kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul
S
he knows she is dreaming when the world starts tremble. But she leaps up anyhow. “The dead aren't gone,” are the first words that hang from her lips.
She is no stranger to the oddness of nightmares, to the fear that builds, even now, in the pit of that delicate belly. These nightmares curl around her in the dark and she can hear the buzzing of the voices growing. She knows where she wants to go, needed to go, but she remembers too a promise she made to a friend.
This time she would find him.
Find him and show him.
Restless and so very, very wide awake, she tries not to begin sorting through her wandering thoughts. It is reflex to slip from her cottage beside the sea. Her mother lifts her head for just a moment before falling back asleep, unaware of her daughter tip toeing about the house. “I won’t go far, I promise.” She feels the need to say in a hushed voice.
The night is cool on her face and she greets it eagerly, tipping her head up to the stars and closing those bright blue eyes. She heads into the city, a place she is not to go without permission, but the place she goes all the same because he will be there. She knows where to find him, she saw him through a window one day, she knew the wings, but before that she knew his eyes, at least she likes to think she saw his eyes first, Elli likes thinking about his eyes after all.
She finds that window—his window—and tosses stones at it, she thinks not of Juliet and Romeo and how the roles have been so perfectly reversed. She watches as the stone fly upwards, skipping across air instead of water, it clangs against the window, the sound so perfectly tuned. Another is tossed, and another, and—she finds no more stones to throw at the window, so she waits. The buzzing it is coming back—buzz, hum, buzz, hum, bu—
“Aeneas,” she says to him when he comes to the window and opens it, the noises of night forgotten for the moment. She feels a flurry of butterflies in her belly, a little explosion of nerves although such things never rise to the surface of her expression. Instead she just stands there quietly, calmly composed, studying him with a face that is always a touch too serious. “Get down here,” she says to him. “I have a perfectly splendid evening planned for us.”
There was always a peaceful serenity about the cliffside. From the moment he had arrived in Novus, it was here that he felt the most comfortable. To be able to look over the edge at the ocean lapping against the rocks, to hear the sounds of the waves crashing. Something about it was calming and soothing. Adding to the moment was the sun that was just barely beginning to rise. The sky filled with oranges and yellows, Rhone’s eyes scanning over it. This was what he loved doing. A quiet morning, sipping his coffee, reflecting on his life and his future.
He missed the mornings of quiet conversation with Asterion, of the deep thoughts that the other stallion seemed to resurrect within him. He missed that stallion, more than he probably could care to admit. But he had moved on to something greater, an encouragement to Rhone to do the same.
So much had changed in the last year. So many of his friends were long gone, leaving him to reflect in the quietness of the morning by himself. Rhone wished he had a friend to share this moment with for it was too beautiful to simply take in on his own. There were so many good things that his new day had to offer and it was a shame Rhone was going to encounter them all by himself.
But even as he stands here alone, he can hear footsteps behind him. Someone is coming to join him and there is a part of Rhone that wants to turn around an greet him or her. And yet, he cannot pull his eyes away from the beauty of the morning. Whoever is coming towards him will stand beside him if they were to converse. Who knew? Perhaps they were just passing through or perhaps they sought him out individually. There were so many possibilities. Rhone would simply stand here and wait, waiting for the world to change. He could probably stand here forever if he was given the opportunity. Sighing, the stallion waited.
There was something distinctly morbid about the library. It smelled of rotting bodies, as if someone had killed a million children and hid them in the floorboards. The dust caught in her nostrils and it made her sneeze, an unladylike sneeze that could not be replicated even if she tried. It started at her hooves and traveled through her body, expelling through her lips with a loud and roaring noise that seemed to echo through empty halls.
Maybe it was just the part of the library that she found herself in that was so unwelcoming. Then again, she didn’t mind the fact that there weren’t any other souls to bother her with their “woe is me” shit. She didn’t have time nor the desire to be someone’s therapist today. She was on a mission and she would not stop until she succeeded.
