Darkness has always been a friend of mine. Normally it follows me like a hound nipping at my heels and baying for the blood it knows will fall in the wake of me. Sometimes I miss the light that used to chase it back each time my sister laid her lips at my cheek and told me to be kind.. But sometimes, as my thoughts and my rage wander in that strange realm between dream and waking,and pain, I only want to sink deeper and deeper into the black.
Sometimes I want to be ink and oil and everything that chokes as it drowns.
I know, somewhere outside the black, there is blood scattered across the sand like bloody pearls. I can taste it on my lips when I think hard about the muscles in my tongue and my throat (and I know I shouldn’t have to remember how to swallow, something is wrong). The tide is lapping at my hocks like a cool, wet wolf’s tongue. Seaweed is tangling in my tail and curling like my mother’s chain around my curled up knees.
The sea is trying to either drag me out of the black or drag me in deep into the dark of it. I’m never sure with the sea, never.
I try to blink. I try to whisper an assurance to the wolf towering viciously protective over my body. I try to do anything, anything, but fade deeper into the black. There are piles of sand behind my eyes and each cuts and stings each time my lashes flutter. If I still remembered how to cry, or feel anything but hunger and rage, I would have.
I would have cried in the same way I rage in the black of my weakness. In the wake of war the only thing agony does is make me furious. And it’s in the wake of the clarion call of this new war I have found that I lay my lips in the sea with the last remnants of my energy. The tide catches my whispering, soon, as it races back out to sea. And hope it finds a way to curl like a noose around the sea-stallion’s neck.
Soon. After I am free from this darkness and pain. Soon.
He can hear it even here in the forest, where the branches muffle the sounds of the sand shifting in the distance and spring blooms in every shade of green. And between the petals of every wild flower that rises up on trembling stalks, he sees the grains of sand shining golden and bright. When he closes his eyes he can still see it, lying like an ever-tightening noose around his soul.
Even here in his burgeoning garden the desert has followed him. Even here with his magic growing roots like anchors, he cannot escape the desert forever. His heart may be a garden now but the desert was in his blood — it would always be in his blood.
For hours he stands there in a clearing listening to it. His flowers wrap themselves about his ankles in braids of color. Stay, they beg in tomes of pollen and paper-soft touches, do not leave us. But they are not enough, not today, not with every chamber of his heart filling with sand and magic like an hourglass running out of space. Not when the song that moves in blood instead of words only grows, and grows, and grows, it grows a dozen mouths and each of them set to gnawing at the forest of his ribs.
He does not remembering leaving them there, petals folding in upon themselves and crumbling without him beneath the weight of all that golden sand. Ipomoea only remembers looking up, and up, and up at the walls of the canyon opening like jaws reaching for the throat of the sky. And he remembers pressing his nose down to the trail of whispers racing along ahead of him like sacred daturas unfurling for him.
Golden poppies and carmine paintbrushes bloom against his skin when he leans his shoulder into the red sandstone walls. And they tell him the truth of it: the king that disappeared into the night, the golden sovereign who loved the sea too much to forget it. And oh, oh —
oh! How his magic rages because of it!
How it turns into a feral thing and grows thorns, and nettles, and teeth that it rakes through the bloody dust of the canyon. If he stopped then to look back at the desert flowers he would see the way they cowered before him now, the way the spaces between them were being filled with weeds and cactus.
But it is another magic that is echoing in his bones like a war-cry when the dust at his hooves begins to tremble. And every drop of that magic, every terrible mile of it blooming in cactus spines down his neck, all of it echoes that call of the desert. It's all tumbleweeds and chalcedony, the echoes of old death and agony and wounds re-opened. In it he can feel something in his heart breaking, and something deeper, something harder, rising up to fill the cracks of it. The sand filling up his heart makes him want to roar, and snarl, and lay his teeth against all of that death and pain until it submits.
He does not want to recognize this part of himself but oh, he does. It is the part of him that never left the desert, that never had a chance to grow soft.
And he wonders now if Orestes had ever known this anger, this feeling of being so close to death; he wonders it it would have been enough to make him stay and break the cycle of kings and queens who were not enough.
He wonders if this is why the desert has called for him.
the danger is i'm dangerous and i might just tear you apart
I
t's been over a year since Lucinda was turned into a kelpie. She's a couple seasons late, but today felt like a day worth celebrating. So in true kelpie fashion, that involved a hunt.
