There is a whisper of flowers in my lungs. I can feel them falling into my blood like oxygen, can feel them being carried to the deepest parts of me. And I know, I know that they will rot before they ever get there.

I do not know why that makes me sad.

In the gloaming darkness between the fires, the night feels like a fractured thing around her, like a bone half-alive tossed into the flames. As Isolt turns into the darkness she can hear it breaking, can see the cracks of it deepening.

The horses with their eyes like moons tell her it means something, as they press around her. And she wonders how they can bare it, this mockery of thin veils and overlapping worlds, the sacrifice of one thing to another for a false religion. And still she stands there as a young-god before them, when they wrap her in incense and roll their rosemary and their eggs in patterns down her skin.

”For cleansing,” they whispered to her. Isolt had not asked for their names, or for the meaning of the ritual they had offered to her like priests offering praises to their god. She had only watched them with her weighted gaze like a wolf might watch the owl gliding just out of reach in the trees.

But her skin had trembled when they made the first pass around her throat, like something in her was cringing away.

She did not tell them it was useless, trying to purify a monster. She made no effort to let them see how it would not work (it would never work, not for a thing made in magic and violence. They could not take apart the two things integral to her soul.) But still she watches them with her eyes like rubies lit up by the flames. And there is a part of her, below the trembling monster in her skin, that is taking the hope fluttering in her lungs between its teeth.

They dance in circles around her, the moon-eyed horses, weaving patterns in smoke and in the egg pressed to her skin that they say will protect her from the darkness she sees. They offer prayers to their god (the wrong god, she thinks) that the egg will take up whatever darkness they think they see trapped in her skin (which she knows is not trapped there, but is the very thing that holds her together.) Still she watches them make pass after pass after pass, and feels that monster in her skin trembling, and the smoke turning acidic in her lungs, and her blood beginning to boil like a demon they did not mean to awaken but oh, they are.

It is a dangerous thing, for them to stand so close to her as the wave of rot rises higher and higher in the ocean of her body. She wonders how they do not see the way her horn turns hungry, how they do not understand the violence of her tail lashing against her own legs. And when they lead her to the bowl of water and break the egg into it, when they smile and tell her ”go in peace now,” she wonders how they could be so foolish to believe it a good thing, their ritual that did not work.

She does not smile at them. She does not hear their whispers, or step away so that the next might be “cleansed”.

She only leans closer to the bowl of water, and stares, and stares, and stares —

@lucinda
"wilting // blooming"

I feel like the fires tonight, as dawn creeps closer and chokes them out with fistfuls of sand thrown onto the coals instead of wood. As their flames burn lower, and lower, and lower, but nonetheless hungry. Nonetheless burning.

I feel like the fires —

waiting to be fed.

he night has slipped into an echo of bonfires that had earlier reached brightly into the sky. The embers of them glow hungrily in their pits, staring out like a monster of eyes and teeth begging to be fed. But those teeth grow duller, and their eyes less bright, as one by one of them are starved.

Somewhere the sun is waiting to rise.

Somehow the night is holding on a little longer.

And Isolt wonders if this was how Caligo felt, when her rage kept the sun from rising all those years ago. She wonders if one day she could be angry enough to smother even the sun.

She thinks she might.

As the flames burn lower and the smoke weeping off of them thickens, Isolt wanders. Around and around the dying flames laid out in a pattern she does not try to decipher, pausing to stare into the blinking coals of each one and to blink back at them. They seem strangely alive to her — dying things who’s death is drawing near, who’s death she can sense the same way she can sense a bleeding hare in the forest.

And she does not save them. Perhaps it is because she had seen the sorrow in her sister’s eye, when young and old tree-gods alike had been sacrificed to the flames. Maybe it is only because Isolt had never been made for the saving of things, not even a hungry fire that reminds her a little bit of herself.

But she cannot shake the feeling that she is searching for something as she turns from one fire to the next. Something that goes below the magic coiled in her belly, that runs in currents beneath the wave of anger that festers like a rot-filled river through her heart. It feels like a thing she has seen in glimpses in her twin’s eyes, that had always made her look too long and too hard, as if by looking hard enough she might begin to see the marrow of it.

So back and forth across the field she walks, with her tail blade carving out shapes into the beaten earth behind her (shapes that might have shown her the answer, had she turned back to look at them in the same way she looked at the sorrow in Danaë’s eyes.) And each fire only makes that broken feeling in her chest grow wider and wider like a ravine splitting open. Her heart feels like an overripe berry splitting against her twin’s lips. And still she searches, as her lungs turn to flower petals hung up to dry and the roots of them press against her bones. Still that sorrow she does not know how to name mourns when she cannot find the sickness carving away pieces of her.

