Winter was colder and lonelier than Pavetta remembered.
The blackened trees contrasted starkly against the glittering white snow blanketing the barren ground. Dawn was not as she remembered, either. A husk of the beauty it had once possessed; a sad tragedy that left the citizens huddled by the hearth of the burnt down homes in silent despair and grief. Pavetta wandered towards the castle, a silver ghost in the winter forest. Her breath crystalized and sparkled in the early evening moonlight. While she now had warm, beautifully furnished quarters in the castle she often preferred the quiet of her grotto in the woods by the stream. She had spent a cold night there.
Alone. And lonely.
Medicinal satchel and cloak over shoulder, Pavetta paced through the ice and snow. She made several calls to rural homes outside of the capitol; checking raspy lungs and distributing soothing herbs for smoke-induced coughing. She could not bear to leave Dawn in this state to complete her Emissary duties. Her people would come first and then she would venture out to see how the other Courts had faired through the terrible disasters.
Eulalie had been on her mind as of late.
The gentle, kind-hearted mother of two. Somnus’ wife and partner. While they were not well acquainted, Pavetta admired her resilient, steadfast spirit. The warmth of the castle embraced her like an old friend as she stepped inside; inviting and pleasant. She paced up the stairs, wondering if Eulalie might be in her own private chambers with the children or out with Somnus. She tapped her horn on the closed door.
“Eulalie? Are you there?"
a pearl in pigshit, a diamond on the finger of a rotting corpse,
creature in whom nothing, but nothing, remains of an elven woman ---
He doesn't have much time to himself these days. Tension runs high in the capital and in response Eik has turned his attention inward, to Solterra instead of the other courts.
(still-- his thoughts are often drifting far above and far away, where a golden eagle circles lazily on warm updrafts. Even when surrounded by four walls, even when engaged in conversation or reading or writing... there is always a part of him that is reserved for Somewhere Else, a part of him always ready to imagine he can feel the wind in his feathers and the sun on his broad back.)
Time has passed in a whirl, as it tends to do when one is exceedingly busy. Searching for the lost, dealing with the bodies, planning the allocation of food (water, for once, not a concern!) and just generally... talking to a lot of people, keeping hopes up, providing support where he can. It is exhausting for someone so fond of silence and open space, but it is deeply rewarding. At the same time, it gives him the uncomfortable feeling of resigning to a fate he had not even seen coming. The emissary once walked the streets with hardly anyone recognizing his face-- he does not know if he will ever have that luxury again.
And so the days bleed into another and the sleep deprivation compounds. His body suffers, too, at war with this newly discovered and highly temperamental magic. It will blaze to life, filling his head with the (unwanted) stream-of-conscious thoughts of anyone nearby, then sputter out leaving him sweating and exhausted and not so confident in his sanity.
In the chaos of the past few weeks, Eik has managed to create a small routine- it helps to keep him grounded even when the days are speeding by. He comes to the rampart at sunrise every morning. It is with such regularity that the morning watch has unofficially become his-- the yearlings normally on duty are granted a few more hours of precious warmth and sleep. He watches the landscape first with a critical eye, looking for changes in the slowly melting snowfall and perpetually hoping to see the flush of green life among the dramatic swathes of white and red-orange. Toward the end of his watch, he has fallen under the spell of the desert's beauty and simply stands there at peace. He has come to love watching the morning colors race across the sand dunes, each day different from the last. It is the one moment in the whole day that feels like it is his. (Even his sleep is interrupted by his magic throwing him in the dreams and nightmares of others.)
Eik does not stir when he hears hooves on the stone behind him. @Seraphina often joins him in the morning, if only for a few minutes to gauge the progress of the snow pack. Sometimes she stays longer and they stare at the desert, each with their own thoughts, preparing for the long day ahead. He does not mind-- he even welcomes her company, for is just as comfortable as solitude. But he quickly that this is not Seraphina. This stranger walks differently, slightly heavier. Still he does not stir, aside from following the mare's movement with a single ear. He is far more alert than he would be if it was the sovereign joining him, but the peace of the morning is still upon him and he is not ready to let it go, not yet.
"Looks like good weather today," he says quietly, never quite adept at small talk even after all the practice of late. His eyes remain on the landscape before them, on the eagle floating above the horizon in large, lazy circles. He thinks if he tries hard enough he might be able to join it, in mind, if only briefly. But for now he settles for imagining what it might be thinking.
* I have let myself go where the dust
E I K Has the color of nothing
@Adelita ahhh goodness he's so bad at small talk -shakes head- (also tagged sera for the reference because it seemed like something she'd do <3) this thread is open to anyone now!
