The ocean laughs at her. It whispers salt-water froth that curves along its sandy lips and echoes its siren call into her ears.
 
The ocean crawls its way up along the beach. It ripples like satin cloth, wrong, wrong. It is the black of ink, midnight painted, moonlight highlighted. It ripples and does not chop or hiss. It rolls in enchanting ways and lures Leto’s gaze down, down from the moon.
 
Oh she watches it, stares upon that wrong, wrong ocean. She gazes as it rolls up the beach toward her and only breathes when it slowly rolls back out. It does not carry her out - not yet, not yet.
 
How tight does Fate hold her? How does it twine in unremitting chains about her ankles? Its hold is unbreakable.
 
The stars keen for the girl who looked away from them.
 
The trees rustle and sigh for the girl who does not look at them.
 
No, she looks at nothing but the sands beneath her feet as she skirts the inland edges of the beach. Sigils blaze across her ebony skin. They burn golden in the moonlight. They pull upon her skin for the damp of the swamp, for the buttress trees that sit, vines strung between their sentinel trunks.
 
Leto might have turned then, she might have let those ancient drawings freshly made upon her skin pull her back, back across Novus and deep into the dank dark of Tinea… were it not for the chime of bones. The clack of skulls, drawn out of mud, and beads that clinked like pottery hummed like the wind. Her own bones chime from where they hang, tied tightly into the snarls of her mane. The star girl’s skull tilts, listening, wild, curious.
 
She looks and looks until, there, a stranger stands with webbed rope strung between her horns and pale bones woven into the tangles of her mane. There is mud in that girl’s veins, it is mud that sings to the starfire in Leto’s own. It is mud that sinks its dirty fingers deep and from amidst the galaxies of her soul draws out her Ilati bond. Slowly, slowly Leto moves, silent like prey, slow like a hunter. She knows how to weave so her metal leaves do not chime, she knows how step so her pearls do not whisper.
 
Closer, closer this creature of starfire and earth magic moves until she is close, close, until the moonlight shadows bathe them and drown them. All is earth here, her sigils laugh across her skin, they cry out their ancient magic into the space between them. They press and press and press their stories deep, deep into the stranger’s skin. Leto’s eyes are wide, wide and the star dare not speak when the earth has its turn to sing.
 
“Not many Ilati still remain…” She says like a shedstar, like a girl woven together by stars and animated by earth’s wild spirit. Leto looks, oh she looks over every inch of this girl – for sigils, for scars, for any whisper of ancient magic. “You are Ilati,” She affirms, slowly, slowly as the trees begin to groan. “Yet I have not seen you before.” For how is it that lately she has seen none but two boys with water in their veins and not an ounce of earth in their souls?

@Iscariot | "speaks" | notes: <3

I am not from here. The stranger says as water falls away and silver meets gold above the rippling water.
 
Leto gazes, her eyes snagging upon the pale glow of sun-bleached bones, woven into the dark of this stranger’s mane, like they are in the black of hers. Snarls of hair adorn the black girl’s throat, they plait and curl, bound together by hair and vines and wild things. Feathers sway in the breeze, begging but beg for the wind.
 
Those words, they bring a smile to Leto’s lips. It is bright and fierce. That black smile gleams like the sun, it shines like the moon and leto wonders of the world beyond Novus. She wonders of her free-roaming brethren that stepped away, into the wilder lands.
 
“Where are you from?” the shed-star murmurs, hungry as though starved. She craves to know more, she yearns for whispers of different lands. Oh how she aches. Oh how she burns. Her blood glows white, white and the stars above burn bright in answer.
 
Leto’s lips reach for where bones hang in the stranger’s mane, for where her hair is woven into plaits. She does not wear sigils as Leto does, bold and starling – like carvings of starlight across the midnight of her skin. “Of course you do. All Ilati wear charms in our hair. Skulls and bones, leaves and berries. All that the earth gives us, we are at liberty to wear.”
 
She trails off, her eyes drifting toward Tinea. “Are you returning to us?” Leto asks though… us - it feels like a lie. It feels like a betrayal when she hears her shed-star blood roar, when she looks to the ocean and wonders when her bones will be lost there.
 
