Posted by: Meira - 11-10-2020, 07:20 PM - Forum: The Dusk Court
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↞ Meira ↠
Far from Delumine she is. Through fields of blooming tulips, upon the stalks of flora in the process of shedding the memories of winter. It is a wonder she chose to start her life over in the court of Dawn, because in so many ways it suffocates her. The fires from the previous nights burn inside her, their memory has caused her sea to shrink in response. There is an uncertain, dark beach somewhere near her abyss. It is so dark, so dark. Meira feels the exhaustion in her bones, she feels every curve in them. The exhaustion sits in her ribs, and pulls her lungs down, down into the abyss. Her eyes too ache, from days spent staring into a figurative sun. The earth-bound sea moves, and moves and moves because she knows if she stops, then she might never start again. There is a tower in the distance, it crawls upwards into the heavens. As if it belongs in the sky with the gods she loves so much. The sky was made for Solis, of that she was sure. Meira wonders how it is that the sea can love the sun so much more than the moon. Caligo has never loved her with the same intensity that Solis has. Caligo is not a warrior, not until it matters. Meira pauses as she watches the bodies slowly collect as dusk begins to fall. They create an entity of their own, and this only further convinces her that everything is made up of various seas.
She stares at them from the sidelines. The laughter of children fills the streets of Terrastella. The dull hum of voices swells as those done with their day move to enjoy the festivities. From one festival to another. Another surely filled with as many mages as the Fire Festival held between Delumine and Denocte. Meira resents the idea that the Dawn loves the Night. Nothing should love the night with such passion, for it will lead to a wildfire that will burn everything in its wake. The night cannot love anyone. Or perhaps it is only him who cannot love anyone, and he is simply an extension of night. A phantom limb that does not belong to Caligo. Meira's features remain quiet, quiet enough so that she does not scare anyone away. The suffocating smoke from the bonfires clings to her, it is a cloying stench. It invades every inch of her frame, masking the brine of the sea. Meira sighs softly, as she thinks of the words the man said to her the night before. That she is good at running. Though she agrees, she wonders if that will always be the case. A gentle breeze begins to blow, blow the smoke from her skin. It carries the scent of the Terminus sea mixed with the kisses of tulips.
For a moment she closes her eyes to enjoy the feeling. The sea inviting her to come home. It is tempting, so tempting. She opens her eyes again to spot another creeping closer to her. Meira adjusts her gaze so that she can better see the one who is approaching her, or at the very least heading in her direction.
It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it's always only temporary
A
s the edge of the forest looms before her, as she can see her home—her first home—through the trees, she feels her throat tighten. Her vision swims a little bit and she struggles to breathe.
She imagines being a little girl and running up those hills next to her father.
She imagines her mother dancing in the waters of the lake. Droplet catching in the sun like stained glass.
She imagines her grandmother tucking her in with a story.
She blinks and it is gone. Elena shakes her head, today was a day for memories. They keep coming to her, it is the guilt, she knows it is the guilt.
Her secrets are a constant, boiling thing beneath the surface of her.
She fears them. Knows that one day they will be the ruin of her, but she cannot bring herself to face them—not yet. She cannot shove them into the light of day because then it may boil beneath the sun and she is not sure that they will ever recover. That she will ever recover, if she is being honest. Because how will he ever look at her the same when he knows what she has kept hidden beneath her tongue, behind her teeth?
She remembers.
She remembers the way her mouth had lilted into a smile
She remembers how she had said “I’ll tell you.”
“But only after you dance with me.”
“We’re only strangers.”
She is standing in Dusk Court, before Marisol’s estate. She is expecting Aeneas, Marisol’s son. The Champion of Community waves off one of the servants, they would have no need for that today. When the boy comes to her, Elena cannot help the smile that springs to her face. “Aeneas, it is a pleasure to finally meet you,” she says looking at him. He reminds her, in an instant, of her nephew, Kildare, and she is suddenly full of warmth and cherry blossoms. “I am your Champion of Community, Elena,” she introduces herself, wondering how much he already knows. “Are you ready to collect some flowers to be taken to the Hospital?” She asks him before moving off. She watches him with blue eyes, curious to how he will respond. Will he think this charity work a waste of time? Will he be excited? What type of boy is Aeneas, and are there any hints of what type of man he will grow into? She leans her golden head closer to him as they approach the garden. “My daughter has not stopped talking about you, Aeneas, you know her, don’t you? Elli?”
he had been something before the fall; he had been flesh and blood
Maybe, I have always been this hungry. Maybe, the world and all that is within it has never been enough to satiate me. The wind is cool, almost refreshing, in my face; I close my eyes against it and focus on the stinging sensation of my own hair lashing at my cheeks. I do not want to take ownership of the decisions that have led me to this land; I do not want to acknowledge my own role in my condemnation.
