Autumn colors had painted the canopy above with a lavish brush and loaned a dry, rasping quality to the sound of the wind filtering through the boughs. The forest always had a solemn, cathedral-like quality to its stoic columns of oak and maple, but fall always seemed to deepen that impression – at least in Vysanthe’s opinion.
She trailed through the familiar, quiet vaults along a favorite trail with her expression cast in a soft and wistful smile. The softest trace of a hum rose and fell from her lips in a wordless tune beneath the midday, dappled light falling across her back. A beautiful season – but so sad. The flowers and vines twined through her curving horns had begun to fade a fortnight prior, losing the vibrant color and scent she’d chosen them for in the final days of summer. It had occurred to her in the past to exchange them for selections from the radiant red and gold leaves that drifted down from the trees, but their liveliness would be short-lived as the frost crept in.
The soft, sweet scent of fruit seeped through her daydreaming to put her musical hum at a pause as she cast about for its source. Nostrils flared, Vy blinked in pleased surprise as her gaze fell upon a welcome sight: the dull dark clusters of late-fruiting blackberries tucked under the mantle of their mother plant. Smiling to herself, she stepped the few paces off the path to lower her head and sample the offering. ”A sign of luck, perhaps?” she chuckled softly.
it's only right that you should play the way you feel it
but listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness
Autumn was a sigh. Jane was so used to Summer that the change of temperatures hurt as badly as a burn. The cool was like a kiss, an ever flowing current of water around her ankles. As such, the scent of pine stung her nose in such a sweet way that she felt like she could be drunk alone. She could be intoxicated like she had been at the Festival, more alone than she had ever been. Jane was rather glad she had no access to alcohol as it were.
She had learned, in the time she had been here, but not enough. She had learned loneliness in its true form, unhidden by lies and false flattery. A warm pelt and a kind smile did not a lover make. Jane had learned imperfection.
What better season symbolises that? When Jane thought back, Autumn was like nothing else. It felt oh so slightly closer to something ethereal, incorporeal. Things that looked dead, weren’t. Though the leaves of the birch turned to colour of ash, the tree itself simply lay sleeping, waiting for the snows to come and go. She wished that she could do the same.
Beauty.
Jane had met enough of the Novus ilk to know that appearances meant nothing. The strangest, most frightening folk could be kind and give her tea. Those most beautiful could tear your heart out and laugh about it with their friends.
The mare in front of Jane was beautiful enough to make Jane stop. Amid the towering copse of trees, there stood a horned mare, horned in the fashion of Galileo but not resembling in any other way. A set of blue-grey horns curled, ramlike, behind the mare’s ear. Her body was the grey of dew, covered by the mask of clouds. Flowers had wrapped their way around her horns and yet defied the Autumn; their colours as soft and fragile as though they fought against their fate.
She looked to be deep in thought. The mare dipped her head to what appeared to be a blackberry bush- a memory touched Jane’s mind, of getting trapped in blackberry vines as a foal. The sweetness of black juice dripping over her lips, the scolding of her mother at how just one mark could land her a spinster forever, useless. Dichotomies. Her sweetest memories were full of them.
A sign of luck, perhaps.
Jane watched and then spoke. “Where I come from, we give blackberries as gifts of respect and ultimate love,” her voice managed to hide its nerves. “Because we have to hurt ourselves to get them- and they still taste so nice.”
Distracted as she was by the promise of sweet fruit and what portents it might hold, Vysanthe didn’t hear the approach of a stranger until the last moment. Excessive watchfulness wasn’t precisely in her nature; while observant and rather astute, she was not of the nervous disposition that fostered the intrinsic wariness that seemed common in others. Perhaps she ought to try being more cautious, if nowhere else than when she ventured further from the safety of the Court. Physical strength was just as foreign to the Entertainer as nerves, and even at the age of seven, Vy could claim to have never found herself in a physical altercation. Why would she? Her fights – if they could even be called such – were fought in word and cleverness, blows parried with shows of skill and wit rather than strength or speed or ferocity.
After all, words could cleave proverbial flesh from bone just as quickly as any blade.
The soft, unfamiliar voice of the stranger cued Vy’s head to rise in a swift arc, scattering a handful of loose petals from the dried wreaths. An expression of surprise lasted a mere blink before she schooled her face into a bemused half-smile. ”What a romantic concept,” she replied with a curious tilt of her head. ”I shall have to remember that – for a story or a song.”