Stepping beneath a low-canging cobweb, Sloane meandered the rows and rows of books that looked to be thousands of years old. How they were still in their original binding was a mystery to the dark mare, a mystery she also had no desire to solve. She didn’t care if the books were new or old, falling apart or new and pristine. All she cared about was finding the book she sought. Nothing else really mattered.
And there it was. Wrapped up in dust and spider webs was an old book that contained knowledge of potions and poisons, spells and scriptures. A grin, an ominous grin, spread across her lips as she feasted her eyes on the black binding. Puckering her lips together, she blew a fast and targeted stream of air on the book, blowing off most of the dust and webs (after all, that shit would NOT be touching her lips when she reached for the book) off the binding. Sinking her teeth into the book, she pulled it from its place on the shelves, carrying it down the edge of the isle to a table with a single lamp that illuminated the immediate 2ft radius.
Once the book slammed down on the table, she nudged it open, using her magic to slowly flit through the pages, looking for something. Growing frustrated by her inability to find it, she grumbled beneath her breath, her tail flagging lightly against her rump and her hoof scraping the concrete in agitation. "Where the fuck is it?" She scanned the page before turning to the next one. Didn’t anyone put in a table of contents? How was she supposed to find what she was looking for? This was stupid.
Home. There really was no place like home. For so long, Katniss thought that home was Ausus, the land where she was born and trained. And then came Rift, another home where she grew into a great leader. And then Novus. And yet, none of these places were really home. Home was in the embrace of Metaphor, staring into the eyes of her son. Home was where she was needed and where she would thrive. Home was a concept that Katniss had not quite mastered, never really feeling like any one place was home.
In the end, it was Kibou that was her home. Her son had grown, taking on life in all of his mysteries. No longer did he need the comfort and support of his mother. For a mother, to watch one’s son grow up and branch out was hard. No longer was she needed. And now she was alone again. No lover. No son. Just herself and her eagle.
Finnick cries out as he soars just above her, his call comforting and welcomed. The eagle still needed her and she needed him. But what was more important was the fact that Denocte still needed her. And so, the mare changes her course, heading into the city in hopes that she might be welcomed home.
So many things had changed in her absence, and yet so many things were the same. The moon still shone brightly in the sky. Torches and lanterns still light the cobblestone pathways of the city. She stands beside the sport where she sent Metaphor into the heavens and she can feel her heart begin to ache.
But with a deep breath, she steps past that point, stepping forward into the future and the unknown. Now was not a time for mourning. Now was the time for redemption. Katniss was back and all of Novus better be ready for the warrior that has returned. No longer was her heart leading her. Some might say that her heart had hardened, making her more cool than warm. But Katniss had seen the damage her heart could do and she would not return to that point. The new Katniss had arrived, her face stoic, her posture tall and rigid. Some may not like the new lease on life she now held onto, but those same individuals could not possibly known the horrors that Katniss had seen in her absence. New scars added to her collection, new wounds that seemed to fester. This was not the same Katniss that left Denocte so many moons ago. This was something far darker. This was the soldier that never was.
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, / The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;☼
This place is ugly.
Seraphina eyes the veneer of well-polished cobblestone stretched out before her on the street, her lips pulled into a firm grimace. There is some part of her that is repulsed enough to wish she could turn back; there is another part of her that tells herself that the bone which composes each mottled, off-white cobblestone is no different than the spinal column that made up the bridge to the city, but that does very little to console the discomfort stirring in her stomach as she makes her way through the abandoned city, ears pinned flat against her skull. Her white hair falls behind her, so long now that it nearly drags the ground, and, though she is unarmored, Alshamtueur clinks rhythmically at her hip with each step she takes deeper and deeper into the labyrinthian mass of the city, towards the heart of the place.
