He rarely left the delectable heat of his desert home, for he was a sun-loving viper, constantly coiled up in the warmest, most comfortable place he could find, soaking his silver spun skin in sunlight. Velorca had been bred to love the sun, to embrace it and adore it, and he did. There was nothing he enjoyed more than the first breath of sunlight upon his delicate eyelids. Yet today... he had grown tired of the constant hustle around him, the warriors that sent him appreciative looks - looks that he often encouraged and enjoyed, just... not today.
Today was different. Today was... it was the anniversary of the day he had been kidnapped, forced into slavery for the old King.
Five years to the day.
He had sneered and snapped at others as he left the vast confounds of Solterra - the same, sly, cunning beast that ensnared soldiers on a daily basis, nothing to show that beneath his razor cut bones there was a ragged, raging wound. That the many, many hands that had touched his satin skin had stained him, poisoned him slowly through the years.
So it was only when he reached the soft serenity of Amare Creek that Velorca released the tension within his knotted muscles and released a long, slow, elegant breath.
As always, he was in pristine condition - his skin like smokey satin, soft to the touch and incredibly smooth, his hair, usually hanging in a silken curtain around his face, was pushed back to reveal the sharp lines of his elegant jaw. His golden eyes, like burnt butter, were full of a cool intelligence that shuddered and snaked around his beautiful brain, his silvery lashes lowered as he watched the brown creek meander by.
He tried not to remember those first few years as he gazed unseeing into the water, visions of beatings and hidden scars flowing as easily as that gentle creek. He looked a vision of unnatural beauty, silent and lost within the confines of his own memories - an unusual and vulnerable state for Snake of Solterra.
The serenity of the forest was undeniable, a temple which had lovingly built and worshipped itself. The moss covered stones underfoot and the gnarled roots of the ancient trees it's corridors and staircases, the ancient's themselves it's secret keepers and eternal guardians. Sworn to uphold the majesty and splendor of the verdant sanctum until their vigil came to a close. Terrastella was beautiful, that went without saying, he glowed beneath Vespera's gentle twilight hue and exalted in her wild winds and bracing sea spray. He lay his head in her blessed meadows and felt her brother's visage upon his back and felt beloved, envigorated by the heat nestled within his gilded scales.
But there was something about the untouched places, the deep places of the earth not beneath the mountain's visage. Places sought by enraptured lovers, starry-eyed wayfarers and even those whose souls swirled turbulently in their depths.
And sometimes Sages felt the cosmic pull of the call, the song of the wayfarer, the lover and the troubled alike.
He had left silently, a quiet word spoken to the guards who lingered in the halls of the Court and taken wing in their next breath. Ears filled with the rush of the wind and the breathless sigh of crystal and gold as they kissed against his skin. The pale stallion flew until he was no more than an apparition of starlight and gold on the horizon, falling and falling until the trees rose up to ensnare him in their embrace.
Wings nestled beneath the safety of his cloak spun in constellations and mist, Isorath walked beneath the lush emerald canopy, heralded by bird calls and the whispered song of the waters. Already his mind felt at peace, wrapped within the safety of the forest, absent of the troubles and ghosts which often lingered within it's hallowed halls. While he would never freely admit to possessing such thoughts, far too prideful in his appearance and other worldly visage, they wore on him. Did Gods carry such weight upon their lofty shoulders? Or were they above such mortal spears piercing their hearts? When Gods went to war or felt the sting of betrayal, did they weep and cast themselves into the night and return anew?
Heavy thoughts indeed, but they did not show upon his scaled face. An exquisite mask carved of marble and gold, crowned with a halo fit for a God. Lavender eyes clear crystalline pools that drank in the divine sights he had chosen to surround himself within, until they landed upon a creature that was not apart of this Sanctum's order. Another lost soul perhaps? Or one half of a whole, the moon awaiting the sun? A cloven hoof stilled upon the moss covered tree he had elected to walk across, the bones of the ancient a bridge for him to reach the less traveled halls.
Slowly, the starlit sage lowered himself upon the tree instead. A makeshift throne for him to peer down inquisitively at the ash coloured stranger with tangible smoke for tresses. One leg hung elegantly from his elevated seat, artfully styled to appear effortless. Bedecked in gold too, a man with an eye for finer things in life — a creature after his own heart. The rest of him became enveloped by his robe, his carefully braided hair meanwhile, cascaded down his scale shoulder and hung beside his porcelain leg. The purple and pastel blue flowers blooming brightly against the richness of their surroundings.
"You look troubled." Came his voice, soft and melodic. A breath on the wind, to those who were not in the presence. It was meant for the stranger and the stranger alone.
Velorca heard the rustle of wings and rolled his eyes at the gentle brown water below him, expecting some Solterran to have followed him. Solterra had always been a dangerous place, with a dangerous government (Zolin's childish face lingered when he closed his weary golden eyes) but now that Rostislav had been released and tensions with Night were rising... it was hard for anyone to leave their golden shores. Even someone as unlikely to leave as Lorca.
