xploring the court had been a joy, and enlightening thus far, but without the sounds of her traveling home and no one to distract her, Mesnyi found herself wandering out to the wilds, dancing through forest and meadow before finding herself at the bank of a rushing river. It was untouched by fire, being so near the court, and she liked it that way (beautiful). She liked its energy, the rolling and foaming, and so she decided to stay. With her she brought her most favored violin, and finding a log to set it down upon - perched just so that its melody could reverberate through its core - she thought its bow into motion, calling up a hard and fast and dancing tune that reminded her of the very rapids before her. It took the lavender mare a few minutes to find somewhere that didn’t suck at her hooves or threaten to fall away, but when she did, there was no stopping her from dancing in the freedom and music of the Mercurial. Lost in the twirling of her mist-white hair and the song of the water and glass, it may very well be that she would not notice a stranger approach.
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
tracker plotter
please tag the proper character for replies
It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you?
I
t is the glint of silver water cutting through the black char forests and the bone dead meadows that makes him fly closer. The glare dances along the undersides of his wings like a kaleidoscope of wealth. He feels like the sky as he drifts lazily downward like a feather on a breeze. He thinks of that river like an ocean (expansive but not enough to cover a world like him).
But it's the sheen of silver and purple spiraling around and around and around like a storm that makes him quicken his descent. He decides to stay in Delumine just a little longer, just long enough to see how long all that lavender and lace can dance.
Each of his feathers sing to the tune of the violin, soft slicks of down and metal that rise and rise into a clamor when he lands on the riverbank. He tucks them to his sides, and lets the music wash away even the echo of him. Although he does not try very hard to be silent.
Veer, for the moment, is content to be nothing more than another metallic shadow along the river. He's content to watch her twirl and move like a storm cased in flesh (summer rain he thinks, she is more summer rain than the hurricane of violence in his own skin). The song seems fitting for her, wild and lovely and foolishly loud.
He watches her like a wolf watches a rabbit-- waiting, waiting, waiting.
he does not notice the stranger at first, but in all her twists and turns, the blur of the forest is not so dark as that. She halts on a dime, chest heaving and gleaming with freshly beading sweat - she has been dancing hard, for certain, and could dance far longer - watching him watching her. He is huge and winged and handsome and frightening. The music quiets into something idling but sharp, a little too heavy on the turns (not like her, and she thinks, not like him, either). Mesnyi stares at him, expressionless, and wonders for a moment what a man like him is doing watching a girl like her.
She does not wonder for very long. She does not need to. It is not hard to imagine.
So, she dips her head, mane washing over her like the ocean foam, and when she rises, she is smiling. ”Care to dance?”
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
tracker plotter
please tag the proper character for replies
It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you?
W
atching her makes him think that he should perhaps find it in him to be anything but a devil. Each of her turns suggests the river at his back, twisting and strong enough to drag a less clever man underwater. He wonders if men have drowned watching her, sunk into that music and let it fill their lungs like saltwater.
She stops, breath heaving, and he starts to count the beads of sweat on her chest that look a little like half-formed pearls against her bright skin. The music stumbles and sharpens. It makes him think of a young blade, almost sharp enough to bleed but not yet hungry enough for blood. Veer could teach her, if she would let him. He could teach her how to be a blade and a song.
There can be harmony in the combination.
The dip of her head is an art form and he almost laughs and dips a wing into a sardonic mockery of her greeting. Instead he only lets his stare flicker and flame like coal dipped in gold. “No.” He says. It sounds like smoke in the forest. His head lifts and his neck arches in a silent challenge.
The next turn of her music does not seem very sharp next to him.
Mesnyi has never liked dangerous boys. She learned very early on that they are the ones that will trap you or kill you or get you trapped or hurt or killed and those are simply not things that can happen to Mesnyi. They are not to her taste. They do not excite her. Not even a little. Not at all. Never have, never will. Such things could never interest a girl raised on the road, a mercurial one, oh no.
As a girl who is not interested, she blinked prettily at him and said. ”Well, goodness, sir, we will have to think of something else to do.”
Not that.
”I am Mesnyi. Might I inquire as to your name?” The music goes soft and lilting. Her voice is sweet as sugar and taught as the silk that strangled the concubine.
(But only that of the favorite concubine would be good enough for Mesnyi.)
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
tracker plotter
please tag the proper character for replies
It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you?
V
eer changes as swiftly as the breeze. In one breath he is still a dark, looming shadow on the riverbank. In the next he is golden and even the sun glinting on the softly rushing water cannot compare to the brightness of him. He walks closer and his wings tuck gracefully to his side, like lambs against a lion.
