It has been longer than perhaps I would like to admit since I have been among the company of people who did not carry an inherent sadness about them. The temple sages would have you believe that the diligence in which they have you study is for the purpose of clearing your mind of all earthly misgivings, that giving up being among our own peoples to learn of the ways of so many others is a grand choice. And to be sure, that is a choice I made wholeheartedly and with delight when I was younger. But that was a decision born of a naivety which was carefully fostered, curated and kept alive by the very nature of the place I lived. Yes, I would call the living I had somewhat sad, I think. Perhaps not for everyone, and that’s alright. And I would not speak ill of all the time that I spent studying and learning and walking among other societies. It was this gift that granted me the understanding that lead to my being here in Delumine, after all, if in a round-about way.
The streets of the city are alive with colour, personality and flourish. The individuals all carrying on with their own lives, engrossed in this thing or that. Peddling wares, making a living, getting to and fro, gathering together for pleasure or chore. There is such an aliveness to those around me that I had forgotten there could be this kind of vibrancy. I had grown to my age mostly among the temple walls, and most of those I had spent my time with all fit into one category or another. There is a sense of comfort in having those around you who are of a same mind, I suppose. But there is deep loneliness there, too, I think. There’s nothing to challenge you, or expand you, and that stagnation has always spelled death. Perhaps that is why it's so important for us to planes-walk as we do- If we cannot indulge in the cultures and traditions of our own people, we must gain knowledge of those from others.
It is the peak of the summer months and the sun is warm against my pelt, a sensation that is not at all unpleasant, particularly when coupled with the breeze that blows through the city carrying with it all the scents of life. I close my eyes and inhale deeply, filling my lungs with the various tastes of those around me. The gentle push of homesickness presses against my abdomen, asking to burrow into my heart and make a nest of longing. I spent more of my time away from my tribe and her traditions than I ever did with them, and being among the life of the people here in Delumine reminds me so much of them. Of our travels, artisans sharing their skills with any who ask, storytellers keeping our world alive through the ages, passing generation to generation our creation. It I listen carefully, I believe that I can still hear the faint sounds of the music they used to play and my limbs ache to move in a dance once fondly remembered but with not enough participants to make it truly glorious.
Slowly my pools flutter open, and I am still in the city square, people watching. The music of my home does not play, though I am sure with the beautiful weather someone may come by and set up to busk the busy streets, and if they do, perhaps I shall take it upon myself to ask if I may dance for them. I may not have any coin to give, but I may barter the pleasure of their music for the dance of my people and the joy that it brings. Yes, that might be a delightful thing indeed. A smile crosses my lips and I settle in at the edge of the square, content to observe those around me and to be present with them as I have not been in so very very long.
if you know your history you'll see how far we've come
There can be no covenants between men and lions, wolves and lambs can never be of one mind
I wake up angry; and once awake, the anger never leaves.
It follows me day by day by day, as I have taken to haunting Terrastella’s shoreline. I cannot withstand leaving the sea for long. My skin begins to dry; I hope the discomfort is a result of a newfound infancy, that I will outgrow it. The wounds at my throat and shoulder have begun to heal, save the puckering of scars; Elena has taken particular care of them. I do not want to say I am grateful—I should not have them, to begin with—but I am. I cannot express it, in words, because the bitterness begins to swell too quickly. I am bitter I have a need of help. I am bitter that I am not dead, more frankly.
The bitterness, I think, is what drives me to drink. Not in Terrastella, no; Damascus, once summoned, flies me to the fields before Delumine. I must leave the sea, or else—
Well, what occurs when one becomes their own internal sentiment?
I am nothing but anger; and the anger makes me leave, because—what is left of me, except the rage?
The rage, strong enough to turn me from the sea I now require. The rage, which dissolves my pride to dust that is then blown away beneath Damascus’ powerful wings. The rage, which removes my inhibitions and my fears and myself.
Then, the rage burns itself up too, as fire does to fuel.
By the time I reach Delumine, I want only to fill the empty well echoing in my chest. It feels infinite, this emptiness inside, as if no amount of thought or action could quell the apathy. And so when I walk through the ivy-covered streets, bright with summertime and youth, it is to skim an indifferent eye over familiar sights and instead travel to a deeper, darker part of town.
Every city has a squalid street where the empty flock in droves. I find them because the first pair of eyes I meet belong to a woman with dead eyes and an accompanying smile full of missing teeth. She coos something at my passage; but I ignore that too, and enter the first door full of noise.
