Cloudy, vacant eyes stay still, still, still, watching nothing at all.
Footsteps lead out and out and out, down onto the beach.
Corpses are left like stepping stones, like clues upon a treasure hunt.
She leaves blood like a trail between her corpses.
It began with a rabbit, but that was never enough, not for a kelpie starved. Especially not one who had grown so thin, so desperate it could barely run its hunger along her ribs like a stick along railings. A loud racket to say I am here and you are killing us.
But that was always her goal: to kill them.
Not the corpses, no, she wanted them alive, she valued their lives above her own. No, she wanted her own death, her kelpie’s death because she knew that this would happen. The Binge, the frantic, wild hunger that was like a hurricane in her veins, unstoppable, unrelenting.
She sobs as she eats, tears falling upon exposed meat. Tears that try to wash the blood from her lips, cleanse her from the violence of her nature. They try to purify her of this binge. But there is nothing that can purify Sereia. Nothing has ever stopped these moments.
Wasting away, she turns from an angel of famine into an angel of death. But at least, when she feasts, the deaths are quick, but… oh, there are so many.
It began with the rabbit, and then the fox, but the fox was not enough. In its open ribcage she saw her sister’s eyes, gleaming as she offered her own fox carcass to Sereia to share. Still famished, already guilty and panicked she fled the fox. Then, there was the fawn and its doe mother, and then out of the trees and onto the beach, a horse, and this is the worst.
She feasts upon the horse until another strays upon the beach and she captures that too, succumbing to her wicked nature, running fast and silent and swift. Until her teeth find their throat, until she pulls them down upon the sand, their limbs tangled, their bodies writhing.
Her kelpie feasts, frantic, desperate, anything to survive. It eats as much as it can before Sereia can regain control, until she can rouse from her stupor and stop this frenzy. Her kelpie eats to keep them alive, Sereia starves them in the hopes that they might die, or a cure could be found before they do…
And it it when his neck breaks with a crack between her teeth that Sereia suddenly realises what she is doing, what her kelpie is doing. She scrabbles away, as flighty as the rabbit she had ended only moments before. She looks at her path of destruction extending out across the beach. Blood and corpses littered like confetti. She is sobbing louder now, louder than when she was frantically eating the first horse. Her eyes find the listless body of the stallion she just culled. He is perfect, untouched, but for the bite at his throat, his broken bones. She wonders if she should eat him, at least to make his life worth something. Her kelpie parries, crying yes, crying out because she knows she needs this, to eat, to live.
Sereia lunges wild, hungry for the stallion’s corpse but stops. No. No. She turns, barely in control of herself. She runs for the sea, she is knee deep within it. It washes the blood from her limbs, it cannot reach the crimson that lies across her chest, her face, her neck, her abdomen. She stands, an angel of death and turns, when a voice cries out against the sea air.
He is there. Golden and bright he stands at the edge of the wood, where the trees meet the sand. Before him is the first horse corpse, behind him the doe and her fawn. The kelpie claws within her, desperate, savage, needing him, his life, his blood.
”Run!” Sereia screams, but she is the one running. Leaping through the surf towards him, her eyes not her own, her mouth too wide, too wide, her hair lifted exposing all that she is, a girl of the sea, everything he hates. Her kelpie lunges for him, leaping out of the water, up the beach. She is there, her lovely mouth parted in an ugly gawp. She reaches for his throat, to live, to die.
some memories never leave your bones.
like the salt in the sea; they become a part of you
- you carry them.
He crosses the spine bridge, whose ribs rise like fingers for him. His toes tap over spinous processes, the sound so much like a piano’s ivories pressed into tune. He has come far from his wild woods but this is the place of his birth and every season he returns it is so utterly different. Each time he takes a piece of it away with him, sometimes a physical memento, sometimes the island within him, sinking deep, like oxygen passing into his blood and then off into his every cell.
Leonidas will always return here. He was born into a strange world. He is spun from stranger magic, Time and ancient, feral things. The weeping wall calls him, its tears mixed with the crying of the wall beyond sound like haunting memories of how he and his sister went when their parents disappeared. But Leonidas was the only one who cried for longer. For Aster stopped and never started again. Her lovely face drawn with something dark, some terrible resolve that sunk into her body and soldered her bones.
In amidst the wandering crowds, this strange fae-boy can pass as nearly a man. Nearly. He is grown tall and muscular, but still youth claims him, turns his eyes wide with wonder and not enough wariness. He has learned of the wilds, of how to live within Nature’s palm, but he has not learned of people yet. Of how they might be the most dangerous things here, more terrible than any monster.
