She is shivering in a pit dug by the weight and heft of her body, the grit turned to mud around her, cold night water stinging at her eyes and filling her ears with bubbling. She had dunked her head to clear her thoughts but still the nightmares gripped her, the visions of fire and metal bending outwards from within, bursting with the horrific smell of sulfur. She sees rain in the night but it is blood and severed limbs, organs, ash, and pulverized bone-- it looks so like snow, but it is summer. It is summer?

it is summer, Oculos confirms, sitting nearby. She had been speaking aloud without realizing it. The hound keeps a careful watch on his companion, as he always has; from long nights spent dodging thrashing hooves on silverite silk sheets to snapping at her heels to propel her through the hot death clutch of the desert. Kassandra collapsed in the humid blanket of a summer night on a beach is nothing to him. She seems to be coming out of it, anyway, because her eyes have righted themselves in their sockets and she has unconsciously wiped the spittle from her jaw.

Kassandra swallows hard. Some distance at her back the bonfires burn into the dark, clawing white-hot scrapes at the sky and at the back of her eyelids, but she cannot bring herself to turn and look at them, let alone go to them. Her visions are terrors of the past, the weight of her crimes, all set against the backdrop of the stars spinning in the atmosphere above. These scenes sunder her and leave her with acrid smoke at the back of her throat, but by now, they are familiar-- ghosts with talons raking deep lines across her brain. The truly horrific ones are the unknown, the mysteries; jumbles messages with no sender or a return address that leave her heaving and petrified because somewhere at the edges of her mind there is a pulse, a beat, a liturgy pleading with her to understand and deliver, but she can’t, she can’t, she can’t, and somewhere, someone with a higher power than she can do nothing but bow their head in disappointment and prepare another sequence of images to drop into the muddied puddle of her consciousness and try again.

Kassandra’s psyche is a fragile and crystalline pool and these visions plop in and fall deep; the ripples are cutting shards of glass.

A sigh shakes her midnight form and sets the galaxies stitched into her pelt to dancing. The heat of the moment has passed and now a chill is setting in, despite the warm seasonal temperatures.

stand up out of the wet sand, Oculos says, a suggestion hidden under a command, move around. You’ll come back to yourself faster.

Kassandra lays her tired head down, neck long against the beach. “I suppose I must look rather silly,” she says, quiet, hoarse, and shaky, “sitting out here by myself in the muck.”

Oculos’ long face splits in a wry smile. when have we ever cared?

Humming a note in agreement, Kas pushes herself to stand. The sand lining her underbelly and legs chafes a bit but it feels good to be present. “I’m older now, Ocky,” she states, matter-of-fact and half sorrowful. “I’m supposed to be dignified, not the same, screaming babe locked in the tower.”

don’t you dare say it’s like you never left, Oculos growls. His voice is a mocking imitation of hers. none of this shit is a metaphor, Kas. Stand up and move on, like always.

“Hm. Like always.” There is fear there, the idea that these abhorrent hallucinations will be her forever. It makes her stomach ache, the black pit in her gut mirroring the spaces between the stars. She turns her eyes there, seeking, pleading.

Her Borzoi’s galaxy mottled fur is rustled by a gentle night breeze as he sits silently beside her.

@AZRAEL | "kass speech" | oculos speech | hmm

august

—
« “Remember, pain is not a test. Knowledge is not enough.”
»

t reminds him, a little, of the old days. 

Waking when dawn is just a suggestion at the horizon, braiding back his hair in the semidark. For most of his life, he’d go for a run this time of day, ending at the marketplace to buy bread from Talon and take it back to the Scarab. Then he would train with Aghavni, then go over the days’ duties with Charon - 

He’s missed the routine. 

Today, of course, is not quite like those days, and there is a flutter of nerves in his stomach, a tension in his shoulders, as he buckles on his sword and goes to the palace. 

He’s grateful it’s early, so there is not much of a crowd. Of course there are still some curious to see the kingdom’s princess battle - well, whoever they think he is - but August has eyes for none of them; he only bends his muzzle to his knee in a bow to Morr, then straightens to face his opponent. 

Oh, and that makes him feel old - the shine of her eyes, the youth of her body, the point of her horn, it all reminds him of training with another unicorn, years ago, when they were both only children with all the arrogance and determination that came with it. 

August nods at Aspara, a faint smile on his face, and unbuckles his sword before carefully placing it to the side (maybe it was silly to bring it at all, but he believes there is a certain decorum to such things, and knows the importance of appearances - even if they’re just for show.) He steps forward, then, eyeing the terrain (not much to see - level, well-trodden dirt near the base of the stairs before the palace) before raising his gaze to his opponent. 

“Ladies first,” he says. 

tagged
@Sirius

credit
1 / 2

This is a place not just for watching, but listening too. And that is just what Tenebrae does as he stands and hears the Island tell her tale from the stone lips of a nearby statue.


