he knew the lie of silence to be as evil as the lie of speech.
Distant lands ring with bells and voices, horrors unfold and borders are closed. But they do not touch Terrastella, not yet, not quite. Here, the sun rises with the crispness of a new morning. Here, the world is born anew as their King returns at last. Dusk celebrates upon his return, people fill the streets and sing and dance and laugh.
Their glee is electricity in the air, drifting to the woman who once may have been a mourning dove or a changling, who wears storms as a cloak and laughs as she brushes, shoulder to shoulder, against the priestesses who have gathered within the walls of the court. For now, Juniper can relax. No messages yet are to be delivered, no vital information to exchange hands, no volley of arrows trying to catch her as she streaks through the skies above. Her heart lurches as she looks there, to the cloudless blue, and sighs when the sun kisses her upturned face.
What she would give to thread through the currents, but Jun is short on candles and paper and food, her shelves painfully bare. So into the masses of merriment she dives, not yet having met those outside of the Halcyon group (and very few within, as it stands), and still a stranger upon these streets. Bright, blossoming eyes dance along stalls like dewdrops on daisies, kiss bare shoulders and blushing cheeks brazenly and without regrets. This sweltering heat from bodies thrust together in throngs and crowds pushes the temple into her mind. The priestesses were not a large group, but they were enough to make her feel welcomed and comforted. This... This overflowing, unending pressure and pressing from the masses has Jun dipping behind a stall, disappearing into an alley.
Perhaps coming out when their King made his appearance is not the wisest idea she's had. Perhaps it would be best to let her belly growl and grumble, returning to the barracks that hold so few precious belongings once more. Ah, but first, should she go to the shrine, should she pray to her goddess for this bright and beautiful day?
Ink ears slicked back into tangled, braided tresses as I wandered into the city of the court my mother had left me outside of. It had been six months and a few days since I was left in the swirling mist of the swamps, before some unlucky individuals had found me tangled up and giggling in a cluster of thorns, blood oozing down my midnight dyed limbs. Of course, I didn't go with them once we removed my gangly limbs from their grasp. Rather I slunk around the shadows of the swamp until my limbs were no longer gangly, my mane no longer stuck up in a wild mohawk and my tail no longer a brush smacking across my ass. As a yearling there were still obvious signs of the awkwardness of youth, but I was older now, much more of a recluse after my six months of voluntary solitude.
The air glittered with an excitement I didn't understand. Everyone's joy moved across my darkened frame like swamp mud, rolled across my tongue like curdled milk, twisting my stomach as strangers in the street brushed up against my shoulder in their gleeful movements. "I'm so sorry!" or "Excuse me!" sang out from their smiling mouths. An attempt at a smile tried to curl up the scarred corners of my mouth but rather just succeeded in opening up the slowly closing wounds from the last time I had found myself in such an awkward situation and allowed my teeth to tear into the tender skin of my lips.
Curses slid from my vocal chords as I attempted to move a little quicker through the crowds of celebrators, still very unaware of what the jubilee was for, muttering apologizes to whoever was unlucky enough to be in my way as long limbs struck out carrying me wherever I could possibly get away. Orange, lupine-like eyes settled on the temple that rose before me and a sigh of relief slipped from between crimson stained lips, the metallic taste coating my tongue as I allowed my body to relax ever so slightly now that the end was in sight. I was uneducated in the arts of religion, but even I muttered a prayer of thanks as I moved into the temple.
Away from the crowd.
Inky ears flicked forward and then backward as I walked into the eerily empty temple, orange eyes settling on a beautifully crafted shrine before me and a moment of awe washed through the temple. "Who are you?" I whispered to the shrine as I stopped a few feet away from it's base.
"Speaking."
@Juniper | sorry it's so rough, hopefully i'll get better | table by Kat & image by artistic-pineapple
drink from the presence of saints, not from those other jars
She is no new sinner learning to repent, she is no green girl still unsure of the gods. No. Confidence fills soft strides, devotion is an unending well in pale eyes. Juniper is a vision dressed in white, weaving through the pillars along the edge of the temple as though this were where she rests her head, this most holy (and neglected) place in Terrastella is her home. Of all the bustling houses and city streets, this is where the Pegasus finds her feet the most grounded.
Like a daughter returning home, she goes through open doors just after the dark child. She hears his whisper, his wonder, and remembers the very same awe upon discovering the statue of Vespera within her own swampy Temple. A smile lights her face like the dawn, like a sunflower opening wide to receive its light, and she steps beside him. Wings splay wide, going up, up, up above even Ulysses' head, and then one casually droops across his back as she smirks. "Vespera," Juniper says. It is the answer to her every prayer, the plea she cries at night or in the throes of passion, the single being who feels most like home whenever she is away from home. Vespera, and it is a chant within her that cannot be silent.
"And I am Juniper. Who are you?" she parrots back, pale brow raising as a phantom breeze lifts her hair from the grounds, winds fingers through his tail and tangles them together for but a moment. Attention, so scattered and distraught before, is solely upon the boy now who stands taller than her even in his youth. Height has never been her issue, in the end, and does not bother her as she lays that smile of sunlight and flowers and tempests upon him at last.
"Speaking."
credits @Ulysses <3 no worries, i'm still getting used to Jun as well !
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