“I am not pure Ilati either. There are few who are.” Our people are dying. she does not say, though her heart is bleeding, though her soul smarts and rips.
 
“My name is Leto.”

@Iscariot | "speaks" | notes: <3

Leto’s skin is the metallic smell of earth succumbing to rain. It is ozone and the moments where sky and earth meet – lightning and snow and rain and so much more. She feels their rub, more agonizing than friction. It casts her out and yet she strives to belong, to the Ilati and the Shed-stars for she is both and yet… neither. The star-girl is a liminal space, neither here, neither there. Leto is ozone and she breathes in the static of her un-belonging.
 
Iscariot (she now knows) flinches from her touch and Leto pauses where she reaches, where she strains. The bones are a centimeter from her lips, but she does not touch, except to let a breath, warm with knowing, glide fondly across the smooth ivory of bone.
 
She smiles – such a strange thing upon her serious lips – and knows the twinge in her stomach is the same twinge she saw in Asterion’s eyes when he reached for her and she too flinched away again and again and again. Ah Ilati girls! Untouchable, wild, independent, scarred. They are all of those things and more.
 
So Leto draws back and knows of Iscariot’s desire – to never be touched and yet to yearn. It is a pining, a craving that itches and will not settle. But the Ilati are not made for touching.
 
And Leto does not know how this new girl searches for her secrets in the dark. If she only asked have you killed the creature that once animated these bones?  then they would be secrets no more. For Iscariot may shy from killing, but Leto has never. It is in her blood, it is the Ilati way. They do not eat their sacrifices, for they are rituals and sacred. Each death carried out with deepest respect and gratitude.
 
But the girl is smiling and Leto is following the upward curve of her lips as if their ascension will bring her closer to the sun.
 
Help.
 
The word hangs and Leto’s lashes, thick with Tinea’s darkness, press down and up as she bathes this girl in the galaxy light of her unearthly gaze. “What help do you ask of us, Iscariot? All our sisters are welcome, no matter how new.” Her head tilts in waiting and her bells chime and her bones clink in a chorus, tell us, tell us.

@Iscariot | "speaks" | notes: <3

Cursed.


Dying.


Those words are heavy in the small space left between the girls. They are nooses about their throats and weights that pull their hearts down, down into the dirt.


Leto blinks worlds away in her gaze. She opens her galaxy eyes and baths Iscariot in the nebulae within. So many stars dance across the Ilati-girl’s skin as leto studies her ever inch and wonders where it is that ails her.


Leto may not know what it is to be dying. But she does know what it is to be cursed - cursed unto death. For is that not what fortune tellers do? Condemn their listeners with the truth - the weight of which is enough to bring them to their knees. 


“What is killing you?” Leto murmurs and never has she been one to know how words can sting and how to lessen their ferocity. She speaks without fear, she speaks with knives upon her tongue and does not realise for even a moment.


Slowly her gaze lowers and runs along Iscariot’s frigid smile. The season it turning about them, winter comes beckoning, but it is not a chill that trembles its way up her spine. “Curses can be lifted, Iscariot. You just have to find out how.” Slowly Leto’s skull tilts and she regards the other girl with wild eyes. “Do you wish for help? The Ilati know so many things.”

@Iscariot | "speaks" | notes: <3

Cure.


Leto sees the effect of that word upon the girl. She sees the way her lashes lower, her head bows and her heart sinks with the weight of sickness and of sorrow. It is no surprised for Leto. She has seen many like this girl before. The sick come to the Ilati with hope in their bones that the magic of Terrastella’s native healers might be enough for them.


They are content to turn their gaze from the Witch Doctor who opens the flesh of woodland animals in order to heal them. Sacrifices are just, she would say and the sick would not argue, not if it meant their life and health.


Iscariot reaches in, pressing a kiss to Leto’s brow. The bones in their hair chink together. There is something sacred in this moment. Some magic stirs and it is hot and full of sparks within Leto’s lungs.


Then Iscariot is moving. She is keen as she walks to the edge of the island and up onto the bridge of slick, slick glass. The star-girl follows her, amber eyes meeting silver as she steps up upon the bridge. “Come then, Iscariot. I will take you to your home.” Together they leave, heading along the dustbowl roads toward Tinea.

@Iscariot | "speaks" | notes: <3