In truth, he could have stolen another taste. A deeper taste, a stronger taste, not one that merely grazes flesh and dreams of carving, of delving, cleaving, a madness of wanting and never knowing the end. He grinned in response instead as fangs knit his lips. It does not know of soft things like love and romance and gentle, swooning breezes of lust. It has only ever known hunger. Such is infinite and ingrained, it is its first primal sin.
It thought of a stag aside a fire, an ocean swept in stars that dripped from her like dying constellations. In part, it is the original Erasmus that would know the true face of hunger is lust, as she is his first primal sin. But the aether is not wanton or innocent, so it mistakes the clambering in its throat and chest for pangs of thirst and ache, and drinks her in visions.
Her voice pleads to him from a distance outside of such dreams, and he realizes that the drone is even farther from them then. do you hear – his flesh prickles where she touches him, feeling too much like a meteor, like lightning, and an ear slips toward the paths they have abandoned. There are whispers still, fleeting and low, but the aether-thing does not recognize their cadence, even when he searches the monotonous hum that stores Erasmus's memory.
Erasmus stops to draw aside before the moonlit path, its euphoric glow spilling over his form in a halo that sets fire to gold veins. He is a shadow that blots the light, bright eyes peering beneath the contrast. He stands, a tall cosmic predatory prowess, an eclipse that promises a whole blood moon that beneath, heathens howl. “they cannot touch you,” his voice drawls, and the shadow of each word hisses, but I can, I can. “come.” this utterance is softer, fuller, and he reaches to brush her cheek with a reassuring caress.
***
The forest spills before them, vibrant and quivering, all the while tense and feral, and Erasmus waits for its sharpened teeth. It is, perhaps, fortune or coincidence that he notices the crook in the path: or perhaps it is the sight of how it continues on into moon-less quarters, shrouded in impenetrable dark. It calls to him in some sort, much like the drone of singing stones or the whispers of power from a menacing divine - not necessarily a whisper but a gravitational pull, one that the aether is keen to notice. This is one that does not brim with promise, nor glory, nor blood. The path is heavy-trod, but he cannot see if the prints continue on into that blinding black. That is when he paused, looking back to an overgrowth that strangles the husk of a dead tree, the maternal wax of moonlight that swells and seals each leaf-vein.
His eyes reach to the dark that unfolds before them, lounging like a waiting cat. And back to the moonlit path, ever slight but wishing, patient and cold.
The crown on his skull pulls a vine as he turns into the overgrown path, their thorns seemingly peeled from his flesh as he enters, embracing, inviting. In the wildness of the moonlit path, dark flowers await them in sleepy, aromatic, unfurling curiosity. Another glance to his partner is a notion onward, soundless but just as gentle as its former command.
What's a god to a non-believer
Who don't believe in anything ♤♧
@Official Dawn Account @Euryale ; Euryale and Erasmus are taking the moonlit path.
sorry it took me so long, and again thank you sid <3!
08-29-2020, 10:14 AM
Played by
Callynite [PM] Posts: 75 — Threads: 22 Signos: 50
It seems too perfect - as one path opens up in light, the other closes itself in darkness. Perhaps you think it an obvious choice, believing the forest is leading you to the correct path. Whatever your reasoning, after only a moment of indecision you step over the fallen tree and into the moonlight.
It feels for a moment like entering a new world: the air feels lighter here, more welcoming. Your hooves float along the ground, as if you weigh little more than a feather might. Your skin is tingling, as motes of dust and miniature specks of light settle along your coat.
Weeds and bushes tangle the pathway of the trail, and if it were not for the moonlight you might have easily strayed from its path; as it is, you find it all too easy to follow, and all too easy to slip into the mystery of the night. Each time you brush against the flora, a thousand pieces of moonlight rise as bubbles into the air, and you might swear you heard them laughing. Perhaps you laugh along with them; perhaps your mind is beginning to feel bleary now, as if every part of you is coming apart in fractures of moonglow. A warmth settles into your bones, a lightheadedness; and yet, it is not altogether unpleasant. Each piece of yourself, each memory you hold dear - you can see them now, floating alongside you down the moonlit trail.
