ALL OF MY WRONGS, NO MORE WICKED WAYS
will come back to haunt me, come with me
will come back to haunt me, come with me
Should be at (near) Lorcan’s gravestone in the fields.
The fields. Written in the casual diction of a native. Meaning that out of the countless fields in Novus, to the author of the decades-old note there was only one of significance: the Fields, capitalized.
After a brief glance at a Terrastellan map Kite fished out of his satchel (their maps were near unchanging through the centuries — he’d dug through the archives before setting sail for Vespera’s court), Senna concluded that the writer of the note must have meant the Susurro Fields.
The difficult part had been in pinpointing where. Needle in a stack of needles. The Susurro Fields stretched over a third of the kingdom, a sea of buffalo grass capped with a foam of lavender sky. He’d sent Nestor out on an early morning scouting mission, plying her with a slab of still-bleeding meat he’d procured from the markets. The waiting had been infuriating. He'd busied himself with paperwork he'd brought from Solterra, then switched to poring over Terrastellan history books when his ink ran out.
Until, late in the afternoon, a white speck reappeared in the sky. The falcon's yellow beak was stained a gruesome crimson. He didn't ask why, because she'd draped herself in the answer. Entrails of rabbit hung like hair ribbons from her chest feathers, her breast stained a red to rival his own. A hunting excursion she'd taken the liberty of embarking on before returning.
Found it, Nestor remarked crisply, clicking her beak at the question boiling over in Senna’s eyes. He prided himself on being a man so hard to read, and had fooled most anyone into believing it. But a gyrfalcon saw all, and he — her master, dear Seneca — had eyes as hollow as a dead tree stump. Full of space for thoughts to roost.
A weakness he’d passed on to his daughter, she clucked. Hollow-eyed father and daughter. Darling mother had been the only exception.
A grave, marked Santiago. Hard to find — it was veiled in dark. Ominous. Senna nodded for her to continue, tail lashing impatiently at his side. He cared little for irrelevant description, and she knew it. Sometimes, he wondered if she was sent by Solis to grieve him.
Disturbed, too, dirt tilled up all over. But no dead man to be found. So either this Santiago dug himself out of the grave sixty years too late — yellow eyes narrowed as a thatch of brown rabbit’s fur was plucked out of her feathers and dropped unceremoniously to the ground — or someone else did him the favor.
“Santiago.” The name lingered at the edges of memory, an elusive little ghost. He pushed it aside for later.
By the time Senna alighted near the grave (less than a day’s trip, Nestor had promised) night fell thick and heavy. A dreamer’s drooping eyelids. Unnatural darkness had wrapped itself around the land like a shroud, squeezing like a constrictor, and the closer he moved to the grave the tighter the constrictor squeezed.
Squeezed out every pinprick of light, until the brightest thing in the night was Nestor. Even his lantern sputtered to an early death. His skin crawled, maggots in a carcass, but fear dared not encroach in the nobleman's heart. He'd banished it to the wastes as a boy.
Something brushed against his leg. Hard and unyielding, like... a wooden stake.
“Santiago,” he whispered, bending down to touch the top of the grave marker. Exhilaration, hot and long-ago forgotten, pulsed like a heart through his oxygen-starved veins. The search for Prudence had been strategic. The alliance he sought, a necessity.
But he would be lying if that was all it was.
“Now, if only the dead could speak.”
☾
The fields. Written in the casual diction of a native. Meaning that out of the countless fields in Novus, to the author of the decades-old note there was only one of significance: the Fields, capitalized.
After a brief glance at a Terrastellan map Kite fished out of his satchel (their maps were near unchanging through the centuries — he’d dug through the archives before setting sail for Vespera’s court), Senna concluded that the writer of the note must have meant the Susurro Fields.
The difficult part had been in pinpointing where. Needle in a stack of needles. The Susurro Fields stretched over a third of the kingdom, a sea of buffalo grass capped with a foam of lavender sky. He’d sent Nestor out on an early morning scouting mission, plying her with a slab of still-bleeding meat he’d procured from the markets. The waiting had been infuriating. He'd busied himself with paperwork he'd brought from Solterra, then switched to poring over Terrastellan history books when his ink ran out.
Until, late in the afternoon, a white speck reappeared in the sky. The falcon's yellow beak was stained a gruesome crimson. He didn't ask why, because she'd draped herself in the answer. Entrails of rabbit hung like hair ribbons from her chest feathers, her breast stained a red to rival his own. A hunting excursion she'd taken the liberty of embarking on before returning.
Found it, Nestor remarked crisply, clicking her beak at the question boiling over in Senna’s eyes. He prided himself on being a man so hard to read, and had fooled most anyone into believing it. But a gyrfalcon saw all, and he — her master, dear Seneca — had eyes as hollow as a dead tree stump. Full of space for thoughts to roost.
A weakness he’d passed on to his daughter, she clucked. Hollow-eyed father and daughter. Darling mother had been the only exception.
A grave, marked Santiago. Hard to find — it was veiled in dark. Ominous. Senna nodded for her to continue, tail lashing impatiently at his side. He cared little for irrelevant description, and she knew it. Sometimes, he wondered if she was sent by Solis to grieve him.
Disturbed, too, dirt tilled up all over. But no dead man to be found. So either this Santiago dug himself out of the grave sixty years too late — yellow eyes narrowed as a thatch of brown rabbit’s fur was plucked out of her feathers and dropped unceremoniously to the ground — or someone else did him the favor.
“Santiago.” The name lingered at the edges of memory, an elusive little ghost. He pushed it aside for later.
By the time Senna alighted near the grave (less than a day’s trip, Nestor had promised) night fell thick and heavy. A dreamer’s drooping eyelids. Unnatural darkness had wrapped itself around the land like a shroud, squeezing like a constrictor, and the closer he moved to the grave the tighter the constrictor squeezed.
Squeezed out every pinprick of light, until the brightest thing in the night was Nestor. Even his lantern sputtered to an early death. His skin crawled, maggots in a carcass, but fear dared not encroach in the nobleman's heart. He'd banished it to the wastes as a boy.
Something brushed against his leg. Hard and unyielding, like... a wooden stake.
“Santiago,” he whispered, bending down to touch the top of the grave marker. Exhilaration, hot and long-ago forgotten, pulsed like a heart through his oxygen-starved veins. The search for Prudence had been strategic. The alliance he sought, a necessity.
But he would be lying if that was all it was.
“Now, if only the dead could speak.”
@any @redandblack"senna" nestor // an open halcyon thread with senna!
