When she is this high, nothing can touch her. 

She drifts above the clouds like any bird of prey, the Solterran sun warm on her back and her wings despite the bite in the air at this altitude. The desert she loves is a foreign landscape, endlessly remade according to the clouds, shifting faster than the golden dunes ever could. There are canyons of cumulonimbus and wide sweeps of stratus and she explores them all, the spaces between her feathers drinking in the wind like the Day Court’s bitter coffee. 

Only when she is numb down to her hooves, only when her throat feels tight with frost, does she dip below the cloud-cover, graceful as a dancer with the slightest tilt of her wings. 

And then - oh! she plummets to earth like a falling star, sunlight flashing on her wings like a comet come to ground. 

There are few things that Elif knows how to do slowly; landing is not among them. With her forehooves extended before her and her wings folded like a falcon at her back she lets the wind whip her until tears sting her eyes, until it seems certain that she will crash into the sand with a cry and a great splintering of bone. 

She waits for the pounding of her heart to reach its highest crescendo before she brakes, flaring out those red-shouldered wings, willing the air to bear her up. Elif hits the ground at a gallop and her laughter strikes like sparks across the desert, rough with the cold and the adrenaline of her descent. 

If she’d had a mane to speak of, it would be well disheveled; as it is her feathers are askew, ruffled by the wind, and her sparse dark tail a wild tangle. She is no smooth-skinned sun-daughter now; she is a desert bramble, a thing small and half-feral, and there is no one left to tell her to be otherwise. 

It’s a thought Elif holds in her heart, sweet with happiness and heavy with sorrow, as she bends her head to drink at the muddy shore of the oasis. 




“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”

The air was cold this high up in the clouds. Even Aion, who styled himself as frost incarnate, whose lungs were coated in ice and whose steps left icicles in his wake - even he could admit to being uncomfortably chilly at this altitude.

But he would gladly weather the cold in exchange for flying.


A laugh bubbles up inside of him, reckless and unbidden, but it’s stolen by the air rushing past the second it breaks out. One stroke of his wings, then two, then three, and Aion is racing the wind itself, feeling for all the world like a hurricane might: wild, unstoppable, free.

Finally whole.

His world finally feels right - he has a home, his mate, his wings, and there’s nothing more that he can imagine wanting or needing. With time the feeling would surely pass, and he would succumb to the curse of humanity and find something new to want and wish for. But today he was at peace - and what a strange, exhilarating feeling it was.

The landscape changes underneath him faster than he can imagine: the meadow gives way to forest, the forest is split in half by a river, then follows a stretch of plains and sparse trees, and eventually the soil gives way to sand that rolls and shifts with the wind. ’I remember this place.’ The half-forgotten memory comes slowly to the forefront of his mind in bits and pieces, its puzzle pieces slipping into place one at a time. He had looked for Eros here without success, had made a note of which places he’d thought most likely to find him at - and when he hadn’t found him there, had swore he would bring him one day.

Instinct makes him angle his wings, slowing his speed until he drifts in lazy circles back down to earth. He can feel his heart racing inside of his chest, beating against his ribs in a wild bid to escape. But the closer he gets to the ground the more it slows, evening out into a beat that’s almost-normal.

For a second he’s unsure - the ground still seems so far away, and it’s been so long since he’s flown that he’s unsure if his legs will even work when he hits the ground - but then he takes the plunge.

It’s awkward at best and painful to watch, the impact jolting his body and sending the feathered stallion to his knees. For a second he stays there, his wings fanned out to either side of him, trembling and breathless and happier than he’s been in months, years, perhaps ever.

Only when he sees her standing there does he think to feel abashed, the blood rushing to his face in embarrassment (thankfully he’s already flushed from his flight.)

He stands, brushing the dirt from his chest and legs. The pool of water is still a ways off, and for a minute he lets himself believe that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t see his fall from the sky. With an air of false nonchalance, he walks the remaining meters to the oasis to drink from the same muddy shore as her, stealing a glance when he thinks she might not be looking.



walk. "talk."

As she drinks she does so cautiously, aware of every movement from her peripheral vision, always watching for a predator. The desert is hungrier than Solis himself, even this green-and-blue part of it. But when a flash of motion catches her eye, draws her head up, it is no crocodile she sees.