There is always excitement to hunting, no matter what it is that she's pursuing. Between the adrenaline rush and the bloodlust that consumes her, she always finds joy in it and doesn't know how she lived her life without this. She can understand now what Abraxia appreciates about life and their bond has only become stronger. Typically, the pair hunt together but today Lucinda is alone. The ocean water has begun to warm up with the changing seasons, so she's eager to spend even more time in the sea. It feels much more comfortable to stretch out her fins than it does with her legs.
Soon, she is in pursuit of a small brown shark. It's not nearly as big as some other sharks she's hunted, but a snack will do just fine to satisfy her hunger. It doesn't take long for the creature to spot her and she propels forward. She longs for that first bite, the one where the first drops of blood land on her tongue and the creature still thinks it can get away. They always try to squirm under her grasp like there is still some hope.
There never is.
This is what she thinks when she reaches that very moment. The shark is no match for her speed and power, so with one swift move, she kills the creature with her jaws. Lu comes up to the surface with the shark in her mouth to get an idea of her surroundings. When she first came to the water, she had been alone, but now there is another here at the edges of the shore. At first, she's not sure whether she wants to hunt them too, but as she swims closer, she thinks she recognizes him.
The kelpie begins to eat when she comes to the shore to meet the man. Her magic transforms her back into her other body and once again her wings feel too heavy on her back. The sea is already calling back to her and she will return to it, but first, she's curious why he is here. They have never properly met, but she's heard many things about the Court regimes.
"Well hello, King of Delumine. What brings you to the home of the kelpie?" she asks, her mouth likely bloody from her kill. She doesn't bother to clean herself up as it's all part of the image. Lucinda watches him closely and wonders if he longs to be part of the sea too.
take this burden away from me and bury it before it buries me
When Elena had first come to Novus she had smelled of mountain air and pine forests like loneliness and sorrow. It had clung to her skin like a memory, an omen. And now she stands here, having lived in Novus longer than so many other places (long enough to fall in love, find magic, find immortality, have a child, and love her community) and now she smells of wild air, the kind that echoes the rain and wind and freedom. She smells like ocean and brine can feel the way the salt has dried her mane in tangling curls that lay against the gold of her neck. She warms herself by the fires. There is nothing she loves more than this, than bathing herself in the emotions of others as they sing, tell stories, and laugh with one another. The wind carries her thoughts high into the sky with the smoke rising. Her worries burn to ash.
Those brilliant blue eyes watch as Elliana disappears into the forest with the other children. You will not race the fire, she had told her daughter. She should know better, she would have better luck telling the west winds not to blow. She walks through the fires, looking upon each as the flames flitter and grow as if delighted by the golden girl’s presence. Fire, it has always been more friend than foe. It had brought her to Tenebrae, the fire in her lantern had led her to that lake, and it had delivered her Elliana.
The music of the festival feeds her soul and soon those feet are dancing between the flames and her body is as fluid as smoke. It may be a race, but Elena does not run, instead her dance is like blaze of flames, moving and shimming underneath the night sky. This is not the first time she has danced amongst flames. It is clear in the way she skips between the embers blowing past her on a new spring breeze.
And just like that woman taught her that night in the storms, a night she cannot get back, she stands at the starting line and like wild fire, she readies herself to leap.
so take away this apathy bury it before it buries me
Tonight, like most nights, sleep does not come easy for him. His dreams are full of wild things, of full moons and rivers that burn brighter than the sun, of songs that sound more like screams echoing in the dark, hollow spaces between his lungs. And above it all, a question —
Something was calling for him.
He has heard it before — in the forest, while tending his gardens, while watching his daughters learning to run on legs that grew inches at a time, years passing in days. Sometimes he thought it was always calling for him, like a lamb at his turn for the slaughter, a sacrifice about to be made. Three times he has died, or almost-died (or was it almost-lived?) and now — now, perhaps, it had come knocking.
He can feel the rattle of it in his lungs, each time he breathes too deeply. And he can feel the heaviness of it pressing in around his heart, closer and closer with every beat.
But it his death was drawing near, it was only to whisper to him not yet.. He knew of course, from watching Thana — you did not always feel it coming. There were some lambs that would forever be surprised to see their own blood running away from them in little rivers, or old men who expected to see just one more sunrise.
And if it was death knocking on the door, he should not rise so easily, so readily, to answer it.
But he does. He rises when he hears the call of it, with notes that ring in every root-filled chamber of his heart instead of in his ears, a language of which he would recognize long after it fades away. It makes him feel something like a wolf, rising to answer the call of his pack beneath a full moon. Rhoeas scrapes the tines of his antlers down the corner of the castle, and in the sound of bone against stone there is that question again: the question a monster asks its creator when the noose around its neck slips.
