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+---- Thread: [P] it is steep it is stone (/showthread.php?tid=5132)
it is steep it is stone - Stellanor - 06-16-2020
She squints one eye shut, and places the other against the cool brass of the eyepiece.
The world becomes simultaneously smaller and bigger at once. Around her, the granite walls and spires fade to black as she gazes up through the curved lenses at the magnified stars—the old fossilized light blooming glumly in the pitch-black sky above. She follows a line from one star to the next, some large and some too small to have seen without her telescope’s aid, her jaw moving in pensive back-and-forth as she chews the inside of her cheeks.
When she has seen what she needs, she pulls back, blinking both eyes clear; the burnished telescope still hovering in the chill, montane moonlight between her and steep drop-off at her argent toes.
To her right, a piece of almost clean parchment hovers with a pot of ink and feather-quill. The geometric and scientific outlines of the new star chart are accounted for on the lamb’s skin. A large round circle with faint dotted lines of longitude and latitude and hemispheres, numbers and diagrams describing the rising and the falling of the sun and the lengths of seasons. Inside, is a world unmapped. A few stray stars and some of the old constellations that could still be seen, and marked in dark ink and illuminated with illustrations, hold their place.
Most of them are gone, cast into obliteration as the land below them had been.
So she starts a new labour of love and dedication.
The star-shed had told her the mountains were a good place to see Novus’ night sky, and of course, he was right. So she climbed the Armas to a protected precipice near the clouds; the cool, thin air reminding her of home—bringing her closer to the throne Cosmos once sat upon; closer to the enigmatic Caligo, yet a name on an altar she has not yet the heart to approach. The vastness of the universe opens like a book to her here, revealing upon its sable skin the formations and patterns of this strange land, like brilliant freckles. The guiding polestars, and the smaller clutches around them that make up the shapes of curved swords, pulled bows and arching swans.
With careful attention, she unknots their positions, placing them, one by one, on the suspended parchment. She pinches her lip between her teeth. Locating the correct position in the sky, with delicate mind’s grasp, she marks the first star of this new order, and then another, just left of the Father’s Mane, a constellation first discovered in Nordlys that still held its position all these many miles away. Between each new monument of dead light, she commands soft, dashed lines until they have become a new landmark by which to navigate at night, for those who know what to look for.
Stella pots the quill and nods, the parchment comes to hover in front of her in the air beside the glinting telescope. She considers the new constellation, tilts her head and bites the insides of her cheeks.
Pinches her lip between her teeth.
And begins to unravel its name.
The world becomes simultaneously smaller and bigger at once. Around her, the granite walls and spires fade to black as she gazes up through the curved lenses at the magnified stars—the old fossilized light blooming glumly in the pitch-black sky above. She follows a line from one star to the next, some large and some too small to have seen without her telescope’s aid, her jaw moving in pensive back-and-forth as she chews the inside of her cheeks.
When she has seen what she needs, she pulls back, blinking both eyes clear; the burnished telescope still hovering in the chill, montane moonlight between her and steep drop-off at her argent toes.
To her right, a piece of almost clean parchment hovers with a pot of ink and feather-quill. The geometric and scientific outlines of the new star chart are accounted for on the lamb’s skin. A large round circle with faint dotted lines of longitude and latitude and hemispheres, numbers and diagrams describing the rising and the falling of the sun and the lengths of seasons. Inside, is a world unmapped. A few stray stars and some of the old constellations that could still be seen, and marked in dark ink and illuminated with illustrations, hold their place.
Most of them are gone, cast into obliteration as the land below them had been.
So she starts a new labour of love and dedication.
The star-shed had told her the mountains were a good place to see Novus’ night sky, and of course, he was right. So she climbed the Armas to a protected precipice near the clouds; the cool, thin air reminding her of home—bringing her closer to the throne Cosmos once sat upon; closer to the enigmatic Caligo, yet a name on an altar she has not yet the heart to approach. The vastness of the universe opens like a book to her here, revealing upon its sable skin the formations and patterns of this strange land, like brilliant freckles. The guiding polestars, and the smaller clutches around them that make up the shapes of curved swords, pulled bows and arching swans.
With careful attention, she unknots their positions, placing them, one by one, on the suspended parchment. She pinches her lip between her teeth. Locating the correct position in the sky, with delicate mind’s grasp, she marks the first star of this new order, and then another, just left of the Father’s Mane, a constellation first discovered in Nordlys that still held its position all these many miles away. Between each new monument of dead light, she commands soft, dashed lines until they have become a new landmark by which to navigate at night, for those who know what to look for.
