The man was walking with a stilted gait through the muck. The murk was still warmed from the long summer season, but as the intermittent chills began to thicken the mud and thick sludge he trod through, the adhesive substance was gaining more and more of a tendency to adhere itself to his fetlocks. They weren't too terribly long, but with a longer than average coat, he had a tendency to pick up bits and pieces of his environment whenever he traveled somewhere.
And currently, his environment was trying to stick to him like cement glue.
The brown man gave a startled squeal as he stepped on a hidden rock beneath the muck's surface, his hoof scraping the moss-slicked and rain-smoothed surface roughly as he went tumbling forwards. Pain flared through the lower ends of the limb as he fell, and he ripped his leg up from the water and held the twisted ankle beneath his chest, not that it saved him from losing his balance. He landed with a rough splash in the murk, the mud and grimy water drenching his face as it splashed up with his fall, copper eyes screwing shut as the liquid coated him. His nostrils were above the surface, thank Vespera, but he still felt all of the underside of his body and quite a bit of his sides soundly submerged, to say nothing of the muck that had splashed up onto him.
His ears were wilted, and eyes facing in no particular direction in a deadpan stare of annoyance.
Oh for Vespera's sake, seriously?!?
A small part of his brain whispered that maybe he ought to just stay here and accept his fate as part of the terrain, better to just give up now than have to deal with the frustrating task of trying to wash the muck from his mane and coat. At least this way he wouldn't have to move either.
He figured he could make a good log. Maybe in time he'd blend in well enough that he could trip up passerby and then he'd have a companion for his misery. Misery loves company.
Closing his eyes with a heavy sigh through his nose, the man set about getting his hooves back underneath him from where he'd gone sprawling. It took more than few hop-like pushes to drag his chest free of the murk and push himself onto his haunches, but using his good leg he managed to attain a sitting position, getting a few deep breaths from the exertion of clawing his way free of the thick murk before assessing the damage.
He flexed the twisted hoof a little, wincing at the small flare of pain as he did so. It didn't feel like he'd sprained or seriously damaged anything, just jerked the joint into a way it wasn't supposed to go and it had rightly protested. He tentatively put his weight back on it, the joint protesting with a burning ache but not enough to deter him, he'd just walk it off. (Or sleep it off, once he found whatever he had gotten up to go looking for. What was he even doing up again? Oh, right, food. As per usual.)
Now that he had his forelegs figured out, it only took a little more pulling to get his back end up and out of the muck, the man feeling his whole body give a twitching as he felt thick rivulets of cold swamp water begin to run down his flanks. Ugh, that was unpleasant to say the least. But he wasn't freezing, he supposed, just uncomfortable.
After giving into the momentary urge to shake himself like some kind of dog, the man gave his injured hoof another small flex, testing how it coped with his weight by taking a few hesitant steps. Not as bad as before, even though it had only been a few moments. He could definitely just walk it off. So he set back off through the swamps, looking for something to eat. Nothing spectacular really, he wasn't looking for anything in particular. Just whatever happened to strike his fancy as he walked.
A bright laugh escaped her throat as she chased her King from the confines of their whispering Court, flitting and dancing along beside him like a golden eyed bird, delicate and dainty next to the muscles rippling underneath his dark skin. He moved with power, his vast wings flaring and tilting to keep balance as they ran and leaped, his path direct and immovable where hers was a prancing shifting delight around him.
Liesel surrounded the King with her coconut and vanilla scent as it wafted from her silver hair, lightening the crispness of the day. She stopped only when her breath came in gasps and she had no more bright laughs to share, only a panting grin, mischievous and vibrant. After a moment of grinning at Kasil with burnt butter eyes, she started to notice her surroundings.
She hadn't been in Delumine long enough to see the marvellous display of red headed flowers now peeking over the grass, each time she'd visited the meadow it had only been endless grass. Now... she took in the sight of the colourful field, her grin remaining plastered to her enigmatic face. Once more, as if she could not help it, her eyes returned to the strong, stoic vision of her King. She'd never seen him so relaxed, and without his headpiece he almost seemed... normal. As if there wasn't a Kingdom relying on him, or several other courtiers waiting to snatch him from her summer hands.
Liesel pushed the thought back, taunting;
"I thought you were lost to the scrolls for good!"
@Kasil because it took me so outrageously long to reply to our old thread, I've started a new one for us directly after they left the Dawn Court xx and omg excuse me for the lame ending
The water was cool against his throat, a compliment to the chilly weather that the fall had brought to Delumine. Soon enough, it would be replaced with the frigid winter -- the season of his birth, but by far his least favorite of them. Winter was always such a dark and desolate time, and already he could tell that the birdsong was becoming less and less. It was stranger still, he thought -- that winter would bring around the end of his first year as a ruling sovereign. The time seemed short and long all in the same moment, but at least things seemed to be coming together. He had not been cast out or challenged for his rule, which he thought must mean that he was doing something right. The chocolate colored stallion left his dark lips against the water’s surface, his equally dark gaze sweeping over the terrain before him.
