she looks into her mirror, wishing someone could hear her, so loud
After everything, she still shakes in the shadows, quiet as a dormouse, completely alone once more. Bexley. She'd run right into Bexley Briar after being caught in another world, another train of thought, a distant place that made her smile and made her cringe. For reasons she cannot say, cannot dare speak yet, her heart aches and her bones quake. Completely mortified, embarrassed, berating herself for having been so careless, Moira Tonnerre stands away from the crowds.
As quiet as a ghost, the phoenix woman gravitates toward the main stage when a band of musicians once more begin to gather along the edges. They are slow to congregate, much like her movements in the darkness the trees provide. For a brief moment, Moira longs to be pale like her family, silver and strong, sleek and beautiful. Some wear chocolate as Asterion does, others are bathed in gold, and more still are as flawless as steel towers spiraling into the sky with only stripes in hues so dark she could not give them a name. None of them have wings. None of them wear the shame she does.
And it is her wings that are now flecked with cake she could not wipe off, frosting still along the tips that would require a bath to remove completely. Perhaps she could find a pool to soak in... That can wait, she thinks as she stares at the stage. There is music still to listen to, to let it steal her heart. As the song begins, the notes are faint and haunting. A drum is struck, over and over, the heartbeat, the pulse to match the ebb and flow of energy around them. Flutes join in, high, wispy, as whimsical as her traitorous heart that flings itself at her sparrow-bone rib cage that is becoming a prison that confines her. Violins a struck, low and as mournful as the day she left the Tonnerres alongside Estelle, they bring tears to her already bright eyes, a soft shimmer in the yellow that makes them pop against the red of her face. Surely, were she not already so deep a shade, then her cheeks would be as bright as a tomato at the very thought of her clumsiness.
Although, in this moment, the cake is the furthest thing from her mind. Eyes close, and at last she just lets herself feel. High notes take her to the clouds, to the stories that Gizelle whispers at night. In those seconds between reality and memory, she can taste the rain, feel the storms that lash against her mother's skin. She remembers the soft tickling of hair along her shoulders, over her neck as her mother tucked her in, kissed her goodnight, and then curled up right beside her. For a moment, Moira can remember what it was to be curled in the arms of her family, held so near and so dearly so that she knew she was loved by at least one person. It's a heady elixir, the magic of music, one that she's willing to let live within her, become an inferno, in the shadows of the trees where no others seem to be.
@Seraphina :D hello, i should probably be asleep. please interrupt her.
she looks into her mirror, wishing someone could hear her, so loud
Petals fall from trees, float off of flowers like raindrops, and through it all Moira wears a smile. Paint is washed from her skin, the water pours in cool waves over her face, her arms, until only the ghost of a rainbow and passion are left to tell others of her heart now back on a canvas. Sweet breads are offered, cake stands proudly on tables with drinks for all to partake of, and Moira pulls a slice and glass towards herself.
Life is too short to not enjoy the little things.
Having seen her cousins die too young, having caught a sickness that even her instructor could not heal, she has suffered alongside them. From their death, she learned to appreciate life more fully despite having closed off too many to count.
A sigh slips from her at last as she looks about, wondering what Asterion has gotten himself up to. After their departure, she slipped away to paint and let her heart bleed out in reds and blues and purples. Upon her neck, a small patch of indigo still remains, as though smeared while deep in thought and missed upon cleaning. The ends of her hair are tinted white from stars too brilliant, too bright. Smiling, she remembers the shooting star now drying on the canvas and hopes that leaves have not gotten stuck to the surface. Perhaps the man of twilight and midnight dreams, of sea songs and starlight would like the painting of this life, or perhaps she'd burn it for the imperfections she could see. The Matron has burned many of Moira's paintings before, and with every crumpled, ashen painting and drawing that was not suitable, she felt her heart splinter and her spine stiffen. "You are a doctor," the Matron would say with cold eyes, remind Moira over and over what she'd worked so hard for. So they were put in trunks and hidden in attics, painted in the dark with only moonlight to guide nimble fingers as they worked for hours on end as though performing a surgery. Once it was finished, she would shred what was not good enough, what the Matron would tear apart, and destroy another hope, another dream, another fear given form.
Often times, Moira painted fire and chains, other times she'd paint the rose bushes in the gardens, the tulips in the window boxes, and portraits of family members. The twins often found their way into her paintings, flinging mud from balconies, pushing one another into ponds full of lily pads and frogs. They brought light into her life. It was these precious moments she's saved. And now, at the heart of the painting full or light and dark, a clashing of two worlds, Estelle sits in all her silver glory with a cloak of emerald and eyes of scorn. Would she be upset with Moira, or happy for her?