Before her stood a tall, long-limbed girlchild – for despite her height, there was youth in all her looks. The marbling of gold that rippled across her shining russet coat caught Vysanthe’s attention for a long moment before her blue eyes flicked up to meet the liquid golden gaze of her unexpected companion. ”But how rude of me – please, call me Vysanthe –“ she lowered her horned head in an artless bow, ”- I will gladly share these blackberries with you, even if in my upbringing they were merely fruit, rather than a token of devotion.”
One eyebrow raised in soft humor, she chuckled once more to herself before bending to cautiously extract a berry-laden stem from the bush with a soft, clean snip of her teeth. A coarse vine snagged the satin surface of her ear as she rose, but failed to draw blood as she shook loose to offer the stem toward the young mare. ”Do you have business in the Forest, or are you and I the same in that we simply seek to bask in the melancholy gasps of a dying season?”
it's only right that you should play the way you feel it
but listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness
The marething seemed to be in her own world. Despite Jane’s proximity, the horned creature didn’t acknowledge her and instead nosed at the batch of blackberries. Jane’s skin smarted a little at her foalhood memories, at the same time as her tongue recalled bursts of sweetness, tartness. It was a little bit strange to feel that she was the watcher, this once. Her ear twitched, thinking back to the many times that she had been surprised by some figure or other. But despite her height that was in many ways hulking, she managed to walk with a quietness that often caught others off guard.
But when Jane spoke, the spell was broken and the mare threw her head up in evident surprise. An apology died on Jane’s lips as the expression faded into something resembling confusion. Jane glanced away in a gesture that was somewhat submissive. “I suppose it is,” Jane smiled and tipped her head back in the direction of the other. “Are you a storyteller?” she asked, her gold-tipped ears twitching forward in curiosity.
She felt the horned mare’s gaze sweep over her body. Jane had always been taller than her peers, and the gold of her coat marked her out in a way that was positively living. Finally, gold eyes met blue as the other introduced her. Vysanthe, Jane thought the name over in her head. It sounded like a flower. “I’m Jane,” she responded, and it felt a little awkward in her mouth. It was apparent to her that the other mare possessed a grace befitting the elegant flowers in her horns. “Thank you, I’d be honoured to accept.”
Vysanthe grasped a stem of blackberry and tore it. A bit of vine snagged her ear and Jane winced a little. Vicious things, they were. “I don’t have business anywhere,” Jane remarked with not a small amount of bitterness, “I’m just wandering. I hail from Solterra, and I have nothing to do, so I just wander here and there. Like a flower petal, or a feather,” she smiled a little bit at that, amused with herself.
Still shaking loose the dregs of whatever daydreams she’d been enshrouded in, Vysanthe regarded the stranger with her typical air of benevolent amusement. ”I am,” she confirmed, head tilting a few degrees to one side. ”A storyteller, or a dancer, or a musician – I’ve tried my hand at many an artist’s skill and yet could never choose a favorite.” It was a lie, though not an egregious one; she would happily choose to do nothing but sing for the rest of her days if she could only elect one of the arts. But of course - a True Entertainer cares not for her own whims but for those of her audience - and thus her opinion on the issue mattered but little.
”Well met, Jane,” the natural musical lilt of her voice wrapped around her new acquaintance’s name with a gentle smile. The awkward uncertainty of new adolescence was apparent in every line that sketched the gangly younger mare’s frame, a familiar sight in newcomers to the Bard’s College around the same age. ”The freedom of being untethered by responsibility or debt must be a delight –“ Vysanthe smiled at the idea, even if it was foreign to her, ”- or do you aspire to some eventual goal of station or profession?”
Pausing a moment, Vy reached down once more to pluck a pair of promising-looking berries from the edge of the bush. The juice might stain her tongue and lips, but the sweetness was worth the mark. ”You may be a bit tall for dancing, but your voice has qualities that would lend well to oration, if you had a mind to tell stories yourself.”
it's only right that you should play the way you feel it
but listen carefully to the sound of your loneliness
Watching Vysanthe, Jane could perceive the amusement in her eyes. From her words, it was evident that she was a multi-talented figure. “I’ve always thought it magical, to see the entertainers in my court back home. My mother pushed me into accepting the title of a scholar, so I could have some reason to live in the court. I never did anything with it though, just drifted through life like a dandelion seed draped in gold.” She chuckled, rolling her eyes at her former self. Her attempts to feign maturity obviously mattered little to someone who had experienced the world and all its figures. Jane imagined that Vysanthe could probably see through her to the dangly, growing figure she was.