He shivers, and begins to run. Ipomoea runs, and he runs, and he runs and he is chasing after something more immortal than the hunt of wolves. He is hunting memories and monsters; he is finding the answer to questions that have not been finished. And when the grass brushes his ankles and he grows thorns from every wildflower, the forest knows better than to try to stop him.
Soon it is the desert spreading out before him, pale as bone in the moonlight. Bits of desert weed and sandstone crumble beneath his hooves and there is a part of him, a distant part of him, that begins to cringe the moment he feels the heat of the sleeping Mors.
But it is the immortal rest of him that smiles as he walks onward, through the sand that shifts restlessly while he looks at the shadows they create like they are maps instead of darkness closing in. And he does not take his eyes off that place on the horizon that turns lighter and lighter with every step he takes, bruise-blue fading to gold. He does not stop chasing.
Yet when a shadow flashes on the sand that is not caused by the dunes rearing up above him like a mouth, he can’t help but turn to it. Only Rhoeas runs on, as every bit of moss and flower begins to dry along his ribs and flake off like scales. Ipomoea does not know which instinct it is that has him turning to the mare instead of following that immortal call that runs free beneath his bonded’s shadow.
Maybe it is because he recognizes the ghost living in her as the same one that lives in him.
Morrighan doesn't usually like to reflect. It can take up too much of her time and often she'll get too wrapped up in past emotions. Yet, as she stands here alone by the fires, her mind wanders. She throws some of the herbs (they're calling it "magic", but she knows it's not quite that special) into the flames and watches as they change from orange to green to black.
It had been last Spring that Antiope promoted her to Regent and it feels like so long ago. She had been so different then. For one, she had still been mortal. They were all getting used to the fact that Isra left them to go on some voyage to a world Morr had never heard of. Antiope had just been promoted Sovereign too. It had been shortly after Morr found Bram and she had just started seeing Al'Zahra.
Al'Zahra, the woman doesn't pass through her mind as much anymore, but from time to time she still makes her way through. There had been a time Morr tried to lose herself in bottles of alcohol to forget. Nothing seemed to work until she had a breakdown and realized Maeve wouldn't want to see her like this. She needed a mother not a monster, especially since Al'Zahra left them both in the fall. It also seemed so long ago that the two left for Dawn's festival and instead of coming back together, Maeve had been escorted by a Dawn soldier.
If she were a wolf, she would hunt the woman down and make her pay, but she is just a horse. A horse with the power to wield fire (even more strongly now) and that's perhaps her only weapon. Sure, part of her still wants to hunt her down and make her feel the same kind of pain that she did, but Maeve's face always seems to come through the cracks. Her precious daughter that would never hurt a fly.
Her gaze moves away from the fires to the young girl who is playing tag with some of the Dawn kids. It warms her heart to see Maeve happy, especially given all they went through on the island. Morr still has the bruises and the burns from fighting some of its demons, but Maeve likely has worse wounds that will take longer to heal. Morr will never forgive herself for it, but at least for now, her daughter is safe and happy.
Maeve has certainly changed the mare and for the better. There's nothing she wouldn't do for her daughter, even if it meant dying for her. Maybe some can see that, but it's taken a lot for her to even realize it in herself what being a mom is like.
So, here she is- a woman who has spent so long fighting for what she believed in and thought she loved (even burned forests down just to prove it), when all she needed was a daughter.
Who knew?
The Regent doesn't take her eyes off Maeve when Antiope walks over. She has since been painted over with bright designs thanks to Maeve and there is a flower crown of yellow and orange flowers on her head. She's not looking like herself, but maybe that's okay.
"Some party, huh?" she asks the mare. It's not like Morr to be so far from Denocte and Antiope probably knows this. Although she hadn't been so sure about leaving (and her stomach is still in knots about being away), it actually hasn't been that bad.
The day was fresh, crisp, new. Dawn was rising, casting the shadows of night away. Before her rises the familiar form of the library. It beckons all scholars and seekers of knowledge into its halls. It is warm and cozy for those who have an affinity for the written word. An affinity she knows she will never have. Meira is not gentle, nor kind, nor remarkably intelligent. It has never been the case that she has ever been the brightest light in the room. Nor has she ever been the brightest light in someone's life. The thought makes her stomach churn and her tongue taste of iron and rot. The ripples of earthen tides warmed and flickered beneath the sunlight filtering through the edges of the rooftops. The sun was slowly spreading itself through the streets of Delumine, it was in no rush. The sun would not hurry itself for anyone, it was an enigma. The sun was both selfish and selfless in so many ways. Meira does not understand the sun any more than she understands Solis, though her faith in both does not wane. Both are the reason she has come here this early morning, to learn about the ancient gods the bard sang of. She wonders if the four deities always were.
