Somewhere in you there's a power with no name It can rise to meet the moment and burn like a flame
T
he oasis is the perfect place for me to study in quiet. I know that mom doesn’t like it when we wander off for very long, but the path to and from Vitae to our little cavern is probably one of the first things I ever remembered. Diana used it to sneak us off in the middle of the night often enough, and now the sun is bright and shining.
I’m nestled beneath a great reaching fern. Whatever sunlight manages to break through the upper canopy of palms gently dapples my skin through the fronds of the fern. I flip through the book of common desert flora and fauna, each page dedicated to a different plant or animal, with multiple pictures and a few short paragraphs.
I’m reading about Northern Ground Hornbills when I hear a soft rustling. My ears flick atop my head locating the sound. I glance up just as a Dorcas Gazelle comes into view, peeking cautiously through the underbrush as it makes its way toward the pool of water at the center of the oasis.
I wait for more to appear, but none do. It’s strange to see one of the small gazelle alone as they usually travel in large herds. I wonder if it got separated during an attack. I feel badly, watching it look around nervously without anyone to warn it of potential danger.
Flipping back through my book, close to the front, I find the page dedicated to my new little friend. I study the pictures for a long moment, but having a living example in front of me I figure this should be pretty easy. It helps that they’re also quite small; no more than foot tall at the shoulder.
So, I start to weave.
As my magic starts to twist and turn before me, the pictures of the gazelle float up from the page and dance around my head, almost as though they are running. Almost as though they are chasing each other. I have to be careful to stay quiet, or all of this will be in vain.
When my magic is done encompassing the images in the book, I glance up to find a second Dorcas Gazelle standing before me. My head hurts a little, but nothing too bad. It stands there for a moment too long without moving and I think maybe it didn’t come out quite right which worries me.
I take in a breath and quietly go, “Boo!” I don’t want to scare the first one, afterall. When it startles and bounds off in the direction of the oasis I smile a little and rest my head in the sand. Now to wait for them to notice each other.
Begin, always as new, the unattainable praising: think, the hero prolongs himself, even his falling was only a pretext for being, his latest rebirth.
T
he world I know passes by in fragments. I breach the surface of the sea in the claws of a dragon; and through those claws I watch the sea meet the land. Sand gives way to foliage; and foliage to thicker trees. A lake might wink brightly for a moment before we pass it by; and the trees might change in nature, from evergreens to thick cypresses. Then the water and the trees meet, and I am certain I must be dreaming or dead.
I have never seen a swamp; and the trunks that rise so serenely from the water seem an odd reflection, as if they are growing from the sky. But then Damascus’s reflection flashes, too, and I am uncertain of whether anything is real anymore. I might have slept; I might have died; but when I awake it is to be surrounded not by Damascus’s obsidian scales, but by men and women I do not recognize. All around me there are trees; the branches form rooms and walkways, and I placed on a gurney and carried through a canopy.
I catch snippets of conversation.
“The wounds are bad. Someone has tended them some; they’ve staunched the bleeding so that he will at least not die, but there’s the onset of infection—“
“I’m worried about sepsis.”
“How did he get here?”
“What do you mean, did you not see that dragon?”
“Who is he, anyway?”
“I have no idea, but—do you see the lacerations? I can’t believe he’s alive at all. Whatever bit him nearly severed the carotid on both sides. If they had, he’d be dead—“
“I don’t even know where to start. Stitches? We need to clean the wound—“
“Ah, we need more doctors here. I know Elena is Champion of Community, but we could really use her experience. Someone go find her.”
Then, quiet.
There is someone—a nurse, maybe—carefully cleaning the wounds on my neck and shoulder. Everything is stinging. Everything hurts too fiercely. I suppose—I suppose I had gotten too drunk, at the festival, and gone back to the sea after talking to Seraphina. I don’t know. I don’t remember. The last—
I don’t know how much time has passed.
My head aches.
Fuck, it stings.
“He definitely has a fever. He’s fighting infection.”
“I think he was attacked by one of the kelpies.”
“That’s all I can figure, from the bite wounds.”
Quiet again. But even the quiet seems loud. I am left alone.
I might have slept, laying on that table. There is a constant creaking of wood; and outside, cicadas are crying into what I assume is the darkness. But it is too difficult to think clearly, and when I raise my head with the intention of standing, the entire room pitches and falls. I drop my head back down and groan.
Let me die, I want to beg. But when I go to speak, I cannot say the words aloud.
I step through the door of the hospital and am hit with something I can only describe as what I imagine a crime scene would smell like if someone were trying to hide it. Cleaners, disinfectants, chemicals, all underlaid by the unmistakable iron tang of blood.