She bites her lip in the place that's been worn so thin, so raw still from the last time it'd bled with her inquietude. Only when the pain lashes from her lip to her neck and down her spine does she let it go. Turning with her drink floating nearby, the phoenix runs smack dab into the side of another. With a gasp her drink falls to the ground, her flower crown she'd asked for so that Asterion would look losing petals in the collision, and her cake smeared down the side of her wing tucked against her ribs to appear as though they do not exist. Horrified, she takes a startled step back, shaking her head and looking at the mess. "Are you alright? I didn't mean to, oh... I'm so sorry. Let me help clean up my mess. I'm sorry," stumbling over words, her soft voice wilts with every syllable. Like little lights blinking out, if you look in her eyes you can see the stars dying. And it had been such a good day until now.
Being pregnant wasn't what Rigel had ever thought it would be. Growing up in sheltered lands meant that he had seen many pregnancies, many foals being born, but it had never dawned on him that he would be one to give birth too. As it was, the foal wasn't ready for the world, and the Caretaker wasn't going to idle about in the Dawn Court when he knew something was going on in the lands of Ruris, at the Veneror Peak.
He didn't expect to come up to a wall of trees, however, and his head tilted back as he looked up, and up, and up, craning his neck and leaning his horned head as far back as he could to see the tops of the titanic plants. "...it's a good thing you're safe and warm, you know. You might think this was scary." He was, of course, talking to his stomach. Rather, to the life growing within him, still sheltered from the world.
Oh, he wasn't sure Orion would like him being here, but he was curious, he couldn't help it.
The kirin waddled a little, his short frame moving as his tail flicked behind him, dragging his tail behind him, feeling the various branches and leaves snagging in plush hairs, dragged with him. "Is this because of the deities...?" He spoke to himself now, flicking an ear forward curiously, even reaching with his nose to brush it over the rough texture of the tree's bark.
It seemed awfully... normal. Just... big. Gigantic. Massive. Bigger than anything he could ever really compare it to, if he was honest.
– Calliope – the name of 'freedom' was chanted across the cause
*
Calliope is relentless in her journey to the newly formed summit. The storm cloud of dust at her back is without end, it rises and falls like ash to cling to all the sweat and froth on her skin. She's no stranger to long journeys, to roadways and deserts that have no break in sight. This path seems like no more than a blink of an eye to her.
Once she had spent seasons watching the trees die and oceans turn to hard, sand. Once the world around her had forgotten who she was. Once, not so long ago, she had traveled through the tangles of time and space to find all the worlds where her sister might still live.
Novus is an easy world to travel. Here there are no beasts to hide in the shadows she casts as the sun starts to hang low in the sky. Calliope has no deaths to deliver on her pathways here, no victims that require the brutal sort of salvation only she can provide.
Only the soft echo of Raymond's hooves as he gains on her slows her footsteps at all. He is more suited to lazy perusal of the dangers ahead of them. His might lies in cleverness and wit. Hers in passion and recklessness.
He is the only council she might listen to and so she relents from her wild hunting gallop to a steady canter.
Calliope gathers herself as she crosses into the summit, chin tucked to her chest and her horn pointed ahead at whatever challenges a god might have left for mortals to face. The magic is thick here. It's strange to feel it again. It was easy to forget such wild things as god-magic where there are courts, walls and laws. Novus does not seem a place for this-- this oil thick air and pillars of trees that act like sentinels to some awful secret.
Where others might pray, bow their heads in reverence at such power over the very earth, Calliope is instantly distrustful.
Gods have raised mazes before her. They were mazes full of horror, designed not to test but to devour those foolish enough to hope for blessings. She has seen them torment those who thought them holy and stitch their lips shut with fire and malice.
Distrust is not a strong enough word to convey all that Calliope feels in her bones as she beholds yet another creation of gods.
With all the sweat and dust on her she smells as wild as any magic of the long dead Riftlands.
That silver of her gaze is an inferno of emotion as she taps her horn against a single tree sentinel, testing it for any trickery that might lay Floretine and Asterion low. She turns towards Raymond, too tense to smile at the sight of him ready to follow all her blazing, reckless passion.
“I am reminded of Ravos.” Calliope doesn't smile, there is no fondness for a place full of demon gods that wanted only to hoard their might for petty things. She doesn't even miss being queen of all the heretics of wild magic that knew no gods in their bones.
Raymond surely knows it is no good thing that this wall of trees reminds her so strongly of another world devoured by itself like an ouroboros.
Seraphina does not like it here.
