The library was a dramatic change from his usual scene as of late, its interior hushed, uncrowded, and eerily quiet. It was a jarring contrast to the streets of the Night Court, where everything and everyone was hardly in motion, and the music played so loud he could hardly hear himself think.
Here in all the silence that was Delumine, his thoughts felt uncomfortably loud inside of his own head.
The scent of Denoctian spices and perfumes still clung to him, wafting through the otherwise stagnant air in a trail behind him as he walked. His scarves whispered against his sides as he moved, hoofbeats landing so quietly on the earthen floor that he made hardly a sound as he went. Aside from the library keepers, who hardly stopped to acknowledge him, he was alone. Dust stirred as he walked amongst the aisles, scanning the titles half heartedly. Toulouse wasn’t sure yet what he was looking for - only that he would know it when he saw it.
And so far he had yet to see it, or even a glimpse of it; there was not a single hint that he was headed in the right direction.
His diamond-shod hooves clicked gently across the floor, wine-red tassels bobbing along his scarves with every step. With the beginnings of a frown making itself present on his face, he stopped before yet another bookshelf, as dusty as the last had been.
Green eyes slithered across the titles, lingering only briefly on any one. Yet again, each of them failed to pique his interest. Is there nothing worthwhile here?
A quick glance around told him no one was watching. And so he reached into the pockets of his scarves, and drew from them a coiled snake. Its gemstone eyes glinted in the dim light, golden scales shining.
“Avekne.”
At his whispered command, the snake came to life. It lifted its head, tongue flickering past its lips to taste the air. Toulouse studied it with interest as it twisted through the space before him, hovering at eye level. He held it up with his telekinesis, so entranced by the snake’s movement that he hardly noticed the footsteps approaching from the other side of the bookshelf.
the motherland don't love you,
the fatherland don’t love you.
so why love anything?
the faithless; they don't love you
the zealous hearts don’t love you.
and that's not gonna change.
ut deo.
@mateo
partially recycled post, hope that’s alright c’:
When the two bodies were found, Mateo had expected time to stop. Sure, in hindsight it was an incredibly stupid expectation. But in the moment, it seemed reasonable for time to just... change, somehow. Everyone else did. Routines were shattered, borders were closed, everything was different in some way or another. A day passed. Two days. Then days turned to weeks turned to months. They had gotten used to being uncomfortable, to the point where it was, oddly enough, comfortable.
Imagine his shock when winter arrived. Winter, when his mind was still stuck on that early Autumn day. Winter, and the killer was still out there. It made him feel restless and useless and most of all unsatisfied with the length between one major event and another. It was not at all like a real story.
He did not know what else to do with his restlessness except to bury it in the library. Which brings us to the ram-horned stranger, and the golden snake, and the spark of... the spark of something in the air that has no name yet.
He does not realize his approach has gone unnoticed. "What's that?" Mateo tries to maintain the hush of the library, but excitement leeches volume into his bright voice. It is for the best that they are alone-- there is no one to scowl at the unintentionally loud black pegasus, although he is unfortunately accustomed to such reactions every now and again.
He watches the snake's tongue flicker, testing the air in a way that is partly familiar, partly unfamiliar. For the pegasus reads the wind beneath his wings as a matter of balance and speed and, on a bad day, survival. But the snake seems to feel at the air in a hungry way, like looking for the answer to a question.
"Is it... magic?" Mateo turns his sharp silver-green gaze to the other stallion and surprise flashes across his expression. He feels his cheeks warm as the sheer force of the stranger's presence dawns on him. (how... beautiful) He straightens, feeling plain and boyish and inferior in every way, and then laughs quietly for no reason other than to calm his nerves. The sound falls flat. He clears his throat. "Uhm..." (say something. say something) "I'm Mateo."
The snake writhed in the air, its movements becoming more and more chaotic, tying itself into knots as if agitated by its its captured state. Toulouse watched it with interest, eyes tracing the golden scales that caught and reflected the flames of the torches lining the corridor.