You look troubled.
Now, there had been a lot of new recruits lately but... but that was certainly not a Solterran voice. Velorca raised his handsome head, peering through golden eyes at the porcelain figure above him. A slow smile curled upon his velveteen lips. On the outside, there seemed to be little reaction but...
The man was... well, he stopped Velorca's shriveled, unfeeling heart in his chest and then forced it to THUD, as if starting anew. A cool rush ran through his veins, swamping him with a strange nervousness that would not leave no matter where Lorca's golden eyes flicked to. He couldn't help but linger on the pureness of his satin skin, the way it gleamed in the soft light, beckoning his tortured fingers forth with an impossibly strong draw. His hair flowed like ivory silk and it smelled... clean, fresh, pure. Velorca wanted to touch the stranger more than anything he'd wanted since his release. His eyes trickled to the antlers, the flashes of gold that had been placed with the utmost care upon his alabaster skin, and lastly to the draconian wings that flared and relaxed so smoothly.
Burnt butter eyes fixed upon lilac.
Here was a man that was everything Velorca wasn't. He was so... so white and clean and pure, unstained and unmarred by the world, a beautiful, rare blossom to be found next to the shriveled, charred scratch of Lorca's soul. He yearned to be closer to the stranger, but even more... he was terrified that someone else might choose to mar that beautiful soul, to throw crimson and black upon it, to use and use until it resembled something like him. Yet he did not know the man - despite his bodies insistence that he did, that he always had.
"Only by my past"
Was his murmured answer, eyes focused upward and completely upon the silver lashed stag above him. He had an almost predatory focus - as if he'd grown from a bitter boy to a grown man in a matter of moments.
"And what brings you to Amare Creek? Someone so beautiful surely cannot be looking for romance..."
There was none of the usual mockery in his velvet voice, none of the arrogance that usually walked beside him step-for-step, word-for-word. Had anyone in Solterra seen him now, they might not have recognized the well-mannered, sincere man as the whore of the court. Velorca couldn't have cared less in that moment what anybody thought of him, despite his penchant for appearances.
He was left standing, wishing for the first time in his life that he could have had wings, if only to share the skies with a soul so pure.
Blessed, and fortunate, that the porcelain clad man cannot read minds like the divine. Pride and vanity are hand in hand, and they bruise easily. On pristine white, it's an ugly smudge of tar. Isorath is no mere Solterran, he is not crafted from sand and blistering canyon winds which sting wounds and make the skin coarse. He'd burn a man for thinking as such.
But he doesn't know, all that he knew is that they are between moments, a place caught between time's heartbeat. Butterscotch gold and lilac smoke.
The Sage remained impossibly serene. Bathed in the dappled sunlight, the long strands of light shimmered off of his scales and reflected off of the pureness of his white coat. There's a coyness in his gaze as the moments slipped idly by, content to allow the other man all the time in the World. He himself, wasted not a grain in the hourglass, he regarded the man with attention one might find an artist examining the marble structure they had poured their heart and soul into. Tracing a careful muzzle over the artful veins of gold laced between pristine white and black. The stranger is handsome, stormclouds and volcanic ash lovingly painted upon his hide, smoke for hair struck through with brilliant pristine white. The gold of his eye and the gold ore of the earth strewn across him like gilded stars burn all the brighter against his dark skin.
Coyness bled from his eyes and into the way his muzzle pulled at the corners into a gentle smile. Foreign, relaxed and stark against the sharpness of his features.
Yes, blessed he is that he doesn't know the stranger's thoughts in this moment. How would he ever explain that he fell from the heavens long ago? Scorched by the very sun he had once loved, and left broken and bleeding against the cold stone floor as his body burnt to ash? Icarus had loved the Sun and had been soothed by the Sea, Isorath was the Icarus that hadn't felt the blessedly cold kiss of the Ocean depths. All he had felt was the harsh crack of the impact and smouldered in the ruins.
Only by my past.
"Our pasts seem to do that, don't they?" Isorath responded nonchalantly, his tone deliberately light hearted. There is a weight to his words, hidden beneath the sweet purr and smoky lilt. "They take the form of spectres that haunt us in the worst times."
For all the vanity in the World, Isorath had not expected the man's question to be so sweet. Laced with a compliment so sincere it made his heartstrings twitch. "Ah, and what if I am?" He recovered with a smooth tilt of his head, strands of manifested starlight sliding over his forehead to hang half-curled around his cheekbones. Teasing came easy, easily and silkily wrapped around his words as if it was second nature to breathing. "Do you flatter everyone you meet?" He asked in good humor, sing song and breathless, momentarily exasperated by the suddenness of the compliment. "Stallion's as dark and handsome as you have a reputation in the Storybooks for a reason, you know."