With every step I cannot help the grimace that turns down the corner of my lips, as the burned skin on my shoulder twists and pulls. I must admit that the hospital is cleaner than I anticipated, though the waiting room is overflowed with equines yet to be seen by anyone. Solterra is known for their battle hungry but certainly not their tender loving care.
As I move toward the counter to check myself in, a young assistant’s eyes pop open when she sees me. “You’re Amunemhet Sevetta!” I pause, as eyes turn to find me from all over the room. “Light be with you, miss. I’d like to check in to be seen for a burn. Job hazard,” I remember to smile graciously, the way Mother always reminded me to. It's a half-lie, but the details don't matter to her I know.
“Oh, no, come with me I’m sure we can find someone to take care of you immediately,” she smiles (almost bashfully, I’d say, if I were to consider it), as she motions for me to follow her into one wing of the hospital. I follow, to the exasperated groans and silent looks of annoyance from the room behind. Keep your head up, Amun. Do not slip from grace. “This really isn’t necessary, it’s only a burn. I can wait with everyone else.”
My parents would remind me to never turn down the things I am given, but to accept them with kindness and dignity. In my heart, it feels wrong to make others wait simply because I am of higher status than they are. “No, no, no. Please, make yourself comfortable in this room and I will go let one of the staff know you’re waiting.”
She leaves before I have the chance to argue, so I wander into the room to bide my time. The smell of chemicals and blood is already beginning to become commonplace to my senses, I cannot imagine what it must be like to work here all day in and day out, trying to keep up with the bodies piling in for care.
Posted by: Amunemhet - 11-16-2020, 11:57 AM - Forum: Archives
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it will fade and it will wither but gold, it will never
The world is barely woken, the sun just stealing a glimpse over the horizon. The eastern horizon is red, and gold, and most of the sky is still dark, dark, dark. I step outside the moment there is light in the sky, and the chill in the early morning air sends a shiver down my spine. Today, Father has asked me to oversee the forges in the city. To check up on business as it were.
There are a scarce number of bodies out and about this early, which is to be expected. Shops will just be opening to beat the midday heat as the sun rises, and the few I pass seem to be various merchants or a soldier or two. Somebody must keep the peace, while the throne sits empty up in the castle. I cannot help but wonder if we have disgraced Solis in some way, for him to allow us to be abandoned in such a way.
I pray that whoever next takes the crown will not bring us all to our knees.
Father says that, regardless of what is happening, business must continue. So here I am in the earliest hours, walking the sand-covered streets. Few look me in the eye as we pass. I wonder if they are afraid, or ashamed. I do not want them to be.
I turn a corner toward the first shop, when I find myself faced with strange company. A wild dog, sniffing along the street. When it hears me it stops, large ears standing tall upon its head. We stare each other down, neither making a sound. Neither doing so much else as breathing.
In the dark, it’s difficult to tell if it is a young female who has left her pack in search of a new home, or perhaps a sick or injured one that has wandered too far in search of a meal. In either case, I hope it is alone. I have seen, on more than one occasion, a pack of wild dogs feasting on some large meal in the desert. I never got close enough to see what it was they had killed, but all know that it is easy to go missing in the Mors.
pain. it is ever present. It is all consuming. It is the ghost that does not let me sleep. I fight it ever night. I rage against it every hour. Still it holds me tightly. Still it thinks me lover. Pain… it is something that will never go away.
She unfurls from her wings like an orange blossom opening. All fire and freshness. Something new. Something beautiful.
And if Dalmatia is beautiful then she is twice as tragic. Her heart is splayed on some cruel god’s table, pinned as a butterfly with a microscope atop. There is a probe that delves in over and over. That cold and cruel god, the one that never answered when she would pray and pray and pray until she screamed herself hoarse and felt blood leak from her bitten lips, would only press deeper an deeper, finding another hidden crevice to learn every day.
She grits her teeth as she rises, feeling the way her bones creak from the cold. Once, she was young, supple, beautiful. Like a young willow tree eager to face the wind. Those days are gone. Her youth is faded like a withering plant and the winter of her life has taken all but the very last breath from her.
And that breath is fire.
And that breath is revenge.
The once-Halcyon presses through the crowds as a bludgeon. People move or they are moved. She does not care for their glares. She hardly notices the way some step nearer, threatening.
But she is the bogeyman they whisper of.
She and Cicero both haunt the markets of Terrastella.
They are the monsters kept hidden from this delicate little world.
And she wears a sneer to wash away the innocence of sleep. Her brows draw down as she climbs ever higher. It is a small mercy, she thinks, that her wings were not clipped when she was put into the prison beneath the cliffs. Instead, they were left to rot and wither. She was left to rot and wither until Marisol saw fit to unleash her if only to unleash a bloodhound with fresh meat.
The reason matters so little.