She wonders if they are the same ancient gods who chose to abandon their past and start the world anew. It reminds her of how she arrived in Delumine. Dust, wax, and silence present themselves to her senses as she breaches the great doors. They spill her form into the sweeping halls. Each step she takes is a foreign one. Meira is not known for her interest in the written word, though there are times where the history of the world intrigues her. She is not studious, for she is far too impatient for that. The answers she seeks are often not the ones that present themselves easily. It is a wonder she tries at all given her nature. Her azure gaze sweeps across the books lovingly placed on their shelves. Meira does not know where to start to find the answers she seeks. Frustration creeps beneath the surface of her sea, an ugly monster she is far too familiar with. It is almost enough to make her turn and abandon the mission entirely. It is the knowledge that her dissatisfaction with the unknown will only grow and force her to return that keeps her here. Meira sighs as she begins to wander the aisles of books aimlessly. It is so early that only a few bodies have swarmed hidden areas of the library. It is a far cry from Solterra. Dust stains the air, not sand. The way the books here are loved too is different. Solterra is built for soldiers, Delumine is built for scholars. Meira once again is starkly aware of how many things make her stand out when compared to a native of Delumine.
Her limbs cease their movement at the thought. It drains her determination, it saps her until she feels she is a hollow shell. Meira wants nothing more than for the books to turn into a sea so that she can crawl into them and return home.
There are no other unicorns to stare at me here. No mirrors to show me broken down into all of my pieces, no stars pretending to be anything but dreams that have died.
Only bones for me to carve. And hearts for me to dig free. And a thousand horrors that coo like doves when they see me coming for them.
I
solt does not have any time for the shops with their weeping walls and their priceless treasures waiting like lambs for the slaughter.
And she has no heart to listen to the screaming wall beneath the weeping one, or to see the pattern of the city spiraling up, and up, and up the same way her horn does when she lifts it to the sky. Isolt is not mortal enough to see anything but the way the inside of the city feels like standing within the ribcage of a giant beast she thinks she once knew the name of. And when she rakes her tail across the opaline floor the wailing sound it makes seems to her like all those star-skeletons coming back to life, like a memory half-forgotten coming back as a ghost.
And what is a ribcage she wonders, but a thing made to guard a heart?
So that is where she goes, with the tip of her bloody horn leading the way. Straight to the heart of the city.
And oh! Maybe this is the reason Isolt has no heart of her own to care for the living: because it is here instead, rooted in the belly of an island that feels as though it were made for her.
Her walk turns to a trot, then a run, then a gallop in which she stretches out long and low and loses herself in the furious beat of her hooves cracking the bone-dry ground with every step. And never does she stop to look down, or to wonder where the heart of the city (her heart) lies. When it calls to her, she can feel it echoing inside of her chest with every beat. Come, it says, come, come, come —
so she does. And with every step rot is blooming from her hoofprints like flowers, specks of black forming arcane patterns that only she would know the meaning of. The walls grow thick with it, and the bone-pillars crack and fill each crevice with curled ribbons of bone pretending to be leaves, and berries, and dreams.
She runs until the throne rises up bright and terrible before her. And seated on that throne —
is her heart.
And wrapped around her heart is a ribcage that is not her own, bones and driftwood twisted into the shape of a prison. There are flowers there, and teeth, and leaflets of poison ivy, and eyes staring back at her. Somewhere a mouth pulls back into a smile, and something trembles to behold it (and oh! how the ground shakes with its tremblings.)
Her heart beats out its sorrow on the throne. Her chest aches in answer.
And Isolt listens to the keening of her tailblade as she scrapes it along the throne room floor, bone against bone, a wail rising through the hollow throne room.