For a moment she isn’t sure what she’s watching, for where are his wings? And then she catches a sweep of gold, a limn of light in the shape of flight-feathers, and like an optical illusion once she’s found them they don’t vanish again. Elif has never seen anything like those wings, strands of the sun shaped for flight.

He plunges like he’s trying to catch his shadow, plummets the way she had - and Elif watches with her heart half in her throat, cheering him on, and when he meets the ground she winces bodily as he goes to his knees. Almost she crosses to him - but the sunlight illuminates his face, each fierce line of private joy, and Elif knows that look.

She does, then, what she thinks her brother would have done, had that spectacular crash-landing been her - and glances away when he turns her direction, bending her head back to drink.

Elif only mocks those she knows deserve it.

Still she is secretly pleased when his shadow slants alongside hers, and this time does not look away when his gaze finds her. Instead she lifts her head, muzzle still dripping with water that shines like diamonds when caught by the light. She is as struck by the cold blue of his eyes as she had been by the first sight of his wings; it is a color she hasn’t seen much in Solterra, rare as ice.

“I thought you were Icarus at first,” she says then, her voice still as girlish as her frame is narrow. “That you flew too high and the sun melted your wings to nothing.” It’s with wonder that she looks to those wings, then, her nose reaching out, her curiosity as keen as the rest of her.

Of course she withdraws, and does not touch; she is a Day girl, and respect of personal space has been bred into her bones.

Instead she tilts her head at him, her alaja bright as blood around her throat, and smiles. “It’s the heat you have to account for, for the landing. It sits above the sand like a blanket and you have to adjust for it.”




“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”

”I thought you were Icarus at first.”

Her words drift across the open water, filling the space between them, and Aion flinches visibly. It’s in his nature to take her words as an insult, to assume first and ask questions later (or never). This time is no different.

”That you flew too high and the sun melted your wings to nothing.” Aion recoils, water splashing back into the river as he lifts his head. His eyes are a flash of ice, blue and cold and distant, when he first turns to look at her.

But the look in her eyes makes him pause, and catch his breath. Water dribbles down his muzzle, pitter-patters back to the oasis from where it came, sending ripples skipping across the pool.

She looks at him like he’s the sun, reaching for him and the magic coursing across his feathers, and he tucks his wings ever closer to his sides. His indignation dissipates then, as quickly as it had come, and he’s only a boy again, embarrassed and afraid of the spotlight. And when he speaks it’s not out of anger, with words laced with defense - his voice is as boyish and curious as he was when he was younger.

“Thank you,” he says, though he isn’t sure if he’s thanking her for her companionship or her tip - or perhaps it’s for the compliment in her eyes, in the way she holds herself back from touching his wings. “It’s been a long time since I last flew, and never somewhere so warm as Solterra.”

He looks at her, at her narrow body with wings that seem almost too-big and too-broad, but he can’t imagine any others in their stead. The green of her eyes stood out so vibrantly, like a pair of beacons against the pale desert and the dark backdrop of her face.

A small voice whispers that he should be assumed, to take the advice of a young girl - but another voice, a wiser one, doesn’t seem to mind.

“Are you from Solterra?” he asks, listening to the second voice. Or did you learn about the temperature changes somehow else?





walk. "talk."

Once, as a filly (well, even more of a filly than she is now, back when her wings were too fledgling to carry her) she had been out on the sandy hills near the city with her brother. They had come across a viper, a taut coil pale as its surroundings, and when Elif had surged forward her brother had snapped a wing in her way to stop her.

“Watch it,” he’d said, and Elif fell still; she had revered her brother even then, his words as holy to her as Solis’s. “See? It is afraid, it is only being defensive - watch its head, its tail, its eyes.” So they had observed the viper, the way it flattened its head, the way it leaned away from them, and Elif learned that day that even deadly things did not always seek to hurt.

It is a lesson that has served her well in Solterra, where almost all of them had teeth of their own; it is a lesson that serves her now, watching the lines of his shoulders, the subtle tightness of his expression.