It is the only sound, now, and somehow that is worse than the weeping walls and strange, slithering, unseen things that she heard in the shops at the outskirts of the city. No city should be so silent, dead or alive. It feels unpleasantly still, and the silence seems to be less of a kind that comes from serenity or loneliness than it does the silence before a great predator strikes and sinks its teeth into you. Seraphina is not afraid of it, exactly. She spends her days among the Mors, which are as merciless and bestial as any magical labyrinth, and she has seen far worse than this; it simply leaves her with a lingering sense of unease, one that reminds her distinctly as her time as a soldier.
At the very least Ereshkigal has made herself useful. She swoops between buildings and down alleyways, a second set of eyes in the looming expanse of the labyrinth; but she has grown strangely silent as they descended into the bony maze, but for the occasional deranged laugh. There is something that she knows about this place, but Seraphina knows better than to ask her about it. She won’t answer – she’ll simply mock her for the question.
She knows that she should go home.
She has two children to care for, and she is no longer a queen – she no longer has any obligation to go searching for monsters unless they find her themselves. Still, since she saw the horrible, half-miraculous rise of this place, she has felt some strange obligation to keep an eye on it.
It feels, sometimes, like it is growing. She doesn’t want to think of what that means; and it is the closest that any of them had been to the gods in years, and, gods know, she deserves some kind of an answer from Solis for what he did to her.
She gives a shake of her silvered head, and, eyes narrowed, she turns a corner that bleeds into another street; and she finds herself standing at the road which leads to the great castle in the heart of this place. (The walls of it seem to pulsate and crawl when she looks at them directly, but she is sure that it is not moving.) Grinding her teeth, she moves forward down the road, which seems to her to grow shorter and longer at complete random; she does not know how long it takes her to reach the entry to the courtyard, but it feels both too short and too long at once. She does not allow herself to think too much of it. She knows that is what this sort of magic wants her to do, and she knows that understanding it isn’t what matters.
There is a gate in front of her – immensely tall and ornate, and made of metal or something horribly metallic. If she wants to reach the castle, she knows that she must go through them; but there is a lock in their center. She narrows her eyes at them, considering, and finally rattles at them with her telekinesis, sure that she is strong enough to break them down if need be-
-but the gates let out a terrible, scream, the scream of a living voice, the scream of a child or an old woman or a dead man she barely recognizes.
She draws back a step, swallowing down a shudder. Between her ears, Ereshkigal howls with laughter.
The lock is dribbling a thick substance. She doesn’t want to think that it looks like blood, or smells like blood – but it does.
“Mama, will you braid my hair?” She asks, walking across the floor of their family’s cottage. Elena obliges (as she so often does for her daughter). Her hair is still short, though no longer the mohawk of her newborn days, she has gained some length, enough for small braids throughout. Elena weaves a flower up near the top by her ears. “There, perfect,” she says as Elli rushes to the window to look herself in the mirror. She is pleased enough and she turns blue eyes to her mother. “I am going to pick you a bouquet,” she says determined before rushing out the door to head to the festival.
Today, she decides, she feels like the color yellow (not yellow like her mother, nor yellow like the sun, but maybe yellow like the center of daisies in a daisy chain). So when she reaches the flowers, Elli moves to those yellow tulips that stand there, ready to be picked and made into a present for her mother.
Elli is young of body but old of spirit. She feels a constant rustling in her soul, her mind straining against the confines of its walls, and her heart thrumming against the edges of her ribcage, as if so eager to burst from her chest and fly around the world. She can feel it now even, as she gathers up the flowers, placing them together. Dusk Court, while beautiful, cannot fully quench her desire to see the entire world. She thinks of the forest she had dove into and the twins that had she had met there. She would find them again, maybe, find them, follow them. Maybe they knew where the end of the world rested. If anyone knew, she thinks, it would be them. It had to be.
She moves to pick another flower, this time a red tulip, to represent the godmother she hears so much about and admires so greatly. But as she goes to pick it, she is met by another. “Excuse me,” she says politely, eyes coming to rest on the stranger’s face. “Could I have this flower?”
dear friend it will be alright, please just stay by my side
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
I
f Elena were anyone else, she would have given up by now. She keeps reaching for the sun, reaching into that endless blue sky, expecting the warmth of it to be reflected upon her, but instead it is always so much colder than she expects.