Stella pots the quill and nods, the parchment comes to hover in front of her in the air beside the glinting telescope. She considers the new constellation, tilts her head and bites the insides of her cheeks.
Pinches her lip between her teeth.
And begins to unravel its name.
@e-cho I'll let yo choose which babe!
☽
RE: it is steep it is stone - Moira - 06-29-2020
M O I R A
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
The sky does not change even when she does. The world is a constant that keeps turning, turning, tilted on an axis she will never find, existing for an eternity that she has chosen to join in on. Even when her own home is far, far, far away, farther than she can reach, can imagine, can ever truly know, the skies are still the same. Perhaps the space between the stars is not so great that it would deliver her unto a new home that does not hold some resemblance to her last, for the skies are still the same even when her heart is not, even when she is not.
Moira longs for the days that she did not bleed light from her pores, that she did not spew sorrow to such as extent as now. The twins, Estelle, Eluoan and isolation were her only friends. Her own brothers never spoke a word to her, her parents letting her go into the arms of another who could take better care, keep better watch, of their problematic daughter and effectively releasing her into the world without so much as a goodbye. The Tonnerres are an opulent group, a selective group, but at the heart of it all they are a cold blooded guild of people run by a woman with very little of a heart left. What beats in her chest is not warm, but cold, and it loves only two enough to grant them favor within her halls.
Her father is one of those two.
The other, the Matron does not speak of.
There, at least, Moira knew herself better than she does now. Whenever her heart becomes turbulent and uncertain, her path murky and clouded, she turns to the mountains. They stood tall and strong when Raum went against Denocte. Not even dragon fire could bring down the gates of the Arma. The knights and guards are a fearless, loyal lot that protect their gaping maw with their lives if need be. It is only the monsters that timid souls should fear...
More often than not, Moira is one of those monsters.
Tonight, Neerja paces beside her, reunited again with her beloved companion. The tigress has been kept too long from any trees and been denied access too long into the heart of her bonded. Now, there is a crack along their bond and she opens the door to tread along a sliver-thin rope. What she finds is chaos, indecision, fear. It is bone-deep, soul-deep, built on a graveyard of lies, a coliseum of uncertainties and anger dwelling in the shadows. This is enough to draw the tigress from Moira's mind, instead brushing her hip against the woman's thigh, pulling her into the present, into the now and here, instead of letting her float in a room of terror and dread.
Even a beast can drown. Even a monster can die.
A smile falls softly to the light wielder's face, bending over it like a shadow, but it does not flee as quickly as they do. Not tonight. Not yet. Cicadas an crickets fall silent when the duo come to pass them by, shying from the light that builds and builds upon the phoenix' skin, illuminating her even in the deepest night. Above, stars twinkle, smiling as only they can do, winking shyly from their cold and quiet crypts. Moira does not know to smile at them, does not think to wave and hope that somehow, somewhere, her blood might feel it miles and miles away. Instead, her golden gaze turns to a rocking outcrop and the outline of a woman.
She is silent as Stella paints her sheepskin, wearing the quietude beautifully as only a Tonnerre can. At last, the cloth is set down and the phoenix clears her throat. A single brow arches and she is somewhat the girl that she had been upon entering this world, and somewhat a new creature entirely, born again as a huntress, born again as a shooting star. "I remember star charts from my home, some would crumble if their glass cases were ever removed. You have a gift," she remarks in her smoky voice. It is the curl of midnight against Stellanor's skin, something mesmerizing, something you remember only in dreams. It could be so easy to fall under her spell... So easy and so hard to forget her now that she is star-forged and world-weary. Something hidden, something secret shimmers under the glow of her skin, dances along Neerja's painted hide, and it is delectable as only a forbidden fruit can be. "Have you found what you're looking for in the stars?" She asks and is reminded of another girl who wishes so dearly to hold on to the starlight that just seems to flit away.
Moira can touch it. Moira can bend it to her will... She does not say these things, does not let the world know her secret tonight, this stranger is not privy to her wrath when it is dormant. Sometimes, there are small blessings like this she thanks the ancestors for between every thought.
