"Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls."
- - -
He can smell the ocean on him and it stirs that ache in his legs, that tickle at the back of his head. He thinks of the sea, endless and restless, and all the mystery beneath it. How it feels like his own mind when he stands perfectly still, eyes closed, feeling the blood pulsing like waves through his body. He yearns for something but is not sure what it is. He cannot find it in the walls of the day court, much as he's tried. Their patterns intrigue and baffle him-- he's come to believe with certainty they are no natural thing, and thus their secrets are of no use to him. They will not help him to lift the veil, to see reality as it really is.
He wanders as he thinks, an old and sometimes dangerous habit-- though it is less thinking and more brooding. It is a rather gloomy state of mind, inevitably leading to the darkest parts of himself, but there is an allure to it. He is the type to wade further and further into the ocean, insistent on discovering just how deep it is.
As he looks up he is surprised to find himself nearing the mountain he can see from his new home. He isn't sure what its name is, if it has one, or why everyone is drawn there. Their attraction to it is what has kept him away until now. As he ponders it, a young mare comes in to view-- she is the color of a particular desert sunrise, the time before the sun shows itself, when a band of warmth sits on the horizon and the sky above it has just opened its blue eyes. Before the sky is blown to hell with brilliant colors. He stares, still unaccustomed to the flamboyant colors and accessories of this place, looking away only when she catches him, breaking his enchantment.
He remembers the ache he found in himself and breathes in deeply.
"Gud Evening, miss." His voice is river pebble smooth; it is his fathers voice, and his father before him. He speaks with a slight accent, a clipping of certain letters and a different inflection. It is different but not unpleasant. "You will go up there?" He asks, skeptical. It is clear from his voice that he has no clue what the appeal is.
He looks to her, then to the peak above them. The way seems well maintained and certainly well used, but she frankly seems so delicate he fears she'll break herself on the rocks. Perhaps he is confusing her coloring, the colors that last for a brief moment during a very particular sunrise, for her disposition. He is complex in many ways, yet almost childishly simple in others. "It will benight soon enough. Let me accompany you."
He does not consider that she has her reasons for being here, alone, at this time, in the place she clearly knows better than him. It also does not occur to him that it is he she would be afraid of. He, the scar-speckled stranger who was oogling her just a few minutes ago. He simply sees a young woman, alone, with nightfall approaching. Like I said, childishly simple.
There is no snow when she finds him this time, no tiger to stalk her steps and direct her home. The dusk is not giving itself to night and the trees are still so thickly laden with leaves and fruit, not bare and sparse in mid-winter’s keep.
Above all, she is not the child she was that day they first met.
That encounter was so long ago, and she has experienced so much over the last few years, that Florentine almost does not recognize the serpentine man she met in the Winter Court of her birth.
It is fortunate then that she does recognize him and that her mind drifts back to that icy scene of a snowy forest, gleaming and glittering - almost purple beneath the bruising gloaming. Her heart stutters in her chest for the memories this boy recreates. Her skin is sure she feels the fall of snow. Oh how Florentine longs to shiver beneath the icy bite of a northerly wind once again.
Yet alas, there is only the sway of the grasses to tickle her knees her. And the heat of the sun chases away any memories of ice and snow that flourish upon her spine. The flower girl drifts to him, stalking the scaled boy as she once had. The girl is quieter now, more skilled than ever at following a subject unnoticed. She has had years to hone her art and a tiger to learn from.
Today however, fortunately for Only, Flora is too keen, too impatient. She has already followed him for sometime and assured herself that this is indeed the ebony and gold man of that childhood memory.
The twilight girl lets her caramel wings flare, their feathered tips brushing through the grasses, their soft hiss playing like music in her ears. Casually the Dusk girl follows her old acquaintance.
“Only.” She says at last when he seems not to notice her. The question in his name could not be shaken for there is a lingering wariness in her breast - this still may be some stranger, or her memory a mere dream she has created for this stranger alone…
Her head tilts, avian and wild, as she peers through her amethyst eyes at the boy before her. “Do you remember me?” She asks in a voice soft with curiosity, her smile small and playful. Her muzzle lifts to better gaze out at him from beneath a fringe now so much longer, so much thicker and more laden with flowers than ever before.