The music is nice, and the paintings – she watches dancers perform their routines by firelight, shadows cast disjointed and fluid against the makeshift stages upon which they perform. Darkness fell hours ago; a cape of stars lines the horizon, and a full moon. The smell of alcohol and smoke is not so nice, but, then, she has never been one for revelry. (The chief revelers of Novus, however, are out of the picture, and she is not sure that she wants to know what it would be like were they in attendance. Much the same, she imagines, but stronger – and, perhaps, bloodier, for reasons that she would never quite understand, but she tells herself that doesn’t matter.) Her eyes stir from the dancers, and she turns to face the crowd. (A familiar habit. No matter where she stands, she has never been able to convince herself that she is safe. Each shadow could hide a threat, each ripple of flame an assassin’s knife – best to stay wary.) She scans unfamiliar blurs of faces and limbs and torsos and hair, and-
She freezes.
She has to be wrong, she thinks, at first, as she stares at that familiar, disappearing patchwork of orange and black and white; the gates of Denocte are closed, and he is pure Denoctian, pure Crow, and so he can’t be here. If it weren’t for a persistent specter of curiosity, she might have left well enough alone and left the passer-by to his own devices, seeing as he could not possibly be the spy that had left her Champion of Community for dead…but the specter persists, and she finds her pace quickening to follow him. She does not know what she will say, if she catches him – she doesn’t even know if there is anything that she wants to say, but some part of her is unwilling to let him, or the impression of him, slip away. Not without accountability, whispers the voice inside of her, gnashing its teeth. Not without – accountability. The words feel like disjointed fragments, because what in the hell does accountability matter in a world that doesn’t give a damn about who it hurts, but she presses forward nevertheless, a lily-scented smudge of grey weaving and twisting through the crowd like a serpent. (Some part of her is a snake, but she tries – tries – so hard to gnaw away at her fangs.) A rush of wolfish adrenaline, the leering urge of purpose prowling inside of her ribcage like a hungry wolf; she is suddenly reminded of her time as a soldier, tracking enemies led astray across the monotonous sands, waiting, waiting, waiting. Her steps are quiet, creeping, her lily-crowned skull dipped low. Ferality comes bleeding out – a ravenous, scraping anger that twists and knots like a hunger inside of her, pent-up and rotting for weeks after the Davke attack, after his attack. She feels – all carnivore. Smoke and laughter and music melt away, and she could be here or a desert hundreds of miles away. She is hunting.
She catches him; emerges from the crowd, just at his flank. “Hello, Acton,” Comes that voice, dry and frigid with cold – she wonders if he’ll remember it, even before he turns around and sees her, marble eyes ablaze with the flicker of torches. Fancy meeting you here.
she looks into her mirror, wishing someone could hear her, so loud
Smells of deep fried bread and sounds of music fill the air, lit by faerie lights strung along trees, intermittent between booths, and edged in the hedges. Everything is large and beautiful, from the sounds, the sights, and even the people that waltz through the woods, into the clearing full of flowers and life and a brightness. She sighs as she recalls her own family gatherings. When Estelle and the other three girls of her training were presented to the family, the ballroom was opened to those within the family - and those without. Wine was served in flutes, champagne cooled on ice in every corner, hors d'oeuvre plates set about on tables that were out of the way. It was one of the only times that Moira saw anyone from outside of her family. Each invitation that had gone out was printed in neat calligraphy, sealed with the family crest, and sent off to the most eligible and deserving of families.
They'd all ignored the girl with wings.
Despite that, she smiles. This is a celebration for artists. There is a pulse in the air, a thrumming of the world centered here for the festival, a universal heartbeat that Moira cannot help but feel in her bones, hum along with under her breath. It makes sway with every wave she feels, let herself go to the throes of passion, but she does none of this.
Instead, the phoenix woman weaves in and out of the throng of people, finding a small stall vacated toward the back edge. Lighting is not optimal, but just the station sends a thrill down her spine. After putting up a fresh canvas, she quickly goes from stall to stall, finds water paints and pencils, oils and ink, and hurries back to the new painting station. From there, the world fades as flowers blossom upon the page. Lilies line the bottom, birthed from the night, sprouting up into a glimmering blue pool with silvers and starlight flecked through the waters. From the top, the morning drips with gardenias and marigolds, poppies framing the clouds. She does not care that the colors now line her face, cresting high on her cheeks so that purples circle her eyes, but not for lack of sleep. Black sweeps along her brow, blue down her arms. And how she beams, so fond and proud of the picture coming to life under her careful ministrations. Every edge is lined with ink of the deepest black, some lines so fine they are hardly found, others so thick and prominent and precise that they're much too hard to miss...
