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+---- Thread: [AW] angel, come clean; (/showthread.php?tid=2693)
angel, come clean; - Tsuyu - 08-13-2018
The tower sits boldly amongst bracken cliff and Albatross-birds: an idol, piercing the quiet blue of sky, glittering in lantern light and begging you to worship it. It exists as a stark, palpable comparison to his worlds of old – the indiscriminate ruins of the Rift, home to things dead and others dying, and now, gone entirely – so much so that he is shaken by it, and brought to a solicitous halt.
The steeple is humbling; and splendid; and magnanimous: and a warmth settles at the very pit of his gut, with it a warbling hum of gratitude that he still exists to witness beauty, let alone roam amongst it.
He presses on towards the Citadel, quiet in thought, light-footed. The horizon is bright, embellished: he pursues it with purpose, head ducked low beneath everglade branches, limbs of bleached willow. His feet move less sluggishly than they once did, and less did his knees stumble, gnarled and creaking like old staircases – he is renewed, here, reborn: the Gods of this place grasping him in the ancient palms of their hands and tenderly, benevolently, piecing together his parts.
His newfound gifts of healing ripple sympathetically beneath the surfaces of him, idling in wait, yearning for use. The irony does not escape him, broken as he is, to be gifted the power of life – albeit weak, and amateurish, it inspires in him a determinism to do better; to be greater.
He might not flourish – but he will survive.
He is ready, now, to unbury himself from the grave, to wander amongst the willow trees of brackish woodlands – to meander amongst the living – to dance with them, bursting with the infinite possibilities of rebirth.
He settles peaceably on the outskirts the capital, content to watch, to wonder. The dark arms of oak and elms encase him – and he is safe, here, amongst lilies and golden thistle, hydrangea leaving violet imprints on the knotted bones of his hocks. He is home amongst them; home here; home already, his diminutive, underdeveloped wings shifting strangely at the strident lines of his shoulders, and his eyes to the sky, flying, flying, flying.
DIS BADThe steeple is humbling; and splendid; and magnanimous: and a warmth settles at the very pit of his gut, with it a warbling hum of gratitude that he still exists to witness beauty, let alone roam amongst it.
He presses on towards the Citadel, quiet in thought, light-footed. The horizon is bright, embellished: he pursues it with purpose, head ducked low beneath everglade branches, limbs of bleached willow. His feet move less sluggishly than they once did, and less did his knees stumble, gnarled and creaking like old staircases – he is renewed, here, reborn: the Gods of this place grasping him in the ancient palms of their hands and tenderly, benevolently, piecing together his parts.
His newfound gifts of healing ripple sympathetically beneath the surfaces of him, idling in wait, yearning for use. The irony does not escape him, broken as he is, to be gifted the power of life – albeit weak, and amateurish, it inspires in him a determinism to do better; to be greater.
He might not flourish – but he will survive.
He is ready, now, to unbury himself from the grave, to wander amongst the willow trees of brackish woodlands – to meander amongst the living – to dance with them, bursting with the infinite possibilities of rebirth.
He settles peaceably on the outskirts the capital, content to watch, to wonder. The dark arms of oak and elms encase him – and he is safe, here, amongst lilies and golden thistle, hydrangea leaving violet imprints on the knotted bones of his hocks. He is home amongst them; home here; home already, his diminutive, underdeveloped wings shifting strangely at the strident lines of his shoulders, and his eyes to the sky, flying, flying, flying.
KISS HIM
RE: angel, come clean; - Asterion - 08-15-2018
The outskirts are a haven for Asterion, too.
How long, now, has he made himself a life in Novus? A year, at least, of sun and rain and love and pain and most of all of learning. He knows, now, what it is to belong to something other than yourself - how it hurts to give, hurts more to have the things you offer turned away. How the ash of things past will always be bitter in his mouth, no matter how bright and fine they once burned.
He is a dreaming boy no longer.