But when she falls to her knees before the last fire, she thinks she has found it.

It is carved there in the shape of a unicorn in the embers, its glowing red body broken up only by the white ash of the coals in a pattern she wishes she did not recognize.

katerina

—
« watch the soft blush seep through her skin / like an indolent sigh. in her looking-glass / my red lips part as though I want to speak. »

hat strange dreams I've been having. Last night I thought I was someone else entirely; someone, even, from a different world. When I woke up—in the dream, that is—there was something staring straight back at me. A creature with an eye which had more colors than any rainbow or opal I had ever seen and a pupil like a long cut, like a mortal wound, and I knew, as purely as Kassandra would have, that I was about to—

My quill splits. A huge web of ink spills onto the parchment, swallowing up my careful writing; before I can even react with a gasp the first part of my entry is gone, and I am now staring at an abyss that was meant to be a book.

“Gods,” I whisper, voice tight with frustration. My mouth twists. One of the library’s little helpers overhears me with his satellite ears. I mouth sorry to his scowling canine face.  After a few excruciatingly long moments, he turns his back to me and bounds away. A breath, held so long it was starting to hurt, finally rushes out of me. 

If anything, I’m thankful that the library is relatively empty. It’s still quite early in the morning; when I walked here from the city just a half hour ago, the sky was still dark, and the fields still rolled with eggshell blue fog. It’s only me and the bookkeepers as far as I can see. And even if they glare at me, it’s not quite the same as being witnessed by other Deluminians. 

I sit up, try to organize my table, and toss the splintered quill to one side. It’s I hold the journal in the air sideways, until ink rolls down the page and drips onto a bit of scrap paper I was smart enough to bring with me. I watch the bead fall: a little jewel of glossy black, its round edges catching the light. When it hits the parchment, it spiders out into a long, dark Rorschach blot.

I stare at it in silence. I swear, inside the patterned ink, I can see that rainbow eye looking back at me.

The Regent thought he might like Delumine's gardens more than the castle, she'd said as much on first delivering him to the Library, but there's always been something hauntingly beautiful about medieval era constructions to the mule. He's fascinated by them, by their extreme contrasts, how these massive fortresses of apparently plain, roughly cut stone held together by crude cement so often hide the most extravagantly rich and decorated interiors, much the same as later renaissance pirates cannily buried their priceless treasures on unassuming spits of sandbar in the middle of the ocean.

Maybe it's that he fancies himself a bit of a castle that way, with all his valuable assets hidden behind a blocky face and comically long ears. Whatever the reason, he does enjoy the castle, walking leisurely up and down the long corridors, occasionally pausing to inspect a painting or a carving, to admire the tenacity of the creeping ivy vines that wriggle their way into ever-widening cracks in the mortar.

He likes the way sunlight spears into the loftily roofed chambers in visible rods of brilliance that shimmer with motes of dust as he passes and wonders idly if any original panes of stained glass might still be in tact somewhere among the outer rooms. That would be lovely to see, he thinks. So often these fragile relics deteriorate to nothing, either through violence or simply the faults of long outdated crafting methods.

As he wanders, Willfur's large, narrow hooves ring on the cobble floor, not by force, but weight, and not so loud as to be disturbing, but with enough noise to gently remind the otherwise silent ruins that they are not yet dead and abandoned.



"Speaking."

khier

ome days, a sense of deja vu overcomes Khier when going about mundane tasks. He might be eating, or preparing for bed, or walking down he street when a scent, or sight, or shadow transports him from the present to the past. He supposes the experience does not belong to him, but to Chara. One day, in the market, they had passed by a fruit vendor. She had stopped him. Those! Those are my favorite! and Khier purchased a basket of pomegranates. 

He had hated the flavor, and the texture of the seeds on his tongue. They were sticking between his teeth, which he found irritable and overall unpleasant. But Chara—who feels, sometimes, through him—could not have been more pleased. Khier, why do you not find more things like pomegranates in your life to love? 

When she asked him, he could not think of his favorite fruit. On St. Foxglove they had gruel more often than fresh produce, and his sense of taste had been numbed by it. There were other deck boys who, each night in the hammocks, would fantasize about the food they would find on the next island. Never Khier, who preferred bland foods. Never Khier. 

Until Chara, who has an appetite for bold, exotic flavors. From where I was raised, she says to him now, as he examines the goods in the market of Delumine. Khier prefers the market of his hometown to that of the other Courts, even Denocte. It is humble, and quiet, and anyways—he feels at ease as he visits the early morning farmer’s market, and listens to Chara as she demands certain purchases. That honey! Oh, get that! 