Even so she must force herself from tensing in kind when he recoils, instead keeping her focus in wonder on his wings, the way they shimmer like a handful of gold dust. When he speaks one of her dark ears flicks forward, surprised by the timbre of his voice, and her vivid green eyes find his. “Why so long?” she asks, the words away before her manners catch her, and she might have blushed, then, picturing the way her mother would reprimand her impudence. Still, she has not the modesty to lower her gaze. “Only I cannot imagine going more than a day without riding the wind.” To be grounded - oh, she might as well be tied. Even now her wings ruffle and resettle along her sides, as though alarmed at the thought.

But it is forgotten at his next question, as her head lifts, her smile blooming like a desert rose, proud as an eagle. “I was born to her,” she says, as if it is a mighty honor, and tells herself it is not an insult that he even had to ask. She tilts her chin at him, then, sunlight bright on her sharp cheekbones, all curious. “Have you never been here before? A lucky thing you found this place - it is the only water for miles.”




@Aion
“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”

It’s not often that he feels this way - like a bird taking its first flight out of the nest, a child who has so much still to learn. His voice is soft, his posture humbled, and through it all his heart thumps away inside of his chest, too fast and painfully loud.

”Why so long?”



Does he tell her? Does he explain the way he flew too high once, how far he fell? Aion can still remember the searing pain, the way his wing crumbled when every one of its fragile bones shattered and his blood rushed forth to spill across a marble floor. He could tell her that the amputation was the worst part, how the world went dark when the hot knife cut through his flesh.

But does he dare?

His jaw tightens, the tendon in his neck bulging. His expression is one of shame when he looks away, because even after all this time the pain of knowing it was his fault is as fresh as it ever was. Even now, when he has new wings, wings more brilliant than the old could have ever dreamed to be. But the way light dances along his feather, creating a ghostly appearance, reminds him that that is all they are: ghosts. A replacement for the ones he lost.

“There was an accident.”



He’s surprised to hear his own voice, having already decided he wouldn’t answer her. But he breathes the words anyway, and with that sigh his shoulders crumble inwards, his head dropping. The tension, or at least most of it, is gone in an instant, because suddenly he’s tired, so tired. He's powerless against it, and again he finds himself feeling like a child, unable to move, unable to escape the grip of the past, frozen in place. Only his ears move, catching her words and the faint rustle of her wings.

“Don’t ever lose that - every day, fly like it’s your last flight.” ”Because you never know when it might be,” he doesn’t say, but his eyes suggest it anyway when they lift and look at her again.

His heart stutters and skips - and for a moment he feels like he’s bleeding again, the way his heart races to catch up. He’s thankful beyond words when the subject finally changes, her words clearing his mind of memories and bringing him back to the present.

He shakes his head, straightening his shoulders. “No. This is my first time.” His blue eyes are somewhat critical as they look across the water to the sand beyond, where dune after dune churns beneath the desert sun. He had never been one for the heat, and perhaps a trip to Denocte would have suited him better - but the reputation of Solterra’s blacksmiths and jewelers was without rival. “It’s… different. I imagine it takes a tough sort to live here.”

It’s the closest thing to a compliment that he can manage, but this time, when he looks at her he holds her gaze. And there’s something similar to a smile playing at the corners of his dark lips.  




@elif
walk. "talk."

There was an accident. Oh, it tells her all she needs to know (though her mind, ever insatiable with that cat’s curiosity, turns over a thousand questions in the span of a heartbeat). An accident - she knows those; there are so many of them possible in the desert! And she knows what goes unspoken, that accidents tended to end terribly, that sometimes they were not accidents at all.

Despite the heat of the day, she shivers. Despite her own sharp interest, she looks away even before he does, averting her gaze at the first tensing of his jaw. She thinks of her brother, and how he’d loved to fly (faster even than she, but then she was always racing to catch up no matter what he was doing). She does not think of anything happing to her own wings, because her youthful, proud mind cannot even fathom the thought.

So she only looks away, across the water where the trees are mirrored and the dunes behind them, where there are dozens of different tracks and she can guess at the locations of a dozen turtle-nests in the sand. Elif does not come here often enough; it feels strange, even, to stand in the green shade of a tree. It is somehow cooler than the shade from buildings, but maybe that is only the memory of the brackish water in her throat.

For once she says nothing, not even to admire his wings again. But at his advice her eyes flick back toward the shocking blue of his, and she nods, quite solemn. Elif isn’t normally the sort to take to heart (or even listen) to advice from her peers, but she thinks again of her brother, and lets the words sink down like thrown stones into the deep well of her heart, though she does not yet understand the full meaning.

