![[ CLOSED♥ ] NOVUS rpg](https://novus-rpg.net/images/logo.png "[ CLOSED♥ ] NOVUS rpg"){kind=logo}
+- [ CLOSED♥ ] NOVUS rpg (https://novus-rpg.net)
+-- Forum: Realms (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=5)
+--- Forum: Solterra (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=15)
+---- Forum: Archives (https://novus-rpg.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=93)
+---- Thread: [P] aching in one place (/showthread.php?tid=4107)
Pages:
1
2
RE: aching in one place - Orestes - 12-29-2019
« don't die so far from the sea »
Orestes, old as the sea, knows it is her poem.
Perhaps that is why he shares it; the struggle of life and death, of ecstasy and fear, of summiting and ending in the same hairsbreadth. There is nothing so brilliant as life at the edge; of the cape buffalo meeting the lion’s jaw, the clash of titans.
What happens between them is quieter.
The pooling of blood; pain that reminds him how close he had been to being a monster, once.
The sea is awakening in his bones; it whispers in his blood and begs for more, more, more.
Show her, something arcane demands. Perhaps it is her violence, or the way Orestes has known the way death feels. Perhaps she feels a bit like an old friend, knocking, knocking, and this time Orestes is not ready to greet her. It is the almost-kiss that undoes him. It is the hard press of her nose against the wound she has left on him.
And Orestes realises it too late—the voice does not belong to the sea. The words are not soft, or sweet, or mysterious, or dark. The words are bright, violent, brazen. They are the sun in a cloudless sky.
Orestes begins to radiate. The golden glow of his tattoos bleeds into the rest of his flesh, until his skin's surface is nothing but light. The heat comes next; the hot wafting of a fire, of a summer storm. It shimmers in the air; nearly a mirage, if not for the burn.Pebbles lift and rotate; the sand at his hooves ascends, ascends, and becomes a dust-fine ring, not unlike those that encircle Saturn. His mane whips into a frenzy. He feels strong; he feels Solis at his back, in the form of the sun.
And for once, the sea is not in his ears.
Just the light in his eyes.
“Lady Death, do you think my skin is begging to die?” Orestes’s voice is heat and rage.
Those eyes—those winter-sea, noon-blue eyes—are more brilliant than the sun. He is light and heat and celestial and he presses into her as she steps away; he wants her to feel the burn, just as she had caused his flesh to sting. Even the remnants of his blood on her horn turn to the colour of sun-bright gold. The rubies become bullion shards.
“It is better you do not write; but you are the reason men write.” He burns, burns, burns. “You are the reason poetry exists… it is a shout into the void, don’t you see?”
Orestes draws back at last; still glowing; still bright. He feels his head rush, his stomach churn. There is a lethargy that creeps into his movements and he drops his head, pins his ears. It does not matter. Orestes is nearly too bright to look at. “‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you…’ Not quite a poem, but words, writing. What abyss have you stared into, Lady Death?”
Just as abruptly as he had begun to mimic his beloved sun, Orestes’s becomes a man again. He is flesh and blood and a body covered in foaming sweat. “You are alive, Lady Death. You may as well shout into the void with the rest of us.” He cannot help it. There is a roguish grin that breaks the indifference of his expression; there is something mischievous in his eyes, but in his mind:
Orestes remembers the way the spear pierced his breast in his first life—always the hardest to die in—and the way the blood flooded in his lungs. He coughed on it, and then choked. Even as he died he had become water but there had been a red, red stain to everything for a long time after that. Orestes nearly thinks—but does not let himself, no, he cannot—of how this is the last chance he has to live.
And how he treats it recklessly now, so recklessly; how he nearly longs to walk hand and hand with her through a herd of stone elk, and leave everything else behind.
THERE IS A LONELINESS IN THIS WORLD SO GREAT THAT YOU CAN SEE IT IN THE SLOW MOVEMENT OF THE HANDS OF A CLOCK. PEOPLE SO TIRED, MUTILATED, EITHER BY LOVE OR NO LOVE. WE ARE AFRAID.
Perhaps that is why he shares it; the struggle of life and death, of ecstasy and fear, of summiting and ending in the same hairsbreadth. There is nothing so brilliant as life at the edge; of the cape buffalo meeting the lion’s jaw, the clash of titans.
What happens between them is quieter.
The pooling of blood; pain that reminds him how close he had been to being a monster, once.
The sea is awakening in his bones; it whispers in his blood and begs for more, more, more.
Show her, something arcane demands. Perhaps it is her violence, or the way Orestes has known the way death feels. Perhaps she feels a bit like an old friend, knocking, knocking, and this time Orestes is not ready to greet her. It is the almost-kiss that undoes him. It is the hard press of her nose against the wound she has left on him.
And Orestes realises it too late—the voice does not belong to the sea. The words are not soft, or sweet, or mysterious, or dark. The words are bright, violent, brazen. They are the sun in a cloudless sky.
Orestes begins to radiate. The golden glow of his tattoos bleeds into the rest of his flesh, until his skin's surface is nothing but light. The heat comes next; the hot wafting of a fire, of a summer storm. It shimmers in the air; nearly a mirage, if not for the burn.Pebbles lift and rotate; the sand at his hooves ascends, ascends, and becomes a dust-fine ring, not unlike those that encircle Saturn. His mane whips into a frenzy. He feels strong; he feels Solis at his back, in the form of the sun.
And for once, the sea is not in his ears.
Just the light in his eyes.
“Lady Death, do you think my skin is begging to die?” Orestes’s voice is heat and rage.