He moves onward, away from the wall that weeps her haunting tears. Away from the wall that screams his terrible ire out like a broken violin. Leonidas, gilded and wild, walks into the glow of the stones, on through the shops and the strange walled gardens, on and on he goes until the castle opens up her maw for him. Her mouth is full of light and creatures. Her teeth are glowing windows. He steps up and in and there, watching art is a girl so much like the one who hunted him in the wood. Leonidas knows a twin. This girl’s body answer’s her sister’s crimson, Isolt has left crimson dots, left like blood splatter across her sister’s ivory skin. Her horn is dipped in blood, her eyes as white and red and bright as a hunter’s moon.
It should stop him, but it does not. He goes to her as his sister came to him. The walls glow off her body and he wonders what death and danger clings to her. What whispers her Rift blood will sing into his. Time meets magic and the boy tips his gilded antlers to touch the art she watches. It scatters from him, like beetles, crawling across the floor, reaching, reaching for their feet, to climb, to claim, to turn them into living art.
you spend so many nights dreaming of spilling your blood to the moonlight. slipping out of your bones, and slithering into the soul of someone else
The world drifts into a wounded stillness. All around me, the wind is singing – a faint breeze of restless apathy. I watch dusk fall like a crown tilting down upon the brow of a midnight heaven. Everywhere is silence, and I enjoy this silence, this unnerving calm, as much as I enjoy the soft moonlight. It is still, like the whisper of death's kiss upon a pale, white hand; and its hunger roams like a lone wolf roams, bristling through aching moonlight and forest-shadow. Everywhere, the darkness drips like a drug. Everywhere, fragments of moonlight pool through the cracks of me, like rainwater escaping between a bone-white ribcage. I feel the night's cold, and lean into its embrace like a lover. I feel the soft breeze singing, and I feel alive; alive with the chill of nightime, coaxing my soul to wake from its eternal slumber.
Her world is a place full of darkness, of fairy-tales – of religion and celestial appetite. Her hunger, is one of dreams and ethereal beauty. When she dances beneath a thick, stream of moonlight, the gauzy moon-silver wraps for her curves like a flowing nightgown. The silver veil flutters by her side, riveting and rippling as a midnight spell. Smoothing, all around her with all that vibrant, light-filled hunger. Andromeda feels more angel than mortal. She feels more like sunlight, that doesn't belong in the shadows of a dead, decaying world. She does not feel like she belongs of this universe made of diamonds and stardust. Like a crescent moon, she feels incomplete – her heart, the secret notes of a mysterious song. She feels too new; an orphaned child, abandoned by the gods. She feels so helpless yet, so unafraid.
When she walks through her dreaming, desolation becomes her companion. When she walks through the valley of stars, her heart feels more empty than it does full. Her voice becomes silent, like swan-songs lost to the wind. Still, she moves on into the deep throes of night. Into the darkness, that caresses her delicate figure. She is but a young girl; soft and holy. A light-bearing torch, full of almost-laughter and echoes of laughter, begging like tears upon night's shadowy visage. Andromeda only laughs, quietly, as soft as the hush of wind; as whisper-thin as a wolf's howl. A silent whisper, a cold song. She is tethered to no place, no being. And yet with her she carries oceans of emotion. With her are the swell of seas.
When she moves, she moves slowly, dances sensually. Waking and wishing upon a night full of dreams. Her legs are slender, as her muscles purr and ripple beneath taut flesh. Behind her bodice, trails her eternal flames. An endless train of amber fire, as they glide like soft silk against her skin. Her tail is lupine, as it flutters behind her; beneath the soft notes of spring, Andromeda looks like a dragon for all the fire she brings. She moves like a swan over a grey lake. All fine-edges, and fragile poetry, feathered into soft, girlish brilliance. Andromeda is a girl of fire, of desire, of dreams. Beneath the shadowy ambience of night, she glows – impossibly celestial. A soft figure of porcelain slenderness made so gentle you'd fear to break her. But her eyes, o, how they scream of another universe, entirely. One full of violence and fire. One full of dark music and the gentle, long-awaited suffering of a half-moon.