The tavern is not clearly marked. But it smells as all taverns do, in all corners of the world, and is occupied by a boisterous group of patrons. I shoulder my way through and stand at the corner of the bar, where I can watch the entire room unfold before my eyes. I order my first drink.
It is hours later when he enters with the same expression I wore.
It is hours later when I realize I am my father after all.
there are nights when the wolves are silent and only the horses howl
The seasons develop and devolve just as the tide swells and subsides. Like a steadfast drum, nature proceeds to batter along with the patterned metronome of time. Maerys has come to learn that nothing that resembles permanency actually is; granite constructions retire to the soil, darlings regress to strangers, flesh and fiber that once labored in battles converts to compost for perennials.
Delumine was not immune to this variety of transformation; what once felt like a fortified collection of dedicated individuals that comprised a powerful court now felt barren, a sensation amplified by the draft that lamented through the mortar and brick walls of its fortress and by the absence of their sovereign.
Was it exclusively Maerys that felt this way?
She had begun to neglect the court that provided her with everything she could've required. She took for granted the tender stroke of field against her ivory pasterns, the reprieve from the crystalline sun the trees offered her, the merciful bubbling of the creek that doused her dehydration.
Yet, Maerys craved to correct this.
So she strode through the palace, her hooves clattering against the stone as Vradara's distant sonances echoed from the heaven just outside the dense walls. Her mauve eyes meticulously scoured the intricate architecture as she wordlessly mused, her feelings moderately scattered.
The plains were so vast that she was loathe to leave them unexplored for long. Having only spent a few months in Novus, Willoughby still had so much to see and do. She felt overwhelmed and also excited. Not a very random emotion for the musician, to be truthful. She was terrified of the future she had forced herself into, but also happy to have made the decision to stay.
Today she wandered as per usual. Having made a small little nest in an avian-like manner between two trees on the outskirts, she left her 'house' to seek. Company? Maybe. She wouldn't be opposed to such a thing. But no, it was more like she was looking for some muse. Her routine was dry and tired by now - she needed something new to entertain.
Else she'd get no coin. Else she wouldn't be able to eat. Nor buy pretty things she had been eyeballing... So lost in her thoughts did she roam without a care, a tune whistling and a spring in her step. Ahead of her, there was another equine. A stranger to the bard. She picked up her pace until she was behind them, flashing a grin if she met their eyes.
a shard of god
in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.
S
somewhere, in the library, there is a room with his name.
Not literally, so to speak; there is no plate on the door announcing that he was there, that once it was his as much as any old, magic thing can belong to anyone (which isn't much, truth be told), but there is still a clean square on the table otherwise covered by a thin film of dust, and there are feathers stuck to the walls and the floorboards, and there is wax from his candle tacking them to the surface in places.
It's been days, a week or two, tops, when Andras steps through the front arch into the library's tall, ancient foyer and a part of him melts like it's fainting in his shell. He had never expected it to feel so much like home. He had never expected anything to.
Needless to say, this still does not ease his nerves. These days Andras is a tightly coiled spring, held in place by sheer force of will, always strained at the edges and waiting to unwind. It, like many things about him, is not sustainable. None of it is sustainable: the boredom, the dam of his self-control, and the bubbling, black sea that it holds back. It's almost impossible to be solid, when you were born with cracks in your walls.
Delumine is quiet, safe. Everything is quiet and safe around it. The nightmare of a few winters past seems to be much more of a nightmare than anything else, not, just another ghost story told in the dark. It is quiet enough that Andras can hear his blood, singing. The crackle of his magic is so loud when the world around him is hushed.
Andras walks the halls one by one, passing shelves of books he's read and ones he hasn't. His jaw aches from holding it closed. In one room, where the hall branches into another, and another, until the labrynthine wood of the library becomes a tangle of paper and lanterns and leaves, he finds-- not what he's looking for, not by a long shot, but something. Gold like the summer sun, white as winter snow, with the sharp bones in places that betray his age. His feathers are maybe not as straight and pristine as he might have imagined, the sharp point of his horn might be worn, some, with time.
