Usually, decisions came easily, more so even than breathing or walking. Luvena Xiaoli was many things: stubborn, calm, poised, but indecisive was not one of them. But for once it was indecision that had swirled within her, for nearly an entire season, before she had come to this conclusion. It had not been easy, after all, she had tried so hard to find solace in dusk, under its dusty skies, and its kind people. But, pieces had been missing. Serving as a medic in a place full of them felt empty... and where they were so peaceful, there was rarely any work to be done beyond tending to herself. She had thought the familiarity would bring her peace... instead it lulled her into a constant emptiness, too close to what she had once had, but missing so many parts, it could never feel right.
The night order had been a breath of fresh air, something new, free of the chains of her past, constantly dragging her behind. In those temples, there was nothing but the comradery and the hustle and bustle of work. It was sheltered and warm, and she had done better than she had in years... Her health was still precarious, there were days when she excused herself from work and tucked herself away for the day in a quiet room, Picoro curled beside her, but, they were far fewer than they had been in the damp musty swamp. So finally, after days of mulling it over, she had pulled herself away from the hospital, and slowly picked her way back towards the mountains, letting her heart string her along, pulling her past every doubt.
She found herself now in the foothills, in the middle of winter, staring ahead at the mountains. She had been camped out here for a few days, tucked against an outcropping of rock for shelter, shivering to keep warm. She was hoping that she would run into someone who she could ask to take her up the icy slopes back to the order. She dared not venture farther on her own in the nicer seasons, let alone in the cold midwinter.
She hadn't sent word to Tenebrae that she was returning, not sure how she would get a message up the mountains to the order. But there was no doubt in the woman's mind that she would be welcomed back with open arms. She was thinner now, then when she had left. Winter always took its toll, and few factors would have changed that. Her eyes duller then they had been, but there was a determination behind them. She did not intend to wait for the thaw.
It was on her third day in the foothills, by the outcropping that she finally spotted someone in the distance, through the drifting flurries. She shook the snow off her pelt as she stood, pushing through the snow with some difficulty to make her way towards the stranger. As she approached she let out a nervous whinny in greeting. After all, this was not yet her court, and she had heard that some did not take kindly to strangers.
I say : if the heart is a muscle I will train it to be sinew. I say : the heart is a muscle and it will resist. / I say : because I am master of myself, I will not be weak.
Winter is as grey as she is.
She is a few inches above each black outcropping of rock and bone-bleach sand; try as she might, she cannot keep her hooves to the ground, anymore. Her magic is wild and hungry, and it spends most days scraping at the inside of her chest, begging to be let out like some starving animal. She doesn’t know what it wants. Sometimes, she is afraid of what it wants.
(Whatever it wants, it isn’t what she wants. It is a second heart beating inside of her. She wonders if it had always been there, even before that night on Veneror; she wonders if Raum gave it to her, violent as the scar on her cheek, or if it has always been a part of her, and he simply brought it out, tooth and claw.
Her magic tells her to grow stronger, from all of this; her magic tells her to become powerful and angry, to become feral and hungry as a sandwyrm. It tells her that she has earned the right, after everything that she has seen, and that it is the only way forward. Her magic tells her that it would be better to seethe than to weep. Her magic tells her that she has nothing left to lose, anyways.
She doesn’t want that. All that Seraphina has ever wanted is-)
The water is grey, and, with it, the sky. Where the sea meets the rocks, where it should be most shallow, where it crashes up on the basalt like an open, foam-toothed mouth, it is nearly black. She doesn’t bother to examine the paradox; it isn’t as though she understands the sea, anyways. Ereshkigal is above her, circling.
The sight is so ordinary that she cannot remember the day. She can barely remember where she is – she presses against the wind like she is walking through water, white hair twisting and coiling in a way that is not quite due to the wind. Her hooves don’t touch the sand. She moves like a ghost. She feels like a ghost. She wonders how long it will take for her to feel like a living thing again.
There were moments – where she did. When Raum was still alive, she still had direction. She still had purpose. Briefly, after his death, she managed to pull herself together. Briefly, after his death, she thought that she might get better.
But there were the nightmares. Every night. There was the backslide, and the guilt. There was the way that she stepped into the capitol one morning and found that she could not look down the streets without wanting to vomit; there is the way that it’s only gotten worse, that she can’t even look towards the city now without feeling nauseas. Every time she thinks that she has managed to pull herself together, she falls apart again.
She hasn’t felt like herself. Not since he killed her.
She wonders if she will ever feel right again. (She wonders if she has ever felt right to begin with.)