The streets of Delumine were empty, almost all their souls sprawled across the Illuster Meadow for the festival. Children raced with baskets between the fires and the forest in celebration of Spring. Fire too brought life in its wake, just as Spring woke the flora from its winter slumber. It is an intricate dance that brings all the world into balance. A balance that she can never have, nor does she understand. The stars twinkle into existence to join the gathering masses. They dance overhead, obscured only by the coloured plumes of smoke dissipating into the sky. At the edge of the forest the darkness begins to yawn. It creeps through the trees, the same horrible monster that it was the day before. The day before was one filled with resentment, each and every soul except for one. A winged man who was forged from the earth, but made for the sky. The other two had been enough to make her blood churn into the volatile creature that swam beneath her rippled surface. Meira often wonders if she belongs in Delumine. Their ideals seem so out of place when applied to her. She is not wise, nor delicate. She is not the epitome of neutrality. Meira is made from the sea, and so she does not know what it means to lead a quiet life.
She is as wild as the fires that roar to life across the meadow. Somewhere nearby at the edge of the forest, a bard sings the epic of the old gods. The ancient beings that came long before Solis, Oriens, Vespera, or Caligo. In a way, they represent the old ways of thinking, and these new gods that are strewn across Novus are their children. Instead of celebrations of old traditions, they celebrate ideals. She often wonders if Solis will abandon her the way she has abandoned his court. Meira frowns at the thought, for though she respects Oriens, he is not her god. Solis loved her with all the wrath and passion that only a man built for war could. Yet, she felt a kinship with Caligo for the way her moon sang lullabies to the tides. It was a push and pull between the two of them. Meira flicks her ears backward as she moves into the forest. She moves until the darkness swallows her up, and the swell of voices is reduced to a gentle hum. The salty scent of the sea leaves its traces in the trees, she can smell it here. Just as she can hear the wind gently blowing the grasses at the base of the trunks as it weaves through the towering figures. Meira is reluctant to admit she is alone here. Delumine is not the home she would have chosen, but she could not go back.
There was always only one way to go in life, and that was forward. No longer could she run back to him. Gone were the comforts of her childhood, she had shed those robes long ago. The forest was as quiet as the sea, or at least it made her soul quiet. It writhed and gnawed on every fiber it could wrap its greedy lips around. Out here, away from all the gathering masses of mages and men, she could just be quiet. The darkness was her only solace, it concealed what she had left behind. Only it knew of her turbulent past. Only it knew that she planned to join the Roannes and bring their proud heritage to Delumine. A revival for her family was upon her, for she could not go back. It was much like time, in the way that it only shifted forward unless it was dragged backward by the mages. Meira sighs as she closes her eyes, surrounded by the darkness of the forest. It is sweeping closer and closer to the edge of the meadow. She can still hear the bard from here, but all the other sounds of the festival have grown quiet. Meira is alone. Truly alone.
She is her own entity, free of the chains that bound her. Ivory limbs swivel her bodice back in the direction she had come from. Her eyes pop open, in the distance she can see the glimmer of the bonfires that lie in stark contrast to the darkening sky. The Roanne woman hovers at the edge of the forest, peering out at the bonfires, listening to the idle epic spun by the bard.
@Alecto
I know this is super rambly. It won't be like this the whole time ;afjd. She's just staring at the bonfires from the edge of the forest near the bard. Just.. using the shadows as a cloak lool
in the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.
T
he morning after the flood, there is little left in his cottage that is salvageable. His dried herbs and medicines are soaked and in disarray; his diaries so wet the pages rip and tear, and the ink has run to the point they are ineligible.
The gaping hole in the roof will require significant carpentry skills to repair. Pravda does not believe he has any belongings that will not require some sort of replacement or, if nothing else, repair.
Around the cottage, the lowermost branches of trees are strewn with blankets and other bedding materials. Books are laid out, in a relatively orderly fashion, on the driest of the blankets in a pocket of sunshine. It is one of those mornings, after a storm, that seems so pristine there couldn’t have possibly been a storm to shake the rafters, to flood the streets, to set the Viride trembling with the wind. No: the forest is fresh and new with the rain, everything greener, more vivid. The birds sing almost too merrily.
Pravda, meanwhile, feels more disheveled than he can remember having felt, since he was a child. A child in his first life, that is.
His braids are unkempt; his eyes are dark, and tired, from a sleepless night spent at the mercy of the storm. He stands watching the books dry, a bit aimless in his—current circumstances. Pravda has only read of such tragedies, he has never been forced to endure one. His mind is still filled with the cracking of the ceiling and the cold running of the water through the floor of his cottage; he glances up towards the sun dappling through the trees, and then toward the ruined diaries.
Prigovora sprawls out in another patch of sunshine, yawning widely. His teeth catch that same light, and Pravda flinches at the high-pitched screech Prigovora makes with the gesture.
Behind him, the main beam of the cottage cracks and folds in half.