If Elena were anyone else, she would have stopped reaching by now.
She sighs heavily as she watches everyone flutter around like butterflies atop the cliffs. They all have drinks, sipping and downing them respectively. She has always loved flowers, from the time her mother first showed them to her. Her love of them only grew as she did, planting her own garden (and crying when one of the boys accidentally trampled it). She would wave flowers into Alvaro’s hair with only his mild complaints. She picked flowers and handed one to each soldier before he set out for war.
She placed flowers on her parents’ graves.
White lilies for her mother.
Gold roses for her father.
She grabs a drink and settles in amongst the crowd to watch the sun begin to set. It truly is a marvelous sunset. Spring can be such fickle weather, but Elena is so grateful that is had held out for the Tulip Festival. No sudden rains, no stubborn snow. It had been a yellow sun and bright blue skies, with flimsy clouds to race across it. All ending in an explosion of color that is the sunset. There are flowers weaved into her hair, done by her daughter. They are white daisies, flowers that have slowly become Elliana’s favorite. Elena has encouraged the passion, finding the daisy much more pleasant than her daughter’s earlier fascination of Chrysanthemum.
The flower of death.
She senses a presence nearby and turns to face her, not recognizing her face. The Champion of Community tilts her pretty golden head, a flower tumbles free from golden locks and finds purchase on the crowd below. “Hello, stranger, come to enjoy the sunset?”
nother day, another time, she had stood in this place along the river’s edged and wished for the impossible. Shrouded in firefly light, Mephisto had believed for a moment in the magic of wanting something more – had allowed herself a moment of whimsy as the realisms of life fell away. She had allowed the festival to sweep up the pragmatist and replace them with the girl, with stars in her eyes and dreams in her heart. In that moment, she had been a vulnerable thing, raw and open to the possibility of fortune. It was a night not unlike tonight, though now there are flames which lick the sky where the fireflies once danced.
The music is just as loud though, the spiced scents of delicate pastries and wines mingling with the chill of evening. Children darted past with gleeful laughs, festival-goers mingling with drink in hand, making small talk as they went. And Mephisto allowed her mind to still, taking the peace of the moment and letting the coils of responsibility settle at her feet. She leaves them as she walks toward the bonfires, standing a few paces from the masses and watching the way the fire played with shadows and light upon their hides.
Her blue eyes are always watching, drawing in the scene around her until they settle curiously on a place where shadows merged and shifted. It was a sight she’d seen before – one which the monk had explained as Caligo’s magic, that fateful night beside the firefly trail. Curiosity edges at the spy as she leaves the fireside, making her way toward the darkness and watching as the shadows become forms, and the forms betray the man who yields them. For a moment, she simply stares at him – for he has changed since the Fall season was upon them.
Now, the monk has lost his shine – his eyes bound tightly with cloth and his posture sunken with shame. Though she cannot know his demons, there are whispers where he walks – snippets of rumor from the eyes of the forest. She cannot make out their words, only their tones of pity and spectacle. Never one to pass judgment without due process though, Mephisto pays little mind to their wagging tongues. Instead, she simply clears her throat, stepping toward him until her lips brush carefully against his shoulder – not suggestively, but merely to tip him to her presence.
“Well…” she whispers to the male, “Your shadows are quiet this evening.” Perhaps the only thing quiet around them, she thinks but doesn’t share. “Tenebrae, have you come to celebrate the Spring?” For he certainly didn’t seem in a mood for celebration, but Mephisto couldn’t know his motivation for coming to Delumine. She does not mention his blindfold or appearance, simply waiting for him to speak, and waiting for the darkness to share what secrets he tried to hide behind his sightless eyes.
and at last i see the light, and it's like the fog has lifted
She walks along the flowers as if she is born to do so, wearing a floral crown upon her head and a smile upon her face. At her side, the blooms seem to part and let her through, and she brushes them tenderly with the tips of her wings, purring with contentment as she passes. Above her, the sun shines brightly onto Terrestella’s festival, and she tilts her face toward its warmth to soak in the rays, wanting the days like this to last forever. For Spring was Solstice’s favorite time of year, a time of rebirth and renewed hope as the chill of winter faded to the bustle of new life. And she wanted to take it all in.