She stops when she is hovered above a gnarly outgrowth of basalt, hovering like a specter above the stone; her unbound hair flows behind her, movements in defiance of the wind, and she stares out at the sea, solitary and monochromatic. Ereshkigal’s talons clamp down on her shoulders like a vice as she circles down for a slow landing, though they only pierce her skin at the tips. She doesn’t notice; or, if she does, she doesn’t flinch.
Fine lines of red drip down her legs like small rivers, washing out to the tide.
@Elena|| sorry for the secondhand depression, elena babe || venetta octavia, "sit, stay, heel" "Speech!" || "Ereshkigal!"
and at last i see the light, and it's like the fog has lifted
Winter had come to Novus, and with it, a curiosity had risen in Solstice. She had been here a short while now, and had marveled when summer turned to fall. The leaves had turned to gold and red, and with them, her heart had become even more free and unburdened. Gone was the doe-eyed nervousness which always made it seem like the girl was prepared to flee, and in its place there is a quietly blossoming confidence as she begins to know herself, her desires, and her thoughts (now that she was able to have thoughts of her own).
A soft smile teases at her lips as she reaches with wonder toward the silver snowflakes that dusted Delumine’s meadow. It was so different, she marveled, this world once covered with wildflowers now cloaked in white. There was a beauty to the winter, Solstice decided, even if it brought a shiver of cold. She stretches her wings to capture as much sunlight as possible, pastel hued feathers ruffling in the winter’s breeze as they longed to fly – but the mare stayed grounded as she always had, too afraid to leave the earth, wondering all the while if they would be scouring the skies to find her.
She stays for a bit in the wide expanse of meadow, before turning toward the tree line and tracing the path toward the library. It was a place she went often, and as she ducked beneath the arched boughs, Solstice purrs with contentment, as awestruck now as she had been the first time she’d laid eyes on it. Books were tucked in the nooks of trees, filling small alcoves and large rooms carved into trees alike. Solstice weaves in and out of the maze of hidden rooms, gathering her favorite books to read them for what seemed like the thousandth time, humming as she went.
As she bustles from place to place, her stack grows taller and her mind begins to wander to the stories within their pages. So lost in her thoughts is the girl, that her surroundings seemed to fall away. She turns, nearly into another patron as a gasp escapes her lips and her stack of books jostles and weaves. “Omph, sorry!” Solstice offers a sheepish smile with her apology as she blinks at the stranger. “I really need to watch where I’m going…”
News of the grand “Party of the Season” had easily reached Denocte, the noble families abuzz with gossip and excitement at the prospect of attending. Better still was the news that Lord Arden Sarrallon had turned his nose up at the invite, disdainfully declining the offer. Locae had made his mind up, upon hearing his father’s response, that he just had to go.
A night of high class revelry with no expense spared and the chance to wander the halls of a Solterran noble’s palace rather excited the young Lord. That and of course the prospect of frustrating his father whose disdain for all but the highest class of Denoctians almost outweighed his disappointment of his wayward son. Dressed in the finest velvet money could buy and crowned in a halter of gold and ruby, Locae perused the marbled halls of the Ieshan’s lavish home, his hoof-falls lost to the echoes of the towering, painted ceilings. Though his outfit marked him as one of them, as someone with staggering wealth and grand holdings, the scars wrought across his plain ebony fur did more to draw attention than any gold or rubies could. He felt like a lion prowling among them, wreathed in a mane of auburn. But the Sarrallon Lord was under no illusions that there was many a viper and desert cat in the court of Solterra.
Though Locae was all too happy to attend the party as a manner of annoying his father, he had very little interest for the finer things in life and even less interest in the conversations between this noble or that. In fact the only thing that would make the evening at least somewhat enjoyable lay spread out across a number of rather vast tables.
The heady blend of alcohol and fine foods wafted from the gigantic hall as Locae greeted Prince Pilate at the door, a smirk upon his lips that suggested any pleasantries he spoke were entirely false. Then he made a beeline for the whiskey, weaving artfully despite his sheer size between the many horses that had packed out the room. The fruity cocktails and multi-coloured drinks promised more than just the usual effects of alcohol and were far too garish for Locae’s tastes and he instead went for a glass filled part way with amber whiskey. Sipping on it in a refined manner (or as refined as the scarred brute could be), he surveyed the packed hall and the guests within, searching for any faces he might recognise.
I want to be happy but something inside me screams that I do not deserve it.