A flash of blue caught his eye, Ipomoea turning just in time to see the blue-and-black songbird rushing into the sky. His bonded flew with such a reckless abandon that Po could feel his own heart start to speed up within his chest, thump-thump-thumping in time with Odet’s wings. His feathers flexed at his ankles - reaching, grasping, straining to fly the way the songbird could.
But Po was a horse with wings hardly bigger than Odet’s; flight would never be his.
Instead he let himself pause and watch his bonded, a lazy smile crooked on his lips. He could feel Odet’s joy through their connection, the confident and effortless ease by which he flew. Seeing the world from above through his bonded’s eyes, experiencing it through his thoughts and emotions… that could be enough for Po. It had to be.
After a moment, he finally tore his gaze from the sky and returned it to the roughened landscape unfolding before him. Denocte looked so very different now than the last time he had been here: the ground was muddy and torn, scattered trees burnt to a crisp and even more ripped up by their roots. ’It looks like a war zone,’ he couldn’t help but think, ’I wonder what terrors they had to face…’
Delumine, too, had seen their own share of disasters - the smoke still clogged his lungs, the burnt trees and meadows filled his dreams. But he hadn’t been able to imagine Denocte looking like this; over the many miles he’d covered, he’d kept envisioning the wildflower meadows and the mirror-like lake and the jubilant city streets. And what he found in its stead seemed sorely out of place.
“Of course, it may just be the rain,” he mused aloud to himself. It had rained a good part of his journey, all through the Bellum Steppe and Arma Mountains. The whole time he had prayed the winds would shift and bring the storm clouds north to his own capitol, but whether or not the gods had answered he couldn’t know.
Nor could he fault Odet’s enthusiasm. For days the bird had been nestled in his hair, trying to stay as dry as possible and failing… it must feel good indeed to stretch his wings again.
The road continued to widen the closer he got to the Night Court’s capitol, though Po was sure to stay well off to the side where the grass provided better footing than the rutted and hole-pocked street. With every rumble of thunder, he found himself quickening his stride, the better to bring Denocte into view as soon as possible. By the end, he hardly paid any mind to his surroundings, focusing instead on the buildings growing taller and taller. And when the brown-and-white splashed Regent finally stepped up to the gates, his bonded flit down upon his withers once more. Odet strode carefully up his neck to weave a few fresh flowers into his mane (for Po had to abandon his blossom crown after the rains had drenched it).
And so it was with a smile and a newly-woven braid that Ipomoea entered the Night Court capitol.
It took him longer than expected to weave his way through the sprawling city streets - and before he knew it, he was horribly turned around. The Dawn Court Regent stopped at a split in the road, turning his head first one way, then another, debating which route to take. Shaking his head, he turned to address the nearest equine. “Excuse me, miss, but could you mayhaps point me towards the castle? I’m afraid I might be lost.”
hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you
i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy
A woman of iron and gold, steel and mettle, fight and fire. Adelita had come a long way from where she had started, bearing the world on her back at some points and at others merely shrugging it off and watching it roll away. Points of her life had come and gone, the birth of her children, the loss of them as they walked out of her life. The fleeting romance of a burning infatuation. Had it been love? Perhaps. Maybe it hadn't.
All of it had been life, plain and simple. Experiences that the woman had taken and gone on with. She lingered on none of them, moving on as she always had. Wasn't it strange, to breathe the air again, clean from dust and dirt, away from the work that she had once cherished so much. She was still flecked with it here and there, though... well. It had been a desert, she thought. It had snowed, and as it had, muddied streaks had run down her flanks, curling around scales and dragging through her fur, cleaning away the work she had toiled through.
The mines were in the past now, once more, and the snow had seen to that.
Now Adelita stood among the structure of an old building that stirred memories, and her horned head turned, glowing eyes blinking as she gazed upon everyone. Some were muttering, many were huddled. They were a people bred for the heat of the sun on their backs, not this chill that had swept down onto them, it seemed. Her legs certainly weren't really up for the chill, stiff in the joints from packed snow, and she stepped away to clean them, shaking a front one first, dipping her head to clean it out.
She still had to meet others, but for now, she had to restore her legs to a more proper functioning order before she could do that. Part of her longed for her metal magic, so she could clean them efficiently, but hard labor was something she never really complained about, having done it most of her life up to this point.
@Teiran || yay! here we gooo. god i'm rusty with her
In the past few weeks, Eik has stood beneath quarreling gods, gotten trapped underground with some of his closest friends, and started to hear voices in his head that are not his own. And now there is a blizzard raging in Solterra with no sign of letting up anytime soon.