When she finally stops dancing, Andromeda stands before the cavern's maw, and gazes deep within their black abyss. A breeze sweeps forward, sirenic and haunting. When the moonlight touches her physique through the fortress of trees, her complexion gives off a mysterious afterglow. Dressed in moonlight, the silver ink feels like silk upon her skin. It feels soft and pale and made by gentle hands, as such tender moonlight smoothes down her curves in a waterfall of pale illumination and wicked cadence. She wonders if she should enter the cave. She wonders if monsters lay among their darkest corners, like gargoyle statues waiting for her with sharp talons. She wonders, she wonders and yet she does not enter the cave. She only steps half-way and then, pauses. She only looks within, as the winds begin to sigh with harsh laughter, and her voice begs quicksilver from her lips; "Hello?"
you're the dawn that rises bloody, and wrecks ships in its wake. but you're a siren too, somewhere deep in the aching heart of you
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
W
inter fell away.
Spring came forward, bursting with life through the bitter cold. Giving promise to a new beginning. A beginning of life. Elena has ached for the spring, to show her daughter the flowers coming forth, to show her the green of the trees, and to introduce her to the warmth of the season. But for all the newness that has come with the season, Elena feels herself performing all too similar actions and the wearing the same emotions on her sleeve.
She runs with all the grace of sunlight, weaving easily through the trees and around the enormous stones until her shoulders darken subtly with sweat and shadow. Her thoughts are singular, an echo of the pain in her chest, pushing her faster and further. The vivid of her blue eyes bright.
They are dead, dead, dead, dead. They are gone, gone gone.
In another world, one where Elena continued to grow wild and free, she may have never felt as broken as she did. In another world where her parents did not die, where this time of year did not fill her with both hurt and rage, guilt and sorrow.
And before she knows it— she is at the ocean again. Throwing messages in bottles and praying they reach the shores of Taiga. Lilli once asked her why everything had to be so complicated. They had been tucked together under a Hyaline night sky. There are too many ways that life can hurt you. Fire and ice both burn, Elena knows this best. So Elena knows not whether to freeze out the world or blaze through it. So she stands there frozen to death and a pile of ash.
She thinks of Elliana. Sunlight and shadows. Opposites, and yet they came together in the perfect creation. Can fire and ice co exist to create something as beautiful as her own daughter? Elena doesn't think so. She knows fire hurts, fire destroys, but fire, fire is alive and grows and breathes. Ice is the quiet killer, the assassin, the murderer. So much more deliberate than fire. And Elena knows she would rather go up in smoke than wait for her blood to turn cold.
Those painfully blue eyes look out to the ocean. She should be getting back. There are responsibilities she cannot ignore, no matter how much she wishes to on a spring day like this one. She turns and as she does, it is then the chill creeps down her spine, as cold as an icicle glinting in the sunlight. She has felt this chill, once, twice, in her life. But Elena remembers it well: ice magic. She turns to face him with winter in her eyes, she doesn't recognize her face, though she is still quick to pass judgment on him, if maybe more so for his lack of familiarity. She takes a single step towards him, tries to keep her voice steady. “Ice does not often reach the shores of Terrastella. Do you have a reason for traveling this way?”
I'm sorry there's so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. I tried to put some of the good things in, as well. Flowers, for instance. Because where would we be without them?
I do not understand dreamers.
I do not understand the way they paint their skins or bejewel themselves; I do not understand their dances or their poetry or their magic.
Most of all, I do not understand the raw exuberance of their lives; the way they allow joy and pain and love to color their expressions in equal measures, as they come, in waves of pleasure or agony. I have always watched them from afar with a bemused expression; I have always humored them.
(What I cannot admit to, ever, is the way I read most voraciously the stories of dreamers. My bookshelves are lined with poetry; with romances; with escapades and adventure tales, of lands I will never visit in anything save for imaginative words).
The Festival unfolds before me in brilliant fire; the colors might have astounded me if I were a dreamer. But already, as I have said, I am not, and instead I find the entire affair a waste of resources. On a political level, I understand the practicality of a festival between Delumine and Denocte—I understand the benefit of merging our cities, our cultures, of letting bonfires lick the sky.
But why, I wonder, must it be under the guise of night? Why must it be with children’s laughter rising high and bright in the spring air, like the unfurling of so many wings?
I know Prigovora should not accompany me to such an event; and yet he is there at my shoulder, a nightmare slicing through the knee-high grass. He does not turn to look at me but stares out through the flames, his irises glowing as all good predator’s do in the darkness, in the glinting light: bright and wide as saucers.
I am here, he thinks, through our Bond. I have known him for an eternity and I will never grow accustomed to the sound of his voice, grating, nails against stone or metal against metal. To keep the dreamers at bay.
