[AW] among the petals

[Torstein]

chest: CLOSED — @isra! — "Speech" and Thoughts
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The Denoctian court was bustling, as per the norm.

Amidst the Solstice party-goers that rushed past towards the festivities, the Solterran Warden lumbered languidly on. It had been a long time since he stepped foot here, for mixed reasons. He wondered if many people here still remembered Aislinn.

In the rush and hustle, he found quiet solace among his own thoughts. There had been whispered rumors of his family, gone, and the pit that settled in his stomach was unexpected and unwelcome. Cynix, gone for more seasons than he expected - and Siavax followed long after. He never expected Araxes to leave, though. He wondered if the flood caught them, or if they left sometime before or after.

No sobbed goodbyes, no — not so much as a whisper before she became a ghost like so many others. He felt the silence grip his throat, and he didn't remember nary a gaze that he met as he wandered the once-familiar capital for what felt like too long. The only enemies he had within Denocte were long, long gone, and there was no hesitation in his step.

Eventually, he found a little nook that he could tell was distinctly hers. After the waters had flooded the capital and then slowly receded back to uncover their devastation, her presence was still here... On the balconies of one of the buildings - nestled in a crook beside a tall, old tree - there was a pile of soft cloth, books, herbs, and homeopathic concoctions. 

Even standing below the balcony, he could tell it was hers. The smell, the little knick-knacks, the personality carved into such a tiny space... there was no doubt in his mind. For a brief moment, the world was lost around him as he stared up at the balcony, silence still holding its tight, unwelcome grip on his throat.

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[Isra]

Isra spilling out like wire

" it was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth."


There is in her some nameless urge that itches and burns at her skin when the stallion passes by her without a second glance. For a moment she wants to call it anything but interest and curiosity. But he smells like the sun and the sand, like Eik. And the moment that thought blazes across her mind like a star, bright enough to blind, she is lost.

Her skin feels like a living thing tugging her to look only at his shadow looming across the ground and swallowing all the others around it. It nips at her heels, that same thing that made her run from the mountains towards Caligo, towards the crown that has yet to grace her brow. At first she follows him at a distance and tells herself that she's only creeping in the shadows of the crowd because he is walking towards the large trees Fable often slumbers in.

Finally though she has to admit she follows him simply because he carries with him the sun instead of the moon and she has been learning to love the fire.

When he stops at the tree and something as dark and fathomless as a trench in the sea drifts across his gaze her own heart stutters and aches in her chest. She wants to say she knows who lived once on that balcony that sits empty and dusted above walls still water-stained. Isra wants to say anything to draw his gaze down, down from the tree where fable hides in the leaves, growing larger even as he slumbers.

Each of her steps rings softly on the cracked stone as she joins him. Her horn seems like a fragile thing when she's close enough to count the dots of black below his eyes. Between them the stones turns black and rough, ore instead of smooth moonstone.

A hundred words dance wildly behind her teeth and perhaps had she looked anywhere but at the sharp bones across his chest she would have simply said hello. Instead she lifts her nose and her mane dances like a black, grave shroud in the breeze. “You have teeth around your heart.” She whispers. Once it would have been pity that shone in her sea-blue eyes.

Now she only looks at him and it's understanding that unfurls in her eyes like a spool of barbed wire.




@Torstein