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+---- Thread: [AW] oh, this kind nepenthe (/showthread.php?tid=3517)
oh, this kind nepenthe - Sirius - 04-27-2019
The flowers are a whisper of glass and sharp things as he walks amongst them. They make up a song, a thousand voices rising together with the wind to tell the story of the star-dusted boy walking amongst them. Even his bell chimes in, a mezzo-sopranic singer to lead them all with its clear ringing. Sirius doesn’t understand the words they sing; but he understands their meaning well enough. There was no word for heaven nor for earth, for gods nor men; their’s is the song of freedom, of mystery and revelation. The entire universe is laid out bare before him, his for the taking, his to explore. Monsters and nightmares be damned, he had left them behind in the forest, replaced them with a field of wildflowers carved from gems, sprinkled like terrestrial stars across the churned up fields. Tonight it was all about him. There were things to see here, things to do, things to be. He would be them all, if he could. He stops amongst the flowers, feelings their cold petals press in against his skin. He’s never seen anything like them before; he dips his head low, their facets filling his eyes with a thousand colors. Sirius hasn’t seen much of the world; but he’s seen enough to recognize the magic coating the land he’s stumbled into. “Where am I?” His voice is soft; when was the last time he’d used it? It’s rough with misuse; like a sheet of paper that’s been crumbled up into a ball and tossed away, with torn edges and sharp creases. It feels impossible to unscramble it, to lay it out smooth and ready for use again. He swallows thickly; his throat feels strange, as if it, too, is rejecting the foreign words he speaks with a fickle tongue. Maybe he was meant to be silent after all; isn’t that what he’d been told? Words were for commands, and commands were for the masters. Except he has no master now. The leather trailing from his forelegs is a testament to that truth, the endings torn and frayed. If he wanted, he could unbraid those strands and cast them off for good; yet he doesn’t. They hold on for dear life, their grasp tight about his knees, his crux and his salvation. His life and his death. moondust in your lungs stars in your eyes you are a child of the cosmos a ruler of the skies @Leto ! takes place in the current RE! |
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Leto - 04-29-2019
This keening soul;
The stars are whispering, a keening that brings her soul to trembling. Her blood is warm, warm within her veins and Leto has eyes for naught but the sky. How can she listen to the earth when the sky is echoing with song? How can she hear the voice of trees when the stars are chanting?
He is here. He is here.
And that is what they cry.
It is more than a chant, more than a litany that repeats and repeats. Does the whole of Novus resound with their song? Are the mountains echoing with ghost song and stardust? She can hear their roaring, it is the sounds of ice and stone rising and rumbling. The snow lies silent, but their eyes are cast up, up, up into the skies. It is a white blanket, glittering, and it paints Leto black, black as a droplet of ink.
This starfire-girl streaks across white, she runs until her limbs ache, until the stars are spilling in her mind and in her blood. Light is burning and scolding and she shivers as it slips like a lance through her veins. Oh Leto is falling apart and only magic ties her together, only dark threads of Ilati shadow keep this girl from spilling open.
She is running and her magic is in her lungs and in her veins. It is brighter than air. It is more vital than the blood in her heart. Her breath blows as a dragon breaching her den of stone and snow. Oh the world is laughing and her magic is tugging, tugging, tugging. It chains her and it pulls her. Her legs are not enough, not for this wrenching, not for this command of stars and air and earth.
Yes, now the ground has heard, now it too rattles beneath her feet. Each thundering step of her feet is a roar, it is stars surging in her veins, stars crying out ever louder: He is here! He is here!
And he is there! He is stood where the stars are laughing and the gem flowers growing. He stands amongst them and each is a herald to this boy they brought. They gleam and shine and smile. They bathe him in white and adorn him in a coat of a thousand splitting colours. Oh Leto is gasping, her lungs aching, the starlight fills them full, full. She is glowing with her magic, white blood that ignites as hot as stars. It splits her for she is marble at her magic’s behest – white-hot light is pouring in cracks over her ebony skin. Leto is the sky at night, the space between stars and it paints her in its blacks and its star-bright whites.
The flowers are rattling and chattering. They declare her here – do they cry to him as well as her? Do they cry she is here, she is here! Leto does not know and she does not think, not when he is made of feathers (that reach for stars) and skin the colour of sunsets bleeding into night.
