, “STOP!”
Stop the rain. Stop the floods. Stop it. Stop it. STOP IT.
Yet the breeze remained. The clouds still churned within the sky. Here, in this world, in this life, she held no dominion. Despite the blood of Gods and Saints that still filled her veins, mighty and mysterious though they may have been, her powers had still forsaken her. Without them, she had begun to rely upon brute strength alone… But brute strength alone would not help the citizens she had sworn to protect. How many rulers had she seen now, in that life and this one?
Mirage. Rannveig, Florentine, Asterion.
How many Gods, full or half, had she seen, in that life and this one?
Sun, Earth, Moon, Time. Mesec, Hototo, Roskuld. Had any come after her death? And the ones here, the Gods of Novus; Vespera, Caligo, Oriens, Solis, and their mighty Father, Tempus.
To whom did she owe her communion? Her conviction? Her loyalty? Why did she owe them anything, when it was they who fought for their very lives, every day against the storms?
Sacrilegious thoughts, indeed. Blasphemous… Yet Israfel’s only God had been silent. The proof of his existence gone without a trace. She mourned, she cried, and she prayed, yet no answers came. And thus, she was on her own.
’Peace,’ Solaris stated, large violet eyes sliding open to gaze passively upon her conflicted bonded, ’Your mind is running far too fast. Calm your heart, child. Peace.’
If only Israfel knew the true meaning of the word, or how to achieve it.
Makeda's sudden appearance into the world of living had left him reeling, spinning. Everything is changed now and it's left him in a sad state of paralysis; unable to move forward with his life.
He's not entirely sure what he should be feeling. Betrayal? Relief? Anger? He believed her dead and she had let him believe it for years. What kind of a person does that?
A Davke woman, of course he thinks in a tired, resigned sort of way. And why would he assume that Makeda would act any differently when she had always done what she wanted, what was best for her?
He's tired of the snow, tired of the cold. That's what he tells himself as he leaves the borders of Solterra behind, but in his heart he knows it's a lie. He cannot be near her, not now. Now who's more a woman? he scoffs at himself and his need for "space". He should be hardened and calloused, as Davke life had fashioned him to be.
But he goes anyway, not wanting to face her stirking violet eyes and demure lips. He can't. Not again. Not when he had let her go, had finally moved on. But had he really moved on? He couldn't honestly say but it was certainly a nice thought.
And so he fulfills the need to be somewhere he's never been before. He finds himself climbing in the mountains, sweat lathering his skin even though it is the dead of winter. He's no longer sure if he's in Solterra or Denocte, and finds he doesn't care, even though he's never stepped hoof outside of Solterra before. Up here the air is cold and clear and he can breathe more freely.
these scars long have yearned for your tender caress
to bind our fortunes, damn what the stars own ---
He was back in the mountains again. Not intentionally, no, never again, but by some glitch in his guidance system that sent him wandering off to the places he never wanted to go.
But where did he want to go?
Nowhere.
Nowhere could make him happy. Nowhere would make him happy. He was always either judged by ten thousand eyes and then some, or alone. He didn’t want to be alone. He did. But didn’t. It was safe from the outside but so so dangerous inside. When he wasn’t alone it was dangerous inside and outside. No winning.
He kept walking. Always walking, always climbing, always pushing forward where there was everywhere to go and everywhere to go back to. There was never nowhere before or behind him.
Unless he died.
He looked over the ledge.
Nope. Not today.
His limbs trembled and stomach churned after that peek at death. He escaped into a rounded indent in the stones, like a shrine carved into a mountainside. No shrine-god waited for him there, he was certain.
He does not think of anything but the flight. (Three flaps, then glide. Three flaps, then glide.) The sad man had chosen him to fly, not to think.
So he flies.
The eerie cold of Solterra persists until the Armas, where it suddenly becomes a normal cold, the plain old chill of altitude. The little crow could not say how he knows the difference- it is just something you feel in your feathers. He looks around with his one good eye, careful to avoid ravens and hawks and the like-- everyone knows they are particularly troublesome here. But it is a quiet evening and everyone seems too busy hunting or socializing to bother the messenger.
Once he's over the mountains, it is a straight shot to the court. Usually he goes directly to the rookery, but this time is different. This time he is to go to the library, and look for a very distinctive lady. His client had the most remarkable gift of showing him an image, in his head, of the woman. When he finds her, in the library as expected, he is disappointed that she is not quite as beautiful as he was expecting. But he knows all too well that boys sending letters (particularly the ones who send flowers as well) to beautiful women are typically not fully grounded in reality.
He sits on the windowsill and squawks loudly, first to get her attention and then to tell her of his journey in a language she won't understand. He tells her of the man with sad eyes who sent him. He doesn't get chosen as a messenger very often, you know, because of his missing eye and mangled feathers and all that, whatever, but the sad man must be a smart man too, because he looked the little crow in the eye and he just knew that this, this was a fellow who would get the job done! And here he is, despite the downright creepy weather, really once in a lifetime stuff, and--
the mare clearly doesn't understand him so he stops, disappointed, and hops to a large wooden table where he unties the letter from his leg. It had not been properly sealed (the crow tuts, finds this insulting) and it uncurls neatly as soon as it is untied. He looks at the scrap of paper, ruffles his feathers (a few fall out, he can never seem to keep them) and watches the woman read. He's hungry, and rather upset that he flew all this way for this-
Moira T,
The jasmine has stopped blooming here, but I still close my eyes and try to remember how it smells. I don't think it helps me sleep but it reminds me of you.
Please let me know you are alive and well. The world would seem much darker without you in it.
I would like to see you again.
Eik
@Moira <3 long overdue! He... he gave up trying to spell Tonnerre x'D