@Stellanor please take my dear heart in a rare moment of peace
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
The sky does not change even when she does. The world is a constant that keeps turning, turning, tilted on an axis she will never find, existing for an eternity that she has chosen to join in on. Even when her own home is far, far, far away, farther than she can reach, can imagine, can ever truly know, the skies are still the same. Perhaps the space between the stars is not so great that it would deliver her unto a new home that does not hold some resemblance to her last, for the skies are still the same even when her heart is not, even when she is not.
Moira longs for the days that she did not bleed light from her pores, that she did not spew sorrow to such as extent as now. The twins, Estelle, Eluoan and isolation were her only friends. Her own brothers never spoke a word to her, her parents letting her go into the arms of another who could take better care, keep better watch, of their problematic daughter and effectively releasing her into the world without so much as a goodbye. The Tonnerres are an opulent group, a selective group, but at the heart of it all they are a cold blooded guild of people run by a woman with very little of a heart left. What beats in her chest is not warm, but cold, and it loves only two enough to grant them favor within her halls.
Her father is one of those two.
The other, the Matron does not speak of.
There, at least, Moira knew herself better than she does now. Whenever her heart becomes turbulent and uncertain, her path murky and clouded, she turns to the mountains. They stood tall and strong when Raum went against Denocte. Not even dragon fire could bring down the gates of the Arma. The knights and guards are a fearless, loyal lot that protect their gaping maw with their lives if need be. It is only the monsters that timid souls should fear...
More often than not, Moira is one of those monsters.
Tonight, Neerja paces beside her, reunited again with her beloved companion. The tigress has been kept too long from any trees and been denied access too long into the heart of her bonded. Now, there is a crack along their bond and she opens the door to tread along a sliver-thin rope. What she finds is chaos, indecision, fear. It is bone-deep, soul-deep, built on a graveyard of lies, a coliseum of uncertainties and anger dwelling in the shadows. This is enough to draw the tigress from Moira's mind, instead brushing her hip against the woman's thigh, pulling her into the present, into the now and here, instead of letting her float in a room of terror and dread.
Even a beast can drown. Even a monster can die.
A smile falls softly to the light wielder's face, bending over it like a shadow, but it does not flee as quickly as they do. Not tonight. Not yet. Cicadas an crickets fall silent when the duo come to pass them by, shying from the light that builds and builds upon the phoenix' skin, illuminating her even in the deepest night. Above, stars twinkle, smiling as only they can do, winking shyly from their cold and quiet crypts. Moira does not know to smile at them, does not think to wave and hope that somehow, somewhere, her blood might feel it miles and miles away. Instead, her golden gaze turns to a rocking outcrop and the outline of a woman.
She is silent as Stella paints her sheepskin, wearing the quietude beautifully as only a Tonnerre can. At last, the cloth is set down and the phoenix clears her throat. A single brow arches and she is somewhat the girl that she had been upon entering this world, and somewhat a new creature entirely, born again as a huntress, born again as a shooting star. "I remember star charts from my home, some would crumble if their glass cases were ever removed. You have a gift," she remarks in her smoky voice. It is the curl of midnight against Stellanor's skin, something mesmerizing, something you remember only in dreams. It could be so easy to fall under her spell... So easy and so hard to forget her now that she is star-forged and world-weary. Something hidden, something secret shimmers under the glow of her skin, dances along Neerja's painted hide, and it is delectable as only a forbidden fruit can be. "Have you found what you're looking for in the stars?" She asks and is reminded of another girl who wishes so dearly to hold on to the starlight that just seems to flit away.
Moira can touch it. Moira can bend it to her will... She does not say these things, does not let the world know her secret tonight, this stranger is not privy to her wrath when it is dormant. Sometimes, there are small blessings like this she thanks the ancestors for between every thought.
@
RE: it is steep it is stone - Stellanor - 08-02-2020
She does not look like a monster, here. Not to Stella. Even as deep shadow falls across her flame-bright face in slashes between shafts of bloomed, faded moonlight and her own spun luminance. Even as darkness enfolds them both, like an embrace or like a flanking, and all around the sill of this high-up place—this ivory tower of granite and star-shed—is unknown and terrifying. Stella stopped seeing monsters in the dark long ago—choose, instead, to see omens and altars. To find comfort in the way it meant only to hold her like a purloined jewel; like a secretive and shameful lover. Only for a moment. Only until they—night and her—were caught in their trysts and it would drop her back to earth with a start, still bruised by its touches.
