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perennial quiet - Lyr - 01-08-2020

THE END OF MAN IS KNOWLEDGE

The first time Lyr saw the spires of Terrastella's capitol, he had been visiting with his father. The austere man had given Lyr a rigid list of instructions to follow: he was to be polite and conscientious, to ask educated questions, to maintain eye contact—none of that flickering gaze nonsense—and to carry himself with the tact and knowledge of their home Court. Lyr had attempted to adhere to these directions, but when his father caught him shyly playing with a group of Halcyon boys, he was scolded in front of them for a lack of discipline. They were there solely to meet with some of Terrastella’s monks, and in doing so Lyr was meant to be quiet, watchful, and demure. 

Now, when Lyr stands gazing out the crenels toward the Terminus sea, there is something as large as a leviathan moving within him. Even now he can bring to mind the precise expression on his father’s face when disappointment thinned the line of his lips, and hardened his brows. Even now he remembers the exact, chilly tone the priest could use to ensure obedience in his son and patron worshipers.

Lyr turns away to continue on his journey as sea birds wheel above him, crying out against the wind. There is a bitter taste on his tongue, and he attempts to console himself by wondering what poetry his mother would have written of the city he now inhabits. Lyr had heard everything about the sea below and the ominous cliffs—but nothing of Terrastella’s quiet, lilac streets. Lyr is a little in love with them, he knows. It is the romantic in him that suffering never staved off.

The soldier twines his way meekly against the battlements, toward the prominent tower of the citadel. An ingenious architect many years ago must have thrown down his plans between Susurro Fields and the Praistigia cliffs and said this is it. Every street in the city seems to direct toward the citadel in a spiderweb; every angle; every line of sight; leads back to the single—nearly lonely—tower. Lyr begins to feel nervous as he comes to the entrance; he is small and plain against the heavy oak door, and the guard standing duty requests to know his purpose there. 

“I request to see the Sovereign, if she is available.” 

The beauty of the citadel, his father had once said, is that despite the tests of time, the changing of Sovereigns, the presence of terrible devastation, famine, or war… the citadel has always remained strong, and timeless. This is how we know the gods walk among us, Lyr. They have a hand in ensuring what remains eternal in our finite lives.

His pulse is a rising tempo in his veins; he feels the beat, beat, beat of his heart in his ears and his face is flushed. Lyr hopes that she cannot meet him; but his tender and mortal hopes are irrelevant to his greater purpose and so he stands, statuesque if not for the way something moves beneath the tranquil surface of his eyes like a storm. Lyr waits, patiently, quietly, with the sea-breeze blowing fine strands of hair across his face.

I HEARD THEM SPEAKING OF PERENNIAL QUIET, I HEARD THEM SAY THAT SORROW IS JUST HAPPINESS AT A DIFFERENT DESTINY, JUST A DIFFERENT COLOURED LIGHT

Rhiaan @ deviant art.com


@Marisol


RE: perennial quiet - Marisol - 02-09-2020

watch the world go by, dreaming /
blood-red dreams of pretty women

The page who comes to get Marisol exits her office only a moment later, and utterly chastised; he rushes down the stairs with a clatter, ears pinned, hair flying wildly, whale-eyed with bright fear as he plunges past the crowd of servants in the kitchen, through the foyer, and out into the streets, where he passes the pale man waiting outside the citadel’s door without a lingering glance and disappears into the web of the streets.

Marisol does not know what, exactly, she is feeling. But it is most certainly not guilt.

He had entered before he was supposed to. Significantly so. She had been busy—distracted—and took a moment to open her mouth. But by the time she did he had already pushed his head through the door, as if he were some ill-mannered desert thief and not a trained attendant, and she had been so startled by the intrusion that her first instinct was to round on him like a mother chastising her child.

He had, after all, caught her in a compromising position. Testing her new form. Examining her needle-sharp teeth in the silvery pool of an antique mirror. That was hardly a good look for someone who was still smiling with her lips closed in public.  

So she set upon him before he had a chance to blink, run, or defend himself verbally, snarling in a way that was hardly royal, “You have a plentiful lack of wit, boy,” and watched him tumble down the stairs and out of view at an inhuman pace. Almost she wished he would stay, that she could chastise him further; but as she watches him flee, she is all at once nauseated, maybe by the weight of her shame or the electric pulse of her relief, and finds herself unable to move.

The mirror slips and clatters to the floor. There is the sound of voices downstairs—a startled murmuring, a whisper of concern—and Marisol knows that they are talking about the boy who has just gone running and in what way he might have offended the queen.

For a moment the world is silent. Mari stands, frozen in place, in the office that has become her undoing. The floor is piled high with various books and files, the desk strewn with quills and scrolls; candles burn and flicker in the windowsills against a true-gray sky outside, and the light in the office is dim yellow or basically non-existent. Outwardly, Marisol looks business-as-usual. But she feels… haggard. Tired. Stretched too thin for comfort. Like she could sleep for years if someone let her.