“My mother’s tiger is not here this time.” Flora says with a small smile, whimsical and just a whisper of sadness tingeing its melody. Her golden skin gleams in the sunlight, matching the gold upon his own torso. “It is good to see you again…” The girl pauses, thoughtful and curious before the gleam in her eyes turns mischievous. “Do you still say ‘oh’ a lot?” Her sly smile curls the corner of her lips. “It was your word of choice the last time we met,” She sings as she laughs and lets the wind tug the petals from her mane.
dancing bears, painted wings, things i almost remember..
The journey through Terrastella had been eye-opening, despite his previous visits. The Dusk Court was stunning in all it's serenity and vitality, each variation more surreal and ethereal than the last. The people had eyes that shone with intelligence and a no-nonsense focus on their tasks at hand, a myriad of healers and scholars - along with honed warriors like Morozko keeping the balance. Had Reichenbach not been so hopelessly in love with Calligo and his brethren, he might have considered living under the evening star of Dusk.
His return was laced with good-intentions, his arrival at the majestic Court limned with purpose. Dusk and Night were sisters, Vespera had always treated her sister with respect and kindness, her gentle hands a soothing balm to the caustic glances of Solis. It seemed time and history were looping, or always destined to repeat the wrongs of the past - for here he stood, a promise on the horizon of both of their courts.
Thoughts of Florentine threatened to consume him, even crossing into Terrastella had set his great heart loose and thundering, still raw with loss. The Night King had always allowed his emotions to show true upon his roguish face, and today was no different. As the day faded and dusk descended upon his mahogany skin, his silver eyes remained bright with both hope and nerves. He wanted to see her, Calligo above did he want to see her - but he was also afraid. Afraid that when he did see her, he would not be there as The Night King, strong and unyielding, but Reichenbach, a man desperately in love with someone he could not have.
So, impossibly torn, he waited at the gates, certain that Morozko or even Rannveig herself would approach. They had important matters to discuss, heartbreak or no.
Escape from the past was all he sought. When he found his way to this new continent, this new... adventure. Nothing was left for him back there except pain, shame, and no future. So he planned to move on and away from where he was. What he was. Now he's a ghost of what he once was, a shadow of the glory, the prince.
In the cover of darkness, cloak wrapped over his shoulders, his wings, he walks along the bank of the creek. Eyes watchful as he moves silently, eyes, ears, and nose taking in his surroundings. The creatures around are soft in their rustling as the diurnals return to their nests, and the nocturnal begin to rise and awaken. He senses, without having seen a map or learned the full layout of the continent himself, that he walks the boundary between two realms. The southern bank, where he treads now, smells of pine tar and smoke, with a hint of fresh rainfall. Earthen.
His breathing is soft, bringing no extra attention toward him as the night accepts him as one of its own. His keen eyes spot a small copse of trees by the bank, and he winds through them. Becoming immobile, he leans against a tree and watches. His gut, what he trusts above any of his five senses, whispers that something, or someone, is close by. The sounds around him grow dimmer, as if sensing the same.
***forgive me, I'm a bit of a rust bucket at this right now. If this HTML is too jenky will you let me know? I'm using something made for a b2g board but it is working for me on my computer.
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He must have been one of the last ones to leave or the first ones to go. Novus was new and the Rift was gone. Between this-a-way and that-a-way he saw no hide nor hair of the ones he knew before this moment right now.
Had he truly been alone for that long?
In the last days of the Rift - everything had disappeared and it had been everyone he knew who went first. After that it all went in a painful, insufferably slow procession; first the sky then the sun, then trees and the grass - the flowers went too- all of it went until there was nothing but glass beneath his feet, not even dirt. He knew hunger long before he knew thirst. When the water started to become harder and harder to find that is when he knew the game must have been close to being over.