Its skin was glinting with light, each carved scale twisting and turning as if it was truly alive. He knew it wasn’t - but magic was a deceitful thing, turning the inanimate into the animate. To anyone who did not look close enough to see the sharp edges, to feel smooth rock beneath their touch, it may have been enough to fool them. Toulouse would never tell them otherwise, even if they asked.
It was a simple illusion, a harmless trick; but in magic there was knowing. And in knowing, there was power.
He heard the soft footsteps turning the corner, but he ignored them. Every twist of the snake’s golden body was enchanting, hypnotizing; he made sure the dark stranger could see it plainly in the dim lighting, made sure the snake was positioned just so in the air to catch every flicker of light, bright against the dull background of the library.
Come closer, the snake seemed to whisper as its scales slid against one another, I have something to show you.
He had only to wait - and he was not disappointed.
A gasp of surprise, and the snake fell to the ground. It writhed on the floor, twisting and righting itself as the palomino spun to face the pegasus.
Toulouse had known he was being watched - but he didn’t know he knew.
Somewhere on the ground, the snake had twisted itself back around and was beginning to slither away into the darkness.
Green eyes met and matched, one set in a face of black and the other, a face of white. They were near opposites in all but the the color of their gaze - but while Mateo’s expression was one of curiosity, Toulouse’s was filled with hunger. The candor in the pegasus was an opening the wolf in him wanted only to exploit.
“…It is indeed,” he murmurs after just the right amount of hesitation. In one smooth movement, he bent over and swept the golden snake off the floor. "I should have known better than to hide it. Frá svefn,” he whispered, breathing over the golden scales - and the snake became still.
Toulouse turned back to the stranger, the tassels on his scarves swaying at his sides.
“I’m Toulouse,” his tone was still cautious, wary; it was like slipping into another skin, wearing it proudly as his own. Easy, natural, intoxicating. Every new face he met was an opportunity to adapt himself, to become someone new. A challenge he gladly rose to meet.
A prolonged pause stretched between them, the horned man milking every second of it. Until he slowly lifted the snake back up to eye level, and -
“- Would you like to see it again?”
The ruby eyes seemed to be looking directly at Mateo, begging him to say yes.
the motherland don't love you,
the fatherland don’t love you.
so why love anything?
the faithless; they don't love you
the zealous hearts don’t love you.
and that's not gonna change.
Layers of golden scales slide across each other effortlessly. Writhing, twisting, dancing to music unheard. It is mesmerizing. Finally the man whispers something that Mateo doesn't pick up, in no part due to a lack of effort on his end. His ears are perked and he leans in unconsciously, shamelessly, to glean what the man said to the snake. Whatever it was, the creature reacts instantly, drawing still.
Mateo leans back, a little disappointed. It dawns on him that his life is sorely lacking in magical things. But then his attention shifts to the stranger's features, and his disappointment is forgotten.
He has met many green eyes in the past several weeks. There was the desert girl, with her summer eyes and sandstone tongue. There was the boy with the scales and lost memories. And then there was Toulouse, who seemed almost otherworldly with his snake and his hair and his short but deliberate words, which flowed like wine from his lips. Mateo very much liked wine.
He licks his lips. "A pleasure to meet you, Toulouse." The man seems cautious, and so Mateo puts as much warmth as he can into his tone and his smile. He even wags his tail feathers a little, although such a gesture would probably slip past the man's attention. "I'm Mateo." He speaks with that typical Deluminian accent. Scholarly, every syl-la-ble pronounced clear and crisp.
He swallows as the silence thins to a razor's edge.
"Would you like to see it again?" The proposition comes with the taste of steel. Like the man is not asking the same question that the words form. It makes Mateo feel nervous, but in a good way. He blinks his long, dark lashes. Beneath them his eyes shift to a deeper shade of green as his interest is piqued.