But today he lets himself pretend. Today he slips from the citadel and all his duties, from the bedside of the injured Florentine, from the thoughts that circle him more doggedly than black flies. Even Cirrus, his familiar, he sends away, and the gull’s thoughts fade to a murmur as she wings out over the endless blue sea.
The bay stallion is as ever unadorned, his dark mane twisted by wind and the twilight bridling of his coat faded under the daylight. For now he is no one, and he is grateful for it.
This is how he finds the stranger, a shadow amongst late-blooming wildflowers, his scent disguised by their bobbing heads. “Oh, hello,” he says softly, his dark eyes tracing over lines dark as pitch, and wings with the faint iridescent sheen of a raven’s. At last he follows the stallion’s gaze upward and over the spill of foliage, the reaching branches of trees. “What do you see?”
@tsuyu
if you'll be my star*
RE: angel, come clean; - Tsuyu - 08-20-2018
Tsuyu scarcely sees his approach – entranced as he is by the cornflower blue of day, shadowed beneath the gnarled fingers of willow. Lonesomeness becomes him: even now, in his rebirth, he finds it challenging to avoid the lure of solitude – of dark places, antediluvian and buried. How many years had he traipsed dark castles, chary and quiet as a ghost, ascending trees as though they were staircases? How many years had he lurched through the swamps of Eden, of Tartuga, knees folding beneath the weight of him – broken?
And now – he is alive, in inequitable parts, but whole. Alive enough to stand amongst the bracken, alive enough to turn his eyes to the sun and watch its deliberate, leisurely descent. His shoulders burn and itch, pin-feathers lancing his skin, bursting to the surface: for now, he is unbothered by it.
For now, they remind him of looming sovereignty; of freedom; of flight.
They say there are Gods here – he had heard whispers of it, foreheads furrowed in the throes of prayer. Was it Gods who gifted him the dark bloom of his wings, small and crumpled at his sides? Was it Gods who erected the remarkable castle astride them, glass windows and golden arches?
But he has seen God – in the shape of a man, hard angles and perturbed parts, and when he touched him, Tsuyu worshipped.
“Oh, hello.”
He turns toward him with some trepidation – habit hard to break, a resilient instinct when you’ve lived amongst brutes and behemoths. The stranger is striking, in his own curious, emblematic way – not as fluorescent as some who paraded amongst the Citadel, ostentatious wings of dripping gold, embellished with charms and insignias – but enough so that you would notice him in a crowd; notice his eyes, dark, deep and ochre. “What do you see?” He is dark and tall and dreamlike. He is not who Tsuyu is looking for – but close.
He is full of quivering things: butterflies in his stomach, burrowing outwards. “Oh,” he starts lamely, embarrassed – he steps back, and stumbles. “Jeg tenkte – I thought I saw…” He trails off, his imaginings suddenly secretive, uncomfortable: “ – snow,” he finishes lamely, and the lie buckles beneath the bore of silence.
The question lies in the wasteland between them. Who are you? Can I stay?
“I was searching, and….” He looks back at the man – looks up, cranes his neck and ruffles the sharp line of blooming shoulder-feathers. “I think I belong here,” he finishes, slow – eyes distant, dark. His voice is unsure – like the stranger might hurl him away from his lands – away from the glittering tower than stands forebodingly astride them, away from the dark shadow that embraces him and back into the hell from which he came.
And now – he is alive, in inequitable parts, but whole. Alive enough to stand amongst the bracken, alive enough to turn his eyes to the sun and watch its deliberate, leisurely descent. His shoulders burn and itch, pin-feathers lancing his skin, bursting to the surface: for now, he is unbothered by it.
For now, they remind him of looming sovereignty; of freedom; of flight.
They say there are Gods here – he had heard whispers of it, foreheads furrowed in the throes of prayer. Was it Gods who gifted him the dark bloom of his wings, small and crumpled at his sides? Was it Gods who erected the remarkable castle astride them, glass windows and golden arches?