I am in Dusk for Elena. I am there to inquire about the medical—or magical—potentials to undo what has been done.
I do not have much hope in her answer and for that reason I am no hurry to receive it.
Sereia did what she could, I suppose, to repair the wounds. My throat is bound tightly in cloth; my shoulder is packed with natural salves. They smell sweet and earthy, and this odor nearly disguises the newfound saltwater tang of my skin.
Yet, I do not want to think of Sereia. I do not even want to think of Elena and what she might do to heal me. I want to think of nothing, and that is how I find myself on Praistigia Cliffs with a drink in hand. I am a soldier, it seems; and I have by now visited Terrastella enough I am not entirely out of place, especially for a festival. I begin to drink to drown my hunger. I begin to drink, to soften my sharpness. I begin to drink because there is nothing left to do.
(I had sworn, once, to Bondike that we would never be our fathers; I had promised it; and he had agreed, it was because we would always have one another).
It was a fool’s promise.
Every man is alone; there is no one there when our desperation most seizes us, or it would not be desperation. There is no one to save us from ourselves, and the damage we might wreck.
I have always been this hungry, I think, with the wind in my face.
I have always needed the world to burn.
And finally, finally, the world has burned me back. I am left changed. I am left so damaged I do not know who I am. My new teeth fit strangely in my mouth. The more I drink, the less I know how to sheath them, the more I begin to bleed.
I am fully drunk by the time I step to the edge and think of how far I had once fallen—I am fully drunk, and swaying, beneath the stars when I ask myself,
How much further do I have to fall?
There is music and conversation behind me; but the edge lures me with a siren's song. I step through the tall grasses, drink in hand, until there is nothing but open space beneath my gaze. The ocean, I see her; and she roars.
Here, I am alone, on the edge, the taste of sugar and mint and blood in my mouth. Here, the conversation cannot reach me. It doesn't matter. Words could not fill me now.
(What I hate the most is the way that, even from the precipice, the sea calls me. And she is laughing; that steady, rhythmic pull and tug is bright and high and hopeful. She is laughing, because now I am hers. She is laughing, because revenge is the sweetest drink of all).
In this moment, I think there is nothing left.
I have spent a lifetime trying to fill my hollow pieces with other aims. With men, or with war.
Now, those hollow pieces are filled with everything I have ever hated. I finish the drink and, with ludicrous anger, throw it from the cliffside into the sea. It is a small, meaningless revolt.
For a unicorn made from a king, it has always felt stranger than it should to walk between stone walls. Each echoing step feels like a gateway mouth instead of a step, through a garden instead of a staircase. Part of her wants to turn back, to return to the meadow where her sister is laying a circle of death instead of beauty. In her bones she can feel the call of it-- the whisper of the mice caught for so long in the walls, the songs of sparrows trapped in the eaves arching above her.
The call of it, of death, is the only note carrying her forward through the lit staircase and the bodies pressing close enough that she can feel their heartbeats through their skin. Like a shield she gathers it around her, a dark cloak, to keep all the brightness of the mortals out.
Sometimes she thinks she hates them for the chaos in their blood, the frail beauty in their gaze that is so bright against the lingering shadow of their coming fates. Sometimes she hates them only for their hope (and what she calls hate is hunger when she is too tired to deny the harshness of it).
By the time she makes it to the balcony her lungs are aching with the want of air fresh from the sea, tinged with the lingering tang of rotten weed and sulfur. Her heart flutters at the taste of it on her tongue (for the taste of anything but sweat and flowers). The fluttering is soon replaced by the drumbeat of something that is not quite hunger but close enough that she has no name for it when the twilight wind howls through her horn.
Below her the flowers draw the shapes of constellations she does not know. But in the patterns she can see a bramblebear woven with wisteria, a sparrow stitched together with ivy, and a fox with a tongue of dandelions. Those are the only stories she can hear, the only songs she knows how to sing, when the lights between the lines of flowers are lit.
When the flickering light stitches out pale lines between the shapes in the flowers, her heart leaps at the sight. And she knows, as she turns to the girl coming closer, that it is not hunger she feels.