I turn away from him but he trails my shadow. I do not know if it is my haste to get away or if it is my simple preoccupation with my thoughts, but the abrupt pivot to the side and beyond has me colliding with something else—
It takes me a moment to recognize, with the sound of air leaving their chest, it is not a something but a someone—
“Excuse me—I apologize. Are you… alright?” My head is ringing, and I realize that is what I had hit. His head.
He is bathed in bright blue firelight; in the thought of stars; in a night that is fresh and new, and not the dead thing that it feels like in my chest.
The fires burned into the sweeping canvas of night. The chill in the air was kept at bay by the immense size of the bonfires painted by strange metals. Meira gave in to her exhaustion, she rested at the edge of the light cast by one of the bonfires. There were a few bodies dwindling near this one, but most equines were attracted to the livelier locations. She never imagined the ground would feel so comfortable. Her nape was elongated and her muzzle rested upon the soft sandy ground. Her oceanic chasms studied the dancing flames. Each flicker was a mesmerizing movement of a complicated pattern. The wood beneath them shifted, the charcoal sounded hollow as it scraped against the wood. Flickers of firelight exploded from the edges of the flame. Meira sighs with contentment as she studies the fire. Her body begins to relax, after traveling from Solterra she sorely needed it. The warmth bathed her bodice as though it were an invisible blanket thrown across her earthen shoulders.
The voices drifting in the night become a dull hum in the background of the main event. Stories are being told, children are racing nearby. It's almost idyllic the way the night is progressing. Meira feels her eyes begin to grow heavy as she allows herself to enjoy the warmth of the flames. She drifts into a landscape much darker than the one in Illuster Meadow. She dreams of the monsters she has already bound. Her frame grows restless as she dreams beneath the stars. Not even the fire is enough to keep her monsters at bay. Meira wakes with a start and finds herself launching herself onto her feet suddenly. The world comes into a sharp focus as she glances around groggily. Annoyance stirs in her as she slowly realizes that she had been dreaming. Dreaming in the void again. The Roanne woman wonders if she will ever dream beyond the void that traps her each night. It swallows her each night, and each morning she wakes in a cold sweat.
Meira casts a glance over her shoulder and spots a hazy figure moving in the direction of the bonfires. She blinks a few times in an attempt to clear her eyes. Whoever is walking toward her is obscured by the darkness of night and the cloak of smoke blowing across the ground between them.
@Septimus | I'm looking forward to writing with you!
Her bones are tired, so tired that they have created a new definition for an old idea. Night is slowly creeping across the sky behind her as she travels west. It stalks her like a horrible monster that is always just out of her reach. It carries with it the threat of isolation, and memories spun from another time. Meira does not dare to stop, she fears she will not be able to keep going if she stops. She believes she will succumb to her weariness if she allows herself any respite. Stars begin to appear in the sky ahead of her, each one twinkling into existence. Meira studies them as she moves, she wishes they kept their promises. The closer she draws to Delumine, the more obscure the stars become. Suspicion prickles along her nape as she peers into the smoke covered sky. The sun has long since set by the time she sees the plumes billowing into the heavens; And yet, reds, violets, and black clouds spill into the void overhead. Meira does not realize she has stopped a moment to study the potential omens in the sky until she looks down at her legs that have immobilized themselves.
She glares at them momentarily, as if to scold them for their betrayal. Meira sighs as she begins to move once more, the effort to shift into motion once more is noticeable. A grunt escapes her pale lips, lips that are more vicious than their colour would promise. It is the only part of her that lies. Every inch of her beyond her lips and daggers speak a brutal truth, just as her mind and heart do. Meira grows closer to the source of the colourful smoke plumes, she has a momentary revelation about them. When she had stayed in Denocte, she had read about the Fire Festival that took place between Denocte and Delumine. Meira recalled thinking it was a curious tradition. Now the festival sprawled out before her, inviting her to go and join the swathes of bodies. Meira began to feel the warmth waft from the bonfires the closer she got to them. The dull hum of voices became more distinct as she passed a few of the bonfires where mages were tossing some sort of metal into them. Meira has again stopped, she is mesmerized by the way the flames dance into the sky. She idly wonders if this is what stars look like up close.
Meira is hovering at the edge of the group, but never quite breaking into the circle of bodies that are gathering for the storyteller taking their place at the head of the circle.
