The dawn broke in silence, yet the violence of color brought tears to the stallion’s eyes.
It had been only a handful of hours since the gentle creature had stepped gingerly from the thinning cover of the Viride, and since then, he had taken in as much of his surroundings as he could with those colorless eyes. The world - this new world, this one that he had been sequestered away from for his entire life - was breathtaking. It was large and open and loud. Blaringly bright colors, cacophony of birdsong and animal calls, crashing of waters and streams, shushing of wind through grasses; it was almost too much.
But could there be such a thing as too much beauty? Too much newness?
Aelgrimm’s inquisitive nature told him such a think wasn’t possible, yet his overwhelmed senses cried the opposite.
When he first stepped from the tree line, it had been late night pressed alongside early day - the small time where the world is shrouded in a peaceful, depthless silence. The moon had been a sliver of itself, a Cheshire grin dangling from a rope of stars. He had been humbled and awed by the vastness of the sky, by the shimmering, frigid pinpricks glistening from within the void. He had learned that the earth was a ball and that their sky was more of less a dome - yet he had always imagined that the shape would be clear. Never in Aelgrimm’s existence had he thought there could be something so colossal that he couldn’t see the end of it.
So he had gazed at that endless ocean of darkness until it began to lighten, shade by shade. He watched the obsidian turn to slate, then to lavender, then to eggshell blue. At last, the golden disk of the sun burst over the horizon and washed the world in bright, saturated shades of life. The sky was a cluster of hues, each clamoring for dominance of the heavens. They reflected a myriad of glimmering slivers onto the earth around the Lorist’s hooves, courtesy of his golden crown catching and refracting the brilliant light.
Indeed, the world he had crept into was endless and loud. Yet, the male supposed he could learn to appreciate it, as long as he got to see the sunrise.
This was foolish. It was childish and idiotic. Who simply goes crashing down a beach at full force? Apparently the golden.
The gold was unleashed, tearing down the beach. His horned head slightly tucked and legs clawing to find grip in the hard sand and sea. It splashed up water and sand in a crescendo, combined with his lungs clawing for air it served as a harmony to the crashing waves. He could feel every nerve, and burning muscle, all while letting his body work in its mechanical rising and falling of pace. And the sun- risen high above, it burned away every ache and stiffness in its heat. It was cathartic, letting the collected walks, careful steps, and hushed breathes of the past few days be torn away. It was a release. And it was addictive.
He hadn’t intended to do such, merely to walk the shore a distance before turning back to his ultimate goal of the night court. It had started as a simply jog down the beach, but each gain of speed was so satisfying he could not stop. He’d hidden in the shadows too long, wasted away in lands without the desire to spend time there, as he did here. Here, in Novus. He wasn’t a family man. Oh no, there was no dream of his to ‘settle’ and have a nice ‘steady’ job. No, the reason the electricity in him sparked and arched so high as to cause such an outburst was that here he could plan something bigger…something crazy. Here he could fully unleash.
He could... at least, until his lungs could no longer find air, and his heart burst through his chest. He at last slowed down, and to his slight disappointment realized it wasn’t near as far as he would have liked before he had had enough. Snorting it off and shaking his head to the care he slowed.
It may have been autumn, and the sea already cold, but to the gold now dark with sweat, it looked lovely. Turning course and slowing to a walk, the creature approached the sea. A nice dip in the ocean sounded a lovely way to end a fine run before returning inland. Well it did…until….One cloven hoof paws at the waves, splashing its freezing artically cold water on his underside. Harks pin back as his whole frame flinches with the cold. Well, he supposed, cold water was a small price to pay for a realm of treasure to steal and politics to meddle with.
The world was a cruel place, wasn't it? One light comes in, one is snuffed out.
The guilt weighed heavily on Orion, on the fact that he had caused it. Rigel was supposed to raise the child with him, they had smiled and laughed about it. Orion had been excited, so excited... but Rigel.. he hadn't made it. Strength had been sapped from him day after day, until finally, one day, he could not wake up. He would not. The small foal in question was partially asleep against his legs, small and tucked up against him, not understanding the wake of the small and private funeral held for Rigel.