the moral of the story is // i will gut you if i need to // i will carve my way out //with only my teeth
The sun queen stands in a ray of dying light filtered through the remnants of shattered windows; she still hasn’t gotten around to replacing the beautiful scenes that had once adorned the sides of the throne room. This is mostly irrelevance – they are hardly the most important thing she has to rebuild – and partially procrastination. Without the sun god to think of, she does not know what scenes to adorn the walls with. (She glances back, momentarily, at the scorched throne, and her eyes rest on the hole that once held the sun medallion she had left at Veneror when she disavowed her gods. She does not speak to him, now, as she used to. A part of her feels emptier for the loss.) She takes a breath, steps back, and moves towards the center of the room, hooves clacking rhythmically against the sandstone floors. She used to pace when she was troubled. Now, it is largely a matter of anticipation – a step that she wonders if she is prepared to take.
She needs another limb; Eik is well-suited to diplomacy and travelling, and she couldn’t have asked for someone better to fulfill her former role, but someone must still fill what was once Avdotya’s place. Someone who is not Avdotya. She has danced around the subject, for some time – she tells herself that the behavior is warranted, given the actions of her previous reagent. Even if she was no choice of hers, putting her trust in the viper was a mistake she would not be quick to repeat, and a Regent that appropriately satisfied what she needed from the role was difficult. She needed fire and blood, and she needed venom. That was not hard to come by, in a land with as short of a temper in Solterra. Genuine loyalty to the court, on the other hand, seemed to be in far shorter supply…and resilience. She expected no trouble in finding resilience in a harsh desert kingdom, but it was not merely physical resilience that she desired.
She’d settled on a candidate, eventually. She’d settled on sharp-toothed smiles and batted lashes, on honey and venom all laced up in a pretty, pretty golden form; more than that, she’d settled in a great gnarl of a scar, a testament. Oh, she was nothing like the darkness of the viper – but she was just as venomous and just as deadly. Seraphina was sure of it. She’d seen her smile.
And now…now it was about time to see if she agreed to the proposition. Seraphina glances at one of the guards stationed at the doors expectantly and takes a deep breath. “Bring me Bexley Briar,” She says, simply – and waits.
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
They came together, yet separate. He stands beside her, but she can feel a chasm between them that she knows she cannot - will not - ever cross. It is a gaping hole slowly swirling around in her body, looking for something more to devour than the subtle emotions flickering just beneath her glistening skin. Moira is a sight with her smile in place, lashes curled for the occasion and hair pinned instead of buns and braids. Anselme would smile at her, wish her well while she is out, and tell her to be good. Gizelle would flutter about like the proud parent she is, but her fire was burning low last Moira had seen of her, with her heart glued to Anselme's. Her mother is nothing more than a marionette now, strings pulled out of 'love' that she claims she feels, yet does not show day in and out. Growing up, Moira remembers her parents were fond of each other, still wrapped in passionate embraces despite Gizelle being grounded - forever banned from flight. There was a pain in her eyes that the phoenix always saw and could never interpret until now - until Estelle was left behind.
Even Estelle would dote on Moira and how well she cleaned up tonight.
Yellow eyes turn toward Asterion, a slight panic racing through her at the sheer amount of people about. "There are so many, there is so much going on," she whispers to him, curling closer into his side so that their shoulders brush. Comfort follows quickly at even that small touch, her head lowers, flowers slipping just so, until she peers at the world through curls and bangs. Unsteady, unsure, Mo knows she wishes to be among them, to slip through stalls and breath in the smell of brushes on canvas, laugh and dance and sing as she did at balls with the other children. But that will come with time as shadows grow longer and souls merrier.
The sun was sweltering, beating down on the back of the young girl, all gangly legs and awkward limbs, small horns that she had yet to grow in to. Jaxis panted, feeling her sides heave slightly, dampened and darkened with sweat, with dust clinging and wetting to cake in to mud.
The girl tossed her head out of agitation, pawing at the ground and glaring at the towering figure of Tor before her, mouth opening and closing as she tried to draw in breath. Bruises bloomed under her skin, but that didn't stop her as she dug her hooves down and pushed forward again with a yell of frustration.
She dug in to dirt and went skidding to a halt, kicking up a cloud of dust at him (unsure if it would reach his face) before she lunged at him. More accurately, she lunged at his legs with an open mouth, attempting to bite. She wouldn't break skin but she wanted to grab at a tendon, wanted to bruise him just as much as he had bruised her.
After all, part of sparring and fighting was learning now wasn't it?