But they won’t. They can’t. It is her burden. And so she blinks her tired eyes and wanders down the staircase to the empty foyer, past the servant girls that eye her cautiously and the kitchens with their incessant clatter, and opens the wide oak door to the outside world, still half-cracked by the page’s hasty exit.

A man stands on the other side. 

He is about her height and weight, though nearly her opposite in color, a ghostly white with blood-red eyes. He stands too correctly to be comfortable; his ears are tilted back uneasily, and his gaze lingers on at her feet rather than on her face, like he is here to deliver a piece of unimaginably bad news.

Marisol sighs.

“Welcome,” she says, and opens the door wider.

“Speaking.”
credits



RE: perennial quiet - Lyr - 03-25-2020

THE END OF MAN IS KNOWLEDGE


Lyr has rehearsed this moment hundreds of times in his own mind. He has stood before a mirror and practiced his expressions; he has told himself, again and again, exactly what he would say and how. Yet when the grand door opens and he knows—yes he knows, because he feels the weight of her gaze, the way it flits over him in what he is certain is a dismissive catalogue of his nondescript features—none of the rehearsals matter. Marisol, the Sovereign, stands on the other side.

Lyr hears her sigh without seeing the gesture. Welcome. And the door creaks wider.

He raises his eyes. He exhales. Look her in the face. (He will never understand why every command he has ever given himself sounds as if it is in his father’s voice.) Lyr does so. He takes in her steel-grey eyes, her dark face, and thinks how terribly lonely it must be, to be the Sovereign of an entire Court. Lyr bows, fully, placing his knee on the ground before her. “Sovereign.” It is a statement full of devotion; Lyr, who has lived many lies, cannot live this as a lie. No. He means it. And then he rises.

Lyr measures his tone. With polite tenseness he states precisely, “Thank you.” And nothing more.

The white and grey stallion enters with the same silence of winter. For a man with red eyes, there ought to be something enflamed, impassioned about them; but when he regards the citadel, it is with the unimpassioned, pragmatic expression of a chess player. 

Lyr steels himself. He imagines very placidly Susurro fields. He imagines the grass that flows and bobs like the sea, and he centers himself there, on those nonviolent, but raging waves. Lyr turns to Marisol again; he sees himself as a soldier, poised and diplomatic. He clears his throat. 

“Sovereign, I requested your audience in order to ask you consider me for a spy position for Terrastella.” This is where Lyr’s careful recitation’s come into play. A man typically so awkward, so stiff, allows briefly for the passion of work to enter his tone. “I have served as a soldier in your Court for nearly two years, and although Novus is relatively peaceful at this point in time… it’s never a bad idea to have eyes and ears where you need them, or think you may one day. My father was a monk in Delumine, and because of that we travelled often to learn of other Courts. He took me with him, hoping I would follow in his footsteps, and because of this I’m familiar with the practices and beliefs of Novus.” 

To hear his voice emerge so strong and clear surprises him. Lyr’s eyes seek out Marisol’s; although he nearly trembles with the strain of it. Lyr knows it is the first step. Lyr knows there is a chance she denies him, or questions him further, but it is the only way


I HEARD THEM SPEAKING OF PERENNIAL QUIET

I HEARD THEM SAY THAT SORROW IS JUST HAPPINESS

AT A DIFFERENT DESTINY, A DIFFERENT COLOURED LIGHT

Rhiaan @ deviant art.com


@Marisol


RE: perennial quiet - Marisol - 06-01-2020

watch the world go by, dreaming /
blood-red dreams of pretty women

Marisol is no more suspicious of him than any other visitor who comes knocking. Appearances like these are not uncommon; she is interrupted more often than she would like by the petty squabbles of citizens, or their personally important but overwhelmingly mundane requests. Ah, but so is the curse of being sovereign, an unintended side effect of being anointed in power. So is the duty she owes to her people. 

His face makes her think he is here to ask for something either very large or very small. The red eyes and pale lips wear an expression almost of fear, and Mari has fielded enough requests to know that that kind of apprehension is sometimes warranted and sometimes isn’t, but either way it takes a toll. When his gaze meets hers, Marisol, despite her best efforts, feels such a twinge of pity she can’t help but offer him an awkward, stilted smile; a smile that might fail, but at least tries, to set him a little more at ease.

Sovereign, he says. Some part of her is surprised—though it has been months, she still thinks of herself as only Commander. But it doesn’t matter. Marisol opens her mouth to ask his name in polite return. But even as she forms her lips around the question he is dropping into a bow deeper than she has seen from almost anyone, knee to the cold tile, head held against his chest. 

Her brow rises inadvertently; she blows out a short, almost confused breath. But she lets him pass by her and into the drawing room without remarking on his frosty silence, his rabbit-red eyes and the way they watch the floor, or his stiff, almost anxious step and posture. (She has to wonder—is he always like this? An overwound clock? A ribbon tied too tight? It’s the way she feels, always—tense to the point of splintering—but oh, it has never occurred to her that it might look like this.) 