The leaves were almost all fallen from the trees, autumn drawing to a close. He had just missed the festival, his journey to the mountains taking him far longer than he would have liked. If he had been alone, he might have been able to manage the trip in just a matter of days -- but with the small entourage he had been traveling with, many of whom had no other way but their own feet to travel, it had proved difficult to get very far very quickly. Next time, he thought, he would go alone despite their protesting.
The Rapax River was a deceptive thing, particularly when it came to sections of it like this. Beneath the seemingly placid surface was something moving so swift that it would drag a grown horse off of his feet and down further where rocks waited to crush bone. A tricky, tempting mistress -- especially in the heat of summer. Kasil lifted his head from the water’s edge, stray drops of the life giving liquid rolling down his chin and staining his rich, dark pelt. He knew all too well how easy it was to be caught in such a trap, had felt the water's wrath more than once in his youth and had been lucky enough to escape her snare without too much harm. It was his thoughts that drew him away from the edge, a mindless habit to wander while he sifted through thoughts and memories. The grass gave way to rock and sand in spaces, before melding back into wavering, dancing blades of green once more. Some of the blades tickled his soft underbelly, while others threatened to snare his limbs.
A sense of peace and serenity hung in the cool air surrounding the skies. It had been a while since Suriel had really felt at peace with the world, what with having to leave her home and being accused of murder. But as the pegasus’s beautiful pink wings contrasted against the blank canvas of the clear sky, it was hard not to feel serene. Compared to the rocky terrain and cliffs in her old home this place looked like some sort of Eden, though she couldn’t really complain about her homeland. She was fortunate to have found a place to call her home and where she could have a fresh start. Besides, she rather liked the ruggedness of Dawn Court, for it added character to the landscape on which she lived.
Quietly Suriel flew lower to the ground until she softly touched the grass beneath her hooves. It was rather foggy once you actually ventured deeper into the mountains. Beginning her walk the snow white and pink colored female walked through the light mist calmly, her pace slow and relaxed as she followed the well beaten path of this new place. She had been grateful for the chance to explore these lands..to further her knowledge of it. For the chance to stretch her wings too. A soft sigh left her lips as she gazed up at the sky for a moment.
The filly entered the herd’s land – her home – at the time the sun was just barely rising over the horizon. It was clear that her silver coat was tattered, covered in places with blood and sweat. Her fur was matted, mane and tail tangled beyond belief, and her button eyes…oh, they reflected the very horror that she had seen. She fell several times in her utter exhaustion, before she collapsed and would not rise. Her breathing was labored, and she gave in to the darkness that wanted so badly to claim her. The filly slept, but fitfully, for several hours; comatose; before she was able to open her eyes again. The nightmares had made certain that she would not be able to recover as she hoped she would; nightmares of sounds – snapping bones and tumbling rocks; a frightened voice warning her to stay back; and then the image of his body falling. Falling into the great unknown. She had not seen his body land, but surely, there was no way he was still alive. They were on the top of the mountain! Softly, the filly began to sob as the sun rose ever-higher, exposing all of her cuts and bruises, the swelling in all four of her legs, and the defeat that so clearly rested upon her shoulders. Why would the gods torture her like this? All she had wanted to do was meet the one she was told she should worship – and he failed to show himself to her. He failed to save her, or her friend. The filly could feel the cold bitterness rising up in her throat, burning as the sobs that wracked her frame. All she could do was lie there, waiting for whatever should come next in this nightmarish hell she called life. ”Speech”
& those dizzy stargazers
who dreamed of the black
kept their heads in the clouds
& they never looked back
She’d gotten lost.
Let’s face it, this really should be the least surprising thing you’ve come across today, apart from gravity still functioning and the moon still orbiting the earth. As effortless as breathing, our little bluejay wanders and becomes distracted, and suddenly finds herself well off the beaten trail of wherever she’d been and somewhere entirely new. It was how she’d gotten to Novus in the first place, how she’d found the Dusk Court, how she always did everything. Generally, she just rolled with it, shrugged a bit and moved on to the next Great AdventureTM. She didn’t really worry too much about what she’d left behind or where she was supposed to be, because she was a firm believer in things happening as they should and living in the moment. Or something like that. You know, its really just possible that her attention span is so short that she just doesn’t notice.
Moving on.