Still breathy and ever-unsatisfied.
It hadn’t always been that way, but she had let darkness into her marrow and she had found it made her whole and abyssal at once. Hungry, always, and perhaps that was better than nothing. Better than passing like some ghost, consigned to an in-between, earth and sky. Better than feeling adrift. It had grounded her, but not in the way Kyrr had grounded her—by pine-roots and birch-limbs. It had anchored her to Him. To the Cimmerian depths of his teased affections; to the way he so easily became all-encompassing, like deepest, immortal night.
She always did need something. Someone.
Without that, she is patterned, orderly ink on sheepskin.
Here, she tries to forget all of it. To set it aside, giving herself wholly to the labour of charting the stars. It has always been where she found her peace. Where she felt stripped down. Naked and without all of the fetters and moorings—without all of the things that made her feel safe or protected, small or unseen—she can be her.
Whatever that shapeless, shifting thing might be.
Tonight, it is moon-made and shadow-forged. In the stillness and quiet that subsumes the light-shrouded stranger and her feline, she is tangled in a web of bright-burning constellations, lashed lavender and black by their formations. She is without and beyond, and from here she can see the world as it heaves and lurches at her feet. She can see everything and still sees nothing at all.
They are announced in the soft language of stone—hoof-fall and paw-padding. She turns her serene, calculating gaze from the paper mottled with new continents of stars to the radiant, red woman, tigress slipping around her thighs. Her voice is smoke and furtive glances, intriguing and lulling. Gift. Perhaps, though it had always felt a little more like an unrequited love affair. “I have the instruments ‒ that’s really half the battle.” Her gaze does not waver, following her as she follows shooting stars on their errant trajectories.
A loosed sun, come to settle on earth.
Stella smiles, brow cocking slightly. “I always find them very cagey with their secrets.” No. Not always. But this sky is new. Its arrangements are vastly different. “They are tight-lipped, even with their names,” the heavy bead of ink that has gathered at the end of her quill drops, splattering at her silver hooves. “Stella,” she inclines her head, and then it comes to her. Turning her attention back to the hovering parchment she reinks her pen. Biting her lip between her teeth, she pens, in clear, looping handwriting,Tigris Cauda .
Still breathy and ever-unsatisfied.
It hadn’t always been that way, but she had let darkness into her marrow and she had found it made her whole and abyssal at once. Hungry, always, and perhaps that was better than nothing. Better than passing like some ghost, consigned to an in-between, earth and sky. Better than feeling adrift. It had grounded her, but not in the way Kyrr had grounded her—by pine-roots and birch-limbs. It had anchored her to Him. To the Cimmerian depths of his teased affections; to the way he so easily became all-encompassing, like deepest, immortal night.
She always did need something. Someone.
Without that, she is patterned, orderly ink on sheepskin.
Here, she tries to forget all of it. To set it aside, giving herself wholly to the labour of charting the stars. It has always been where she found her peace. Where she felt stripped down. Naked and without all of the fetters and moorings—without all of the things that made her feel safe or protected, small or unseen—she can be her.
Whatever that shapeless, shifting thing might be.
Tonight, it is moon-made and shadow-forged. In the stillness and quiet that subsumes the light-shrouded stranger and her feline, she is tangled in a web of bright-burning constellations, lashed lavender and black by their formations. She is without and beyond, and from here she can see the world as it heaves and lurches at her feet. She can see everything and still sees nothing at all.
They are announced in the soft language of stone—hoof-fall and paw-padding. She turns her serene, calculating gaze from the paper mottled with new continents of stars to the radiant, red woman, tigress slipping around her thighs. Her voice is smoke and furtive glances, intriguing and lulling. Gift. Perhaps, though it had always felt a little more like an unrequited love affair. “I have the instruments ‒ that’s really half the battle.” Her gaze does not waver, following her as she follows shooting stars on their errant trajectories.
A loosed sun, come to settle on earth.
Stella smiles, brow cocking slightly. “I always find them very cagey with their secrets.” No. Not always. But this sky is new. Its arrangements are vastly different. “They are tight-lipped, even with their names,” the heavy bead of ink that has gathered at the end of her quill drops, splattering at her silver hooves. “Stella,” she inclines her head, and then it comes to her. Turning her attention back to the hovering parchment she reinks her pen. Biting her lip between her teeth, she pens, in clear, looping handwriting,
☽