“I must admit that there is nothing I despise quite as much as these freedoms. I do nothing, ever since I moved to Solterra I have stayed in my relatives’ house and seen them grow increasingly sick of me. More than once have I dreamt of leaving, but I have no idea what I would do.”
Relaxed in her age and station, Vysanthe ate at the blackberries. Jane admired the ease in her frame; so easy and practiced, no doubt, from years of meeting individuals. Jane had a few on her side, but very few to give her purpose. She remembered a few days ago, she had gone into a coffee shop with another filly from the court- a ridiculous young thing, caring only for clothes and gossip. In the corner there had been an older mare, draped over a table.
“That’s Lillian, she’s a widow,” Mir had said with a sneer, “Got married when she was our age, and now they say that she’s a horrible old wreck who does nothing but bet on races and fights at the Colosseum.” Lillian was a bay, who in many ways reminded Jane of her mother. “How horrible, to be the one who dies last,” Mir continued.
But Jane had seen herself. It was horrible. She remembered the shiver of excitement.
With a soft note of wry self-derision, Jane outlined the origins of her dissatisfaction with the situation she found herself in. To be sure, being pushed into a role against one’s will could be less than ideal – but was that not what had happened to Vysanthe herself? Though she remained silent, listening to the youngling’s disappointment with the careless nature of youth, the songstress had to wonder if it was perhaps an overabundance of privilege and lack of adversity that had created Jane’s dilemma.
Indeed, compared to the trials and hardships of some in the world – even here in the heart of Delumine – Jane’s false veneer of what she seemed to think of as worldliness was frail.
”I may not be old, but I have seen a fair share of the realms and the troubles that many face,” Vy began delicately, cleaning the traces of blackberry juice from her lips. ”A day may come when you wish fervently for the carefree nature of these times; it could be the most ardent desire of your heart to return to such a state.”
Though Vysanthe’s expression was a smile of benevolence, the inward facets of her mind couldn’t help marveling at how the mareling lacked understanding of her good fortune. That she had not been thrown with the usual cold callousness of Fate into some form of servitude – one painful lesson after another learned in pursuit of scraping a meager existence – did not seem to have registered on any level in her mind.
’How lucky she is, to be so free of care or worry that it becomes a problem, rather than a freedom.’
”I did not originally make the choice to become what I am,” she continued, leaning on the cadences of proper oration to prevent any notes of irony or sarcasm from leaving her tongue. ”I was younger than you are now – only barely weaned – when my mother gave me over to the Bard’s College. I never knew my father, and she had no interest in child-rearing.” Vysanthe kept a close eye upon Jane to gauge her reactions to the story – would she pick up on the message she was sketching, like a spider spinning a web from the outside in?
”Perhaps some would say I had no other choice, but I maintain that I chose to dedicate my life to the opportunity that was given to me. I found a genuine joy and interest in the cards Fate dealt me; perhaps you should examine the hand you have been dealt and choose something for yourself.” The seriousness of the conversation had to be lightened, Vy knew – she tilted her head and smiled gently at Jane. ”And with as many options as you may find you have, Jane, your choice may be easily changed.”
Jane watched the mare. Privilege and naivety was writ upon the mare’s brow, barely out of adolescence as she was. At the end of the day, there were many situations far less desirable that she could have found herself in. But at the end of the day she had been born into luxury, and though her mother was not the warmest or most maternal; Jane had been given food and shelter and education.
“I just want something to do,” Jane confessed, “I moved to Solterra after a scandal happened back home and they had to get rid of me. I don't have any friends in the city and my aunt has taken me in out of family duty alone. And Solterra is so hot, so I'm burnt every time I step inside.” In many ways were her actions foallike as Jane tasted at the sweet blackberries, accompanied by bitterness.
Vysanthe’s eyes were kind but a quiet amusement lay behind them. Jane had very little idea of her privilege. Of course, the past few months had left their scarcity on her coat; her fur having lost its substance and the ever lingering shadows of her ribcage. But the light was returning to her eyes and would continue to do so. Much lay before her.
Jane did pick up on something beneath Vysanthe’s words and she tipped her head, trying to figure out what it was. But there were things that she wouldn’t know until experienced, and this was one of them.
“I think there are many things I can do with my life, but I can’t make tail nor end of them. I know nothing about what a scholar does- literally, what do they do?” Jane laughed a little at herself, “I’ve asked, but no one has given me an answer. Write down stuff?” She sighed “But I like that you have found love in what you do. I hope I may do so as well, in time. And that my skin might toughen up.”
