[AW] . & our paper houses reach the stars

[Moira]

I paid the price and own the scars
why did we climb to fall so far ?

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 Sunlight scrapes precariously over precariously hewn wings reaching for the sun that is so far away. Glinting beneath heavenly light small chains laugh gaily as the girl's feathers rustle and head tilts upward, rich amber eyes closed as she takes in one breath, and then another, and another, only to be terminated by the faintest of sighs and more sorrow spilling upon her shoulders.

  What would help Estelle?

 Sick, cold, alone. Abandoned. Clanking through her head like tanks rolling over battlegrounds, she cringes at the thought of her poor cousin whom she left to find herbs to help heal her. Was she even still alive? Worry ate at the laugh lines that were tucked into the very edge of her eyes, around the corners of her once-beaming mouth. It was detestable to have left her there, so alone in a world they did not know. But Estelle is strong, she reminds herself, thoroughly scolded (although to say calmness had returned would be a falsity even she could not commit to) and once more focused, Moira's dark lashes flutter open at last.

  Striking beauty of a woman pieced together from sunlight and stars themselves, she is a living masterpiece. Orange skin clings tightly to an arched neck and swaying hips, wraps like a lover over sparrow-boned breast and aching heart, curls like smoke about a face that darkens just enough to draw the eyes away from curious ivory marks that mar her proud chest and soaring wings, pulling ever further away from the starlight that sprouts from her sides. The phoenix woman holds herself tall despite such average stature. She does not seek to be flashy or garner unwanted attention, simply existing within the biome and living within her means.

 This new land was strange, the people she had yet to get to know personally. Caretaker. That's the title she'd been given when entering the den of artists and claiming them as her kin just as the esteemed Tonnerre's had taken Moira as one of their own when but a young girl. They'd found her alongside the lake, searching then much as she was now for Lizard Tail and Floatingheart to help create poultices and potions alike that would heal from within and without a body. It was the art she'd been taught - the life she'd chosen.

 A life of servitude was all she could offer.

 To the water she now looks, determination creeping in along the edges, wiping away the worry and unease that haunts her day and night, replacing self doubt with stone cold certainty. Moira was born for this. From a young age she'd been instructed on how to help, how to heal. It was her one gift to the world, if nothing else ever came of her.

 Many plants are in full bloom, proud to display their color (or lack of) upon the surface, even moreso to survive to be tall enough that Moira would notice them. Careful are the steps she takes forward into the pool once more, avoiding the saddened eyes she knows so well that would stare back at her should she choose to watch the girl that enters the pool just like herself. What would she find there? Every time it's the same. Bracelets from her beloved Estelle would disappear, forgotten as the woman was when Moira was working - a shame she should never get over; black and white locks held tight into braids and buns, looking much more than her four years should allow; and the face of a girl who'd left her family and all she'd ever loved.

 Regret.

 At the end of it all, she knew she'd find that within the heart of the woman who would stare back at her. Where did she fit in the grand scheme of things? Perhaps she'd found Denocte and the Night Court and their denizens because her heart called to the artists, the lovers, those too passionate for their skins. But she was not alive like they were - she did not truly live as they did, did she? Fire courses in their hearts, they are unafraid to proclaim love and show their creations. Moira, esteemed daughter of the Tonnerre clan, Phoenix Woman cut from the sky itself, disgraced and reborn, hated and loved. Moira... Now she was just... Moira. Caretaker for Denocte, in charge of patching up wounds, keeping the shelves stocked, and minding her own business until she was right and ready to let herself find another home that would help heal Estelle as it should her.

 She sighs again, at last meeting those accusing eyes. Traitor they say, glaring at her even though she wears no such expression upon her much more neutral visage. Brows draw tight once more, and in an unusual show of discomfort she splashes away her own reflection, refusing to look any longer at herself for fear of what more she would find. Forcefully she pushes further into the pools, feet sinking into mud, moving over rocks with algae so heavy upon their surface they seem almost covered in biofilms of slime. It is a cesspool for parasites, but these waters hold herbs she needs as well.


   code: e-cho; image: unsplash

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in this house of broken hearts
we made our love out of stacks of cards

[Raum]

 

The flame is sinking into mud and he watches her go.
 