Orion had told no one, and had shouldered the burden on his own, allowing it to sit on his back and weigh his horned head down. It was a burden that would stick him with guilt every chance it got, he knew that much.
Still, he did not expect company, and it showed as his head turned and he blinked milky eyes at the regent. "Po..." It was nice to see a friendly face after... everything. After the weight of the Summit, after the death of his friend, and the new responsibility of the foal.
A god had followed her across the sky, wielding thunder and lightning as protest to her continued absence from her home. The atmosphere around her shook like a force as the particles parted to make way for rain; the clouds, heavy, sighed relief and opened their grey bodies. Nothing remained untouched, not even her--one of the earth, a piece of the nature from which the rain was borne. It was a mist across the expanse of her sight, a mutable wall only few willingly crossed. If she was one of them there was no indication of either choice made. It was a storm that waged war with the land, sky and earth, and in the end neither would be victorious. It was a simple system, she knew--they would tire themselves out from futile effort made and slink off, tails tucked, to save the battle for another day. It would end just as it came, without flourish or hesitation. And she would, as always, remain mired in the middle.
The castle walls lined one side of her, the rain an endless dominance to claim everything it touched. Giant gentle wings hung loose against her figure, tips kissing the sodden ground beneath her weight. The fortress loomed, neither glaring nor inviting with invisible eyes, but it was the opposite way she looked; out, out toward the fields of wet fog as she and everything around her was bombarded with a stinging, relentless deluge. She made no motion toward the opening in the stone walls, made no movement at all as she stood a statue with the storm raging around them.
Air never tasted so sweet as it did when Asterion left that holy place.
The walk back to the Dusk Court was a quiet thing, for him. It was shared solemn glances, and his shoulder bumping against his friends’, and listening to other people’s conversation. It was remembrance and contemplation and most of all the knowing –
This was only the beginning.
-
He has never before been grateful to see a bird, but that is what he feels when Cirrus cries a welcome and wheels down from her circling once he steps into the citadel. She says nothing, thinks nothing, as she perches between his shoulder blades, but her slight weight is a comfort nonetheless.
The regent is grateful, too, for all those of his court. Florentine had gone and stopped them from their digging, but the knowledge of what they had done – had tried to do – would stay with him forever. Each heartbeat of his is mingled love and worry, and maybe that is what belonging truly meant.
They gather now in silence and in speech, and though so many times Asterion has sought solitude he is glad for the comfort of the crowd now. His dark-eyed gaze goes once more to Florentine, and then he clears his throat and looks to the members of the Court he loves. (What thoughts rise of that last meeting, standing in a swamp barred with thick shadows and golden light, he pushes away).
“I’m sure you have all heard,” he says, and he makes his voice louder than its normal seafoam softness – not the sea that shatters and breaks but the cliff it rushes against – “some version of what happened on the Mount. But we would like you to hear it from us.
After Tempus shut the doors on the regimes, he spoke to us. He asked us why the courts squabbled. He warned us that a change was coming.” The bay knows he will not soon forget the glow of those eyes, the terrible, mouthless sound of that voice. Almost he forgets he stands in his city’s courtyard now, and is not again hidden away in a place prepared by a god. “The regimes spoke of what had happened, and of our wishes for peace. We asked the god what change we should expect.
And then we heard Tempus’ children themselves speaking. They accused one another, and their voices rose to arguing, and then Tempus bid them stop. That is when the stones collapsed.” His voice is like stone, too, but his eyes are soft and dark and watchful of the people gathered. “Nothing we – or you – did could stir them. We worked together, as did you, but Tempus did not shift the stone. After a time, he let us out another way.” So quietly had they all slipped from that holy place; even now Asterion is dark with sweat and gray with dust. His dark mouth draws a grim line. “He said nothing else.”