But he is unmistakable. Andras has never met the man, but he could call his name across the room. There is only one Somnus. "You're the former king, right?" This he says through clenched teeth. "Where have you been?"
what does the god of your childhood look like? a soft apparition pigeoned in the attic, / a wound eating you one year at a time? ☼
For some time, she simply lingers on the peak, eyes closed against the silence and the sharp, half-scalding press of the sun on her back; the breeze is still cool, and, at this high an altitude, far from soft. Somewhere above her, Ereshkigal is spiraling like a leaf on the wind, a smudge of ink against an otherwise perfectly blue sky. She feels like there should be clouds – there is this gnawing in her stomach -, but there is only sun and sky and sun and sky, and the cathedral is at her back. Her children are not here today, and Ereshkigal is being unusually nonconfrontational; the landscape feels quiet in a way that she has grown unaccustomed to without realizing it. It’s not unwelcome, though. It’s not unwelcome at all.
It is some time before she enters the cathedral; and then it is some time before she approaches the sun god’s altar.
She stands for a while in the middle, a window’s cut of light leaving the contours of her face half-cast in sharp angles of light and shadow. She looks to Tempus, first, and then she slowly draws her eyes to Solis, from the empty spheres of his eyes to the frozen fires that compose his mane and tail. As a child, stumbling meekly at the viceroy’s heels, the statue seemed grand and imposing, holy in the way that the gold and gems of the nobility weren’t; now, she isn’t sure what he seems to her at all. Lifeless, certainly, blank and still and impassive – even with the sharp downturn of his brow and the angry curve of his lips – in a way that is more man than divine, in a way that she knows he shouldn’t be. If she pressed her muzzle to his skin, she knows that it would be cold, but there was a god inside of it, once. She wonders where he’s gone now. She wonders if he is still listening.
There are all the ordinary rituals, disconnected for once from her prayers; she lights the candles like clockwork, stares a moment at the familiar spire of their ash-grey smoke. The incense is next, and she stands for a while and waits for the scent to drift, to permeate every stone inch of the cathedral’s empty space. She doesn’t pray. She knows plenty of prayers, written into the contours of her mind like words on a page in a book, but none of them are right; they crumble in her mouth.
Absently, she meets the statue’s eyes. “They’re growing well,” she says, after a moment. “I don’t know if you’ve been – watching, but they are. Ambrose is the cleverest thing I think I’ve ever seen; he has a mind like a steel trap. I wonder how he remembers it all.” (Even, she thinks, things that he shouldn’t.) “He’s sweet, you know. Quiet. Nervous. I don’t think I’ve….” Her brow furrows and her lips quirk; I don’t think I’ve done well enough remains unsaid, but it hangs in the air between them like a curse, nearly palpable. It’s true, though. She tries, she knows that she tries, but there is a part of her – large and dark and throbbing, like a growth turned hostile – that knows it isn’t enough, that knows he wouldn’t be so anxious if she had – done something differently, if she were better, if anything about all of this were better. “I don’t know if you ever intend to speak to us again, but I – I know he would like to see you.” She bites her tongue, runs it between her teeth. She doesn’t want him to, though. She doesn’t want him to – because they are hers, even if he was the one who blessed them into existence, and she doesn’t trust him enough to want him to touch them. She wants them to be freer than that. (There is a part of her that wonders why she is telling him this; there is a part of her that knows it is because there is no one else.) “And Diana, she’s…” She trails off, a half-bitter half-laugh catching in her throat. “She’s a…sharp thing, you know. Fiery. Restless. She always seems to find trouble, and she always gets herself out of it, but-“but one day she won’t and that is the way of things“-I still worry. She thinks it’s silly. Rolls her eyes whenever I bring it up.” She pauses. Looks away. “She thinks things will be easy for her, right now. She runs with sandwyrms and sings with teryrs and sleeps in nests of snakes. I know they won’t be.”
Seraphina raises her chin, then, and she swallows a lump coiled up in her throat. “You know, I don’t think that what you’ve done to me was- fair. I don’t-“ She closes her eyes. Sighs. There’s no use in speaking to gods like men; they don’t understand the world in a blink at all. She tells herself that all those unfairnesses don’t really matter, because they’re said and done, but they still rub at her like a tuft of fur pushed up backwards, like shattered glass, like something she can reshape but can’t quite fix. It’s over, and there’s nothing she can do about it, and there’s so much that she finds herself regretting, but she wouldn’t change it, but she still thinks about it-
Her eyes open with a flutter of white lashes. The sun is in them, and, no matter how much you pray, you’re always left picking up pieces of something. There’s one she remembers, a relic from her mother instead of Viceroy, and she hums it under her breath like a song when she snuffs out the candle and leaves the altar without so much as a goodbye.
closed. || 400?!?!?!?!?! || main quote from "outhouse," rachel mckibbens; title from danez smith, "I'm Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense"
It was not the first time she had seen the ocean, let's be clear about that. She had seen countless ones in her travels, but Ruris' one took her breath away every time. Standing on the sandy beach, Willoughby breathed in salt water scent slowly and deliberately. Terminus Sea, that's what the locals called this place. She could think of many other names for it too.
