t goes like this: Michael follows Moira like a shadow, or less than that. A bright spot on the horizon. Something always humming and warm in a world often cold, and unfeeling, and cruel, even at the best of times. He says little, just smiles when she looks at him over her shoulder, and tips his head to the side when she asks how he is, what he wants, how he's doing.
It has now been years since he was drained of his immortality. He can feel himself aging. He promises to stay, over and over again Michael promises that he will stay with her, no matter the cost. She does not ask him why there's a "cost" to begin with, why he cannot just feel free because he is free, why he has to have it trembling in his fists to see that it is alive at all.
He doesn't know how he's doing. He doesn't want to know. None of it matters.
Today Michael feels old, though nine years (give or take a few hundred) isn't all that bad, really, in the grand scheme of things. He didn't know it would hurt, that he would be so full of old, familiar aches that they settle back to a dull thrum in the back of his head when he's not actively taking stock of them. He supposes, it's hard not to feel old, sometimes.
(Moira is as young and as beautiful as she's ever been. He looks at her before he leaves her side for the day, meandering toward the market with a loaf of bread and a heavy feeling in all four of his legs-- and he thinks, now, maybe more than ever, that he had never wanted to be mortal at all. He'd stay for her. He'd stay forever, for her.)
Michael stops by the fountain, gold and white and blue against its white stone as he sinks onto the wide rim and the loaf cracks in half in his grip with a soft, satisfying crunch. Near him, there is a girl, not quite waifish but delicate in the bones, a dizzying smear of white and every soft, pale color he can think of. He is not prone, these days, to caring much about strangers. Even now his chest squeezes itself in a vice when he holds out half the loaf and gives her a wobbling smile.
He wonders if it will ever not be nerve-wracking, speaking. He hopes. "This is too much for just me," he says, "we can share, if you'd like."
I am soft again.
There is water and it surrounds me.
There is feeling and I can feel it.
One of the wonders she had come to admire was the archives here.
Never before had Willoughby seen a library, let alone heard of one until now. Her parents were kind folks, gentle folks, and had their own stories to tell. They told them by lips, not pages. Voices, not verses. She actually did not know how to read very well - simple things like lyrics and rhythms were more her speed. Yet this did not mean the woman was lacking intellect. She just learned differently.
It did not mean she wanted to lack in any way. Discovery was the spice of life. Adventure came in many forms. Today she would find herself in the library, perusing the shelves. Today, she wanted to read more about the mythology and folklore associated with the realm. Willoughby was always looking for new material to add to her routines. She would start here before going to the courts' lands to perfect her craft.
The woman still considered herself a new member of entertaining. Not yet an aspired or beloved bard, but a simple amusement for the masses. This fine day was not spent with such dances and songs in mind. No, it was spent in the library among dusty tomes. She did not know where to start, but she took a simple pleasure in finding out for herself.
death cannot harm me -
it is life which is full of risk and malignity.
My sister was born first. I — I was too enraged I think, too angry at being told I must do anything, be anything but a root growing tangled together with my twin. But I could not bear to be alone when my sister left the womb.
So I followed her.
I think now that I will always be following her.
I
solt waits in the shadow of a wall overgrow with wisteria, watching the flowers deepen into ever-darker shades of violet.
On the other side there is a ballroom, and in that ballroom are horses dancing like they are shards of moonlight caught in the wind instead of mortals. When she tilts her head she can hear the ghost-music whispering in the throats of a thousand white sparrows beating their wings in the rafters.
Her heart feels like a note of that song they are weaving, splintered off and forgotten behind when the rest of the instruments lift into the crescendo. And perhaps she is beginning to learn how her sister feels, how sorrow lays down to root like a rose in her liver, thorns tearing apart her insides. Perhaps now Isolt is learning she always knew how to be soft, and only now does she find it in herself to want to be.
She should be inside, she knows. She should be following along in her sister’s shadow like a sword ready to carve through the hearts of anyone who dared dance too near to her. She knows she should be trying to get to her hunger, and her rage, and the pieces of herself that fit into her sister’s sorrow like a key to a lock. She should press their horns together and whisper to her of all the ways the world will bow at her feet (of all the ways she will make sure of it, because Danaë is the one thing in this world that she would do anything for.)
There are a million things she should do as a sister, a twin, a unicorn who is only half of her own soul.
Instead she blinks, and watches the first petal free itself from the wisteria wall with a sigh. It falls like a black tear to her feet (and she knows it is the only tear she will cry, in the only way she knows how to.)