From his perch atop the rugged bank, the Crow drinks in her melancholy with a vague interest. There was a reason he had followed her here, however… This girl reminded him of Rhoswen. They were both carved from the sun and its fire is a glint that sparked in both their eyes.
 
The water shatters at her feet, broken by her displeasure. Raum wonders if her heart is as fierce as Rhoswen’s too... Her wings reach up, feathers like fingers of flame, stretching to pluck the stars from the sky. He wonders if Moira might melt the world with wings like that. It is wonder the lake does not hiss at her touch and turn to steam beneath that phoenix skin of hers.
 
This strange girl is white-hot fire, but Raum is the silver across the water; a piece of Lithium set to burn the lake like gasoline. The Crow moves, but he is not shadow, rather he is moonlit mercury, pouring across a mirror. The blue of his gaze is a drop of water upon her scolding wings and he wonders if they might turn to steam with just a look. Her wings laugh through their flames, he fancies, and he hears their call to look.
 
He turns his gaze from her.
 
In silence, in the blistering heat of a sun that knows no rest, Raum steps down into the water. It is cool as it hides his limbs beneath the surface, it is wild as it dances beneath the sky, mirroring a world more alive and distorted than the one he resides within.
 
That drowning gaze, returns to her and then never does it slip from the fire of her as he wades closer. The water chatters happily at his limbs; Moira is fortunate – does she know? It is uncommon to hear this Crow approach, the death he brings does not even whisper. It knows only the beauty of silence.
 
“Dislike what you see?” Raum asks her quietly, as the waters still tremble from her strike. What twisted truth had the lake told this time? The assassin is curious to know as he steps up beside the fire-girl, his eyes turning to ash beneath her flames.

@Moira - here have a Raum!

 

[Moira]

I paid the price and own the scars
why did we climb to fall so far ?

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Taught to sing and dance and be merry, Moira is not gifted with the art of observation for her surroundings - only that of her patients and friends, those few who are called as such. Tales of the Crows and the death they could bring, ravaging the world as a disaster had struck and making it look more simple that it truly was, rending flesh from bone and leaving no evidence... None of it had reached the Tonnerre estate, winding its way within the compound until terror would have risen and stories whispered at night to put the children to bed. The Crows she knows nothing of yet, not even fully in Denocte enough to have learned who they are, what they are.


So it is with little apprehension that she finds blue eyes in the water, staring at her as a voice slithers in with the man, like a snake in her bed it is cool along her spine. But the coolness does not alleviate what she feels. Instead, as yellow eyes flutter shut and the phoenix woman expels a breath, she squares her shoulders and straightens her spine to turn and face him.


The sight is striking enough, so much so that she could have stumbled and cried. He could be one of us she thinks, pulled into memories of family portraits and lessons where she was forced to learn the history of the Tonnerres back to generation upon generation ago. This one was your great, great, great, great, great, great aunt Emile and uncle Louis, they had Francis, Elie, Marc, and Reginald. Your family decended from Thibaut and Emile after that, little Moira. That's what they'd tell her as she stared at grim face and bleak eyes, watching as each one glared or snarled or simply existed without having ever breathed happiness into their lungs and expunged the gray skies that lived in their hearts.


He looks like a ghost from her family.


But the light in his eyes, the simple way the sun seems to light his skin on fire where lightning should have been, it reminds her that he is not them. Despite the ice in his voice and the isolation in those eyes, he is not a Tonnerre. Movements are much too smooth, not poised nor refined enough, and he sits too still. Although, Moira would argue her Aunt Aurelie could have taken him in a glaring contest hands down.


"Moreso what I don't," she says at last, her voice is velvet and smoke at midnight - not the chiming bells that other girls wear so well, but something darker, more subtle and suitable to pleasurable nights and throes of passion than hospital halls and colorful canvases. "What is it you see?" The phoenix asks, brows raising as she meets those strange, sharp eyes that are as fresh as the first rainfall. What white would she blend with blue to get that shade of winter, she wonders, marveling at the man in the mere tapestry of the world about them.