"Yes, of course," he says, breathlessly, and he takes a step closer to those ruby eyes. The stranger (Toulouse, he called himself) smells nice. Floral. It is disarming, in the same vaguely dangerous way the snake is-- Mateo feels he shouldn't, but he relaxes a little bit. One of his wings gently touches the other man as tension uncoils from his shoulders. "Where did you find it?"
- - -
@Toulouse no worries/rush, love! <3 I am really enjoying this thread so far!
The dark pegasus leans closer and closer, until his green eyes reflect the golden scales of the shake and Toulouse can see the sculpture’s likeness in his gaze. He’s completely enamored with the magic trick, and the horned man takes great delight in ensnaring him. It’s a show to him, a game of faces.
And he always wins.
It’s so easy, when he has a willing audience, a boy like Mateo who wears his youth proudly, like a badge on his sleeve. His emotions were on display in force, inviting him in, showing his cards. It’s almost too easy to change himself into someone new, to kindle those flames of curiosity with a smile and a wink and a whisper of words that set the snake back to dancing. Every face was different, every name had its own connotations, every person their own tics. Some were simply easier to crack and exploit.
“A pleasure to meet you as well,” he keeps his smile subtle, even shy, letting the other man believe that he’s the one who needs coaxing. “Mateo.” The name is smooth on his tongue, like honey; even as he files it away for later use. If the youth is a member of the court, as he appears to be, Toulouse is sure he will be seeing him again. Thankfully, names came easily to him.
For a moment - but only a moment - he’s afraid Mateo will turn down his offer. He doubts himself in that time, afraid he’s found the wrong button to push, afraid it may have been a morbid curiosity and not a delight that he saw in the boy. And when he inhales, he holds his breath.
”Yes.” He lets his smile break out widely, splitting across his face in joy. “Excellent,” he breathes, releasing his breath. The snake floats back up into the air, filling the slender space between them - and then, slowly, carefully, drifts to the pegasus, inviting him to hold it within his own telekinesis.
And only when he takes it within his grasp does Toulouse work his magic.
“Avekne.”
The snake comes back to life with a dry rustling sound, licking its lips and blinking its ruby eyes. It turns slowly in the air to look at the man who holds it, tail coiling about itself.
“A trader sold it to me in a marketplace, it was so long ago I hardly remember the name of the land,” he lies smoothly, breathlessly, lowering his head to peer at the animated creature. “He didn’t tell me it was charmed - the snake himself did. Every night while I slept I awoke to a soft hissing, like he was begging to be let out. He was always warm to the touch, and his eyes were glowing - some days I put him down on my bedside table, and when morning came he was someplace else entirely.” His eyes moved carefully from the snake to the pegasus, watching for his reaction, waiting patiently.
And he laughs, the sound as soft and delicate as shattering glass. ”I wasn’t sure I believed in magic until then.”
the motherland don't love you,
the fatherland don’t love you.
so why love anything?
the faithless; they don't love you
the zealous hearts don’t love you.
and that's not gonna change.
He hardly breathes when the snake changes hands and comes to rest in his telekinesis. When it moves again he sees smudges of red and gold at the edge of his vision, a hazy tunnel with the snake at its core, the snake, the snake. Its forked tongue flicks once, twice, almost too fast to see at all, and yet in a split of a split second it can taste everything in the room. Mateo and the stranger, the empty fireplace, the books from all reaches of Novus (and beyond), the bark of the trees that form the library and all the little creatures living in its nooks and crannies– all captured in the simplest flick of the tongue.
It is the simplest but most impactful display of power Mateo has ever seen, and he will remember it for a very long time to come.
If the pegasus feels the weight of the other man’s shrewd attention, he does not appear to notice. He might even be enjoying it, judging from the little half-smile at his lips– or perhaps that is just because he’s so captivated by the snake. Mateo was so used to courting others, not just in a romantic sense (although there was a lot of that, to varying success), that it was a little refreshing to sense that his reactions were being judges, his response was of value. He is too tragically naive to even consider that the other man might have ulterior motives. So he listens carefully as Toulouse shares his story. Of all the things he says, what snags Mateo’s attention is “I hardly remember the name of the land.”