It’s wanting with an ache deep enough to devour her whole.
"I can feel it mounting; a dark wave - upon the night of my soul”
His touch stains her. Every inch of her skin is hot, angry, and empty. So empty. He came to her again in the night. The lies spun from his mouth were just right. Too right. She should have known better. She did know better. Still, he gnawed on the scraps he'd been 'kind' enough to leave her. Meira feels the paths that her tears left on her face. He left on her face. Meira wants to be free from him and his lies. Her heart aches, because she cannot pry his filthy claws from its core. There is no sanctuary in all of Delumine that can cleanse the stench and filth and rot he has left behind. Each time, each time she gives in he robs her of herself. He robs her of the peace she is trying so hard to build in her life. Her anger pours from her blue chasms as her frame sweeps across the stone halls of the castle. It is early, so early. Before the dawn has a chance to kiss away the cloak of stars and dreamers. Meira moves, each step feels so heavy. Each hoof is like lead, each one drags along the stone floors. The castle is still unfamiliar to her, and she finds herself pausing at an intersection because she cannot remember which path she is meant to take.
A lantern hangs from her earth stained lips. The taste of metal on her tongue is acrid, it brings her no comfort. Not in the way that blood does when she fights for her life. When she fights for her home, and all that she loves. The silence of the castle in the early morning weighs upon her until it threatens to suffocate her. She wishes to be nothing more than a ghost. She has duties to Delumine, those of which involve patrolling the castle for intruders. The protection of the royal family is of the utmost importance to a soldier. Meira cannot help the feelings that arise in her chest, because his memory is too raw and fresh. The sea can still feel the whisper of his touch. It ebbs and flows with violence until the lantern falls at her hooves with a clang. She dissolves, dissolves until she is pressed against the shadows lining the wall. Meira feels her emotions swell, too great for any amount of soothing. She is useless in so many more ways than one. The air rushes from her lungs, the sting of the sea hits the back of her throat as her emotion pours from her.
The silence continues to permeate the halls, as the sun begins to rise in Delumine. But she can't forget the night's past, nor the memory of him. Meira is frozen against the wall of the castle she is meant to protect. Anger rises in her throat, anger at herself because she does not believe she should be allowed to protect something so important. She can't even protect herself.
“Truth," said a traveller, “Is a breath, a wind, a shadow, a phantom; long have I pursued it, but never have I touched the hem of its garment.”
T
he truth, she had said, can be monstrous.
Boudika’s own words haunt her on a spring day that is trying very hard to be something else. It is midmorning, with rain coming down not in a torrent but a steady, miserable drizzle. The streets of Denocte are largely abandoned due to the weather, waterlogged with puddles from the night’s heavier storm. The chill in the air is more reminiscent of winter than spring, but Boudika does not mind. In fact, the cold is almost welcoming—she is glad she has the streets to herself. The absence of Denocte’s busy citizens leaves the city strangely quiet, and veiled in fog; the rain makes the middle-distance impossible to see, and bleeds the world around her of color.
The atmosphere of Denocte promises to be hiding secrets. It promises to be mysterious, cryptic, in the way that it changes her most vibrant color to shades of burgundy. She is almost someone else, despite not having changed shape. Through the fog, she watches a feral cat cross the street. She cannot hear the sea, but knows the storm was brought in by it; the distance does not seem too great and she remains in Denocte, wandering.
Boudika listens to shopkeepers and residents; the smell of woodsmoke from chimneys, to keep the lingering chill at bay. The city of Denocte has always been a place she has loved, fiercely; and it has always been a place she had never quite belonged. Only now does Boudika begin to accept that fact; that she is not so unalike the feral cat, slinking along the corners of the alleyways, a visitor, an observer. Her movements are slow and leonine; they lack the ferocity, the energy, she otherwise possesses by the sea.
She lifts her head, as if for some type of prayer. The rain kisses down her nose and mouth; she closes her eyes against the soft pinpricks.
When she lowers her face from the caress of the sky, the truth finds her.
It comes, unasked for and unbidden, in the shape of a little girl.
A girl with too-blue eyes, eyes that eat up all the gray light of the rain and remind it that, ultimately, it belongs to the sky. Eyes like a clear, summertime day or a cool winter afternoon. Between them sits a heart, but when she turns as if to continue on, a crescent moon flashes on her shoulder.
"Wait." Boudika’s voice cracks.