It had been a productive summer. She’d wandered quite a bit, met a few interesting folks along the way. She’d tried her best to become friends with a buffalo, but it had other ideas (mostly eating, and fertilizing the fields) and she’d been forced to carry on elsewhere. Eventually, she’d made it back to the Dusk realm, and decided she should find the castle that her and Maude had talked about and get herself properly introduced to whoever she was supposed to introduce herself to.
It was a cool autumn day, the sun shining through the partly clouded sky and giving a bit of warmth to the crisp air. Leaves crunched beneath her as she landed – gracefully, for a change – and she took a few moments to step on a few extra dried ones, grinning to herself and delighting in the noise they made. Satisfied with her sped-up leaf deterioration, she finally took in the castle before her.
It wasn’t the first time she’d come across such a structure, but the ones she was used to were generally more… crumbly. Broken ruins and stone over taken by vines and flora – those were the castles she was familiar with. It was interesting to see this one still clearly in use.
The little bird folded her wings against her back as her bright amber eyes swept the building. Slowly, she walked toward the entrance, eyes gazing upwards at everything above her, most certainly not looking where she was going…
The word’s of the old stallion and his story of these new lands leaves a bitter taste on the boy’s tongue. It reminds him of the gods who had let his homeland dissolve in fumes. Allowed his friends to cease all existence. He shivered as he recalled the white plume of energy consuming those from within who stood their ground against the villain. Flesh torn away from their forms in ethereal elegance. Instead of tears he merely bore his eyes into the crisp, blue skies.
“Novus.” The sound that fell from his mouth was foreign. It hit the air with a dull pang, providing him no amount of hope or reprieve. He found it cruel and ironic that the god of Day existed on this plane. And whether it had been nostalgia, and the underlying desperation for something familiar within – he pursued the Day Court like a starved beast. A hound in search of food, hollowed out.
Nimble limbs pressed off the ground. Steady, faithful wings pulsed and lifted him further into the air. The world around him fell away. While the winds lilted here and there, cool hands that grazed across his skin. Severing thoughts of a land that no longer existed, or the people lost and forsaken. Instead of being blown to and fro, a leaf trapped on the tides of the wind, he was rewarded by the simple task he set ahead of himself. A rare, blooming warmth that nestled gently beside him. For it was adventure that sparked its bloom, and a pale manifestation of purpose that hurried his flight towards the heart of Solterra.
What would he find there? People, the ocean… Its saline scent teased him to pick up his pace. It breathed life inside of tired flesh and sinew, in the travelled muscles that kept him together – chasing memories of childhood. He trembled as they neared the edges of the fortress. Beyond the wind swept dunes, and their inhospitable reaches. Respirations became heavy, sucking in air, as he pressed further until he couldn’t any longer. Defeated, but nowhere conquered by his fatigue – the youth stumbled upon the arid ground with shaky limbs. Sweat clung to his skin, from the steady rays of the sun. And before him in the near distance, he could see the castle in its grand form.
Verdant eyes did not reciprocate the curiosity that befell Saiorse then. They hung on a balance, an impartial presence that could not express this impressive find. For he was still the stranger, and perhaps these people would accuse him of trespassing. It made him hesitate, as he neared the building. Stopping himself from continuing any further. He bit his lip as if it to reprimand himself - people didn’t change. People were all the same, all together suspicious and perhaps just as guarded as he. Strangers might as well as be pretenders, spies, and intruders.
What was he then?
The youth breathed in deeply. Shuffling himself so that he could gaze at the ocean while he waited. Either for someone to notice of his presence, or to observe for an opening – an opportunity to pass through and… Hopefully grapple with some sort of bearing as to where exactly he had landed himself.
A low growl rumbled between towering canyon walls; it did not threaten or intimidate, but instead nagged a lone traveler. It reminded him of his hunger, scraped at his mind and nearly made him believe his very being was withering away. The lanky canine hadn't eaten in days - a common reality for predators in Solterra - and it was bringing him close to desperation. He prowled the maze-like canyon with a dangerous glint in his amber eyes, searching now for anything with a heartbeat to potentially sate his stomach.
Little did the Borzoi know, he was walking straight into a buffet.
It began with a trail of blood, a small trickle that turned into a steady line of bright red. The smell was entrancing and he did not hesitate to follow it, having picked up a fluid trot that brought him directly to the source. A horse's body lay lifeless on the dry, dusty ground, its flesh still warm from its last moments alive; however, the dog's gaze jumped to the mare that stood a few feet away. He could feel the chill in her cold stare, but he did not move from his position. Whatever happened between her and the dead one over there didn't matter to him, all he saw was a pile of meat waiting to be devoured... and he'd be damned if he lost out on a meal here.