Those eyes—those winter-sea, noon-blue eyes—are more brilliant than the sun. He is light and heat and celestial and he presses into her as she steps away; he wants her to feel the burn, just as she had caused his flesh to sting. Even the remnants of his blood on her horn turn to the colour of sun-bright gold. The rubies become bullion shards.
“It is better you do not write; but you are the reason men write.” He burns, burns, burns. “You are the reason poetry exists… it is a shout into the void, don’t you see?”
Orestes draws back at last; still glowing; still bright. He feels his head rush, his stomach churn. There is a lethargy that creeps into his movements and he drops his head, pins his ears. It does not matter. Orestes is nearly too bright to look at. “‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you…’ Not quite a poem, but words, writing. What abyss have you stared into, Lady Death?”
Just as abruptly as he had begun to mimic his beloved sun, Orestes’s becomes a man again. He is flesh and blood and a body covered in foaming sweat. “You are alive, Lady Death. You may as well shout into the void with the rest of us.” He cannot help it. There is a roguish grin that breaks the indifference of his expression; there is something mischievous in his eyes, but in his mind:
Orestes remembers the way the spear pierced his breast in his first life—always the hardest to die in—and the way the blood flooded in his lungs. He coughed on it, and then choked. Even as he died he had become water but there had been a red, red stain to everything for a long time after that. Orestes nearly thinks—but does not let himself, no, he cannot—of how this is the last chance he has to live.
And how he treats it recklessly now, so recklessly; how he nearly longs to walk hand and hand with her through a herd of stone elk, and leave everything else behind.
@Thana / speaks / notes: text text
☀︎RE: aching in one place - Thana - 12-29-2019
She can see it in him before it surfaces, that pulse of fury spiraling up, up, up towards the outside of his skin. Her own magic, her own violence snarls to see it, to see the way he spirals just like the bloody drawings she marked him with (claimed him with). How often had her own violence felt like this? Like her heart was going to leap free of the cage and bare its teeth and bones at the world. It feels like that now when he glows, and burns, and the world ebbs towards the side of violence with him.
It fees like her magic is going to unmake her, flip her inside-out until she's all teeth, and organ, and bones whittled down to sharp points.
And so Thana answers him. Because she is shark, and unicorn, and wolf at the full moon.
Her own magic rises, furious and wild and cold, cold, cold. It leaks through her pores, rot and dust and death. She imagines what his heart will feel like pressed against the tip of her horn; she imagines how his veins might flutter in the wind like flags. She imagines how his eyes might tremble beneath her skin as she presses them closed, how they might see the true color of white just one final time. She imagines how the curl of his neck might feel again pressed against hers, how like the center of the earth his skin might feel if she pressed her lips in a kiss at the hollow of his throat.
She imagines unmaking him and making him.
When he asks her the first question she does not answer in the way of the horses in this world. She answers him in the way of the wild, of the forest, of the rift-magic hungry to eat a world. It's there, her reply, her howling hello to his violence, in the tilt of her horn as she lowers it across his spine. It's in the thud, thud, thud of stones against the curl of it, in the way it sounds like knocking. She rests it across his spine as he curls into her and as his fire makes her skin froth white as a wave on a storm sea. And if her horn is saying anything at all besides hello, it's a begging plea to make art out of the prefect curl of his spine.
His fury makes all her nerve-endings feel alive and she has never felt like her soul was so cold as it is now pressed tight against the sun. She has never felt so alive, as alive as death might feel standing in the middle of a civil-war, like the world is stretching out endlessly before her and it's black, and rotten, and begging to be taken. Her eyes spark and blaze at him and the urge to ask him, am I the reason you write then?, is strong enough to taste like acid and dust when she licks at the backs of her snarling teeth.
Perhaps the words do not come, perhaps nothing comes out but the feral, aching, wanting growl of her violence, but it's there, the asking, in the ashes of her gaze, in the ember-amethyst. The asking is in the one small promise of softness her form knows how to give.
“I cannot.” She says the words as he pulls back and each is a bolt of lightning, a hail to all the wicked things she's made of. It's hard and full of teeth and wanting that she does not know how to hide. Even when he softens and turns to nothing but a horse she cannot pull them back. She wants to scar him, she wants to pluck that sun-god inside him loose. She wants to burn, and burn, and burn. She wants to hurt again. And even though she doesn't want to think it, the thought is there, like an itch, that maybe a gallon of blood might bring him back.
Thana closes her eyes hard enough that she can see only white and feel only the sting of it. Each inhale she takes is sharper than the last, shallow and harsh. She's breathing like a dying thing on a battlefield, like the last one alive in a pile of corpses. She's breathing like she's praying. “I cannot shout or yell into the void.” The words are between those shallow breaths and she trembles like she's been running for miles and miles. Because she still wants to make and unmake him, she still wants that gallon of blood and that kiss against the hollow of his throat.
And when she opens her eyes to look at him she wonders that he cannot see all the ways in which she can do nothing with the void. She wonders why he cannot see it when her wolf is calling to his sea upon a desert throne. How can he not see there is no void in Novus but her?
Her froth must seem like sea-foam, she thinks, when she presses their necks together. And her voice must sound like a wave at the bottom of the sea when she lifts her nose to his ear and says, “but if you do I will answer back.”. The blade at the end of her tail taps a knock, knock, knocking song against a stone fallen out of place in the wreckage of his fury. Or maybe it sounds like a drumbeat.
Maybe it's nothing more than a battle-cry she was made singing.
Her tail is still tapping when she slides her nose down his face to his lips. And it is still knocking, drumming, tapping when she breathes her air right into his lungs.
Knock, Knock. “Always.” Knock.
@orestes