@Morrighan | I hope this is okay/gives you enough to respond to <3
i'm up against these things i can't see ;
they don't compare ; make me believe, make me believe
T
here is something about divination that's both interesting but intimidating at the same time. I've heard of the Shed Stars back in Denocte but Momma never let me meet them. She said it could be too dangerous, but they always seemed nice enough. They wore pretty jewelry and some had eyes that glowed like crystals in moonlight. One of them complimented me on my own jewelry as we went by, the chains and bangles that Momma Zahra gave me, but Momma Morr shooed me away. I think they can be too powerful and so she wants to keep me safe. I get it, but I've always wondered how someone could read things to predict stuff. I wondered if they could actually predict the future.
When Momma left me for a bit to be with Aspara, I knew this might be my chance while she's not looking. It seems the Shed Stars have left a deck of cards out for free use on top of a tree stump (at least, this is what it looks like to me). I'm feeling a little mischievous today, but also this will distract me from all the bonfires that surround us (and how I somehow made embers spark at my feet back on the island).
No, I really don't want to think about that. Although part of me is curious if the cards are powerful enough to tell me more about it... Maybe later.
For now, I start shuffling the cards and give a big grin to Aspara. "Let me tell your future!" I say but in a deeper, more ominous voice. I don't really know how to shuffle cards so some just start falling out of the pile and onto the ground. One falls face up and I peek down to read the words on it - "Death."
I should find fire beautiful. Momma does and so many others do too. I can tell by how they are laughing and smiling by the bonfires. Some are throwing things into the fire from pouches and it makes the flames change color. I should be fascinated by that, but I'm not. I'm terrified.
I remember the way the sparks came up out of nowhere on the island. I had been so scared already but then I did that. I made fire appear like Momma can. I've admired her for many things, but not her magic. That was the last thing I ever wanted to get from her, but I got it anyways.
So I still turn away from the flames and try to hold in my tears. I want to be strong like Momma, but not angry or destructive. Fire can get out of control so easily and I never want to conjure it again. Anything but that.
There are paints and jewelry setup in stations where the meadow meets the woods. Momma is in view, but she too is entranced by the flames. I know she doesn't want me going too far, so I stop here and figure I may as well paint. I've seen others painting themselves in elaborate colors and designs, so I can try it too. I use the reflection from a nearby puddle to start painting a flower on my cheek, but then I hear something in the woods. Out of the corner of my eye, I think I see something with wings. I can feel my ear twitch. Everything in there is too dark so I can't figure out if I imagined it.
Although, I've never forgotten the pegasus boy I met in the markets or how he wanted to show me his places in the forest. Is this one of them? He must be so scared with all the noise from the festival.
"Leo? Is that you?" I whisper to the trees. That way if it is him, he won't get so much attention drawn to him. Part of me hopes I'm right and I can have a friend distract me from my thoughts.
let everything happen to you, beauty and terror, just keep going, no feeling is final
He could be in a chapel, but for the absence of voices echoing of stone. The voices drift off into the night and the wind is more open, more free across his skin than if feels within a chapel. So many things Tenebrae is learning about the world now his sight is gone.
The incense drifts, burned upon charcoal and flame, carried up and out upon the wind, laden with blessings and prayers. Tenebrae comes to the festival as a chastened man. His journey was long and arduous. The lessons of learning to live sightless are all across his body. His limbs are bruised and bloody. His shadow magic is not yet accustomed to reaching out before him solid and wide to feel the terrain ahead of him. He cannot read its messages so clearly yet when they press upon his awareness. So the warrior monk stumbles and trips, yet each day grows easier. His remaining senses grow more attune. Already his brothers are making him fight, blind. It is like learning anew. Listening to his opponent, sensing their presence.
Tonight he moves through the crowd that jostles him, knocks him. Crowds are not so good at sensing the impaired within their midst. Tenebrae drifts to the edge, stepping closer until the heat of a bonfire breathes across his silver skin. The bandages across his eyes warm with the heat. Tenebrae basks in the warmth for it is soothing across his now broken eyes. They still throb, filled with Solis’ light, burned out, cast into eternal darkness.
The Disciple stands upon the edge, silent, and thinks of all his transgressions. Promises, prayers and penitent whispers lie across his lips and he murmurs them out into the smoke filled night. They rise with the incense up to the sky and the eternity beyond. That is what Tenebrae has now, an eternity of a broken heart and its punishment of eternal darkness. He is cast into Caligo’s darkness now, he longs to love her more for it, but all he feels now is numb. Yet Caligo might be the only thing left for him. Elena is gone, her ire and hurt still a sun’s rage across his skin. Her child is not his and that, to this monk, is both a blessing and the most agonising curse. He cannot help but be filled with the thought of what could have been. Yet, at least it is a blessing for a monk should not have a child and a father should be able to see his daughter.