Seraphina had risen with the sun that morning.
As she passed through the gaping halls of the sandstone fortress, she felt as though she could taste ash on her tongue – like a vulture, feasting on the dead, circling in wait to replace what was lost to the Solterrans. With nothing but the first, faint rays of dawn to guide her steps, the world felt disquietingly still and silent; the bustle of court life, something she had so slowly grown accustomed to, had felt like an aberration at first, but the capitol now seemed far worse for its absence. For a moment, she was a solitary figure, a shadow of silver cast against the dull brown-orange of the sandstone walls. She traced hallways and rooms that had now grown familiar. Seraphina only paused to linger in the library, throwing her eyes along the lines of shelves that had become her daily haunts in her time as Emissary. Deep, deep, deep beneath her skin, – so deep she barely noticed it – she felt something twist as she left, a quiet recognition that things were not the same as they once were, though she knew that they had not been for some time. Yet when she drew close to the windows, she saw the same desert that had always greeted her sprawled out far as the eye could see, a seemingly-endless ocean of golden waves that was reborn in its own image with each passing day. Solterra never changed, not really, and very little could be done to alter its landscape for more than the moment. (But with Maxence’s presumed death, she had remembered again that they existed in the moment. Somehow, she had let herself forget just how quickly the world could be turned on its head again.) She passed down to the lower levels of the fortress in perfect quiet, save for the rhythmic clack of her hooves against the stone floor and the slow rise and fall of her own breath.
Today she would shed her skin.
She did not expect the process to be easy - she expected to rake herself off in handfuls to discover what was truly beneath her polished, cool exterior. Her duty had always been to her country, and that had not changed. However, in the past, she had always been a cog in a far greater machine, subject to the push and pull of higher powers; now she swept the tide, though she was not so fool as to imagine she had all that much control over the way it would ebb and flow. (In fact, she was sure that she was more apt to possess its consequence.) A part of her was terrified. Another part felt nothing at all, even as she passed the threshold of the fortress and stepped into the hazy light of the courtyard. She would remain there for a time in solitary, silent consideration, still searching for the words that she had lost at Maxence’s funeral – she would have to find them quickly. Now she lingered in the realm of open hostility. The possibility of death had been imposed upon her as a child, but this sense of failure was a completely different stake; she had changed. She was changing again. And now she lingered on the precipice of something dark and vast, about to step onto a tightrope from which she could not return. (Sometimes she thought that she was far too young to take up the mantle of Sovereign, too uncertain, too cold, too, too, too-) Seraphina had not chosen the rank of Emissary, though she had not fought it, either. This crown was solely her volition, however, with a pinch of circumstance. Perhaps it was the first real choice that she had ever made in her life.
And now she stands in the center of the courtyard, the first, piercing rays of day heat pricking sweat from her skin; she raises her head to look up at the sky, and, for a moment, she remembers that blinding light, that sun that kept her from seeing the light, that light which obscured -
She prays to Solis, and, for a moment, she thinks that she finds the words, even if they are only in her mind.
Then, gathering all of her certainty, she draws to the blowing horn in the middle of the courtyard and breathes into it; the haunting, howling melody echoes across the capitol, across the deserts, to the very edges of Solterra.
She draws back. She waits.
Sera's formally stepping up. <3 Laws, the census, & a few other things will be posted up in the next few days! Day Court members are very strongly encouraged to attend, particularly if they're ranked! also, I know that I've already tossed up a reply in the thread w/ the dusk kids, but that's primarily in the interest of keeping that thread/related plots moving. and because I wanted this to be post 100 because I have a flair for drama.
@Avdotya first, please!
His anger was a living thing, closing in around him like the canyon walls. The news of Maxence’s death had come not long after his last meeting with Raum, and all the want for war that had been building, building, building in him had nowhere to go. And so he radiated it, heat rolling off of him in the midmorning desert, the path he walked still cool in the shadows.
By all rights he should have been happy. Acton doesn’t know why it’s not satisfaction licking through his blood, quickening his steps – but then, it’s not like him to parse apart his feelings. That was more for Raum. The buckskin only felt and acted and paid whatever the consequences demanded.
His course through the canyon was quicker than the last time he was here; his gaze glanced over familiar rock formations, burnished orange as his skin, the shadows stark and coal-black. Meet me, said the message that the Ghost had sent, and Acton had told no one where he was going.
It doesn’t yet occur to him that that may have been a mistake.
The cave mouth is a deeper black than the shadowed rock around it. Acton paused a moment before entering, ears pricked with listening, his gaze half-wary and half-mad. There was no one; not a sound but his own breathing, too quiet to echo in the narrow walls.
He slipped into the darkness to wait for the sound of hooves.