(Why, lately, is her voice always cracking? Why is it, in these matters of the heart, she no longer sounds like herself?)
When the truth finds her, when it comes, it is a levee breaking. It is a flood. It is a natural disaster.
And she is left asking if a lie could have been better.
If a lie could have been more merciful.
"Wait, please." Her smile does not feel as if it belongs to her. It is uncertain, and shaky, and too thin. Her voice, too, seems too thin. "I know your parents. I'm friends with them. Please--tell me, how is your father? You look so much alike."
“If I loved him, if I kept him, my child, my daughter, would be his, but she isn’t," Elena had said.
DREAMS ARE SWEET UNTIL THEY AREN'T men are kind until they aren’t / flowers bloom until they rot and fall apart
As she watches her daughter from some distance – close enough to see her, but without revealing herself to the dainty, black-and-white creature frolicking in the flowers (like a child should, she decides, with some relief) -, she finds herself thinking of the first festival she attended in Terrastella. She was younger, then, and different; a newly-appointed emissary, not yet burdened with the weight of a crown. At the time, she’d been optimistic in the only way that she knew how, which was with a certain coldness that she regrets, much as she knows that it couldn’t have been helped. Maxence had been unlike any native Solterran, and, though he was brash and impulsive, she’d thought that he could be the harbinger of a new Solterra, unhindered by the class divisions and cruelties that had characterized the kingdom before Zolin’s death. And – when she thought about it - he was the first person to ever show her an ounce of respect. It had meant something, at the time.
She’d been here on a diplomatic affair. She swears that she’d worn a crown of white lilies, and she almost thinks that she’d danced with someone for the first and only time in her life, but that might have been in Delumine instead. (The events are beginning to blend together; she is not sure how that makes her feel.) Now, Seraphina stands knee-deep in a swaying field of flowers, watching her daughter, and she tries to make peace with the whole of that – she just wishes that she’d ever felt like any of it was really over.
(And there are always these quiet thoughts in the back of her mind when she looks at her children. Children will grow, and they will find lives of their own – and someday, they will leave her. She doesn’t know what she’ll do, then, and she tries to tell herself that she can worry about it when it comes; but years mean less and less to her by the day, and there is some part of her that is paralyzingly afraid that the ones she has with her children will pass far more quickly than she expects.)
She raises her head, white hair sweeping out of her eyes, and she looks towards the sea. She can smell salt and fish on the crest of the wind; the tide is creeping up on the rocks, foamy tendrils of white against jagged and shimmering spires of raven-black. All around her, there is the sound of life – wandering partygoers, drunken lovers, children finally let out for the spring. Somehow, above the hum of it all, she can still hear the sound of the tides against the shore, the low rumble of each crashing wave.
She watches her daughter and sighs.
Pride swells in Azrael’s chest as he walks beside Elena’s child – no, his child. He mentally corrects his thoughts, still in wonder and awe that the golden mare had entrusted him with such an important distinction. While their path to happiness had been anything but smooth, Azrael was finding domestic life quite suited him. He loved waking up beside Elena’s golden warmth, watching the sleep fade from her crystal blue eyes and her soft smile when she reached for him in the morning light. Still, there are shadows in her eyes, hurt which he would do his best to kiss away. They would heal, in time – and Elena would find her way once more.
But today was not a day to worry about things past. Instead, he focused on the present, watching the way Tenebrae’s child frolicked in the flowers, carefully selecting the most beautiful blooms and bringing them back to him. She’d filled the basket he dutifully carried, and he nodded as he went – passing strangers and those more familiar. All around, the land was alive with spring, bursting with color and hope for newness with the season. “Look Elli,” he whispered, gesturing to a large graceful bird on the outskirts of the festival. “That’s a Great Egret… they are said to bring tranquility and peace.” It walks quietly along the treeline, blinking at the shed-star and his daughter once, before wandering by with a graceful pace. They could certainly use some tranquility, he quietly mused, before turning his attention back to the girl.
“What should we do next… your basket is looking pretty full.” As if illustrating his point, the stallion gestures to their haul, overflowing in a rainbow of colors. “Do you want to make something for your mother?” She would love it, he decided, if not for the beauty of the flowers than for the nostalgia of a homemade gift.
