He could still see their faces. Everyone that he killed stay etched within his mind. It had gotten so bad that he no longer remembered the faces of his loved ones. They had been pushed back into nothing. All he could remember of them were the emotions he felt while watching them die. How they cried for help and he could not save them. Those feelings were all he had left. So despite still living and being free, he started to wonder if they won after all. Jaeren could no longer recognize himself or what he was fighting for other than what his commander commanded of him or his king.
He remembered wanting to be with them. Tempted to let himself die back in his youth but his captors would not allow it. The first few fights he would just take all the beatings. There would be nothing left of him but he was never killed. There was no sport if he just stood there and in their eyes, death was too easy. They wanted to destroy him. He remembered hanging onto a new feeling. Revenge. Getting his chance to make those who wronged him suffer. It became all he could think about.
In the end, they might have won. He lost his past. His loved ones' faces gone and the reason to fight put behind him. They were dead. All of them, so where did that leave him now? Revenge was not sweet. It does not fill the hole but makes a larger one. He could try to end his life now, but what would be the point of all his suffering? To lose himself and than give up. What kind of man did that make him? So he trained and made weapons for his brother's in arms. It was the only thing he could do that gave him some kind of purpose after all these years.
He stood on a small foothill overlooking the plains, his ruby colored gaze sharp and intelligent..but void of feeling. He didn't dare show much emotion except around his brothers.
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
Melancholy and sorrow permeate the air, almost as potent as the herds of bison that graze the lands during the summer months. Troves of creatures larger than herself blunder through fields of grass so green and beautiful she is sure that she does not have a color vibrant enough to capture it in a picture. Maybe she could make one. It would make for a lovely picture, Moira thinks, looking down from a hill upon the cows and their calves that frolic through fields without a worry in the world. She likes to imagine she was once as carefree as them, so innocent and untroubled, but Moira knows better than that. From the very beginning she has been unwanted until proven worthy, and what an awfully inspiring reason to have risen among her family than to make them proud. Others would have done it for spite, Estelle surely would have were she not treasured from the very beginning, but the phoenix is not her cousin. Her cousin was not hated for she was born silver and strong, nothing like the winged woman who wears the sunset upon her skin as war paint. Ready to take on the world.
But Moira does not fault her cousin for being so beloved as children, just as she does not blame her now for their exile.
Estelle was cast out. Moira chose to follow. They are not decisions she regrets, for already she's met so many figures who have enriched her life. Memories and photos she treasures almost as much as family, so when she sees a man drenched in the past, she cannot overlook him.
Compassionate, kind...Mo possesses a warm heart that allows her to overlook the wings that Jaeren has tucked neatly to his sides, to simply see a man of gray and white alone and expressionless. Even no expression tells her more than she will let on, more than she shows as she begins her decent down her own hill to skirt the herd of bison and approach him.
She knows he will see her before she comes upon him, and even so she does not care to hide herself or yell forth an introduction. There is such peace today with the wind toying with her tail, running through the buns and braids upon her neck, by her face, lazily pulling at blades of grass until it dances while she moves through it. The phoenix has a pleasant enough expression upon her carmine visage, something agreeable and welcoming. It is not a look as warm as the day today, yet it does not discourage one when they look upon her. It simply is, as though Mo does not care who you are or whence you come, all that matters is you.
So when she comes up the small hill to Jaeren's side, avoiding looking at the wings upon his back that she knows will make her heart race until she freezes like a doe in headlights, there is only kindness that she exudes. "Care for some company?" Rich is the voice that comes forth, a strange complement to the colors of her coat, for it would remind you of the night sky and dreams unanswered.
@Jaeren this is so late, but I hope that's alright !
He did see her before she reached him but he also made no move to acknowledge her. At least not in the most obvious of ways, a mere flick of his ears or casual tilt of his head was his only movement. Otherwise he stood as still as a statue, a sentinel on this hill as though it was his job to watch over the herds below him. His ruby gaze finally moved away from the moving herds of bison to gaze at the scarlet hued female that approached him. He did not know her but she faintly smelled of Denocte, his home.
At her question he remained silent but the expression on his face grew subtle contemplative. As though he was considering her request like it was an important decision to make. Perhaps for him it was. The Bear of the Brotherhood was not one to make merriment or good company often these days. Least of all with those he didn't know no matter if they were from the same court or not. Still..he was lonely. For once he'd let his weakening heart have some company.
"If you wish my lady." Came his quiet reply with a subtle dip of his head to her.
she looks into her mirror,
wishing someone could hear her, so loud
His silence is a near deafening roar, even as the wind coyly plays with their hair, plucking strands from her puns and pulling his own two-toned locks from their place upon his neck. Horns that twist and curl about themselves are proud and tall upon his head, adding even more height to the behemoth of a man. Like Caine, this man reaches the sky, goes to heights she cannot reach - will not reach with her own wings being so useless.
Even so, the phoenix does not care to learn to fly.
Noticing the slightest of shifting even before he spoke, Mo's breath rushes into her lungs as she turns her face towards his in time to catch his head falling toward the ground in her general direction. If the sun was bright, then the smile she gives him could have put it to shame. Practically beaming, Mo exhales at last. "As long as you'll have me. I'm Moira Tonnerre, but you can call me Mo." A conspirator's grin flickers then, as though they are thick as thieves. He does not seem the talkative type. This only draws out her own words, words that usually stay hidden beneath layer after layer of bandaging she applies in her little wing of Denocte.
Like any other, Moira has layers. They are not yet all peeled, but bit by bit there are cracks she never knew were there, surfacing until she flows freely into and out of them. Today is a good day, for her voice is at the ready, her eyes so bright and alert, and she knows as long as she does not look back to the wings upon her own body that mirror his (perhaps smaller) that she will be just fine.