The sound of her voice, this statue girl, if of lands being born and reborn. It is a rumbling that reaches into his bones and rattles out from them the truth of all he is. His own curious legend and all the ways he has made it normal and present and mundane. 


He listens and as he does, he wonders how the island has made her look. She sounds so much like a woman, like any girl with skin soft and warm. But nothing but the grass is soft here. All around the windswept hills that roll up into the sky and down into the sea are statues that laugh like children and watch like eagles. Still his lips are warm with the graze of stone across his lips as he touched the cheek of a statue and noted that it was not soft and supple as skin should be. 


Stones ring like stars and twinkle as diamonds when his toes catch upon them. They are cymbals in the symphony of this island’s unravelling story. Their sound, ricocheting between the sleepy, idyllic valleys and rising up to be lost into the sky, begs him to listen. They tell him not to heed the stories he hears, but Tenebrae already knows that. Tell me something new, he might say to them in turn, but already they are silent, their song lost and he does not touch them again, but lets them rest, buried in the earth.


He tilts his head as another comes, they are not heavy like the statues that move around them. The stranger’s footfalls are light, weightless, like a bird. The monk listens and his shadows see. They push toward the newcomer and press their inky black questions against his skin, who are you? they ask, what are you? For they do not trust anything in this strange place where nothing is as they eye would have you believe. But maybe, maybe, that is where the monk, at last, will not miss his taken sight.

tagged
@Morrighan

credit
1 / 2

The beach is moonsoaked. Silver lies upon the top of the sea and shines like diamond light over the crowns of all those who drift along the beach. Though the searches for trinkets and shells was a daytime activity, still there are those who come and pick their way through the dark, night-painted, objects littering the beach. They hold them up to firelight and let the flames reveal their identities. 


Tenebrae listens to them all. The sounds of children blowing into shells that cry out like ships at sea. It is a mythological noise, he theinks. One that belongs between the leaves of leatherbound books and upon the tongues of those who gather round the logfires upon the sand. He has heard their stories too, those of ghosts and gods, mermaids and kelpies. 


Kelpies. 


He is looking out to where he hears the sea sigh. He looks, even with his unseeing eyes, like a man yearning. He should look more like a monk, he thinks. 


Maybe Morrighan finds her new Regent like this, caught by the seduction of a sea he cannot see. Though he listens to it, as a mermaid who has lost her tail and found herself landlocked with legs she can barely walk upon. He is learning how to be a man blind. The Disciple and Regent is learning what it is to live on without his sight. The pulse of grief twists in his breast, throbbing like needle pricks. Boudika and Elena have taught him well, to know what grief is, how it stings, how it weighs one down…


Morrighan comes. He knows the way she breathes, the way her body parts the air and her feet touch the ground. Tenebrae has already learned the song of her feet upon the earth, the rhythm of her footfalls. The smoke that clings to her skin, a whisper of fire beneath her skin, plays across his tongue and she smiles, warmed by the embers of her. She is a glow he might always turn to. “Morr,” the monk welcomes and reaches his muzzle towards her (where she parts the air with her breath, her body). 


“I am proud of you,” her Regent murmurs, low and warm as whiskey. And he is proud of her, it is there in his moonlit smile that tips up small (for neither of them have ever enjoyed grand gestures). “I hope you will find quiet time too, tonight.” For heavy is the crown, Tenebrae thinks.

The summer is beautiful, a perfect time to actually leave the court interior and wander among the meadow that houses many an herb.

The sun beats down on a striped body, small and dainty as Eirene makes her way through the taller grasses, small hooves picking up small clods of dirt with her steps as she keeps a keen eye out. There's much to learn about what grows where, and while she should be sticking herself into the court itself . . . well. At the moment, her collection begs to be grown, in a literal sense. Gathering the seeds and flowers of what she needs will benefit her and the Court, if she's kept as a medic. So far, it's been mostly learning faces, though she's yet to actually introduce herself to anyone.

The zorse has heard the name Ipomoea a lot, and the relation of a title -- Sovereign. It's an unusual one, but she's only ever been around Elders and disciples, a herd equipped to heal, not to rule over a land. They had all been travelers, gathering their herbs and helping the actual herds they came across, lending healing hands and soft words, potent potions and salves to cure the ailed. Eirene learned much from them, as much as potentially possible, anyway. Leaving had been a way to ensure she still grew her skills, developed them in ways that the old herd had only ever dreamed off.

Hooves pause, and she becomes aware that she's wandered a bit far into the grasses, her mind wandering off to the past and leaving her body to simply run on an auto-pilot. Not the best idea, all things considered. She's learned a lot of the world on her own, and that most of said world had short tempers and very sharp teeth if they were so inclined to use them as well as their sharp tongues. Soft as she is, she has also learned that such things are merely how the world works, and to not let them anchor her free floating spirit down. Perhaps that's why she's met so many patients with short words and been able to walk away with a smile on her face.

