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☆ becoming - Illu - 12-29-2019


There was something to be said about how stitching of my collar seemed to dig into my throat, pulling taught against sensitive skin with every swallow. The air was particularly hot, despite the chill throughout the palace halls. Winter was in full-swing and the general bustle of the people had slowed to a crawl, preferring to stay warm and safe rather than out and about in the snow. Which was reasonable. This errand though, was not so much. Cold radiated from the stone walls of the Denocte keep, though it was quashed almost as quickly as it seeped through by the flickering light of the lanterns that lined the walls. Although they were not very large, the warmth they radiated felt close and homely. Not nearly warm enough to inspire a film of perspiration across my brow, though, and so I could not help but question what it was about this summons that had my heart stumbling and nerves on edge.

Perhaps it was the source.

It had been quite a long time since Isra had called upon me, though our last meeting had been gentle and informative. Laid casually before a roaring fire-place within the depths of her personal quarters, I had listened to her chosen story of that time. A story of winter and the sea, of love and battle, heartbreak and death. Which tended to be a theme with Isra, but... there was always a lesson. Always some reason behind her tales, though I could not always figure out what. She did not like to give away the answers, rather preferring to let me do it on my own. Her way of teaching me problem-solving skills no doubt. I liked to think I was fairly successful at finding solutions, however, my tutor did not.

Just the very thought of that insipid stallion made me want to scowl. Hare-brained fool that he was! Don't do this!, don't do that! he said, that's not how I showed you!. Who cares how I did it? I thought then, as long as the answer is correct. I knew how to follow instructions, I knew how to read and understand guidelines, how to root out details between the lines. How dare he presume that I was anything less just based on my personal decision not to play by his rules! The information, in its base concept, was still the same.

It felt as if the trek to the commons room was too short, for suddenly the roof was arching above my head as the silken drapery of the door frame slid across my back. It opened forth into a shockingly large chamber, held up with meticulously carved pillars, framed with elegant, yet subtle decorum in deep colors befitting Caligo. My collar was suddenly unbearably tight as each step echoed into the yawning emptiness. I was alone here, nobody else to fill the silence and it was so, so close. So very real, whispering in my ears, reaching out from the shadows. Isra? I called, controlling my features as my voice sounded hollow and small against the earthen stone. 




ooc: @Isra @Aspara



RE: ☆ becoming - Isra - 12-31-2019

Isra who is not asking

"Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt hollow and empty and aching.” 



If there is a roof to this world, if there is a place where it all started molecule by molecule, I feel like I am standing it on. There are a hundred different pathways running out from my hooves like rivers fat with whitewater. Each races towards the horizon, and the sea, and I cannot tell where each ends and where the nothing beyond does. And yet, as I feel like I'm standing on the roof of the world, there is nothing of fear rolling around in the walls of my soul.

There is only purpose, and war, and fury.

I wonder when I started feeling less like a mother and more like a god. I wonder--

The sounds of Illu's voice shakes me loose from my wondering. The firelight makes my eyes sting when I realize I had been staring at it too long, I'm always looking at fire now and wondering, wondering, wondering if the world is a phoenix or a bit of dried, ancient wood. “Illu.” Her name sounds the same way it always has on my tongue, like home, like survival, like a promise I suddenly want to give her.

I remember the way she was brought her. I remember the worry in that stallion's voice, the way he talked about his world being torn apart. I remember feeling sorrow, and pity, and want. Even in the middle of a war I remember it all.

Will she want me to take her world too, will she want to go home when she learns what terrible thing I'm going to do?

The floors turns to marble around me without me ever making the conscious choice to change it. The magic in my blood is always doing that now, changing the world, remaking it like I'm a god that cannot help this vicious need to creature. Oh I hope the word is a phoenix.

I look at her and my eyes and heart ache like I'm dying instead of resting in a fake serenity by the fire.“Join me.” And for the first time, the very first time, my words to her are not lifted into the softness of a request.

This time I'm not asking.


@Illu
Art



RE: ☆ becoming - Illu - 01-05-2020


Perhaps it is the stillness, the velvet lined darkness draped down the hard stone walls. Or mayhap it was the occasional draft of cold across my spine, a subconscious reminder that outside, nature whistled with rage. Or... maybe it was something altogether different as I stood there silently, only the rhythm of my heartbeath for company. Each breath was slow, calculated as latent panic attempted to rear its head somewhere in the back of my mind, lacing thoughts with echoes of fire and lightning.

No, I thought, affirming my surroundings with a white-lined gaze, ears sliding back as something new broke into the silence. Foot-steps, familiar foot-steps. Her arrival injected a blossom of calm into my veins, easing the swivet threatening to overcome my tentative logic. So long I spent perfecting it, so hard I struggled to convince myself that all was well. Yet here all it took was a few jagged shadows and it all came tumbling down. Almost. Not so far that I could not turn to her with an expectant, if not somewhat hesitant, look. "Isra I-" Join me.

Cold.

Her eyes are so hauntingly cold as she looks at me. That sea-blue gaze was hardened into ice, glittering down at me with an emptiness to rival the room. Admittedly, it was not the first time I had witnessed this look, though it is the first time it was ever directed at me. Some part of me knew that it was not in malice that she gazed upon me now, but it did not stop the skin puckering down my neck. "Of course," I say softly, and it feels like an eternity was come and gone. I move beside her with a twist of my head, assuming that she meant to retire back to her quarters.






ooc: @Isra



RE: ☆ becoming - Isra - 01-07-2020

Isra who waters a forest

"what I am to you is not real.” 



Somewhere along the line fire became a comfort to me. I'm not sure when it happened, maybe between the burning of the pass and the burning of my city's stores. Maybe it happened before then. Maybe it happened when I was drowning in the sea and all I wanted was to feel warm, and alive, for just one more moment. Everything is a forest of maybes for me now, a forest upon roots of moments. And all of it, every leaf, and flower, and seed, are all watered by the oceans of tears I've cried.

Illu is another tree in my forest, another masterpiece of root, and seed, and possibilities. I should not go to war. I should be a better mother, a better queen. I should do anything but move closer to the fire and beckon her to me not with words this time but with the star-bright ache in my eyes. But I do it anyway before I press my nose into her mane and breathe in everything that makes me water my sorrows. “I am going to be leaving.” I do not tell her that she is not coming.

I could not deny the choice to her, not when one of my own daughters is coming with me.

Only one. Only one. Only one.

I want to cry when I pull away. I want to tremble down to the floor in a flurry of dust and snow. But I only look at the fire and think of all the ways in which I will burn this place to the ground if I stay, if I don't give all my nightmares and all my magic a direction in which to blaze. “Aspara is staying here.” The words do not make me cry like I thought they would. Maybe everything in me is frost now.

I'm still looking at the flames when I ask her the only thing I will every really ask of her. She's too young for this. I try not to think about it. “Will you stay with her?” I try not to think about much anymore.

It's mostly fire and war for me now. This form was not made for motherhood and happiness. I was made to suffer.

I died for it.


@Illu
Art