When she pulls away it feels like she is cutting arcane patterns into her heart with the blade of her own tail, like she is carving away the bits of sorrow that are trying to grow in the loam of her. Her heart flutters at the taste of it, at the way the rot blooming in flower-patterns down her throat is not enough (is never enough) to sate the hunger coiled in her belly. The hunger only licks its teeth and growls, and begs her to reach for more and more of the petals (and more and more and more—) until all the wall comes crashing down.
She almost does. Isolt almost presses her horn to the wall like a spear thrust into the belly of a boar, just to see the way the petals would bleed black and heavy down her brow.
But tonight she is more sorrow than rage, and not even a belly-full of wisteria can stop the aching that runs deep enough to devour her whole.
So she blinks, and another black-petal-tear falls. And she tilts her head back to listen to the music that is bleeding through the walls like ghost notes.
She had come to call the Plains her on again, off again home. It was much like a house at this point, however. A place she could come back to, but not put down roots. For Willoughby, she did not think such a thing existed for her. Not yet anyway. Too new to this realm to make much of a splash, she spent her days wandering to those that would accept her and then come back here for rest. No court held her interest for long, for she had no one to call friend yet.
Perhaps it had been foolish of her to reject her master's plea. He had told her to come with him to the next grand adventure, to sing with him forever... Yet she was not ready to be tied down. No man or woman had tickled her fancy enough to call it that forever. The mare sighed, breathing in the scents of the realm she had come to admire. One day she would venture further. This was not the day. Dusk was fading into night, and she was alone yet again.
As a social creature, Willoughby sought company in any form. Leaving behind her usual place of rest, she crept under the moonlight. A pleasant smile graced her lips as she glanced this way and that, hoping to get a glimpse of some beast that had decided to take a moonlit walk.
Posted by: Andras - 12-26-2020, 01:34 AM - Forum: Archives
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a shard of god
in my mouth
turning
my tongue into
rivers of blood.
O
utside his room (larger now, with a larger window that looks out over the city and the sky hung just over its shoulder) it is dark, and hushed. He is not used to seeing the smear of the milky way when he looks up. There is no canopy to shield him from the prying eyes of the moon. It makes him feel terribly small, more than he already is.
He pens the note at his desk, the new, longer one already stacked high with books he carried to the city from the library and his notes on them. Andras has been thinking of this through the long winter and the far longer spring. Every time he sets out to write, every time he dips his quill (one of his own feathers; black as the night sky above and thin as razor wire) in the pot of ink someone calls his name through the door.
Amid the upheaval, he is a man of many faces and not nearly as many talents: lawkeeper and diplomat, sword and reaching branch. He holds onto the word Warden like it is the only thing he knows, through assignments where he should at least make an attempt at smiling, but instead flowers out from behind his glasses. It is the only thing he knows. It is the only thing he knows except--
--well, this is why he writes. There is a moment of striking peace. The pen scratches the paper and it is all he can hear that is not the faint wind outside, or his magic, crackling off his skin with the mounting tension in his grip.
The first page says only:
Pilate,
It's time we talked,
but the more he looks at it, scrubbing his face with the palm of one wing, the more he finds it lacking. It shouldn't be so hard, to be tolerable and charming and open. It shouldn't be so hard to be anything other than a row of grinning teeth and the distant crack of an approaching storm. There are softer animals in the world. There are gentle ones. Even deer have their spears when they need them.
Andras stares at the page, mouth pressed into a tight line. He does not know how to be a deer. He only knows how to be a dog. Loving Pilate--is that what he's doing?--isn't so hard. It's a remarkably easy, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other ordeal, and he has always found it easier, just to walk, any say nothing.
Pilate is not the same sort of man. Not at all. Andras would have him no other way. He crumples his first, impossibly short draft, sets it on the ground next to the desk, and begins again:
Prince Pilate,
I figured, once in my life, I'd do the favor of giving your fair notice before dropping in. I'll be in Solterra soon, to see you. I think we should talk. Think of your favorite place. I'll take you there.
Yours,
Andras, Delumine Emissary
The pen shakes as he drops it back into the pot, clumsily enough that it globs once on the red wood on the desk, and ties it to the leg of an owl, summoned hours ago, that had been waiting, staring at him with eyes full of the same smeared milky way as the window. His eyes follow it out as it goes, a shrinking white speck above the orange glow of a city about to bed down for the night. He only waits long enough for it to return, some time later, empty-handed, before he is flying, too.
Only just barely here and there's already a shift of power.
Eirene has always been one to stick around and help, however many hands that hold the crown. Her duty is to those in need, though lately she's had to align that duty with her role in the Court as well.