Oh Leto is gasping, drinking air as if it might be her last. She feels the ache in her limbs, the burn of stars that scold through her muscles. But he is asking where he is and her lips, though they thirst for air, though they are heavy with the night and with the stars, are forming the word, “Free.” And she does not know what it means, not when she is a girl made of stars and Ilati earth. Each has made her free, each has made her to run and fight and never know chains. Never has she known the tight grasp of leather about her ankles, never has she known darkness...
(But somewhere the sea is laughing, for it is dark and deep and fate has already planned the day Leto will know the darkness of its water.)
Slowly, carefully, she moves to him and the stars fall into silence. His bell chimes and hers replies as golden leaves and glittering pearls shift and sway amidst her hair – just to better see the boy the stars have brought.
@Sirius | "speaks" | notes: I love him. I love him so much.
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Sirius - 05-27-2019
There’s something changing in the air, as if the light and energy from the stars themselves have invaded the earth. The wind is a wild thing, racing through the flowers and setting them to song. They dance and they sing, bending on long stalks and beckoning for him to join in their celebration. And he wants to - oh, how he wants to! His wings are still shuddering from his flight, but his legs are restless. He’s only just landed, and the need to run and stretch his body is growing stronger with each passing minute. He knows it has to do with the stars - their light has invaded everything here, turning the flowers silver and turning his soul silver still. Starlight courses through his veins, and all at once he’s one with the heavens, one with the earth, playing a pivotal part in some great performance. Sirius dips his head to the flowers, eyelashes fluttering. Even when he closes his eyes, he can still see them there; petals made of stardust and light, each silhouette emblazoned into his memory forever. They turn to him, their high-pitched laughter drifting through the caverns of his mind, drawing him in deeper to their sea. You belong here, here where the stars touch the earth, where the stars make everything glow. When he opens his eyes, he believes them. How could he not? The whole field is aglow, as if the stars have taken refuge across the earth, disguised as small, glassy flowers. The young stallion has never seen nor imagined anything like it before, but it simply feels right. It feels like home, and he could die content now simply knowing he had been a part of it. But wait, there’s more! He lifts his head at their command, turning with the wind that rushes past. At first, he sees nothing; all there is is starlight, and beyond that starlight, darkness. But then she steps forward, and she, too, is glowing. He wonders if she’s a star, too, or perhaps star-sent; his magic is responding in kind to her’s, a hazy cloud crystallizing in the air around him. It hovers, mere inches from his skin, as if waiting. ”Free.” His magic becomes a river then, breaking free from his grasp. Its as if he is Orion, and the waves of Eridanus froth and writhe and flow from him, and she is at its end. “Who are you?” he asks, his voice a whisper, a tremble, a breath of stardust reaching out for her. His river is dancing between them still, weaving its way closer and closer to her. The air is silent, the stars are silent; they watch on in quiet reverie, as their two creations meet at last. “Are you like me?” Are you made of stardust and starlight, too? moondust in your lungs stars in your eyes you are a child of the cosmos a ruler of the skies @Leto ! how many times can i say "star" in one post i don't even want to count |
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Leto - 07-03-2019
This keening soul;
He looks to her and the stars are shifting. They are swirling and moving in a kaleidoscope above her.
Free.
The word echoes, it reaches out to his bell that chimes, it resonates in the clinking of her leaves and pearls. Leto is a lamp upon the earth and in her light the word reaches out with endless fingers that know no limits.
Her gaze falls to the tassels, once leather straps, at his feet. She looks at the sky and wonders where his tether once was. The sky is keening in answer, it is writhing in clouds and darkness and wild abandon.
His breath is starlight and in answer stardust settles along her flesh. Who is she? Who is she? the stardust echoes, over and over. Who is this girl of earth and dust with starfire in her blood and the moon’s light in her eyes.
“Leto.” She answers with that name that sounds like cymbals and a sigh. That name that clings to the air and drifts with stardust and light. A river of stars pours from him, like water, like ink. Stars glitter and oh they are cool where hers are hot and savage. Closer and closer his river flows. Stronger and stronger is the taste of metallic magic upon her tongue.
Oh the stars roar like lions in her ears, oh the constellations are moving, weaving, dancing. He is here their song spells out. He is here their patterns form. Her lips press tight as stars glitter between her teeth. That river of magic brushes across her chest and oh how it makes the starfire girl burn. Newly godless, newly shed of religion and faith, she stands more naked than she has ever been. She stands with stars in her ears and Ilati sigils across her skin. This girl is earthbound and starlit. Galaxies flow in her veins and how bright are her eyes that behold this boy and his celestial magic.