In the months since her release, she has grown strong again. Ribs are not claws gripping for the stars. Her spine is no longer a xylophone for ghosts to dance their fingers upon. But her eyes. Oh her eyes are the same cold, dead green things as they stare from the beautiful tower over the fields of flowers.
Bodies. Broken hearts. Criminals to be. They all swarm like maggots in her once-beloved city. They are all just corpses waiting to be.
But they are not hers to make.
Dalmatia drags down air at last and unfurls piebald wings. They are larger up close and far more picturesque when reaching for the heavens. Even chained, even betrayed, even hungering, she is unbroken.
The world is made of water. Large puddles, small puddles, pound upon pound of water. It is endless and it is blue.
Juniper is made of water, too. Her heart is red and beating, heated when it should be cold and frigid. She stands in a field of blue that is not water but made of stalk and bud. Forget-me-not flowers, like every reminder that flashes in the night, wink up to her with their bright, shining eyes. They are pearls between her teeth when she pulls one, and then another and another from its stem.
They fall, crushed, to the ground. Their water seeps from their skin. Her water cannot join the earth so easily.
Juniper tries not to look to the couples that laugh. El Rey makes her laugh and he has been gone for months. Run. Leave. Flee. He’d forced her hand, losing himself in a bloodthirsty crowd before she could wrap herself about him and plant herself as a thorn in his side so that they might not part so quickly.
It infuriated her.
And yet...Juniper does not know how to stay angry. She only knows how to love and love and love as a cup brimming over. It spills into the world as rain from the clouds. And in her field of blue as day fades to dusk, she sighs and pulls another petal, praying Vespera will grant her mercy soon.
"He loves me, he loves me not…” She whispers into the bustling field of laughter and life and all that is not hers.
She stands as a pillar against corruption, a beacon of flame as her own fires dance around her. Even fresh from birth, Morrighan looks a force to be reckoned with. Hair crisp, short. Bram beside her. Every ounce the warrior she’s always been, the fighter that came from the womb screaming and kicking into a world ready to scream and kick louder, harder.
Alecto looks to her, to the blues and greens that reflect in those depthless eyes.
The burden of a nation lies on her shoulder, and he does not say that he knows the weight of people’s expectations better than he knows his own name.
Instead, the man of starlight and everything opposite Morr moves as a sailboat through the skies. There is only the smell of wood smoke. There is only the sound of laughter. And he stops at her right to look at The people she looks at. The night is still young and their journey was long, but Morrighan does not let fatigue show if she feels anything at all. Alecto knows better than to show anything more than a façade, too. So he tips an ear towards the Regent, respectful of the wolf that nips by her heels.
“Few were as sure-footed as you, Lady Regent, on their way into the shrouded North.” Golden eyes do not look left, glancing at a woman who surely frowns more deeply than even his own father knows how to. They remain on the people she guards, the fragile lives she strives to see fulfilled despite the fury and anger ripping at her soul every second of every day.
His silence is unsettling. But then again, so is hers.
“I’ve yet to properly meet you. Allow me then, please, to introduce myself. I am Alecto, fresh from the ships of far trading countries, come to your beautiful city in hopes of making...something of a home I suppose. If nothing else, a story would settle with me just fine, too.” The voice that sighs to her is gentle, licking like a flame along her neck, resting as a laughing ember in her ear.
And he is honest, oh so frighteningly honest, before the Regent who would have his tongue for swaying it too much.
Here, the air is thin and gray. The wind off the sea is bitterly cold; it whips O’s dark hair into a flurry of knots as she picks her way across the beach. But she slips the tangles behind her pinned ears and keeps walking.
Spring in Solterra would never be so sour. When the desert is harsh, it is at least harsh in a way that speaks of possible magic. When the sun beats down, one has some inkling of what it might feel like at its perfect height; sometimes it makes mirages on the white sand, and one remembers with a glittery kind of excitement how wonderful water might taste.
But this. This springtime, nighttime beach is nothing but cold and dark and damp. And O wonders, almost amusedly, what it is about this place that Andi loves so much.
The ocean beats up against the shore ceaselessly. Its dull roar rises and falls in time with the blood O hears ringing in her ears, in time with the slow, careless heartbeat that thump-thump-thumps in the lowest part of her chest. Overhead, the sky is not the eye-bright blue that O is so used to seeing, but a sultry, stormy gray that shifts in value as it rolls from horizon to horizon in thick bands of fog.
The mood of the moment is tired, and downcast. It’s almost enough to make her somber; to make her wonder if this is the same suffocating not-quite-misery that will tail her all the way back home, nipping at her heels for all the hours she will spend alone.
But then there is the clear black silhouette of a girl pressed up against the sea, and O perks up like a wild dog who’s just smelled blood.