Word had traveled fast about the coronation, and she had been as curious as ever, stepping along the vine woven paths and up broad stairs with bannisters encased in flowers. It's quite a beautiful sight in the flickering glow of lanterns in halls and the soft light of a wandering sun. Eirene has never been to anything quite so . . . extravagant. She's used to a simpler life in the form of caring for others without much thought as to wealth of any sort.
Being in a court was different than the wandering herds of her past, but she's found that she does rather enjoy it. She has her own small garden that she can cultivate the seeds that she finds, delicately growing her herb collection and furthering her use of them, including them in poultices and salves that she's used countless times over for those in need.
Today, there is no bustle or rush of someone in need of some sort of cure to an ailment. There's no tickling grasses at her belly in the meadow she had enjoyed. No, today it's just her, and her curiosity as she wanders among those that cast her curious glances and then move on, such as anyone would when seeing someone new.
If she's lucky, she can find a vendor amongst the dancing and festivities, the soft smiles.
"Congratulations." He tries to sound excited, appropriately celebratory at least, but the syllables fall flat and his normally bright, inquisitive eyes begin to tighten at the corners, focus turning inward instead of out. It had taken him so long to gather his courage and introduce himself to Ipomoea - and that Sovereign had seemed so comfortable in the castle, so in command of himself and everything around him, adjusting the vines and the stones as casually as he now moves flesh and blood and authority - that this sudden coronation and announcement of leaving comes as a shock, a poisonous mixture of confusion and sadness.
Willfur wonders how much more he might have understood about the situation had he not skirted around the edges of the Court for so long, resisting the urge to anchor his life to the library and by extension, those who rule it, but now that he has, he's let himself become entrenched, and defensive in the face of possible change, the ever menacing unknown.
He wonders cynically if Danaë's Delumine will still hold a place for him, if she'll continue in the same manner of quiet tolerance as her father, or rearrange and remake her inheritance like so many children do when given freedom for the first time. Some go mad with it, dismantling everything that came before them in the name of 'independence,' but he has no reason to think this spider-legged daughter might do so or be any less sensible than her predecessor. She's only young, he thinks, her youth and inexperience putting her more at risk of being influenced by emotions - presumably more so than he should be - and the ambitious, angry minds that always hover around centers of power, but that's all the more reason he should be ready to step close, not shrink away. She needs support, people she can rely on and give some of the weight of her new responsibilities, not distrust or dismissal, not misplaced offense.
Ashamed of himself, he silences the negative thoughts and looks at the mare more closely, appraising, softening at the red and the white of her coat, the hollow, spiral horn curling away from her delicate brow, reminiscent of her mother's, but less imposing, though maybe only because he hasn't yet felt its sharpness against his skin.
Would Thana leave too? He wonders, and he's suddenly cognizant of how alone this young woman must feel, shouldered with an entire kingdom and abandoned as lightly as anyone else. He bows his head. "Danaë, I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to introduce myself. I'm Willfur, and I'm very pleased to meet you at last." Now his voice rings with sincerity. "I sometimes lose track of myself, but I hope to be an asset to you and the Court. If there's anything I can do for you, don't hesitate to ask. I'm happy to help in any way that I can."
Posted by: August - 12-24-2020, 10:31 PM - Forum: Archives
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Like any true Denoctian, he waits until nightfall to come to the beach.
That meant it is fairly late and the sand is cooling beneath his hooves as he wanders the stalls. Many of younger children have been taken off to bed, and many of the older are wobbly with stolen wine. The breeze off the ocean is pleasantly cool, and all around the market dragons race like streams of fireworks.
It’s the Night Court at its best, all laughter and ocean and the stars obscured by bonfire smoke. Moonlight trembles in a column on the sea. August has nowhere particular in mind, so he starts by joining a small line for drinks.
“August,” he hears from over his shoulder. “it’s such a pleasure to see you.” When he turns, it’s into a smile vaguely reminiscent of a crocodile’s below a pair of cornflower blue eyes. The chestnut mare looks both satisfied and an expectant in a way only the lifelong wealthy could pull off.
He knows he should say the pleasure is mine, and aren’t you looking well. She had always been a very generous patron of the Scarab (and not always willingly), and because of that he had always been extremely…complementary. Instead, he gives her a blithe smile and a slow blink of fine pale lashes. “Sirena,” he says, not reaching for the cheek she offers as though for a kiss. “It’s been a long time. Did you ever tell Henry about how you spent his inheritance?”
As he’d hoped, her expression slips to shocked offense, and she gives him a withering look before turning to sashay down the beach. The palomino only watches her long enough to make sure she is gone before turning back, right into another set of blue eyes. His smile sharpens, turning real. “Bexley Briar. Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS DANCE OUT OF YOUR SKIN
INTO ANOTHER SONG NOT QUITE ABOUT HEROES,
BUT STILL A SONG WHERE YOU CAN LIFT THE SPEAR
AND SAY "YES" AS IT FLASHES."