But he has seen God – in the shape of a man, hard angles and perturbed parts, and when he touched him, Tsuyu worshipped.
“Oh, hello.”
He turns toward him with some trepidation – habit hard to break, a resilient instinct when you’ve lived amongst brutes and behemoths. The stranger is striking, in his own curious, emblematic way – not as fluorescent as some who paraded amongst the Citadel, ostentatious wings of dripping gold, embellished with charms and insignias – but enough so that you would notice him in a crowd; notice his eyes, dark, deep and ochre. “What do you see?” He is dark and tall and dreamlike. He is not who Tsuyu is looking for – but close.
He is full of quivering things: butterflies in his stomach, burrowing outwards. “Oh,” he starts lamely, embarrassed – he steps back, and stumbles. “Jeg tenkte – I thought I saw…” He trails off, his imaginings suddenly secretive, uncomfortable: “ – snow,” he finishes lamely, and the lie buckles beneath the bore of silence.
The question lies in the wasteland between them. Who are you? Can I stay?
“I was searching, and….” He looks back at the man – looks up, cranes his neck and ruffles the sharp line of blooming shoulder-feathers. “I think I belong here,” he finishes, slow – eyes distant, dark. His voice is unsure – like the stranger might hurl him away from his lands – away from the glittering tower than stands forebodingly astride them, away from the dark shadow that embraces him and back into the hell from which he came.
NOTES // @Asterion
RE: angel, come clean; - Asterion - 08-20-2018
There is something almost familiar in the way the black stallion turns to him, all sharp angles and shadows-on-shadows. At first he searches his memories of Ravos, the first time he has considered that old and ravaged world in some time, but his thoughts surface with nothing.
He would remember this stranger if he’d met him before; he is sure of it. Perhaps it is only the look in his eye, the way it does not anticipate kindness. Asterion thinks of all those he has known from Before, and all those he has met from the mad and sick riftlands, and he wonders –
but he is still unused to the slow games of fate, and the stranger speaks before his thoughts can converge into anything more than dreamstuff thin as cobwebs.
Snow, he says, and if the bay thinks anything strange of it, he shows nothing. He only shifts his weight among the ferns and wildflowers and tilts his muzzle into the breeze.
“You may soon enough,” he says, that something in him always seeking to soothe, to thumb away the creases of foreheads and the corners of eyes. Usually it is he who steps back, and it feels strange to watch the stranger stumble; Asterion ducks his gaze away under the pretense of once more studying the sky.
It tells him nothing he doesn’t know: a break in the rain, the promise of evening. How long has it been that the clouds aren’t another threat among a hundred? Not long enough to feel safe.
His dark-eyed gaze turns back when the stranger speaks again, and for a long moment he is surprised into silence by what is said. Of all the things he might expect, it is not this – that someone could be so certain, to give voice to such a thing.
He is just a little jealous, but mostly he is glad.
“Then I think you do, too,” he answers at last, and now a smile curves the dark corners of his lips. “You’re lucky – it took me the better part of a year to figure out that much.” A year of dare I and can I, a year of learning a hundred lessons of loss and love and bitter regret.
Still, he thinks, he prefers to bed down in the saltgrass and the cedar than in any of a dozen perfumed rooms in the citadel. But that is hardly something he can hold against his home.
Now he holds the stranger steady in his gaze, as though by committing each line, each errant newborn feather to memory he can make his home as much this man’s as his own.
“I am Asterion, and I welcome you to Terrastella, the Dusk Court.” Maybe there is something he should add then, but the bay says nothing of who he is to this place. It is too new a weight, too fresh a bruise. Better by far to be simply himself, a man who finally feels he fits the name he bears.
Asterion still knows how to be a boy much more than a king.