He stretches his wings and her eyes run across their ever feather and bend. Never has she desired flight, but she might now, just for a moment. Oh to rise up and meet the stars, rather than to pull them down, down to her, where she waits, this girl, this Summoner of Stars.
The grasses caress her knees, they whisper of spring looming, of bursting into life. The girl aches and she looks to the runaway boy and hums with a voice of trembling stars, “Yes. And no.” Her delicate crown tips up to the sky, a sky she once looked to for her goddess. Oh laughter, wild angry, bitter laughter is upon her lips. It burns her mouth like fire, so desperate is it to escape. But she lowers her gaze to the boy the stars have pulled her to and says, instead, ‘We are similar but not the same. Where are you from? Did you hear the stars calling?”
Free.
The word echoes, it reaches out to his bell that chimes, it resonates in the clinking of her leaves and pearls. Leto is a lamp upon the earth and in her light the word reaches out with endless fingers that know no limits.
Her gaze falls to the tassels, once leather straps, at his feet. She looks at the sky and wonders where his tether once was. The sky is keening in answer, it is writhing in clouds and darkness and wild abandon.
His breath is starlight and in answer stardust settles along her flesh. Who is she? Who is she? the stardust echoes, over and over. Who is this girl of earth and dust with starfire in her blood and the moon’s light in her eyes.
“Leto.” She answers with that name that sounds like cymbals and a sigh. That name that clings to the air and drifts with stardust and light. A river of stars pours from him, like water, like ink. Stars glitter and oh they are cool where hers are hot and savage. Closer and closer his river flows. Stronger and stronger is the taste of metallic magic upon her tongue.
Oh the stars roar like lions in her ears, oh the constellations are moving, weaving, dancing. He is here their song spells out. He is here their patterns form. Her lips press tight as stars glitter between her teeth. That river of magic brushes across her chest and oh how it makes the starfire girl burn. Newly godless, newly shed of religion and faith, she stands more naked than she has ever been. She stands with stars in her ears and Ilati sigils across her skin. This girl is earthbound and starlit. Galaxies flow in her veins and how bright are her eyes that behold this boy and his celestial magic.
He stretches his wings and her eyes run across their ever feather and bend. Never has she desired flight, but she might now, just for a moment. Oh to rise up and meet the stars, rather than to pull them down, down to her, where she waits, this girl, this Summoner of Stars.
The grasses caress her knees, they whisper of spring looming, of bursting into life. The girl aches and she looks to the runaway boy and hums with a voice of trembling stars, “Yes. And no.” Her delicate crown tips up to the sky, a sky she once looked to for her goddess. Oh laughter, wild angry, bitter laughter is upon her lips. It burns her mouth like fire, so desperate is it to escape. But she lowers her gaze to the boy the stars have pulled her to and says, instead, ‘We are similar but not the same. Where are you from? Did you hear the stars calling?”
@Asterion | "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Sirius - 07-25-2019
It was hard to believe that the world could be so alive.
It was not the dull, silent, black-and-white thing he had come to know in his childhood, a cold front that greeted him every time he was let out of the cage that was his prison. He had thought that the sun, even when warm, carried with it a bite of winter, a harshness that seemed at every moment attempting to tear him down and eat him alive.
It had been a very shuttered, isolated view of the world, he would come to realize. And a very, very wrong one.
The world - the real world, was far more than anything his dreams could have prepared him for. The real world was a field of wildflowers carved from gemstones, each one placed intentionally in its perfect arrangement. It was a sky that stretched endlessly, father than he could see, with a million stars burning brightly overhead, a moon to guide his way home.
The real world was a girl, with starfire burning in her veins. And it was a boy with torn shackles still hanging from his legs.
“Leto,” he echoes, and a smile crafts itself onto his lips. It sounds like let go spoken too quickly, and he has to bite his tongue to keep himself from trying to mimic it aloud, to test it out for himself. He likes her name, he decides; it’s a good name. It tastes like light might on his lips, as gentle as the moon, and just as powerful. The sort of name the stars might bestow.
”I am Sirius.” Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, the stars are chanting, imprinting the name forever into his memory.
He would be content to stay here forever, if only time would stop: to sit here in silence with a girl born of the same thread as him, to let the stars speak for them. They would turn their gaze heavenward and Sirius would let his magic mimic the constellations he found there, until he turned to stardust himself. He could make up for his years of never seeing the night sky with the rest of his life.