She has yet avoided all her accidents.

Elif is glad, too, when the conversation moves onto Solterra, both because she is a creature so proud of the home that bore her and because she daren’t ask any of the questions that flooded up against the white dam of her teeth at all he left unsaid. Despite his ungainly landing, or that he has never been before to the desert, she respects him without question (and those golden djinn-wings still have her in more than a little awe).

“Welcome, then,” she says, and smiles broadly, pleased to be the first he has met. “I am Elif.” She follows his gaze across the water, missing the criticism there because it is so foreign to her. She would sooner think ill of her own mother (and sometimes does) than the desert. Even his word, different, does not make her bristle like a tomcat. “It does,” she says, and feels a hand-span taller at his praise. But then she sighs a little dreamily - like the young girl she so often tries not to be - and extends a wing-tip to test the breeze. “I sometimes wonder which came first, the hard people or the hard land. I know Solis formed Solterra as his own court, but…” and here her voice drops, almost shy, like a secret she is ashamed of (yet there is wonder, too, in the rain-washed green of her eyes). “I have found the shapes of fish in the canyons, pressed into the rocks.” She gives a little snort, as if disbelieving of her own tale, and tries to tell herself it is not blasphemy.

After all, here stood a man with wings spun of golden light; perhaps there were no limit to wonders.




@Aion

“Do not be afraid to bare your teeth -”

She welcomes him, and he could almost smile - almost. The chill of his memories still have their icy fingers clutched about his heart, squeezing in a way that makes his chest feel tight and his breaths painful to draw in. Even the warmth of the desert isn’t enough to keep them at bay; the frost is inside of him, turning him to stone from within. Morbid thoughts cling to his mind, unshakeable memories that whisper of tragedy and death, of a curse that will follow him to his grave.

No longer can he feel the heat of the desert dancing along his wingtips; the air around him grows colder as his magic flares. It’s a struggle to push it away, a struggle to swallow past the growing lump in his throat. He has to force himself to look back at her, tilting his ears forward to pretend he’s listening.

But it’s like trying to stop a river. He can hear her voice, but it sounds as if he’s underwater. “I am Aion,” he manages, though his tongue feels thick, as if it’s forgotten his own name. “I’m from Delumine.”

Delumine, where the sun was always warm and the flowers were always lovely. It’s a place he isn’t sure he belongs; but Eros is there, and he belongs wherever Eros is. There were worse places to live.

She’s still talking, and Aion forces himself to listen, to steal a glance as she looks out across the water and sighs. We’re so different, you and I, he wants to tell her. She was so young and optimist, like a new spring flower growing in the desert. “You’re not a hard person,” he tells her instead. I am. “So maybe it was the hard land that came first, and changed the people.”

He isn’t sure he believes in her god, but he doesn’t tell her so. There’s hope in her, as plain as day; a youthfulness that shines brighter perhaps than even his wings. Aion leans in close as her voice drops, praying to whatever god there might be that she doesn’t see the frost in his eyes, that she might not feel the coolness of the air hovering about his skin.

“Solterra seems like an ancient place,” he says slowly. “how old do they say it is?” There’s still a lot for him to learn about this new world, with its history and its legends.

But there’s a mystery in not knowing, an excitement in untangling a mystery. So he lowers his voice the same as she, and even when he can’t smile with his lips he lets his eyes dance and encourage her to say more.

“Maybe the canyons were filled with flying fish once, or water that filled it to the brim.” He gestures with one wing out to the water before them, that sparkles like gold in the light. “Maybe this is all that remains of it.”




@elif
walk. "talk."

little pilgrim
the Indian's axed your scalp.

Aion, he says, a mouthful of vowels that round out the word like wind filling billowing fabric, and something in the name makes Elif think of time. Of a circle, curling around itself forever and ever, of eternity.

You’re thinking eon, her brother might have said, laughing - but her brother is dead and Elif doesn’t know what she’s thinking, except that she will not forget his name, even if he comes from Delumine where (she is told) the horses are as soft and peaceful as daisies, bobbing graceful heads in golden fields. She has never seen a daisy, but she could always picture it - but he does not seem like a soft man. Not in that way.