They leave the flower fields behind, working their way toward the craftsmen and merchants. As the pair passed them, Azrael stopped to watch the dancers and listen to the lively music, bobbing his head in a carefree manner as he encouraged Elliana to dance with the other children. She was always so serious, he mused – and yet, he understood all the same. Still, he wanted the girl to lead a childhood of unadulterated happiness – one where all her dreams were possible. So he sighed, letting her take the lead and following with a lightness to his step, eager to see the festival through the eyes of his child as she took in all that her first spring would offer.
I am counting diseased flowers like other unicorns count stars. I can see it there, before the others do — the specks of black that look like pollen, the sludge that moves up their veins instead of water. I can see a tulip beginning to bow when it becomes too weak to stand.
I am looking for it. I am helping it along because it is the only way I know how to cure the sick. And I wonder —
I wonder how others do not see it.
A
s she walks through row upon row of planted tulips, she is not listening to the whispers that follow her. And she is not watching for the eyes that follow her, or the looks that tell her (as if she did not already know) that she is other. She only walks on and on and on until she gets to the patch of flowers that are as white as picked-clean bones laid out in patterns across the field.
Today all Isolt sees are the flowers trembling on their long, thin stalks as she walks amongst them. And in the absence of wind, or song, or a reason to dance — she knows it is her who makes them shiver as though it were still winter. Like a den full of rabbits huddling close to one another for warmth while the wolf waits outside.
The thought makes her lips curl into a look that is more snarl than smile.
When the edges of the first tulip turns black and begins to curl in upon itself, she is still smiling. And she is still smiling when she hears the too-sweet, fermented smell of it fill the air like honey, like peace, like death. And she leans in close to it, close enough that her lips brush against the petals as softly as a kiss. At her touch the tulip begins to weep pollen instead of tears, and Isolt can hear it beginning to cry as its stalk gives out and it crumbles to dust at her hooves.
Somewhere, she knows, her sister is learning to love her own rotten flowers. And somewhere their father is growing new rows, and new patterns, and new life to replace the ones they are hollowing out.
But here in this row there is no purity, or honor, or holiness, or life. There is only a new-god who smiles a unicorn’s smile, and a circle of death that sparks to life beneath her lips.
When the second tulip dies like the first (but with a shriek instead of a cry), she collects its rotten pollen like black sludge tears along her eyelashes. And when the third tulip dies (this one with a shriek, and petals that turn sharp as knives before they break against the skin of her), still her smile does not waiver.
It is not until she has stopped counting that she begins to wonder if her sister would, were she here. And it is only then that she looks down on her garden — for the spot of death in a field of life is as much her’s as the bones that lay hidden in the earth — and sees only her sister’s face looking back at her in every wound that bleeds pollen and ash.
And if she were less of a thing made in magic, or less of a monster wearing the face of a unicorn, she might have felt remorse for the deaths then. She might have learned that she could walk away and leave the field for those who still dream in flowers to enjoy. She might have recognized the war drum beat of her heart as a hundred wishes — a hundred aches and wants that beg her to move away and find a song that will not lead her into madness.
But she is a monster. And the eyes that watch her as the not-monsters hurry away from the plague reigning like freedom among her tulips is all the affirmation she will ever need.
Her circle of death only grows, and grows, and grows around her until the only color that is left in her shadow is a blackness deep and terrible. The hunger inside of her chest grows teeth, and claws, and sets them all against her ribs with all the rage of a wild thing determined to escape.
And in the center of that dark circle a single cardinal flower begins to grow, tall and bloody and beautiful.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
There is the steady rhythm of rain outside, and this is when Elena sits down to write.
Dearest Po,
I could not help but think about you today because right before the rain fell, I saw the most feather bedded with the flowers, it reminded me of your own feathers.
How are your daughters? Elli talks about twins and a forest in her sleep often, could these be your girls? I ask her upon waking, but she never has any recollection of the dreams. At least I think they are dreams…
How is Delumine? It feels like ages since I have been there, Terrastella keeps me busy, as does the Hospital. I have a patient that can no longer speak, but every day I go she offers me a smile and an autumn leaf. It has been ages since I have seen fall leaves, I have no idea where she gets them. Every time I bring it home and add it to the garden. I do not know what it is supposed to mean, but I find comfort in the expected.
Elli is watching a spring thunderstorm outside. Our tulips have died, as they do in late spring, but she is excited by the prospect of planting daisies. She has already began painting them and we have yet to even plant the seeds. Maybe when the rain passes?
Sunflowers,
Elena
She ties the letter to the leg of the white dove and when the thunder passes and the rain is a quiet drizzle, she takes off to the North, to Delumine. To Po.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