Somehow, you managed to get us caught in our game. Stephan figured in the closet space of Only's mind, even he was too weak to be angry - too tired to shake himself from the mental irons his hands and feet Only lade him down with.
The last river he visited had once been an ocean - one that had tried to drown him once, twice - the third time to pull him in would be soon. Soon. Out of desperation to satisfy some part of the emptiness which slowly crept into him. He believed that the Rift was filling him with the same kind of 'stuff' that it was made out of. Soon it would all be over - he felt it coming. Soon.
In the beginning of the end, there had been a bright and powerful flash of light. Only hoped that it was the rapture. The sky, always black and always full of stars, was blue and the cold, frozen, mirrors beneath his feet were soft, lush, and green with grass. Only sagged under the weight of a new world. He was caught between the cross-roads of being relieved as well as overwhelmed. His legs wibble-wobbled and eventually caved in beneath him. Down-down-down into a lush carpet of green, green grass (oh such bliss! The grass was alive! Alive and not dead!) - just to feel it cool and wet with dew beneath his belly.
Dawn had never felt so blissful until this day.
The air was fresh (there was air! not water? was he not drowning?!) and the breeze most pleasant. It felt like a Summer morning but he could not be too sure. In truth he wasn't even sure what Summer meant anymore because being lost in the Rift was like being lost in a dark room with nothing in it. Would it rain? Would it snow? Would there be a constant lightning storm for weeks (months? years?) that never ended? Would the rain-rain so hard that it would turn into the sea in seconds? His worry drove him from eating the grass or drinking from the creeks, from laying in a safe, quiet glen and sleeping for once - to the point that all he could do was sit and worry.
Butterflies floated by and he drew in a quick breath of air as it passed by. Would the moment shatter? What wicked beast had turned the world upside down this time? What cursed magic desired to trick him into thinking he was back in Nebraska? Only had appeared on the front grounds of a land he knew nothing of - no, this wasn't Nebraska, it was somewhere (something?) else - and he could not bring himself to exhale the breath caught in his lungs. His eyes did not dare to blink. Secretly, Only wished the breeze would shush itself long enough to settle his hair. Any entropy at all and the whole thing could be over with. Surely this was worse than a dream, it was some altered reality that wouldn't settle for more than five minutes. The butterflies paused at the red poppies and bee balm, his eyes shifting only once before something else was already happening.
Something snapped, Only moved quite fast for a man so down on his luck.
"I didn't--" he started but found another horse standing not far from him. Which one of them was the traveler and the other a settler? He was beside himself with a flurry of troubled emotions that passed through his eyes like reflections of a storm but he was too tired to try and understand. He could cry if crying didn't look so ugly on him. He staggered in the mild morning breeze as he took a step towards the stranger.
They are real. Good God, they are real.
"Please let me stay. Please."
.only thief for hire
low-functioning telekinesis
There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called but few are chosen.
It’s all in the arrival, the entrance, the beginning. How did your story start, and with what words, and did you draw your audience in quick enough? The where, the what, the who… those don’t ever matter as much as the how.
Or at least, that’s what they say.
Never mind who they are.
In this case, the where was by the ocean, the cliffs rising up from the brine like a jagged fortress, the spray filling the air already laden with the scent of salt. Gulls cried and circled, as sea fowl tend to, endlessly searching for small fish and crabs. The sun had risen but it was early yet, and the heat was still finding its way into all the crevices, and while it was busy making the stones warm, a lazy sea breeze ruffled along the edges, idly moving through tall grasses and heather, displacing bees as they wandered through the air toward thistle blossoms.
It sounds peaceful doesn’t it?
It’s one of those situations where ‘if the tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ moments, where everything is still and sweet and picturesque…
You know what happens next, right? Please don’t tell me this is going to surprise you.
She arrived.