Forest decorates every inch of Delumine. From the outskirts to the heart of it, wood buries its roots more deeply than the gods of his home. The waters and great rains in the desert could wash them away from time to time, but they always come back. Would these trees come back as well if all of them were burned to a crisp or ripped away in a mighty tornado? Is there another, like his father, who would so desecrate the land for their plan, whatever it is, and do anything everything to achieve it?
The monks, he knows, told him that there is always great evil in the world, but without this darkness, there would be no light. Ceylon is rather fond of moonlight, starlight, the mystery, and shadow it shows. Perhaps it is because when it's dark, he can see the galaxies his skin is modeled after. They wink high above, and he imagines them colorful, he imagines solar storms raging out of control in terrifying displays of fuchsia and coral, of seafoam green and darkest teal.
His buildings are never so bright nor brilliant. Oh, but he is.
Although he does not think it so, Ceylon is a statue of gold and glory, splashed with the night sky that winks to those who pass him by. The blue of him is as lovely and soft as his mother. The rest of him is every inch his father's son, and he is a Greek Adonis, he is a Cupid shooting his bow and arrow, he is everything splendid and lovely tucked into the curves and planes, the palatial expanses between his bones, the sleek sigh of every breath, and the whisper of his skin on a winter's day.
Frost kisses his nose, it bites at him like a wolf, and he only knows to hold it gently, softly. Ceylon would pull a blanket closer, bring another candle forth, were he home. And he is not.
Ceylon may never go home again.
So he moves between the walls of stone that tower higher and higher. Sky-blue eyes follow ivy up the stone cracks and he aches to piece the palace back together again. He knows he could do it. Ceylon knows he is as skilled with a chisel and hammer as he is with anything else.
Oh, the things he would do, the things he will do! Until that time he would wait, patiently, and bide his time. He is not an impulsive creature, not so overly bold and brash as to rush in headfirst without a plan, without first knowing where exactly he was and what exactly that meant. His sister would be proud, at least, that he has learned caution, at last, under the unwavering hand that raised him.
Time seems irrelevant when his whole life is marked only by pages, structures, and stone. In the Monastery, the monks did not tell him when it was morning or night, nor when to rise, nor when to rest. They only brought him to lesson after lesson in a house that was not a home. How could a temple, a holy place Ceylon's father would likely have destroyed if he'd had the chance, ever be more than a cage to hold the heart of a bird that longs for something more than what it's given without ever knowing exactly what?
It can't. Simple. Like him. Ceylon is a simple thing that lives between the lines of text historians write down to catalog the events of the world. The rise and fall of kingdoms, places, people. All of it. Everything. It's the same.
One face blurs into another, they don't look at him, not really.
Ceylon wouldn't ask them to look at him. His blue eyes do not yearn to reach out and touch their skin, find solace on the image of their lips forming his name, learning the curve of their lashes until they are the inspirations to the rise of his next great masterpiece and resurrection of the past. He's tired of making people into places, of watching their lips curl up, down, and being unable to decipher exactly why. Of course, it really isn't as though he's tried hard, or at all, to learn what emotions look like on another's face. Only his sister's face showed him what the world could be like if he dared to step into it. She taught him to laugh, to sing.
When she left him, too, he forgot those things.
The monks made sure that he knew only papers, pencils, and particles until he dreamed them into existence, brought back the world that the demon of the sand so desperately tried to destroy. Why? He'd ask over and over at first. Why? he'd question the silence surrounding him. Eventually, Ceylon stopped asking people.
Eventually, Ceylon started asking papers.
In the monastery, there were plenty of books to occupy his hungry mind. Always, always is he thirsty for something new, an appetite for knowledge growing and growing with the passing of every moon cycle.
Someday, it might kill him.
Until then, he'll eat another book for breakfast and start another with his morning tea. It doesn't matter when the end comes, when time forgets that it has meaning, it only matters that he's here. Spines of trees have morphed into spines of books, titles carved into their stout trunks until they scream.
It is not a peaceful place, but instead, this library is a place of memory. So many memories that are dark and hidden. He'll learn them all. Someday soon, he'll know everything this wooded refuge has to offer.
At first, the thing that becomes erasmus thinks that it has fallen headlong into a dream.
It is just before dawn when it arrives at the place that connects them all together – the web, the realm, the island. When the darkness of the night and the heat of the stars do not shift and reveal to it its namesake, it realizes that sleep has not carried it here. There are no dying embers of suns or the coldness of forsaken moons, no half-eaten planets lost to some new orbit, though it cannot help but feel as though it is still the black hole on the precipice – still the event horizon, hungry, lost, and waiting.