Instead, she steps back in silence and lets him take his place in the center of the room. Lantern-light glints off the cold marble of his skin. When he speaks, though, it’s stronger and smoother than she would have ever expected just by looking; he even sounds certain, as if it’s something he’s practiced for eons, maybe since birth. Marisol listens to the words with her eyes fixed on his and her ears pricked forward, a look of careful consideration pulling down at the corners of her mouth.

She has always been careful to weigh her options.

When he finishes speaking, a moment of silence passes. Marisol’s gray eyes fix on Lyr’s and stare deeply as she lets it sink in, thinking silently, working over the theories in her head.

“So I take it,” she says finally, “that you think I may need your eyes and ears some day soon. Why?”

“Speaking.”
credits



RE: perennial quiet - Lyr - 07-01-2020

THE END OF MAN IS KNOWLEDGE

So I take it that you think I may need your eyes and ears some day soon. Why?

Lyr wonders, sometimes, where his shyness stemmed from. As a younger man, it had not been so apparent; no, he had simply been quiet, and observant, and less inclined to rambunctious behaviour. Now, however, his quiet has manifested into shyness; and that shyness into introversion. But, what is more than that—Lyr is undone by Marisol for a deeper, more intrinsic reason. Authority. His father, growing up, had always stressed the importance of that. The intricate niceties of social, Court life; the station of the rich, the middle class, the poor. How to thank soldiers for their service; how to remain silent in Delumine’s endless library; the authoritative stares of other scholars devoted to Oriens. Always, always that authority was wound as taunt as a guitar’s strings.

Her eyes are heavy on him. Lyr cannot discern if it is distrust, or if it is merely her composure. He forces himself to relax, corded muscle by corded muscle, until he takes upon himself a semblance of relaxation. He even manages a small, knowing smile. “Sovereign—when are eyes and ears not needed?” Lyr adds, hesitantly: "My father was a monk for Oriens, a scholar devout to Novus’s religious practices and history. In all of these histories he studied, do you know what he railed about?”

Lyr feels overcome with the passion of what he speaks; and yet he remains polite, composed. He has relaxed even enough to glance about the citadel’s grand entrance hall, the stained glass, the marble, the way he thinks he can hear the distant sea upon the cliffs. When he glances at Marisol again, it is with the most confidence he has mustered thus far. “Men go to war. Even in times of peace, they seek out destruction. If it isn’t today, or tomorrow, or even a year from now—it will be one day. And wouldn’t you rather be the Sovereign who took precautions, than the Sovereign who didn’t?”

I HEARD THEM SPEAKING OF PERENNIAL QUIET

I HEARD THEM SAY THAT SORROW IS JUST HAPPINESS

AT A DIFFERENT DESTINY, A DIFFERENT COLOURED LIGHT

Rhiaan @ deviant art.com


@Marisol


RE: perennial quiet - Marisol - 09-07-2020

watch the world go by, dreaming /
blood-red dreams of pretty women

Mari feels… small.

There are two inches between them, barely notable at all; but she feels the difference keenly, and the bother she feels at it is less a sharp prickle than a dull, gnawing ache. It weighs on her. It pulls on her shoulders, and she puts effort into keeping herself tall and rigid. 

Marisol has seen enough of the world to know that his height, in itself, means nothing. (If it came down to it, she thinks, he would not present much of a problem. Tall or not.) She has taken down monsters and warriors double her size. She has seen kid-sized cadets beat their sparring partners into the ground—sparring partners taller, heavier, sometimes even more experienced. But this is a different feeling. Far closer to frustration than to fear. It’s not about whether he could defeat her—he couldn’t—or even catch her if she tried to dodge him in a spar. 

It’s about the power. The feeling that already lives inside of her of being inferior, of being unqualified: of being a small girl, a queen on a chessboard that is far too big for her to traverse properly, a board filled with sovereigns and regents that all loom over her, and—

It is that feeling. That feeling of being loomed over. Marisol’s jaw grits. She blinks once; long, tense, slow.

It is that feeling that sits deep inside her and does not move, does not flinch, but is only lodged further and further into the pit that is her heart and stomach when she hears him speak. 

When he looks at her, he is wearing strange mix of composure and forced relaxation that Marisol recognizes intimately. On someone else it might disarm her; on him, it is almost irritating. Wouldn’t you rather be the Sovereign who took precautions, than the Sovereign who didn’t? Marisol can’t help the barest flinch. And when he dares to smile—oh, that digs into her, claws and teeth, until her eyes narrow and her jaw seems to ache. 

“I don’t need you,” she says softly, icily, “to tell me what kind of Sovereign I would rather be, Lyr. You are the son of a monk. yet you seem to have forgotten: it is Vespera who commands me, no one else.”

A beat. Marisol lets out a short huff of breath. “I agree. We should be careful. Wars begin easily. But you understand—being given this position does not guarantee you any special treatment. There are… rules.”

There are always rules. There are only rules, Marisol thinks—rules to hold the world together, and a few to break it apart. 

Hers will not be the latter.


“Speaking.”
credits