Where did she come from? We’re never sure. But she soared through the morning air, bright blue wings catching the early rays. She spied the cliffs and headed toward them, braids strung out behind her, excited to see what new land she was encountering. The small mare folded in her wings and dove downward, fully prepared to make the most elegant of landings –
There was a noise like a roar, and wetness, and she snorted and spun, lurching sideways through the air as her wings tried to catch up to the frantic messages her brain was sending. The land came up a bit quicker than intended and she landed roughly, dirt and grass and pebbles spraying as she skidded to a stop. Did she land on her feet? Almost. She’d ended somehow on her bum, eying the cliffs and the water that had betrayed her by daring to gush upwards when she hadn’t been looking.
She snorted again, quieter, and picked herself up, stretching her wings out fully before folding them against her backside. A few loose feathers drifted gently down to the ground and she left them there, a silent apology to the earth she’d torn up. It had extracted a toll from her, too, her right haunch was scraped, but nothing that had broken the surface. She’d be sore for a few days, but that was nothing new in the world of Cress Crash LandingsTM.
Finally, satisfied that she was mostly intact, the little blue jay glanced around, bright yellow-orange eyes landing on the one person that had likely born witness to her marvelous entrance. She grinned and trotted toward them, the word embarrassment nowhere to be found.
“Did you see that?!” She shook her head, as if she could hardly believe it herself. “Woo! Ocean tried to get me!” She shifted her wings a little against her back, the crest of feathers on her head standing up as she looked over this hapless victim of her now undying friendship. “I’m Cress! Who are you? Where are we?”
To the desert she had retreated, allowing herself to become lost in the endless golden estate. Heat billowed, mirages formed, sand whirled. Rhoswen had run until her legs shook and her heart convulsed within the birdcage of her narrow chest, and then she had walked - walked for hours and miles and years with no direction or purpose. The red girl followed no map or rhythm, moving only in random design. From the exhaustion she found reprieve from the buzzing in her skull - it was incessant and ceaseless, a torment that lived long into the night and kept her from sleep. Tossing and turning in her bed, there had been only the mural of that penetrating sapphire gaze beneath a softly furrowed brow. Gods, Raum - let me be.
So off into the night the little firestorm had vanished. That had been hours ago, and now she was reaching her wits end - for miles from the castle she still could not quite shake the silver-skinned man from her thoughts. Night had melted away come the rising sun, dawn and daylight banishing the shadows and midday was at last upon her. Steadying, Rhoswen peaked the top of a tall dune, sweat gleaming on her finely-hewn physique. Had Reich sent him? She scowled at the notion, heat flushing behind her ears. Tensions between Day and Night since the coronation of their respective Kings had been rising, but was it really necessary to send in a spy? An assassin?! Even Rhoswen, a girl composed from impulsive hellfire, knew this to be a treacherous move, but she had forgotten how fast her brother's arm was drawn - his big hands squared into fists. She wondered what Rhaegar would do, had he taken the Sovereignship instead. Oh, how she missed that dragon boy.
code belongs to spaced.
ooc: open to any day courtian! rhos needs a friend rn please ;_;
Lumaris wasn’t surprised at how quickly it’d taken him to get into the swing of life among the Night Court; he’d traded in serving one King as a warrior to serving another, only this time Lumaris doubted Reichenbach would have him committing the monstrosities his grandfather had and he was not bound by oath to obey. In the short time Lumaris had seen the Night King the antlered stag had begun to begrudgingly respect him- something that didn’t happen very often. However Lumaris still hadn’t gotten used to his lack of magic or fae and elf abilities- something that he feared this was something he would never adjust to. Once again his painfully slow mortal speed hindered his trek through the mountains but this time it was far quicker.
Taking leave of the Night Court for the day Lumaris found himself besides the sea, breathing in the salty air. Here the wind was strong, tugging playfully at the steed’s navy locks and fighting him subtly at every step. Lumaris had always loved the sea, regaled by tales of its ferocity and strength song by elf and fae alike. As a Prince he’d never had the chance to visit a beach, to feel the soft caress of waves upon his pillars. As Durann’s puppet however Lumaris had seen many different terrains. Alas when you are waging bloody war upon others the feel of the sea breeze and the call of ocean birds does not seem so sweet.