In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it. It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed - but never think that you are the night.
There is a beating heart of a city built on bones and built on stone. He scours the halls of the library for days, drinking down paper like one does poison in a desperate plea for death and all that should come, or would come, after it. Ceylon has buried his nose in the trees that surround Delumine, buried them in the trunks of shelves and raised it high to the branches folded over until they are so dense that not even the rain would dare come through and destroy the knowledge of that old library.
His candles do not often run low, nor are they snuffed out. Enchanted, as many of the candles and lights in the library are, they burn for weeks upon weeks. Perhaps he has forgotten some on tables long since abandoned by the man of sand and starlight. Another may have found the dancing flame and huffed it out of existence.
Ceylon does not know.
He does not care.
Once he leaves a book, having lapped up all the sweets it would offer, it is returned and his post, once well used and worn in, abandoned to find a more secluded section that has not seen the feet of man for many, many moon cycles.
Ceylon read there, in those ancient bowels, of a great tree growing in the center of Delumine. It is wide and tall, as immovable as the mountains themselves. Perhaps he missed its branches in the sky without meaning to, for there are so many branches that ache towards the sun and fall painfully short before they die.
He does not know, but now that the knowledge is his, he wants to see.
There is nothing to stop him as he walks through the city. Few wave, smiling in his direction in hopes that, perhaps, he would come over and investigate what they wish to sell or the gossip they have to offer. They do not know him. He is a creature wholly unto himself, needing little in the way of company and treasuring the silence that permeates the still and forgotten areas of the world more than the fortuitous hum that signifies life itself.
Ceylon does not care so much for living and present things.
Relics of the past and future interest him more.
Gold and blue feet patter along stone and dust. He moves as a ghost. Perhaps that is all he will be - a forgotten and fading ghost even when he lives.
After a time of silent contemplation and resolute indifference to those around him, he stops. This...this is the heart of Delumine.
Great roots spring from the earth and tunnel back down, crisscrossing to and fro. Great branches bow toward the ground, weeping leaves from their highest reaches. New sprouts from Spring’s gentle breath arch over the broadstroked edges where last year’s leaves fell.
If he were more aware, more sensitive, he would tell you the tree whispers and moans. He would tell you that there is a beating at its center that is as old as this piece of land.
But he is not, so he does not.
Instead, the architect stares with furrowed brow and blue eyes heavenward, gazing up the length of the old, rooted god.
The salt is on the briar rose, the fog is in the fir trees
It’s afternoon in Denocte, and the merchants haven’t even arrived yet to the fabled Night Markets; it’s all empty stalls, crows and the occasional miniature dragon in the streets, bright blue banners sewn with a silver moon snapping in the brisk wind off the harbor.
There is a decidedly different energy here than to Terrastella’s sleepy pier. Caspian weaves between sailors and dockhands like a salmon between nets, relishing the shouting and swearing, the snap of the sails, the salt breeze. He pauses to watch a ship board, burly stallions rolling barrels up a plank; Caspian’s never been on so much as a rowboat, but when he closes his eyes and feels the sway of the dock beneath his feet it’s easy to imagine the pitch and roll of being on the deck.
At first another bout of shouting only adds to his vision, but at the third bray of Hey! You boy! Caspian opens his eyes to find one of those burly stallions staring at him from a much closer distance, wearing an expression of displeasure that the paint is not unused to having directed at him. The younger man glares at him, tensing, but when the dark bay snorts and says “Goddess’s biscuits, you young curs are useless. Get back to work!” Caspian only shakes his head emphatically and says “Aye, sir!” before turning and running down the dock, grinning at the consternated shout behind him.
He slows but doesn’t stop until he’s a few blocks away, and his hooves clop pleasantly on a street paved with uneven stones, buildings leaning like bad teeth above him. Some are multiple stories, an oddity he isn’t used to. Somewhere ahead, he knows, Benvolio is sleeping the day away in some unused chimney. On a whim Caspian steps into a dark shop, strolls to the counter and asks the young mare working it if she knows where he can find a girl named Aspara. “The princess?” She says, incredulous, and laughs with a voice as harsh as a jay. She doesn’t stop laughing even as he turns, brow furrowed, and heads for the door with a last glare shot her way. The sound follows him back out onto the street.
“Princess,” he says, trying out the word, then shakes his head, unable to square it with the girl he’d shared wine with beside the fire, the air perfumed with salt and smoke. It seemed impossible, not least because princesses did not have pet wolves. Still, he picks at it like a knot as he wanders the streets, gradually getting lost.
I step through the door of the hospital and am hit with something I can only describe as what I imagine a crime scene would smell like if someone were trying to hide it. Cleaners, disinfectants, chemicals, all underlaid by the unmistakable iron tang of blood.