It seems to him that her song carries itself to the tune of his hooves moving through the grass.
He laughs when she blinks as prettily as a doe in the morning dew. She's sweetness that he could choke on and he wonders how much it would take to make her sour. He wonders if it's worth finding out. This close she smells of jasmine and green grass. Veer smells like darkness and gold (always gold).
“You might.” He says even as he presses closer and closer. In his smile teeth flash too starkly to be truly kind. There is still some space between them when he stops,. His eyes, molten and golden, catch on her violin. Something in him sparks, curious, almost as much as he is about the point of her horn.
His eyes look back and they are heavy.“I'm Veer.” The curl of his lips deepens and his smile reaches up to his eyes (it shines there like a small sun). “What do you propose, if not dancing?” He still finds himself wondering how bitter and cloying he sweetness might be.
Surely there is more to her than jasmine, song and sugar. Underneath the sun sweet things either burn or they rot.
we want to think she is looking for something, but she is past panic now
H
e moves towards her and she does not step back. Boys like for you to be afraid. Such is their way. She only stands there and watches, her smile gone cold as the autumn river foam. ”You might.” He is golden, now that the sun catches him in its grasp, but Mesnyi is just as certain that he could escape it just as easily. She is grateful when he halts, grateful for the tenuous space between them. ”I’m Veer.” She does not like the way his teeth glint in the light, porcelain and gold. ”What do you propose, if not dancing?”
A whistle of warm air leaves her nostrils. ”I’m not sure you’ll allow me the time to think about an alternative. Perhaps while we chat, something will come to mind.” It is certainly not an invitation. She would never invite such beasts to play.
Mesnyi did not miss the glance he spared her violin; she let it drag the last note a moment longer before falling silent. Her gaze never left Veer, but sharpened ever so slightly. ”Do you like it? I have played since I was a child, but it plays itself, given the chance.” If she must be caught in such conversation, then let it be of her own making.
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
tracker plotter
please tag the proper character for replies
03-19-2019, 12:24 PM - This post was last modified: 03-19-2019, 12:29 PM by Mesnyi
It will stop your breath, how cruel I can be. But you understand, don’t you?
W
hen the final note drags out, long and low, from the violin it's not music that he thinks about. He thinks of the sound of blades and blood; how each drags along the other like a sigh in the moonlight. It's that sound he thinks of as he starts to move. Each of his steps is a dance to that blade song and the grass sways beneath him like satin against the hard edge of his hooves. He moves in a circle, slow and haunting, like the note that is spiraling down, down, down into silence.
Veer moves like a wolf. It's not until the violin song and the chorus of her voice ends that he stills again. Something is itching under his skin and he almost shivers with it. It feels like restlessness and something else, something darker. How long has it been since he's given in to the violence pulsing through him? How long since he lost himself in the underground arena with blood and sand in his teeth?
His gold eyes watch her and they are burning in the shadows of the forest around them. A wing rustles at his side, like a flag in the breeze that doesn't want to be tethered anymore. This court and rivers are already making him eager to be off. In Solterra he is less of a wolf among the sand and violence.
He would burn what's left of this forest to the ground if he could. Just to watch the smoke rise like a dragon. Would they still crave peace then?
“Do you often give it the chance?” There's a hint of soot in his voice and a hint of prayer, like a boy kneeling at the altar of war. He snaps his wings out just to cool a little of that itch and they sound like a whip in the silence of the unicorn and her violin. “I don't imagine I would, if I owned such a thing.” Because Veer trusts nothing but himself and Najjad.
@Mesnyi | "speaks" | notes: this just straight poop
er gaze follows him as he stalks about her and she makes to follow with her head as well but then - he stops, with the last note of the violin, a piece of the music himself. Her lungs sing praises as they let out a held breath. She intends to hold the pause for as long as he does. The wind sifts through them like a dying goldpanner before there is sound in the woods again.
”Do you often give it the chance?” Mesnyi scrunches her nose at the snap of his wide, dark wings. Her patience wanes, and yet she feels some relief that there is something to talk about (but not enough, he still frightens her, oh yes). ”I don’t imagine I would, if I owned such a thing.”
Mesnyi lets her lip curl, just enough. ”No, I don’t imagine you would.” She thought about the words before she said them, as always, and all the disdain in her said yes before all the diplomacy in her could say no. The violin tripped on a note as her mind did. She grinned with too many teeth and said, sickly sweet, ”Please excuse my manners. It was a slip of the tongue.”
"You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while."
tracker plotter
please tag the proper character for replies
![[Image: 26y3cfu.png]](https://i.imgur.com/26y3cfu.png)