For as tempting as the rest of the world may be, it would never compare to the allure of the galaxies.
His eyes meet her’s, both of them silver, both of them stars, matching gazes. He could make a new constellation of their eyes, he thinks, if only he could shape the stardust that still flows from him like water.
“Yes,” he answers her, and that word is a sigh, releasing more stardust from his body. Only now does he remember his flight, only now does he remember the ache in his wings, the fatigued that threatens to pull him down into the bed of glass roses.
“I do not know where I came from,” he whispers, “only that I am here now, and they say here is a better place than there.” He doesn’t need to tell her who “they” are, not with words; he gestures with one wing towards the skies above.
”- Do you know where here is?" It's an innocent question, but oh how it burns to ask it.
hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you
i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy
@Leto ! <3
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Leto - 07-27-2019
This keening soul;
He whispers, and she strains to hear him. She leans in, like a universe pressing upon his. His voice comes to her, softly. It comes laden with weariness and how his wings echo that weary voice. The move at his side, slow and sluggish, as if the very earth has bound them tight in vines and weights them low, low. The move like arms trapped in mud, in swallowing quicksand.
She longs to breathe life into him. She longs to bleed energy into his veins like the sun does the earth. Yet she does neither. Leto merely watches, letting his words dance along the shell of her ears.
They say that here is a better place than there. His wing rises, suddenly free from earth’s great shackles. It reaches for the sky, just as he had fallen, an angel broken free of the ties that bind. Her galaxy eyes watch the way he moves, it trails along the arm of his wing, up and up past feathers rich as bark, up and up to where they lengthen and gather and narrow to a tip that points like a spear into the sky. A finger laced with magic to call the stars to order.
Her gaze runs along the tip of his wing and then sets loose. It rises and rises and though he does not look, Leto does. Never is she able to look away from them for long. They glitter in response. They laugh, joyous and proud with their wiles in freeing their boy. Starlight gleams along the frayed edges of his leather ties, Leto knows it is there, the blood of stars, a price spent for the freedom of another.
“And is it a better place?” She asks at last, her gaze tumbling down to land like lightning across his flesh. Mercury gleams in her gaze, it rolls like planets sucked in to billowing sun. This girl knows nothing of where he had been, of what joys or horrors may have swaddled him there. At last she lets her eyes settle upon the shackles broken at his ankles. Boldly, her muzzle lowers to touch the haggard leather. “It smells of freedom.” She muses and how light her voice is when there is ire seeping like acid into her veins. “Were you kept captive?” Her skull tilts and her sigils blaze, a thousand Ilati are screaming out from the runes across her torso. Her people know oppression and servitude. “If so, then anywhere where you have freedom is a better place than there, Sirius.”
At last she has said his name. At last she lets it roll upon her tongue like a wave. It crashes upon her teeth and tongue like a star-storm making landfall. “The dog-star.” She muses and again she looks up, drawn to where that star rests. “The scorching star,” it an intimate whisper, her voice laden with awe and adoration as a smile begins to curl at her lips. The star, that brightest of stars, begins to burn as her starfire wakens it. What power she draws as it smolders and scorches and burns bright, bright, bright.
“Did they name you after it?” She asks at last, starlight limning across the ink of her skin. Suddenly weary, suddenly fatigued with glass grasses tapping at her knees.
@Sirius | "speaks" | notes: <3
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Sirius - 08-01-2019
She asks him questions, questions that fall like silk from her lips, questions that seem to know the answer better than he knows. He isn’t sure he has the words he needs to reply.
Leto comes forward, letting her muzzle brush the leather still wrapped about his legs, its ends torn and frayed. He wonders if she sees the numbers carved there, what used to be his name, before the stars found him.
A captive, she calls him, a once-prisoner, and although Sirius has not heard the words before he can hear the stars begin a chant in his ears, and the word seems to fit him as well as his name. YES, YES, YES, the stars tell him, NO LONGER A CAPTIVE, FREED. His head is swimming in their words, in their constellations, in their brightness, and when he speaks again its in a dreamy, far-off voice.
“Yes,” he tells her, ”yes, I think that’s what I was.” NO LONGER, they whisper again, more gently this time. He thinks they might be laughing, way up there in the sky, as if delighted with themselves, as if proud of saving one of their children. Their voice falls away to nothing more than a hum in the back of his mind, as ever-present as the buzz of a bee’s wings. He clings to it, to them, to knowing they are with him. Here in this land where the galaxies seem as close to earth as they ever will be, the home they have led him to.