As the city grows in the distance, a bright spot against the black sea of the foothills and the dark rock of the mountain range, he thinks how he has not seen it since before he was Warden, just after the death of Raum. He had been sharper, then, with his magic beating like bird's wings in his chest, drumming on the inside of his ribs like a thing knocking, trying to claw its way out of the pit of him.
He had known, then, what he does not know now: that he can take his sharp edges and grind them away if he wants, smooth his body down like a river rock, shining and red in the palm. He hadn't wanted to, then, and now, when he does, when he has been losing sleep for weeks because he cannot figure out how to stretch into his new shape, it seems like some great secret, always perched just behind the back of his head.
He is gritting his teeth as he lands just outside the heavy wood door of the city gate and, though it is open, it leers down at him like a dragon, mouth ringed with teeth set in gem-speckled gums. There is an empty study room in the library, reclaimed by the crowd. Last week he carried his single bed of pillows and his lone candle and his stacks of hastily scrawled notes to another empty room in the court proper, a parlor off the emissary's office that is, on its own, at least three times the size. He had not realized until he set it out again that the candle smells like pine and honey.
Andras steps through the tall gate and climbs the hill toward the citadel, every line drawn in bold, grim strokes. At the Citadel's doors, he is asked, "You are the new Emissary from Dawn?" and he nods, a short duck of his head before it is tucked back into his chest.
“Andras. Just here to see the sovereign,” Andras half-mumbles, half sighs against his own skin. There is a prolonged, punctuated silence as he is led through the door and asked to wait. In the hall, with its vaulted ceiling and its tall, blue-gray structure, he must look very small. A black speck on the carpet. An ant in the home of a lion. He grits his teeth tighter, and waits.
I felt too old to be searching for seashells, too indifferent to play volleyball, and too proud to make a castle of sand that would only be washed away come high tide. I was at the beach that day anyway because it felt good, sometimes, to be around my kind. All of us together like this, strangers and old friends, tourists and locals, it made me feel… well, the closest thing to faith. Or what I thought faith must feel like. There was something deeply beautiful in the way all our lives overlapped, if only for a day. It was a reminder that we were kindred in a way that ran deeper than blood.
But maybe that’s all lofty talkaround, soulful fluff to avoid the simple admission that sometimes, despite everything I had, everyone I knew and loved, I got lonely. But it wasn’t a bad thing. I think, sometimes, loneliness is how you know you’re really alive. Otherwise you might as well be dreaming, or dead. (I really, really hope there’s no loneliness in death)
I walked down the beach, stopping here and there to say hi to friends. I jumped into the waves often, and on occasion stopped in my tracks to admire a nice shell; there were many treasures exposed by the tide, but I always left them for someone else who might treasure it more. At one point I found a particularly nice sand dollar, which I picked up only temporarily. It was something to twirl around with my telekinesis while my mind wandered to the sound of the waves.
I saw the young prince as I was emerging from the sea. The sun was behind me; its afternoon glow warmed the rich browns of his skin. I didn’t know who he was for sure... but I immediately had my suspicions, and I walked toward him with the notion of confirming them. There was something in the way he walked, something other that whispered to me of inner worlds and rich mysteries, reminded me of the sun kind and his stories. It was in his nose, too, and the big-hearted way he looked at things. I was sure he had no idea he wore that look, no idea that with a single glance I knew he was torn between one place and another, and another, and another. He was overflowing. I knew what that was like.
And then, of course, there were the tattoos. I always found tattoos easier to look at than people themselves. Somehow it felt less personal to look at someone’s skin when it told a tale… though really it was more. I loved tattoos on others, was immediately and deeply intrigued by them, but I would never want one for myself. The best stories were the ones nobody else could see. I carried those with me on the inside, packed them tightly together behind my ribcage. I had always been a private and secretive child. Nobody realized it was because I was selfish, not even (for a very long while) myself.
I wanted to rush up to him and ask if he was Orestes’ boy, and where did his father go, and why? But I was a year older than the colt. At that time in our lives, put in other words, I was twice his age. I approached him with a quiet dignity that contradicted the restless excitement in my eyes. I was not so afraid of putting my heart on display; I wore my contradictions on my shoulders. Yet they only suggested that there was more to uncover, more to be told. I diverged not in two directions, but many.
“Hey you! Catch!” I tossed him the sand dollar I had found earlier. It felt like asking a question, and the answer would lie in whether he caught it or not.