Moira enjoys looking at people as paintings far more than she should, but when you're not her patient, you're simply there and gone like everyone else, it would seem. Her only memory would write him on a canvas with colors so bold, so cold, that to look would to feel the chill to your bones.


   code: e-cho; image: unsplash @Raum well hello handsome ovo

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in this house of broken hearts
we made our love out of stacks of cards

[Raum]

 

He is the mercury to her sunfire. The ice to her flames. He wonders why the waters do not hiss when she steps into the lake. He wonders if her touch will burn – consume him from the inside out. Was she the consort of the sun god Solis? She seemed to be in every physical way.
 
He meets her solar eyes with an electric gaze – blue sparks that hiss between them. To soon he turns to the water, the way it ripples and paints this girl’s reflection. It paints her before the night sky – she is littered in stars, but she is the red sun, set to consume them all.
 
When she looks to him, she thinks of a ghost – but not the Ghost he is. Not the specter Denocte labels him as. She thinks of phantoms that haunt her family line, historical ghosts that linger just out of her mind’s reach. Raum is not that, but he is a wraith of flesh and blood. He is a monster that makes the blood run cold in death. He has delivered many to the door of hell, but he waits for his own chariot as he teaches his daughter to fight like a Crow. She already dances like an assassin, with her small blade held fast to her slender limb.
 
The devil lifts his chin and regards her as she speaks. He feels the heat of those words, but only as a hot wound. “Our reflections are always lacking.” He murmurs with a velveteen voice. It pours between them, thick and rich, a lavish drink, indulgent and silver.
 
“it is not easy to hold a mirror up to ourselves.” The Crow continues, looking to the silver monster in the lake. It looks to him with blue, blue eyes and a knife sharp smile that twists and turns in the water. He wears no smile upon his real lips.
 
“I see a lie.” He says softly, simply. Ripples run away from where he stirs within the water. But even in that he lies, for in his reflection Raum sees so many, many lies.

@Moira

 

[Moira]

I paid the price and own the scars
why did we climb to fall so far ?

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 Raum sees her as Solis' lover, swaddled in his unending fire, bathed in his holy light. Little does he know she is raised by a den of vipers, a hive of bees. He is not the lightning that runs in Tonnerre veins, does not whether the storms as she's learned to do, but he could have been. Their eyes meet in a clash of fire and ice, sparks lighting between them - the phoenix does not know what to make of him. He is new, he is as strange as Denocte. She's met so few, too few, merely existed in her wing of the world and doing as she should. Moira is a quiet soul, needing little, wanting for less. What is it this mercurial man desires?

Night creeps upon them softly, slowly. It is a lullaby that eases tense muscles and wraps them in the hum of crickets on the shoreline. She does not mind the dark, revels in the secrets it holds, would bathe in its glory if she could. But she is not Calligo's daughter. She is not Denocte's blood.

She is Tonnerre.

Born instead of storms and manners, made of lightning and ice, given the world on the end of a string and shunning it for the sake of a single soul. A soul more precious to Moira than her own life. If she could, she would trade places with Estelle, give her own health to revive the woman who suffers even now, so far away from Moira that she burns with agony and sorrow whenever her mind wonders that way. So the distraction provided is welcome at last, to keep her from seeing the wraith, the witch, the betrayal in the waves that lap at their legs.

Ripples hit her from his movements. They are as gentle as the man's words.

Wings shift, clinging closer with every syllable he murmurs. With a voice like honey, he could convince a snake it was a dog if he tries. Something like that could be dangerous. She listens still, caught up in his words, some part thinking that her own voice, although soft, is like the desert sands shifting compared to his. More of a sigh and a whisper than the musical notes he sings, as calming as the waves lapping at the beach on a sunny day, it's something easily forgotten as the girl wants it to be.

Raising high to peer at Raum's reflection, she wonders what it shows him. Is it as deplorable as her own? "What is only two dimensional cannot catch all that is in three," she agrees at last, hot breath tickling whiskers on her chin, flowing down to her chest, to the surface of the water once more. "A lie," she muses, she hopes. For then would she not be innocent? Free of this guilt that is a shackle upon her wrists, a collar about her neck, a gilded cage of golden bobbles and silver trinkets meant to guide her to an early grave. "Perhaps you should work on yourself then. I'm Moira Tonnerre, are you from Denocte?"


   code: e-cho; image: unsplash @Raum <3

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in this house of broken hearts
we made our love out of stacks of cards