Overhead the evening is bleeding away to night. Cirrus shifts on his back, a ruffle of pale feathers like a sigh. Once more he looks between them, these faces that teach him what it is to love. “We wanted you to know, so that we may be ready. Although…” Almost he laughs, but in the end he closes his teeth on it; instead he shapes a wry smile. “Ready for what is anyone’s guess.”
@Florentine @Cyrene @Fiona @Atreus @Israfel @Turhan just tagging all the champs - but all of Dusk (or others hanging about) are welcome if you want to hear what happened at the Summit and ask any questions! Just figured we should get this IC <3
------------------I have seen the dark universe yawning
---------------------------------Where the black planets roll without aim,
It's between the doomed hill of corals that she lingers in the tides, swaying both closer and further away from those violent, sharp edges with the currents of the deep sea. The anemones reach out when the currents bring her closer. They devour the fat ocean worms that cling to her skin, bedding down in the hollows of her cannon bones and the spaces between her wings.
All the sea ebbs around her, breaking against the edges of her form until she looks like sea-foam drowned in the deep, impossibly white and thick enough to drown. The sharks swim circles above her, a halo of fins, slick gray and toothy smiles that never manage to quite close.
She's dressed with the predators of the sea, cloaked in the darkness where the only light that filters through is black, black, black.
Wormlust grazes on those anemones, relishing the sharp sting of their defenses against her tongue and lips. She feels as if she's alive with their electricity, full of the power of the sea and she can almost forget that the steel of her bones is nothing more than brittle, mortal marrow now.
Her wings are nothing more than fins in the deep, stained blue and drifting with the tide. That blackness that might be a 'thing' for how it seems to breathe against the silken weight of her wings. They reach out from her side like koi fins, butterfly like, ragged and thin enough to be made of the membrane that spreads over eyes that were made for the atmosphere, to behold the cosmos in all that wonderful and massive glory.
Soon though, she grows tired of the sting of anemones and the shark-flesh over head. She's had her fill of sea-creatures, of predators too tiny to soothe her hunger for more than a moment. And so she takes to the tides, to the currents and she slices through that living darkness like a comet full of blazing fury, set on a course to devour the entire world in ocean foam.
He is nothing more than another predator in the sea when she comes upon him, slick with water and seaweed. A kelpie, a monster of the deep that came after her, after the cosmos and the below beheld the terror of her form and knew that another of her kind should not be made.
“Oh,” Bubbles take her words and encase them with the air from her lungs that's she's stolen from the gills of an orc and a dolphin. “you are not quite the same as I.” Closer she swims, circling him like a shark, fangs glimmering in the moonlight that trickles in this shallower place where she found him.
Oh, she wishes she said the words, let the waves tangle about him like teeth, like currents that flow deep, deep, deep. Oh, do you think you taste as the sea might, salted and sweet?
But instead she only circles above him, his own halo made of predator wings and flesh and weeds.
“Toulouse of T’det, citizen of Delumine. I request an audience with King Somnus.”
His voice was commanding, filling the entry hall he stood in with ease. There was no room for questioning or disagreement; he was no royal, but the serpent was not willing to take no for an answer.
’The king will see me.’
A guard slipped away, disappearing through a door as quickly and quietly as a mouse. Toulouse watched him go, his eyes boring a hole into the space he had once occupied, before switching his attention to the other guard.
Unable to hold his stare, the opposing equine looked away. A smile curled at Toulouse’s lips.
He had yet to meet the king of the Dawn Court, the realm he had so easily chosen as his own. In fact, he had hardly spent any time in the northeastern boundaries—his attention had thus far been split across the continent. A blind girl from Terrastella, a peculiar series of events in Denocte, his shadow's reappearance. And the voice of a god beckoning everyone to a meadow framed by impossibly ancient trees, locking the way the Regimes while he met with a mare as serpentine as he was wolflike. Indeed, Toulouse’s life had been anything but dull since his haphazard arrival into Novus.