(He’s never known a home before, but he thinks this might make a good one.)
”They told me this is a better place,” he tells her, and ”So far, they have been right.” He hopes they are right; he had flown so far to get here, here at the end of his wings’ strength, and he isn’t sure he could do that again. Here feels like the end of the world to him; behind him is only more tethers and more hunts and more masters, but here there are glass roses and girls with stars in their eyes.
Sirius draws his breath in and holds it, and this time he follows her gaze when she tilts her starfire-eyes heavenward.
And oh how he gasps, when it seems the galaxies are smoldering above them, a single star burning bright, brighter, brightest in the sky. He knows that star as intimately as he knows himself; they share the same name, and he wonders if someday, somewhere, they might share more, like brothers, like friends.
The star grows brighter, swelling with light that sparkles white and gold, blue and red, colors he’s never seen before. SIrius takes a step forward, his head still craned backwards, and his other wing raises now to join the other one, and together they stretch for that star. He’d like to fly to it, to swim through the sky with his namesake.
When he looks back at her at last, he sees the starlight has anointed her with a crown of silver that drips down the edges of her face.
“I think I might like to fly now,” he tells her, and for the first time in his life it is not a question.
hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you
i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy
@Leto ! <3
this may be the worst reply i've ever written you
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Leto - 10-06-2019
This keening soul;
They told me this is a better place. So far, they have been right, He says, his dark eyes wide and bold. Yet Leto does not smile, she regards him with her silver eyes, so full of galaxies gleaming.
Was this truly a better place? Half of her wishes to agree, to utter her affirmation with fierce delight. Yet the other part of her curls its lip with distaste. It thinks of kelpies and gods with not a care for their people. But Leto says nothing to this boy with his tassles about his feet.
She says nothing when she smells the foreign smells - each one metallic like chains and acrid with their awfulness. Her gaze roves over him, this boy of stars. Long ago had her gaze descended from the sky, but still he looks up. Still he marvels at the places full and glorious and endless above them. There are so many places to hide there. Leto’s jealous gaze slips to his wings and the feathers that will bear him up at his every whim. Could they reach the stars? Could they find the spaces between their light and hide for all of eternity?
Her breath draws in and her lungs ache fiercely. They hold their breath together, each of them feeling their souls ascend. Her skin is glowing, the stars trembling and blinking where they lie within their sea of black.
His wings each flare, reaching up and up toward the sky. They halo his spine, they forge him like a swan, graceful and beautiful. He says he wishes to fly and still her eyes are roaming over the curves of him - made elegant by his wings that summon the air beneath them.
Slowly she steps back, “Then you had better go Sirius. The sky has been waiting too long for you.”
Leto waits until the air bears him upward, until the moon limns him in silver and the flowers sing of his parting. When he is but a dot in the distance, only then does Leto turn from the meadow and disappear into the dim dark.
@Sirius | "speaks" | notes: wrapping this up lovely <3
RE: oh, this kind nepenthe - Sirius - 10-14-2019
He is not looking at her, when she tells him it’s okay to go.
He does not see the way her skin seems to glow and the stars that lie within her tremble and blink and light up the darkness - but he feels it. His own magic is yawning, casting off the lull that has shackled it for so long, like a great beast coming awake. It pours from him, a cloud of star dust and constellations that stretch up and up and up, a celestial rope connecting him to the heavens.
Sirius follows that thread of magic with his eyes, and takes a step forward.
His lungs are aching, each breath quick and shallow, each beat of his heart a shudder. His wings have already forgotten the frenzy of his earlier flight, lifting themselves up at his sides. The winds makes his feathers dance and he trembles.
“It was nice meeting you, Leto.” One downward sweep of his wings and his hooves leave the ground. The air sighs, as if with relief as the sky takes back what is rightfully her’s. Three clean strokes and the ground is dwindling beneath him, the gemstone flowers bright specks far below and she is standing like a comet in their midst.
“I hope to see you again.” His voice is little more than a sigh, and he does not know if she hears him.
Sirius drifts on near-silent wings, swimming through an empty swath of sky. There are stars above him and stars below him, and his magic lights up the sky around him.
And he does not worry that someone might be chasing him. He does not worry at all.
hearts are breaking
wars are raging on
you’ve got me nervous
i’m at the end of my rope
hey, man, we can’t all be like you
i wish we were all rose-colored too
my rose-colored boy
@Leto !