When the stars lose their place and barrel earthward, he closes his eyes and grins, but it is not sated still. They cascade like shards, the sound and smell of death and ashes, and the aether leaks from his pores in a veil of starless night. He waits until there is nothing but silence. And waits still. The gravity is spellbound, then heavy – it longs to drag him with it, drag it into the graveyard of stars that catch the faint glint of his gold then lapse into darkness, longs to fold him into the wreck yard of sharp and harrowing things, of deathly things to which he belongs.
He is no god. No devil. No savior. The aether is an abomination.
But the universe makes no mistakes.
Dawn pulls refractions over the mangled corpses of still-hot stars, colors bounding weightlessly from their tomb, the embers of constellations still glowing, sparking, then giving in to the cold stillness of death. At first, it is unclear if it is snow or ashes that drift from the sky – dancing, cascading – until a flake settles in the heat of his spine and too, dies.
When he walks, each step that folds itself over a still struggling shard of star crushes it with a gasp or sigh, or the long-gone cry of agony. Aether reaches to them meekly – as though shadows drip from him like a funeral veil, tattered edges separating the pieces left in his wake. They knead and knot, stitch and pull, ripping that final, diseased life from each suffering fragment of wounded heaven. Some cease into dust, mixing with the ash-snow.
Beneath him, the mirrors regress and fade like the light gone from the eyes of a doe, and in the horrific shadow that passes over him: reveal in each surface, the animation of colliding planets, dying suns, collapsing galaxies that against each other knit and burst like a supernova. In some, the sunlight draws a shimmer across broad faces, and when Erasmus passes the reflections shift and ripple and pull apart like multiplying cells. In each, his flesh is not horseflesh but a silhouette full with collapsing solar systems, blackening skies, black holes which collide and swell and break apart and eat and eat and eat.
In some, Erasmus is not the likeness of a boy at all but something awful, something horrific, something with dark eyes and shuddering ribs and a mouth full of grating, grinning, grinding rows of reticulated teeth.
When he stops, the darkness of him spreads beyond his shadow, consuming shards in hopeless images of dying worlds like an unfurling malignancy. At its heart, a mere boy – the image of Erasmus, seeming innocent (but it's the eyes, the eyes tell) and ponderous, waiting for the death of the Novusian sun.
Returning to Solterra hadn't been on my agenda in a while. It feels foreign to me now, like something out of a dream, when in reality, I have probably only been gone a year or less. The desert sands welcome each footstep, despite my heart aching more and more for the song of the sea. I find myself hating land the more I spend time on it. I am a predator beneath the water and there are less creatures to challenge me there unlike here. But what they don't realize is that I'm a predator here too.
This is how it feels when I step into the dining room of some Solterran noble. I never kept up with the names when I lived here because it didn't matter to me. I stayed as far away from the Court as I could and all that mattered was getting paid. I have since broken my ties with Vendetta and the job (which I'm sure she wasn't too happy about, but I don't really care) so I had no reason to come back, until now.
There had been an advertisement for dating- a pretty pathetic one at that. It read like something a desperate man had written in a rush. That's probably why I couldn't resist putting my name in the pool just to see how terrible the outcome would be. I figured if whoever I was paired with for a "date" was irritating enough, I'd just lure them to the sea and be done with them there. Of course, there's always a small chance that fate could actually pair me with someone worth my time, but that chance is very small.
All I have is a note with a name on it, but the name already escapes me when I see a man by the bar of this party. He stands out among all the lavish decorations of this noble house, but somehow still blends in among all the gold. He is not who I'm supposed to meet tonight, but he's someone I'd much rather meet with. I drop the piece of paper on the floor and walk over.
"Hello traveller," I say, my voice sweet like the wine I can smell in the air. I remember his name, but I also remember our last conversation. The way he spoke of monsters and his search of myths among his travels. I am so tired of meeting those who live in Courts because they are all the same. Not Torix- I can tell he does not belong to a Court and makes his own code. I'm dying to know what that code is.
Without asking for permission, I take the seat next to him and study the menu for a moment. Perhaps I'm the one out of place here, but I do not show it. I order a drink that promises a smell of spices but tastes sweet. "Have you been alone here long?" I can't deny he has some handsome qualities, so it would be sort of a shame if he didn't have a date this evening.
kissed my penny and threw it in
prayed to keep my soul
H
er mother told her that she had constellations trapped in her heart. They would stare up at that so impossible, infinite night sky and she imagined those same nebulas swam in her veins and expanded across her chest—that she was nothing but stardust. She wonders, if she were stardust, where she would go. Across galaxies, across time, across worlds, and across universes. Away, away, away.