And he wouldn’t have preferred it any other way.
Information flowed through his mind like water, curling and weaving like smoke into every waking thought. He couldn’t stop it from invading his dreams: over and over again he replayed the events, analyzing them and categorizing them away for future use. There was no morsel left forgotten or untouched, for he never knew when he might need it again.
And today… today might be that time. Toulouse turned away from the guards, wandering his way to a window that overlooked the valleys and meadow shining vibrantly with flowers. It all seemed so peaceful, so very unlike the rest of the world he had visited.
The palomino would give his own leg to change that. To bring chaos and confusion to such an idyllic landscape would be the icing on the cake, an early birthday present to himself. To see blood run and shine as brightly as the poppies, turning the Rapax river red while the Viride forest burned with fire… to see the fairytale turn into a nightmare, the land of milk and honey run dry. His mint green eyes shone with delight, imagining it in his mind.
But of course, Somnus didn’t need to know that. The King would know only what Toulouse allowed him to.
They were playing his game now.
colossal we come
these renegades in the ring
where the lost get found
in the crown of the circus king
I'm buzzed. Not shitfaced, just a little tipsy. Something to take the edge off. Lip drooping, eyes lidded. My mind goes in and out of focus as I try to keep my wandering thoughts straight. Of course they would rather not obey me. Drunken stupor... Damaris... the Regime GONE. Isorath, Reichenbach, Aislinn. Isorath I'd never been close to, but Reich and Aislinn.... my heart beats painfully in my chest, complaining at the anguish I've put it through. 'Why is everyone leaving me? Victorina and Weir.. now Reich and Aislinn. Is it me?'
Do I count for nothing? Damaris lays panting lightly over by a stone arch. I nod absentmindedly. 'I would be nowhere without you.' Though the thoughts are all mangled, we both know how sincere I am. Damaris has long become my glue to keep all my marbles in the right bag. Though she has a point, I feel through our bond her sympathy... not just sympathy, but empathy. She's also been attached to the friends and family we've had.
"You know I was more or less convinced to step down from being the Warden." I voice my thoughts out loud, and now it is Damaris's turn to nod. "But now... it's like I'm the only one left." That wasn't true and we both knew it. There were the Champions that remained: Seree, Healing; Lyra, Community; Araxes, Wisdom. But for better or worse I'd never really socialized with any of them except Araxes. 'That was a long time ago, too.'
New management would have to come in. Maybe they'll keep us around, maybe they'll give us the boot. Certainly I hope to work things out better than with the last group. A grimace crosses my face. I wish I could have parted with all of them on better terms, but fate simply a different outcome in mind. I sigh and lean up against the opposite wall of the arch Damaris has claimed. "What a mess."
Tag: @Seree @Lyra @Araxes if you wanna drop in and comment on the state of NC :P but all are welcome! Rosti thoughts | "Rosti speech" | Damaris mindspeak
No matter how bright, brilliant, serene, or stunning a sunset is, it is always followed by a darkness. Its not necessarily a message of doom, for those are nightmares, not darkness. Many of you image the giant looming monsters behind the tree but that is not what the darkness at the set of the sun truly is. The darkness is at its core just as beautiful as the day, but in its opposite. The day is stunning for what it reveals, its clarity and honesty; the darkness is beloved for what it conceals, its secrets and mischief.
And so it was on the shore of the lake, as the sun cling to the tops of the mountains at dusk. Crickets, and birds were already falling away to quite evening lullabies as the first stars appeared above. The early evening air was heavy with moisture, but already beginning to bite with the chill of winter not far off. It was with the setting sun he finally appears. As the last rays of gold struck out over the sky, and reflected in the lake, another ray of gold slips down to the shore line. He’s not a usual face, but he walks like it. His Spanish neck lightly curled and at ease, his cloven hooves stepping in a swinging walk, all while his tasseled tail slides side to side. Take care though how you judge this scene, for invisible to you is the calculating mind within. Spinning. Weaving. Arching. Creating masterpieces of thought, in rich drawn plans.