@Tsuyu forgive this terrible jumble of words and YAY DUSK COURT
if you'll be my star*
RE: angel, come clean; - Tsuyu - 08-31-2018
Y
ou may soon enough,” the starry stranger says, and Tsuyu has near forgotten the slow train of conversation, anyway. Still, he blinks, crooks his mouth in the shape of something hopeful, and glances away – thoughtful. “Then I think you do, too.”
Truthfully – and he dare not utter it, not to the spangled stranger, not even once – he just yearns to belong. It could be here: or it could be the emerald beaches of Tartuga, or the burnished fields of Ferraden. It could be in the peaking top of an ancient, cobblestoned castle, entwined beneath emblazoned green covers. It could be where his svart pojke is, black like night, encompassed under the knotted fingers of a Peachleaf tree – touching. Adulating.
Though – and he turns towards the citadel now, it’s summits striking and proud – there is something. A beauty that tugs at him, tender. A rumble of commotion at his feet, louder at dark, the guffaw of activity that comes with bustling night-markets. Certainly, it’s worlds away from the doorstep of Mont Nuit – where he lingered so long in the slopes of old ruins that his timeworn body became them.
Once, he had loitered in a palace just like it: dripping with gossamer, emblazoned placards, streamers of white and gold. He had clung to Gael with a fearsomeness, trembling with expectancy, fearful to dawdle too close to golden tables lest he knock ancient, priceless heirlooms off them. He felt alien to its marble corners, a hundred rooms each ornamented with ivory candles and lustred Egyptian sheets.
He imagines he’d feel just as alien amongst the covenants of Terrastella’s castle, a dark shadow breaking the sanctuary of an otherwise holy, scintillating place.
“Asterion,” he repeats, tasting the sound of it: is it familiar? Is anything familiar? He searches for a face but unearths instead a sea of strangers, melancholy and shadowed. “Oh – Thank you,” he finishes, soft, an addendum, turning towards him and in his expression is something like gratitude.
The day wanes, slow, pink and gold ribbons turning to dark navy and peacoat: it turns to dusk amid them, bathing them in warm blue. In the distance, the yellow glow of lanterns bloom like lilies, lit one by one.
“I don’t know where to begin,” he admits – too socially ham-fisted to recognise he’s speaking in hazy riddles, threads of wispy and lucid things. “It’s so different – here,” he finishes, eluding to duskier things, darker places: forests of black that stretch endlessly and snare you in them, smiling.
TSUYU.
RE: angel, come clean; - Asterion - 09-12-2018
It was never belonging that Asterion sought. Heroes, in his boyish, dreaming mind, did not belong - they were solitary figures, always wandering. They sought adventure, and quests, and so he did too, always looking for something over the next rise.
Giving his heart to the Dusk Court had been an accident as much as a choice, but it isn’t one he yet regrets.
His name is still a surprise to hear on foreign lips, though he was the one who gave it: it’s a wonder to him how it always sounds a little different, the way each mouth shapes the syllables. The bay does not mind that no name is given in response; in how many meetings has he been guilty of not sharing his own? But there is nothing he can say to those words of gratitude when he feels he’s given nothing to earn it.
Well has he learned that words could mean no more than mist, however sweetly spoken.
It’s so different here.
“I thought that too, at first,” he says, and his smile is softer than dusk, softer than sea-foam. In that smile is a memory of himself, new on these shores, and thinking how soft it was in comparison with Ravos. How tame, how safe. And oh, how he has been proven wrong – yet that smile lingers. “And I suppose in many ways it’s true, depending on where you’re from. One surprise to me, for instance, was the castle.”
He looks toward it then, the seat of his court, the soft way it comes alive as the darkness gathers around them. Even from here he can smell the slight iodine cast to the air, and pictures the seabirds all settling in to sleep on their cliffside nests. When he glances back at the stranger (a black rich as velvet in the growing night) a question colors his gaze.
“If you wish to begin there, I could show you.”
@Tsuyu
if you'll be my star*