In some ways, Elliana has been robbed of her childhood. She has seen death, has heard the way they face it, some bravely, some clawing at their life until they tip over into the abyss. There is not the carefree childish quality of imagining that this world she lives in now stretches on and on for eternity, unchanging. She knows the faces that are here now were once not, and will one day not be again. She is all to aware of time, when she should be free of it in youthful bliss. Instead, it weighs on her, the chills she feels when someone is close, when she knows they are going to leave. Another face, here, gone, and then another face gone, then here. Faces, faces, faces.
The ghost girl, the quiet girl, the almost invisible girl. She has only known snow, only known the endless alabaster blanket that covers the earth. She likes the way it makes everything look the same, uniform. There is comfort in the expectedness of it. Elliana walks in the fields where she has painted before, grabs a piece of snow already slightly rolled and begins pushing it against the ground. Rolling, rolling, rolling.
Elena had agreed to let her daughter attend the playdate by herself, but her mother had warned her that not many in the world were kind – that most wore a facade, that they pretended to be whatever they needed to be to get what they wanted. But Elliana could not help it, despite the ghosts, despite the demons, Elli was being raised in a world far kinder than her mother’s, and because of this, she was not jaded. Her heart saw things, and she wanted to love them. Love, love, love.
Jack, her companion animal thought the snow to be too cold and so he remains hanging on her neck, occasionally running those strange hands of his through her short, blonde mane. He chatters in her ear, telling her how big to roll the snow and what she should do to make the best possible snow pony out here. (He also chatters about how he is somewhat hurt that she was not building a snow lemur.) Build, build, build.
It is then those too blue eyes find an older girl also standing in the snow and Elliana, so free of doubt that this stranger could hurt her, walks up behind her. “Are you Maybird? Do you want to help me build my Snow Pony?” She asks, her lemur clinging onto her neck, watching carefully and settling himself in a position ready to spring. “I’m Elliana.” Elliana, Elliana, Elliana.
Posted by: Mercy - 08-30-2020, 10:45 AM - Forum: Archives
- No Replies
mercy
a heart's a heavy burden
While most would be disappointed to wake up surrounded by the cold bearing of snow, Mercy was actually relieved. Her sleep that night had been wrought with nightmares, visions of her mother chasing her through all of Novus and shoving her back inside that tiny prison she once called home. The bright white embrace of the snow on the plains was just enough to snap her out of it and remind her that she was, really and truly, free.
Mercy could still feel her heard beating rapidly in her chest. If anyone looked at her, they would probably be able to see the panic in her eyes. But she sat motionless on the cool ground and took deep, centering breaths. The layer of snow on the ground was thin, but still brilliant in the morning sun. It was pretty cold, but mercifully her thickset body wasn't irked by it very much. She felt perfectly acclimated after spending the entire night here. The only reason she wasn't covered in the snow surrounding her was because of the short, singular tree she had decided to sleep under last night. She looked up through it's branches, squinting in the bright light of daytime and thanked the tree silently for keeping her from the elements.
"I wonder how long I'll be safe from her," Mercy mused to herself aloud. Her life had been lonely since before she could remember, and over time one of the only ways to keep her entertained was to talk to herself. It was affirming, in a way. She had never had the pleasure of friends while she was growing up, only empty walls and her mother's demanding whinnies. Sometimes her voice would be the only sane thing she would hear in a day.
A pit of fear was opening in her heart, and Mercy didn't quite have the willpower this early in the morning to push it back. Maybe her nightmares were a prophecy of what was to come. Her mother was surely searching for her, furious to have lost her daughter and servant (probably more so the latter than anything). How long could Mercy keep running away from her? Stay out of her sight? How far would her mother go to get her back?
Mercy sighed woefully to herself, propping her head on one of her feathered hooves. She tried desperately to admire the beauty of the plains covered in snow. She didn't know how much longer she'd be able to appreciate sights like these.
But maybe, hope whispered in her chest to fill that pit in her heart, maybe her mother was just as soulless as she had guessed. Maybe her mother didn't care about her wellbeing or her servitude enough to worry about finding her. Maybe, somewhere, her mother was relieved to be without her. Mercy tried to view this as a positive, but it had a hollowness to it, too, that didn't quite fill the void. She hoped desperately that after a snack or two she would feel much better, because so far this day wasn't living up to any good expectations.