Shifting her weight, Eirene tilts her horned head downward toward a small herb as her mind wanders on the past, nosing against a leaf and trying to identify the smell before her ears flick back, catching sound of . . . something. Lifting her head up again, she looks much like a zebra, eyes roaming and ears flicking back and forth, listening, before once again dropping down. Carefully, she uses her telekinesis to pick the herb -- roots and all -- before stashing it into a satchel that's already fit to burst with greenery and tangled roots. The other satchel against her hip seems to just clink and clank when she walks, the tinkle of glass gently bouncing off of each other.

Carefully, Eirene makes her way through the grasses and flowers, on the hunt for yet another plant if she can find it. It isn't until she's nearly nose deep in the dirt that she hears movement, and she lifts her head with a flick of her mane, antlers gleaming in the light and --- "Hello?" a soft voice parting her lips.

and those gardens became a dark carnival of unseen dangers, a bottomless sea of unspeakable grotesqueries.

Denocte’s stories are nothing like the one she’s found buried in the old librarian's heart. There are no Eira in the stories here, no deathless, no unicorns running between the birch like ghosts. But when the fire crackles with a bit of magic and shoots stars from the embers she finds herself watching the brightness instead of a gull picking at a crab in the distant tide. 
 
With her father beside her it is easy to see the wonder in the world instead of the hunger of it. 
 
The thunder left in the wake of the god’s rage, when he tossed his sword into the tide, found itself a new home in the belly of the sea. There all the whales, and sharks, and coral reefs started to eat away at the edges of the thunder. They ate, and ate, and ate until through their bodies, as they all died, the thunder spread until it was in every molecule of the sea. It was in the water-creatures and the sea-weeds. It was in the dolphin’s hearts as they crested over the waves like shooting stars. 
 
It is not its own rage that the sea roars with and if you put a conch shell to you ear and listen closely, and stay very quiet as it whispers, you might hear the story of how the rage of a god poisoned the whole sea: for the sea, back in the beginning of time, had wanted to be gentle.
 
The crowd falls silent as the story-teller tosses his last bit of magic into the fire. In their awed breaths Danaë cannot hear sorrow but wonder, magic instead of a heartbreak, rejoice instead of lament. And she wonders if this is what it means to be immortal, to be as made as the god in the story. She wonders if it means that someday every ounce of her rage, and hunger, and sleepy want of death, will infect the entire world. 
 
Beneath her cheek her father’s shoulder is warm, sun-warm even in the dead of night, and she leans hard enough against him that she can feel the bones of his shoulder meeting those of her jaw. “Do you think,” she whispers into his mane, “that someday a mortal will press their ears to a owl’s nest in a great pine and hear the story of me instead of the story of the tree?” And she thinks that there might be a terrible secret in some dark hole of her heart when the question does not make her feel sorrow, or lament. 
 
All she can feel is a rejoice that the forest (someday) would love her enough to hold some part of her, even a part as small as her sound, in a chewed out hole full of life. 
 
Because that is what she hears in the steady lub-dub of her father’s blood and magic when she presses her ear against his ribs. 


@Ipomoea

And star and I and wind and deer,
Are in the dark together,—near,

Danaë cannot hear the whisper of magic early evening’s story-teller told her to look for on the beach. If there is a whisper of Caligo caught in the conch shells littering the shore she cannot hear it beneath the roar of the waves and the howl of the wind. Echoes of that story are still lingering in her heart like the distant drums of war telling her that she must hurry, hurry, hurry. The sand still does not whisper when her walk grows faster, and faster, and faster until she is streaking across the shore (and it feels more like through than on). 

In the bellies of dead clam shells she can only see the glitter of pearls and dead caught stars bursting through the sand. Children make wishes on each of them as they press their lips in salted kisses to the dead sea creatures. The roaring sea and the howling wind carry away the words of the wishes so that she cannot catch them as she wanders between the clusters of children. But for each wish that lingers where the roar meets the howl she grows a ghost pipe in the pearl belly of a child’s treasure.  In each claw of a crab that’s already started to rot she grows an orchid that blooms towards the moon instead of dappled forest light. In a tree forgotten by both the forest and the sea a redwood seedling grows by inches instead of eons.
 
None of the small lives in the barrel of death catch her interest as she stalks the shoreline. She’s too lost in trying to catch the whispers in the sand, in the shells, in the moonlight gathering cool as star-water on her cheeks. One ear curls towards the children playing in her wake, straining to hear a whisper of the beauty, of the secret, she cannot understand. 
 
Danaë strains so hard that it starts to feel like hunger, and need, and wrath. 
 
And maybe that’s why, when she stops to lay her cheek against the weathered ribcage of a whale, nothing grows from the bones she rests her cheek again. Even when her hound races away from her game of gulls to lay her sandy nose against Danaë’s hock, not even a single moon-white rose grows. 
 
There is only hunger, only the roar of the sea and the howl of the wind, when she turns to look at the horse that joins her.



@any!