There you are as a child again, or an adolescent, or an adult, perhaps there is even a version of yourself you know to be from future years. Are they smiling, and laughing as the moonlight plays across your face? Or are they frowning, or crying, or hanging their head in silence?
Do you still feel like them?
They walk with you for a while, this other-you, this past-you, this future-you. Until the trees part again. Standing in the moonlight is the stranger from the beginning of the path.
He smiles at you, but it seems a sad smile.
“Who are you?” the stranger asks, breaking the silence. The other-you looks at you, and smiles a feral smile you do not recognize. “I do not believe you are not the same Euryale, or the same Erasmus, that you were earlier today.” Already he is disintegrating - it seems a trick of the light, the green tones of his coat blending into his forest, his eyes darkening from sun-bright gold to the silver of the moon. “I warned you not to let the forest trick you…”
And then he is gone. And you are alone with that other-you.
The moonlight path has led you back to the beginning of the trail, instead of the end. The stranger is there to welcome you -- but so it seems, is yourself. A ghost-version of yourself from the past, future, or present, follows you back. It is up to you how long they follow you (maybe they stay in the forest, or vanish once the solstice ends; or maybe they follow you around for some time to come. Perhaps they wish you harm, or are there only to serve as a reminder of some important event in your life.) Feel free to interpret this prompt however you wish!
@euryale & @erasmus have each been awarded +300 signos for completing this quest. Thank you so much for participating!
The path unwinds to riches, to ash, to serpents, to dust motes rising and falling like the studded breath of a forlorn guardian – the trees, bidden, lower their heavy heads, and the thorns sharpen their points. In the thistle thick there are the whispers still but distant, and Erasmus remembers the sallow face of mist-things gathered in a faerie ring. There were hunger in their eyes like elders in a sacrificial rite. The fawn bleats, the knife drives, and all is never silent again.
These are not his memories, these are not his images flashing precariously on into the spooling light that seems curiously unnatural the further they go. As if milk-white becomes a hot-white, a luminescence that is blue and yellow and red and orange and all things refracted and undone and done like lapping waves. A derision rolls steadily through him, and it should feel like hunger – but instead, it feels mortal, hideously flawed, a stirring in his core (or his lungs, or his ribs, or his heart?) that brightens like the light onset.
It darkens in response.
It is tangled in aether until it is made less of bones and flesh and mortal things like derision or love or fear. His eyes are not eyes – his mouth is not a mouth – his feet do not carry but sway, weightless, against the motion of moving on. The unnatural-ness of the light reminds it of a star in its final gasps of life, a sudden exhale of power and might as though it may save itself from the impending disaster prophesied from the moment of its birth. It compensates for the things that swell up in him like secondhand curses from an ignorant boy, as though Erasmus – the true Erasmus, the real Erasmus, the dead Erasmus – fights his new-flesh like fists against a cage.
When they break into the glade where the old man leans on his best leg like a cane, the thing that Becomes is almost unrecognizable, a tangled mass of dark stars and gaping vortex which, peeling from a shadow of a horse like skins shedding from a serpent. His hooves hiss over the soft grass, no longer remembering the clod and clap of shoes on rocks. His eyes do not see but feel and hear and touch, for the world is vibrant and full and aether reaches for each nuance of nature that it knows it can never again mold. Beneath the tonguing fibers of black smoke, shimmering iridescence, the cuts of gold glint faintly, pulsing weaker, weaker.
“Who are you?” the old man begins, but Erasmus does not answer. Nor does the Aether. “I do not believe you are the same.... that you were earlier today.” There is only silence, shivers, shudders, and the great perilous Nothing that opens within It like a flower plucked from the path. The old man fades, fades, until his grin is all that remains – a wound in the tiger-striped ash tree, pale and bowed. “I warned you not to let the forest trick you...” but there is nothing that follows, the cold breeze chasing away the distant sounds of the festival.
It does not turn to comfort Euryale and the thing or being that she has become. It is not until long after it leaves the glade, and the clever magic of the Wood falls from his flesh again in sloughs, an outline returning slowly, painfully, that It realizes that it had been the finest trick of all.
exit.
What's a god to a non-believer
Who don't believe in anything ♤♧