But that wasn't important. As the Pegasus stood on the shore, she blinked as a new scent hit her snout. Turning, she was faced with the wonder and excitement of a stranger's face. She brightened as they came closer. "Hello" t'was a new day, time wise. The morning sun soaked the waters below "have you come to see the ocean too?"
And today, she would visit the Dusk Court. No particular reasoning behind her actions. She was free to make such decisions as a member of nowhere. Smiling as she walked, passing the border and further into the field, Willoughby sought nothing. It was because she did this that she came upon such interesting people by accident.
If she wanted to seek others, she found they did not come so easily. No, no. She would not seek anyone. She would keep herself pleasantly surprised. Though the flat land before her gave no such shock; she could see someone coming from miles. It was behind her that was more surprising. Logically, that is. It should be.
So she kept her pace, a soft hymn on her lips and a spring in her step. The maiden would continue until stopped and stop she would. The smell of another drifted by her nose. Willoughby realized with gentleness she had her eyes closed. Opening them now, her pale blues stared at a figure she did not know. She was still away from them, but curiosity made her dance closer.
Celebrations were still in full swing by the time night had fallen across the Dawn Court. Willoughby glanced this way and that, finding the experience to have been charming thus far. Now lanterns rolled out, lighting the darkened world in a gentle fire. She strolled through the place reserved for quiet conversation, the dance floor tempting enough as is.
Yet no one was dancing at this time of night. Mares and stallions sat together, quietly whispering and enjoying each other's company. The young had been placed to bed. Willoughby barely knew anyone at this court. She could count how many she knew by name, finding this a sad state. In an effort to meet new equines, she took a seat near this part of the garden.
No one approached her. Not yet. They were busy entertaining themselves, happy enough to see familiar faces coming out to the coronation. She frowns softly, glancing away... before a shadow falls across her lap. The maiden looks back, seeing the form of a stranger.
Posted by: Meira - 12-27-2020, 03:10 PM - Forum: Archives
- No Replies
Now my neck is open wide, begging for a fist around it
The stone skeleton houses a writhing sea of bodies. More and more pour in through the ancient walls decorated thick flora that is expertly cared for. There is no doubt as to who is responsible for these plants. Someone who feels such anger when the forests are thrust to the fire for the sake of a gathering. It is the one who she now must serve as Sovereign. She is inevitable. Everythign about her since their first encounter has been this way. From Meira's first strings of mistakes, to the fact she sits on the guard. Danaë. Meira watches from high on one of the many overhangs strewn with sickly sweet bursting flowers sewn lovingly into the thick green vines along the bannister. She peers down at the masses as they gather without mirth. The former Sovereign has left for Solterra; she has half a mind to join him. If it were not for the memory and the sting of rejection she still feels in her bones. Meira watches and listens as the voices swell in time with the haunting music that echoes down the halls. She is here as much for the coronation as she is to protect the members of Delumine.
There is a mournful atmosphere in the familiar stone structure she serves daily. The familiar halls weep for their king. They weep for his absence, as much as they weep tears of joy for what this may mean for Solterra. It is true, so true that Oriens is the brother of Solis. It is why she has been drawn to Delumine in the first place. She wants to love Delumine as she loves Solterra. Love Oriens as she loves Solis. Even their kings and queens. Meira is not made of love. It is a foreign, sticky substance that roots itself into the very essence of all beings in Novus. Just as magic does. An element she resents with every fiber of her being. Restless at the thought that she must protect these mages, for Danaë is one of them. She cannot speak against her. Danaë is inevitable and intoxicating. She is capable. Far more than Meira knows she will ever be.
Then there is the matter of Isolt. A warning that she cannot shake from her mind. When she last spoke with Danaë, she could not deny the promise of their encounter someday. Meira sighs softly into the flowers and they spill their pollen upon her lips in response. For once she does not smell like the sea that she truly loves. One day she will return to the sea as she is meant to. All Roannes do. She is a monster that has been muzzled and bound by the earth. They will know soon enough.
She is hungry. So hungry. She would trade mirth and melancholy for blood any day. Meira sweeps herself down into the dark corridor that will take her deeper into the castle she protects as a soldier of Delumine.
@Isolt
Sorry this is just a bunch of rambling a;fj