As if echoing her thoughts, he speaks again, saying she is not hard. The little mare slants an ear at him, unsure; in her mind (where she is no noble but something quick and brave and fearsome) it is almost an insult. But he had not said it that way, with a smirk, or the glint of anything cruel in his eyes. She had looked for them and found something else instead, and so she settles her restless, sharp tongue and does not lean away when he curls in close.

His words blow cool, or maybe it is his skin, or maybe it is only the wind, a wind that comes from beyond Solterra and still has the breath of something else. “The records in the capital go back more than a hundred years of rulers,” she says, wishing she had paid more attention at history lessons - too easy, for her and those of her age, to prefer to focus on the bloody wars and the shining golden conquests. “But it must be far older than that. I heard from a merchant once there are trees in Novus almost a thousand years old. How could that be measured?” She laughs, as though the idea is ridiculous, but she shivers, too, a little shiver of her skin as on a stream with a pike passing just underneath the surface.

There is still no mocking in his eyes, when she meets them again, no sign that he finds her a fool the way so many adults seem to. And when the stallion speaks again, his words are just as fanciful, and they delight her, despite the doubt of it that must be part of her belief in Solis, a belief that has not yet begun to wear away, little grains of sand that are the beginnings of erosion.

“Yes,” she says, playing along, “and maybe we all breathed under water and loved it, and we can’t anymore, and that is why so many Solterrans seem angry all the time.” Before shyness can overcome her, she reaches over to nudge his shoulder, a brief touch like a proving. Then she pulls away, and the desert bathes her in warmth again, wrapping her in golden arms. She is struck by a sudden urge to walk the markets, with their sharp scents of spice and undulating music, the streets holding the sun-baked warmth long into the cooling night. Elif is still new to being along, always giving in to each whim.

“I’m going back to the city,” she tells him, though there is doubt in it when she looks again at those golden, dragonfly-thin wings. “It was good to meet you, Aion. Don’t forget where this place is, and perhaps I’ll see you again. May the winds favor you.” Almost shyly - like a girl again, and not a half-wild thing, she inclines her narrow head in a little bow.

And then (for she hates goodbyes, the way they’re too formal, or hardly necessary, or maybe, terribly, permanent) she turns away, bursting into a gallop, churning the sand behind her and feeling the last of the sun on her shoulders, faster and faster until the wind is a whine in her ears until at last she snaps wide her wings. Down she thrusts them, and down again, the process her body knows as well as it knows to circulate blood, to pump the heart, to fill and empty the lungs. And Elif soars.




 
@Aion is a lovely man <3 (ignore the html switch, someday I won't be too lazy to fix that one)

His eyes are bright in a way they haven’t been in a long time, as if he’s a boy again. It doesn’t feel like he has to worry, about his lack of flying skills or how far he’s drifted from the Dawn Court, or anything else in the world. 



He just smiles shyly at her, and although there’s a sadness in his eyes, there’s also something that could almost be mistaken for hope.

And her laughter is infectious. It spills from him as easily as breathing, and he doesn’t try to stop it or take it back. It’s low and quiet, echoing off the water back to him, but it’s laughter all the same. ”Perhaps,” he says when he stops to catch his breath at last. ”I’m sure that would explain a lot.”

Aion still doesn’t know much about Novus (he’d been much too preoccupied drowning in his own self-loathing to do any research), but even he has heard of the Day Court’s reputation. Yet as he looks at the green-eyed pegasus with a smile that reminds him of sunlight, the first Solterran he’s met since his time here, he wonders if the stories he’s heard was wrong, or if she’s the black sheep of the bunch.

”I’m going back to the city,” she tells him then, and her breath is warm against his shoulder. ”It was good to meet you too, Elif,” he says, and he means it. ”I won’t forget.”

He hopes he sees her again, someday - the thought is strange in his mind, but not unwelcome. He thinks Eros might like her, if they were ever to meet, and the thought warms his heart. Aion watches as she runs off into the desert, the sands parting beneath her hooves like waves. And then she is flying, and her wings are far more steady than his, her path through the skies far more sure. It’s like watching an eagle fly, for what eagle isn’t as bold and sure of themselves as her?



He watches until she disappears on the horizon, and then he turns back to the water, and only his reflection keeps him company.




@elif
thank you for such a lovely thread <3
walk. "talk."