e can still feel the heat from the fires, the brightness of the flames forever imprinted into his mind. It seemed his life was one fire after the next now; Solterra, Delumine, Denocte. No matter where he went he found disaster, in a world torn asunder.
Smoke lingers in the air, the sharp, acrid smell of burning buildings filling the street and replacing the scent of spices by which he had always known the market. Snow and ash; he can’t tell the difference between them anymore. Both are white and falling, both are coating the ground in a thin, ever-growing blanket.
There’s a hollowness in his chest, an empty space where his heart should have been beating. He thinks the fire may have burned it away, like the raiders had cut it out and tossed it upon the woodpile to burn it with the rest of Denocte’s chattels. And in its absence, he feels nothing - nothing except for the bile rising slowly in his throat.
And the anger that accompanies it.
It feels as if he’s standing in Viride all over again, staring at the blackened shell of a once mighty forest. The leaves and color had been stripped away, and all the joy and warmth and life along with it. It’s similarly muted and somber here, where the markets are hushed and the stalls closed and everything is covered in white.
But here the trees are replaced by houses, and the flames were no accident. White ash coats his hooves, white snow a blanket across his back, white-hot blood singing the inside of his veins.
Where he had felt sorrow back in Delumine, Ipomoea feels a slow-burning rage now. It’s a foreign feeling, one made all the more intense because of it. It streaks through his mind like a ghost, filling the empty spaces of his chest with a fire not dissimilar to the fire from the raid.
This is why you came, the remnants of the fire tells him.
This is why he left his home.
To fight fire with fire, to act when the rest of Delumine was silent. He wants to bring this picture home with him, he wants to show his family the destruction they had turned away from. Don’t you know it’s only a matter of time? We won’t be immune forever. He wants to grab their shoulders and shake them to awareness, to stir them to action, to make them understand that this ruin was not confined to Denocte, that it would spread like a plague until everything and everyone was as hollowed out as the markets.
He wants to scream. He wants to cry and rage and flee, but he doesn’t. Ipomoea stands in the market, willing his magic to bring the life back, but he thinks he may have cut that part out of himself, too. His magic is quiet, the flowers decorating his brow wilting and dropped dead, browned leaves to the streets. He wants to make it beautiful again - but this time, he can’t.
So he lets the fire within him burn
@open to any!! | "speaks" | set after the day court raid
She stands in the markets, her eyes looking over the stalls of the vendors who had been selling their items and trinkets just this morning. No longer is there chatter about the price of goods or the sounds of buyers haggling the prices. Tonight, the markets are eerily silent. The only sound they make is the crackle and pop of embers that still burn away at the food stores.
Katniss has salvaged what she could, tried to pull as much food from the fires as her limbs could carry. Poor Finnick, the bird laying near lifeless on her back, had done his part in bringing water from the rivers to help put out the blaze. The smoke has burned both their lungs and the eagle cannot even find the energy to stand.
Her eyes look out at the destruction and somewhere, there is something peaceful about this picture. The snow and ash cover the markets in a blanket of white. Other Denocte citizens stand about. Some are trying to clean up the mess, some are repackaging the food that was salvaged, and some are just standing there in tears, in awe of what all has happened.
Up ahead, Katniss sees the face of a stallion she has not met before. She is cautious of him, unsure if perhaps he was the one who started these fires. Her steps bring her closer to him, the only sound of her approach is the way the snow crunches beneath the press of her hoof.
She comes to stand alongside him, her red eyes peering into his own. She can see that he is just as angry as she is. Whoever he is, he did not start these fires. “Such destruction on such a peaceful night.” Her words are hoarse, the smoke having burned her lungs. The silver black mare appears black, the white of her mane turned dark grey with soot from her efforts to rescue what food she could.
She sighs, the weight of what has happened tonight weighing heavily upon her heart. While she has not been a Denocte citizen for too long, she has come to love this place and call it home. She has bonded with these people and vowed to protect them with every ounce of her being. Seeing these fires hurts her heart. Whoever is behind this will pay, Katniss will see that she leads the charge to punish whoever is behind this.
rom within the expanse of white comes a streak of blue, vibrant and lovely amidst the rubble. Odet stands out easily here, with his broad wings and his warbling song, flitting back and forth from one destroyed market stall to another. He lands briefly, a puff of ash and snow rising into the air around him.
A moment later he’s back in the air, winging his way back to his bonded, something red bright within his beak. He flies through a small crowd of children, who cry out in laughter as the wind he makes tousles their baby-fuzz manes. It’s a strange sound, Ipomoea thinks: one that doesn’t quite belong here in the markets, yet one that blossoms hope in his breast none the less.
The songbird alights on his bonded’s crest, light as a feather as he tucks his wings in neatly. With a muffled chirp and a couple hopping steps, he leans down over Ipomoea’s brow, tucking a small sprig of winterberries into his mane. A smile, small and wispy, finds its way to the appaloosa’s face.
“Thank you,” he says softly, as Odet takes flight once more. A bright, mimetic chirrup is his response, as the steller’s jay returns to the air.
He hasn’t been standing there long when another joins him. Ipomoea watches the silver-haired mare from the corner of his eye as she comes up beside him and stops, an eagle tucked away on her back. He wonders briefly if they’re bondeds, like himself and Odet; or maybe the eagle had been injured somehow, and she is a caretaker looking after it. Either way it’s clear the mare is protecting the avian, and even without knowing her, Ipomoea is glad to see her.
”Such destruction on such a peaceful night.” She, like the rest of Denocte, is still grieving the attack from the night before. It still feels surreal; Ipomoea had come to the Night Court knowing they were on the brink of war, but seeing an act of such destruction was another thing entirely.
For a moment he is silent, mulling over her words, remembering the sound of her smoke-choked voice.
"It certainly was," he says softly, and his voice is nearly as hoarse as her’s. He was there that night, witnessing the fires firsthand. He had gone in to save as many supplies as he could, before Fable had brought them water from the lakes - he’ll never forget the taste of smoke, rich with burning fruits and grains. The smoke from Viride had been woody and piney; but the smoke here had been cloying, burning his lungs until they were blackened with tar.
"Sometimes, I wish we could stop time like Tempus," he starts after a pause, turning to examine the stranger beside him. "That we could just watch the snow fall without worrying about the winter that comes with it." A winter with less food, and an enemy that strikes in the dark. He hoped Delumine was faring better; the harvest had been delayed due to the fires, he knew, and when the snow came, it came with force.
Ipomoea shook his head slightly to clear his mind. It was no use fretting about things he didn’t know; until the next letter from home came, he would focus on the work left to do in Denocte.
Katniss ! | "speaks" | wanted to reply to this one again before the island one haha c;