Even here, behind the shelter of stone walls with fire and horseflesh to warm him and booze to blue the memories, he sees them every time he closes his eyes-- the ones lost in the blizzard. Not their faces but their souls, multicolored candles that flicker, and flicker, and finally, one by one, sputter out. Each time one of them takes a last breath he feels it. Most just fade away too exhausted to fight death, and there is something peaceful about their passage. Some go out with regret on their mind, or sorrow. The hardest to bear are the ones who leave with the spitfire of an animal just not ready to die. He does not know which category he would fall in, or which he would want to.
Surely these are just the thoughts of a madman with a fever (most don't realize this, but it can be truly ugly when fever-dreams and mania collide)... but he has begun to question his madness... it has never been this precise before, in a way that is both frightening and exciting. What if he is still connected to the poor beasts in the storm? He thought that strange magic had long fizzled out, taking all his body's warmth with it, but maybe... maybe it is still there, in the space between blood cells, tired but not extinguished.
Eiks eyes are glazed in thought as the party goers whirl around him, seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the storm outside-- although more likely just willfully ignorant. He slowly makes his way to a wall which he leans against heavily.
Shivering and sweating at once, and trying his hardest to not close his eyes,
(leave me alone, please, there's nothing more I can do for you)
he looks, in no uncertain terms, like shit.
* I have let myself go where the dust
E I K Has the color of nothing
Posted by: Raymond - 08-25-2018, 11:46 PM - Forum: The Hospital
- No Replies
His eyes are filled with judgment
And his heart is filled with pain
***
The controlled chaos of the hospital proceeded with an almost balletic grace, horses passing one another this way and that without pausing for reflection. In the monsoon's aftermath the healers had no shortage of work to do; Raymond gained entry with only cursory notice, riding the wave of a self-assured stride that said he belonged here.
Hell, with that walk, he could probably have walked out of your house with a pair of your pants over his shoulder.
But today the confidence came with somber pragmatism. The red stallion could hide the things he felt, but he could not stop the flow of his thoughts beneath the surface or the way they buried themselves like needles behind his eyes. He felt volatile.
The halls echoed with the heavy shadow of unfinished business. Voices were clipped and impatient, eyes either gawked or accused. Raymond swept like a storm front through the corridors and slowed only when the smell of herbs and wound dressings was joined by the more meaningful scent of familiar flowers. Then he took one last turn into a doorway, and there was Florentine.
His grey eyes darted over her, traced the set of her broken wing and the ugly puckered flesh where her leg was still trying diligently to knit itself back together. He wasn't the sort to dwell upon his own war wounds (even now, with his borrowed satchel scraping them raw with every step), but seeing the fruit of Ruth's labor was enough to make him consider feeling shame for ever daring to complain in the past, present, or future.
The red stallion tapped the wall with the flat of his tail blade in lieu of an official announcement. "Hello there. You up for a visitor?"
***
Raymond
Who is there to stand against the rider on the range?
Even in the brittle grip of winter, Amare Creek wasn’t as cold as the heart of Solterra. Not this year, when the gods returned and set to collecting souls and punishing those who remained.
Already he can’t remember what excuses they’d made, to slip away here like giggling yearlings while the rational world ground to a halt. There was a girl beside him with a gaze that made his heart catch in his throat, colored a gold that pharaohs would demand to be buried with; what other way could he possibly want to spend the end of the world?
The last time he’d come here, also in winter, he’d met a strange girl with ribs like barrel-slats and eyes like wells, who had asked him about death. She seemed hungry in general, but starving especially for that – to be killed, to be ended. Acton had never met anybody like her, for whom madness seemed not a question but a foregone conclusion. When he glanced at the river, sleek with ice, he saw her in it, pale as a wedding-dress or a bleached bone, saying the water was no water but blood.
Best not to think of that now.
But the girl had been right about this: his hands were hardly clean, any more than Bexley’s were. What sins had they yet to commit?
For the first time other than that first time, they were truly alone – no brother-Crow, no crowd gathered in a fire-lit market or a flower-strewn festival, no assembly of devout or devoted just out of sight, as at the Summit.
Just a boy and a girl who seemed to enjoy what it felt like, to burn and be burned in kind.
Still the bare limbs of the trees leaned above them, and the river laughed beneath its veil of ice, and birds sang even in the winter. Acton paid none of these any mind; his gaze was still too full of gold.
“If you were a god,” he asked languidly, smiling as he traced his lips along the curve of her spine, “what would you create?”
Ah, but there was the second part of the question, unspoken (perhaps even unthought – but then again, likely not, not for such as him), hovering like the cloud of his breath in the cold.
If you were a god, Bexley Briar, what would you destroy?