With his head to the air, Lumaris tasted the salty tang, mismatched eyes fluttering shut as he allowed the scenery to soak all of his other senses. For once the stallion was at ease.
a heart of fire and a mind of ice
So Dark sucks at starters xD but here you go @Florentine
It is early when she lands amidst the leaning grasses of the prairie. All about her is the hiss and rustle of stems swaying like a gently rolling sea.
The sun is golden, the sky a brilliant early morning pink. It is true that the twilight girl does not know why she is here – at this time, of all things. For the girl of gloaming light and slow moon rises, dawn in the night court is a curious time for her to come. But maybe there is a part of her that wishes to see it in all lights, at all times.
It is different. She is bereft of shadows, of moonlight, of calling stars. They are not hers to have, yet she craves them all the same.
The grasses seem to sense this as they sway more, their bustle becoming louder.
Amethyst eyes, purple and brilliant, drink in the dawn soaked hillside as it sweeps down towards trees, towards the moonlight lake she so fondly keeps within her heart.
As the golden girl wades slowly through the myriad of flowers that sway and dance, for once it is neither flora nor fauna that draws her attention. Instead, her eyes gaze outward, peering beneath her fringe of tangled honeyed hair, for there, upon the crest of one hill, gazing at the sunrise is a figure she knows so well.
Florentine does not want to remember this boy, she does not want to face the memory of their first meeting and the terrible insults that passed between them. Yet there he is, a force she cannot avoid, no matter how wretched the girl feels now, no matter that she has even had worse encounters since…
“I did not expect you here.” The twilight girl says, softly, warily. She pauses, her eyes trailing over the drawn lines of his face. They are familiar to her, she even put them there once – had they never truly gone?
“Why are you here Charlemagne?” She asks of him at last, her lips wary but her eyes curious. The Dusk girl is quiet, slow and careful, as if one word from him could cast her back to Terrastella. Maybe it could, for guilt makes her less of the girl she truly is. Guilt has her wild demeanor tempered.
Character #1:Reichenbach Bonded: - Magic: - Armor: - Weapons: -
Character #2:Raglan Bonded: - Magic: - Armor: - Weapons: -
R E I C H E N B A C H
KING OF THIEVES
Contrary to popular belief, Reichenbach adored the sunshine. He was a sun-soaker in every aspect of the word, with today being no exception to the rule. While he awaited the arrival of silvertongue, the Night Court Sovereign lay on his side with limbs spread so that they might get as much as sunshine as possible, his round belly saturated by the summer sun and his argent eyes closed contentedly. A faint smile played around the corners of his ebony lips as he daydreamed, seeing a blur of violet flowers and tattooed constellations - silver hair but apricot skin. Truthfully, he'd never had to seperate his emotions before, had never been confused or uncertain when it came to love and happiness - Reichenbach was a man who knew what he wanted, a man that didn't allow for excuses but instead headed toward that brightness, aimed for it. Now... he was lost in the tedium of morals, morals and heartbreak.
Training and sparring with Raglan had been a welcome distraction - as his Crows always had been. They were a band of brothers and sisters made family through misfortune, always there to clap one another on the back or make each other laugh if it was needed. Their loyalty wasn't able to be bought, their love not given easily or half-heartedly - they were children of hardship and adversity, and yet they had grown to be unyielding, an unstoppable force that acted as a constant reminder of where he had come from, of how many children still needed care. Raglan had his own terrible tale, one that Reichenbach knew intimately, and yet had come forth and bloomed in the past year. Camdis' tutoring was aiding the boy mentally and this sparring... it would no doubt come in handy when Raglan ran that silver tongue of his. The boy was too witty and quick-minded for his own good.
Hearing faint footfalls (Raglan had a step that was trained to be almost silent, taught by Reich himself when the boy had been found) Reichenbach opened one eye lazily, squinting through long ebony lashes as he heaved himself to lean on one shoulder, watching Raglan's approach through a sun-soaked haze.