Around her, there were children with their baskets, gathering flowers as they went. Some were hasty, in a race to find as many colored blooms as they could and move onto the next activity. Others took their time, carefully selecting the most perfect of colors, with petals that unfurled just-so. She called out to them in a sing-song voice, offering the youngest child a chance to peruse her own basket, picking a couple of flowers before offering a sheepish smile and gallivanting off to join her peers. It was a time of great peace, and though it was the first time Solstice had left the comforts of Delumine, she felt a strange pull of adventure and courage which egged her onward.
“Hello,” She offered to a stranger who approached, much bolder than her usual demeanor. A smile stretches wide across her face as she bows her head, sending ombre curls cascading in front of her golden gaze. “Happy Spring to you!” It was a simple greeting, but a friendly one, as her stomach twists in knots, wondering if her words would be met with equal friendship or welcome. For the mare is as unsure as a child, nervous at how the world would see her. For some, she would be a naïve sort of dreamer, for others a lost and frightened soul. But the beauty of Novus with its wild magics and foreign gods, is that Solstice could be anyone she wanted, left to her own freedom of choice and whimsy.
So today, she plays the bold, waiting with baited breath to meet the other who stood before her, desperately wanting to fit in with the crowd.
It's been fun spending a little more time in Terrastella. The Dawn soldier guy and I went through here on the way home in the Fall, but I don't feel like I truly was able to experience it. I think I still like Delumine more, but there are still special things about this place too. For one, I can tell why they might like the dusk so much as I watch the sun set and paint all different colors across the sky. It's so pretty, especially when looking out at the cliffs.
I've been enjoying this tulip festival that Tenebrae and Bram brought me to. Shadow Man and I put together a flower crown for me to wear, which sits on my head now. It has all different colored tulips woven into it that it reminds me of a rainbow. It keeps shifting and covering my eyes a little though, so I have to adjust it sometimes. I think it looks good on me (better than phoenix flames, I think, although I still appreciate Leo's painting).
I left Tenebrae behind to walk around for a little while. I felt bad with him being blind and all, but he was with some others he knew so it seemed he'd be okay while Bram and I go. The timber wolf hasn't left my side since we got here, but I don't blame him. The island did a number on all of us. I still notice him limping when he thinks I'm not looking and I feel sorry for him. Him and Momma got attacked pretty bad trying to save me.
Anyway, there are better things for me to be thinking about. I keep trying to stop my brain from going back to those darker moments (my nightmares do enough to remind me of it anyway), so I focus now on the field of tulips. I pick a bright yellow flower that's fully bloomed and tuck it behind Bram's ear. I know it probably won't stay there long and I can't help but giggle as I look at him. He looks adorable, although his expression clearly shows his disapproval. Honestly, it just makes me laugh more.
Suddenly, his ears perk up and he's looking straight past me. I follow his gaze and notice a red fox sniffing around in the flowers. At first, I don't move because I've never seen one before. It's so pretty looking with its amber colored coat and fluffy tail. I wonder if it's come for the festival too?
Then I bound over to it, smiling ever so brightly, my face quickly turns to a frown when the fox bolts. "Wait, no! Come back! I didn't mean to scare you!" I call after it, although it probably can't understand a word I'm saying.
I try to run as fast as I can, but the fox is much faster than me. It's not until Bram catches up to me that I stop chasing it. "But… he was cute… and seemed friendly at least," I tell Bram and he just shakes his head at me. I know I shouldn't run off too far, but I can't help but get a little carried away sometimes.
When I hear a familiar voice, it makes me forget about missing out on meeting a fox.
"Po!" I shout and start to run again, but at least this time it's to meet a friend. I can hear Bram sigh and start running again to catch up with me (poor wolf).