Posted by: Asterion - 08-23-2018, 11:35 AM - Forum: Archives
- No Replies
The big gull glided through the clouds until they turned to smoke, until the raindrops became flakes of ash, until she was above the Dawn Court.
The billowing smoke and haze of the fires had not been visible through Terrastella’s own torrential downpours, but Asterion had known theirs was not the only court suffering unnatural disasters. Still, the tone between the new king and his bonded was grim as she told him of the damage.
There was so much rebuilding to be done, and so many to mourn.
But there were also other matters that must be done, and Cirrus passed over burned fields and blackened forests, silent and steadfast as she sought the capitol. When she found it, bright even beneath a wreath of smoke, she dipped her wings and spiraled down like an autumn leaf until she reached the courtyard.
There she remained, until someone came to untie the scroll from her leg.
Dear King Somnus,
I hope you are as well as can be hoped for in such a time of disaster and grief across Novus. I imagine your court is as occupied as ours is in healing, rebuilding and recovering, but please let us know if there is any aid we can give.
I am afraid my other reason for writing this is no more happy. Florentine has been grievously injured in an accident, and while there is optimism that she will recover fully, she has stepped down from her position as queen and named me to rule in her stead.
I know she has ever been grateful to call you friend, and I hope someday to have the honor myself. In the meantime, know the bond between our courts is no lesser for the change.
We – all the citizens of Novus – will survive this together. And once we have, perhaps our regimes can come together for a far happier reason than the last.
Yours respectfully,
Asterion
P.S. This is Cirrus. She was looking forward to meeting your Alba.
cirrus
@Somnus and anyone I suppose? Figured word should get out on Flora :(
Amidst all the destruction, all the pain of a world undergoing change (but are they growing-pains or dying-pains?) winter has come at last to Novus.
What strange storms have circled the summits of the Arma Mountains have finally wrung out their fury, and left softer cloudbanks in their wake, and a dusting of snow. It is not so easy, now, to tell the burned-places from the ones that are simply bare for the season, with all of them coated in white.
Lysander is a bright spot against a mute day, burnished copper against the white and brown and evergreen. He is hunting, but his prey, mistletoe, is proving an evasive thing. Still he is in no true hurry; his days are as idle as they’ve ever been, unconcerned as he is with court politics. There are no more rescues to be made, no more floods to flee from, no more bedsides to sit beside and spin out stories until he feels something like numbness.
He spots the fox first, small and tawny and far more out of place than he is, here at the foot of the mountains. It is a curious thing, and he pauses to watch it pass by – and is not wholly surprised to see the figure not far behind it, emerging from a copse of aspen, as striped as birch-bark.
As for himself, Lysander is impossible to miss where he stands amid the briar and leaf-litter and snow, and he inclines his angular head when the stallion’s gaze finds him.
“If you’re one of the Ilati, you’re some ways from home,” he says easily, but if it is true the stranger could hardly be blamed – Tinea was still barely habitable, and a flooded swamp in winter sounded like a terrible place to be.
And anyway, anyone familiar with him would know Lysander is far from home, too.
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
Once again Raymond returned to the fields and swamps of Terrastella, only this time he came as he had left once before - on foot, alone, and with a clear mind.
The landscape had changed drastically since his last visit. Tinea Swamp seemed almost to have spilled over onto the vast fields that had served as his entryway into Novus. The lands were scarred by torrential rains and pocked with yawning, treacherous sinkholes. So this had been the reckoning made for them, cast down from on high rather than welling up from below. As usual, the two nations shared rather more than a view of the sea.
A modest satchel slung across his shoulder agitated the half-healed war wounds criss-crossing his bright copper back and shoulders. Inside, an equally-modest tome shifted against his flesh with the natural movement of his stride. Raymond had found both haphazardly discarded in what, if the guardsman were to be believed, had once served as quarters for Denocte's past regency. He had given the room one thorough walkthrough before insisting that it be repurposed to whatever end would best serve the court in these trying times.
Even in the wake of natural disaster, the red stallion preferred free winds and starlit skies to the oppressive closeness of walls.
But the book came with Raymond as he set out alone to do Isra's bidding, welcoming the brief return to his roots that such travel would entail. He did not fear the reception he would receive given the nature of his previous visit, though with his rage and distress long since burnt out he suspected he might play a fair guest to a less welcoming host.
There was not enough time to fret over such things. He would have to make do with what he was given, just as he always did. Upon gaining entry to Terrastella's subdued throne room, he passed along his credentials and request for an audience to a waiting attendant, who whisked out of the hall in dutiful silence. There Raymond waited, looking every bit as comfortable in the clean military angles of his current posture as he would bloodying himself on the battlefield or sauntering through crowds at a party. Ceremony came easily to him.