This wasn’t his first evening here, just the first where he made an appearance. The golden had been keeping to the shadows, slipping among this new land quietly and peacefully, listening, watching. Most places these days he would perhaps nick a trinket or two, or have a bit of a laugh before moving on, but this place seemed different. Admittedly he could not gauge much from his silent lurking, but he knew enough to see an opportunity. That was enough. That had brought him here.
The gold unicorn stops at the shore, with its small spit of lake sand beach. In a calculated turn of his head, he looks further south, and though his gaze was seemingly uninterested, his eyes flashed momentarily with gold. Sparking. Energized. Hinting at the forces spinning within. The Night Court. The gold couldn’t paint a picture, but he could categorize the keep with what he’d learned so far. It was enough to fill him with thoughts of opportunities and riches he might find in, or seek out under their banner. He’d rest the night here before heading out in the morn to inquire about the realm of night. He rarely settled in one place, rarely stayed to long, but he was, in truth, growing bored of snatching wallets and rings. It was time for something a little more challenging. A corner of his lip rise in the hint of a grin. It was time he stopped lurking and stepped out into the darkness.
OOC :: *cue awkward intro post* Oh well!
Hello all! Feel free to come meet Thranduil! Also, if anyone from the night court would like to come say hello and 'welcome' him that'd be great, though I know its chaotic right now. And if not Ill post there later. =) Anyway! Hope you like.
"Speech"
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout.
Down came the rain
and washed the spider out.
Darkness caressed the land with a slow hand, her breath slow and yet filled with a heaviness that echoed the oppressive atmosphere of the summit grounds. It had been this way since she had arrived, in a small group of other equines from Delumine. There was an uncertainty that tightened around the throats of everyone like a noose, threatening to strangle the very life that they had always known. As if some of them weren’t already dead. It had not helped any to feel the earth shake with such force that it had sent her to her knees, and to watch as the great doors that had closed their nation’s leaders behind them become blocked with stone.
She had felt the palpable panic that had surged with the realization that the four courts’ regimes were trapped, or in the worst case dead. The people had come in droves, watching with frightened eyes to behold the sight of the rubble. Even Soleil could not hide her fear, the concern clearly etched into her fine features. What did this mean? What had happened in there? She had waited, merely an observer -- watching as others tried to dig their way into the rubble. If their leaders were gone, what would this mean? Fear had kept her away from the small crowd beginning to form, flashes of the chaos that had followed Zolin’s death looping through her mind like a film.
It was when she was sure that she could smell the smoke, feel the very heat of flame against her skin that she had turned and fled. It was all too much, and she could not afford to be caught in the midst of another rebellion. She had only returned when word had reached them that the Sovereigns and their Regimes were unscathed, appearing out of the forest. Relief had filled her like a breath of fresh air, and the way that her skin had trembled could finally be still. Her weakness was so evident that she was disgusted.
She adjusted the ivory fabric resting against gilded skin, pulling it closer to defend against a particularly bitter wind. She could feel the sting of it in the scrapes that covered her knees and ankles, not quite yet healed over from her fall. Leaden-blue eyes were focused on her route ahead, coming back to the place she had abandoned hours ago -- her lip curling back in a sneer of contempt at her response. She wanted to understand why the terror had so easily gripped her. Would it not have been a good thing for the Sovereigns and their regimes to perish? Would that not help further her goals to see Solterra returned to its former glory?
No She thought, as she stepped up the crumbled rock that hid the place where the great doors had stood. Her teke brushed gently over the stone, it’s cragged edges continuing to crumble where she touched them. She wanted to know just what had occured in there, and if the gods were really speaking to the populace again. The blonde shifted her weight, tossing a glance over her shoulder to the darkness behind the trees. Someone was there. She thought quietly, though she couldn't be sure. Something though, an inner sense, warned her to be cautious.