Khier laughs under his breath as he goes, resisting the urge to speak to her aloud. He pauses, using his height to stare over the heads of other citizens as they browse the wares. He is looking for something very specific, after placing the honey in the basket—

Yes. They are difficult to find, but a foreign salesmen has recently brought in a shipment of more exotic foods, from some tropical climate. 

Fruit of the angels? Chara’s voice chimes excitedly. The amulet, resting at the hollow of his throat, nearly burns him as he cuts through the crowd. “I think they’re just called papayas, Chara,” Khier comments under his breath. 

He knows the story, of course—he knows how she had once shared them with her mother, what seemed like an eternity ago. They had been a favorite between them, and Chara had told him it was her father who convinced the near-goddess the fruit could be better than ambrosia. Khier smiles but that smile disappears, suddenly, when he nears the stand to see the mare standing over the fruits. 

Khier cannot remember a time when Chara had gone completely silent. She exists as a warmth in the back of his mind, a constant presence akin to light. She feels, to him, as the sun does on a late summer day. And for a moment, she conceals herself from him. She is there, loud and present and bright, and then—cold and empty and uncertain.

That’s my mother, she says, and Khier cannot find the words. She urges him forward and so he steps, but neither of them are prepared for the meeting. He stands beside her as if waiting for an opportunity to purchase the fruit. 

He clears his throat from behind her. “Have you—have you ever heard them called the fruit of the angels?” Khier asks, shakily. 

My father—my father called them that. A joke, because they weren’t the fruit of the gods. 


Some days, the deja vu creates a life of its own. Some days, he cannot escape it, even if he had wanted to. 

khier

here is an old woman I visit every few days who sits in the city gardens. I have never spoken with her, but her name is Thistle, and I know this because there are days when a young man visits her and they walk through the gardens of Delumine side-by-side. I remember it because I have heard it spoken and have trouble believing she is named after a weed; the fact sits strangely with me. I have questions, but I do not have the courage to ask her about them. I have had the opportunity to speak with her on a number of occasions, and the young man is not always there; but for whatever reason I have found my tongue tied or my legs weak. I think it is because she reminds me of my grandmother, who raised me with more stability than my mother ever could. My grandmother had a name I never spoke; I called her Oma. 

I remember her and I remember the smell of bread baking. I remember the nights my mother did not come home, but Oma did, to feed or bathe me as a young boy. I remember how she had been married, once, to a man who died in the war. She had clear blue eyes and a disposition both soft and hard. 

Thistle, in any respect, reminds me of Oma. It is the way she speaks to the young man, I think. I did not mean to overhear them that first day as they walked; but I did; and now I visit her every few days in the gardens. I busy myself with reading, or toss a stick for True. I have made it a routine and I am observant enough to recognize there are a number of individuals who frequent the gardens at the same time as Thistle and I. There is the man who smokes a cigar each afternoon by the roses, and the young girl who carries a satchel of books home from the library. There is a woman who wears a red scarf and busily walks along the various trails before leaving in as much of a hurry. There is the older gentlemen who sits by the fountain and reads. There is an artist that I see occasionally, but often enough that their presence is missed when they are not there. They paint. 

And anyways, it is not so strange, I think, to have a routine of walking through the gardens with True at the exact same time Thistle walks with the young man. I am often close enough to hear the nature of their conversations. She asks him, sometimes, how things are going with a girl named Sable. There are weeks the relationship goes well, and there are weeks it seems on the verge of failure. She asks him what he is currently studying, and he tells her in an animated way. Then he will ask what she has been doing, and Thistle will always discuss a book or a poem or the sunset from the night before. Simple things, that Chara loves, and sometimes Chara will tell me stories. I did not have a grandmother, she tells me. My mother was nearly a goddess. But if I had had a grandmother—I would have wanted it to be a woman like Thistle. 

Today is no different, I think, except Thistle is not there, and neither is the young man. I find myself taken aback, and wait. I find a stick and toss it back and forth on a patch of nicely manicured grass for True, who runs excitedly after. Occasionally he returns it. Occasionally he breaks it, and I am forced to find another adequate stick. This distracts me, until the sun begins to set and Thistle does not arrive.

The young man, however, does. He does, and he paces back and forth in front of the statue where they have often met. Then he leaves and I find the lack of information unbearable.

Perhaps she is only sick, Chara suggests, but my stomach is sinking and I do not respond. I begin to walk through the intricate garden instead, hiding between hedges and trees. True pads alongside me until I dip into an alcove of intertwined trees. I walk further and pause only when I reach a statue of a globe. I stand for a moment and attempt to catalogue the islands I see; but I quickly realize the statue is fantastical, with only Novus present. I close my eyes but realize, after a moment, I am no longer alone. I turn toward them and nearly smile. Nearly. 

“This is my secret spot,” I admit, with a candidness that is both playful and severe. True barks, and shatters the silence of the garden laid beneath a blanket of dusk. 

khier

have always tried to get lost. When I began to sail on the St. Foxglove as a deck boy, wherever we stopped I would wander. From the ship, to the shore, to the inland beyond. They warned me against it. They said to walk only with soldiers. There were boys like me who ran errands aboard the ship, cleaned quarters, and were assigned to a sailor that went missing in the woods of the strange islands we visited. 

Boys who wandered off as silhouettes against the trees, brushing back untouched foliage, to never return. The sailors and soldiers made stories, of course, of demons and magic that wooed the boys away. Astrid once wrote me of a dream she had on an island with red sands every night they were docked there. She wrote me the dream was the same song, and the song was sung by a woman as red as the sands. She could never remember the words; but when she awoke she hummed the tune, wordlessly, eerily, months after they left.

These stories never inspired fear in me. I know they should have. I know I should have been more careful. I should have been more attentive to my solitude; more determined to go only with a friend. I could not, however. Try as I may, the more inhospitable the island the more called I was to venture forth alone. I love the silences. I think it stems from never having had silence as a boy, except at night; and even then my homeland had been so small I could hear the neighbor snore. And so, when I had the freedom I took, and took, and took. 

This is no different. 

The only difference is the land seems so much larger. It is, I imagine, because this is no island. This is no easily conquerable bit of territory. It is a country; a continent. I have been here only long enough to join a Court; to understand the territories. I have not been here long enough to explore, to understand. 

I begin with the Viride.

(And, I wonder, if I will not spend the rest of my time here in the woods outside of Delumine). 

The trees before me are larger than any I have ever seen. They completely obscure the sky; a multitude of boughs and needles. Coniferous, I heard a sailor once describe trees of smaller stature on an island where the wolves howled each and every night. Coniferous. As I walk among them, pinecones break underfoot. There is fog in the air; surreal. The light strains weakly through it and dissipates evenly throughout the too-tall trees. I cannot see far down the path, but do not mind. There is an aura of mystery I enjoy. The woods, however, seem strangely silent. There are no birds; no bright, high calls. Only the whirr and hum of insects and the sudden bright blights of fireflies. The sun is setting. The air is turning red. 

I walk until I can no longer. There is a fallen tree in the deer trail I had been following and I can go no further. Either direction I glance the trunk stretches endlessly, out of sight. True, who has been wandering, finds me again and together we turn around. The necklace in the hollow of my throat is warm, warm, warm, and Chara's thoughts are alight with laughter. 

It occurs to me, suddenly, the trail is gone behind me as well. 

khier

have never seen a mountain like this, breaking against the sky in the middle distance. It dominates the plain as an omnipresent silhouette, made distinctive in the bright spring sun. The sky, clear and cloudless, offers no competition for the peak. Effortlessly, breathtakingly, the mountain cuts the horizon with its clarity. I have seen mountains, before. I have climbed them, even. 

But never have I stood in the shadow of a mountain from miles away and watched it from the plains beneath. I feel small; insignificant, even, as True bounds thoughtlessly through the tall grass. As he breaks it, I can smell the fresh green scent and upturned earth. The feeling is nearly surreal. It takes me too long to realize this is because of the sky’s clearness, and the vast space before me. I am accustomed to islands; cramped spaces; the knowledge that if he walks far enough, I will hit the ocean. Here, it feels as if I could walk for days and never meet the water. 

Something new to dream of, Chara whispers to me. The necklace rests in the hollow of my throat; it is a warm, constant heartbeat there. 

I smile. But there are no witnesses, besides True. He appears to be eating something disgusting, snuffing through the grass. For that reason, I cannot count him as a witness either. Chara laughs in my mind and I laugh aloud, and continue to walk.

I might have continued to marvel at the mountain, if not distracted suddenly by the a copse of trees nearby. There are wildflowers underfoot, and in the copse of trees the sky becomes obscured by the mottled, vibrant leaves. The copse is deep enough, profound enough, I am covered in darkness. True begins to bark, hackles raised. “Quit it,” I snap; unfortunately, he has never been the most biddable companion, and my command is easily ignored. 

I groan under my throat and continue walking. “Hello?” I think I catch a glimpse of motion through the leaves and boughs. “Ignore him. He has no manners.” I smile, stepping forward. 

I wonder, says Chara. Where he gets that.