Would he ever be so well traveled, or else so old, that he forgot the name of a place? Perhaps it was an unfair comparison, for Mateo’s memory for names and faces was nearly perfect. His mind was a catalog of everyone he had ever met, in precise detail. He can still remember in stunning detail the eyelashes of that sailor he met once in the capital, 3 years ago. (The man was charming and smelled like fish. It was the only time Mateo found such a scent to be downright attractive. He might have fallen a little in love, but not so much that his heart was broken when his sailor never returned.)
When the ram-horned man laughs, Mateo smiles warmly at the sound. But oh, the boy never doubted magic. He was full of faith– in god, in his elders, in magic– in anything and everything, until proved wrong. It was almost exactly the opposite of everyone else he met. They always seemed to be waiting for things to be proven before they believed. Surely the longer he went on living his charmed life, the harder the ground would feel when the rug was pulled out from under him and he learned not everything was wholesome, simple, beautiful.
“You might be the most captivating stranger I’ve met,” Mateo says suddenly, with a shy smile. “So. What are you doing here?” He seemed to the the sort of person who always had a plan. Mateo recognizes this only because it is a trait he lacks completely. A movement draws his attention away from the handsome stranger– back to the snake, who slithers casually across a large study table. “Frá… svefn?” He looks uncertainly to Toulouse. He had a sharp memory and a knack for words, but he was not sure if he pronounced the words correctly, or if there was some other trick to getting the snake to still. “What does it mean?” He asks quietly (they were in a library, after all). "And... Aveykne?" In typical Mateo fashion, he asks a second question, and then a third, before the first can be answered.
- - -
@Toulouse no you are wonderful and I love you <3
The snake freezes on the table the moment Mateo says the first command, and that is all the confirmation he needs to know he said it correctly. His second try does not yield the same luck, however. The snake remains motionless, a slash of gold on the mahogany table.
“Avekne,” he corrects, and the snake lifts its head sleepily, blinking at the two horses. “With a soft e.” He watches as the snake flicks its tongue, tasting the air, and begins to creep across the table to him.
“It means,” he says slowly, like a teacher with all the patience in the world to spare, “that it will do as I ask.” It’s spoken in a forgotten language, the magic that binds the snake to him. The name of it would mean nothing to the youth, of that Toulouse was certain - but it meant something to him. And he would not reveal it quite so easily as that.
The snake turns his head to look at him then, ruby eyes shinning brightly with laughter. Toulouse stares back at it, unblinking, unyielding, watching the golden scales undulate in the dim lighting.
As the snake comes closer Toulouse captures it within his grasp, lifting it from the table. It twists itself in the air, as if displeased.
“I like to travel,” he tells Mateo casually as he does so. “I’m always looking for a new land, a new world, somewhere, something to keep me entertained. Tell me, do you think Novus is that place now?” Of course he’s already made up his mind that it is - why else would be be here? - but still he pretends to let the pegasus decide it for him, as if his very presence in Novus depends on Mateo’s answer.
“Delumine especially,” he continues. “Wherever there’s so much knowledge and magic, something exciting is bound to happen eventually.”
Toulouse looks at the nearby lantern then, the oil burning low now, and gasps. “My, look at the time. I’ve been in the library all day!” The snake still in his grasp, he peeks his horned head around the corner of the bookshelves.
“Do forgive me, Mateo, but I haven’t had anything to eat since early this morning, and I’m famished. What’s your favorite place to dine here in the Court?”
He turns back to look at him then, and there’s an unspoken invitation in his eyes, as if what he’s really asking Mateo is lead the way.
the motherland don't love you,
the fatherland don’t love you.
so why love anything?
the faithless; they don't love you
the zealous hearts don’t love you.
and that's not gonna change.
ut deo.
@mateo
kind of fell apart at the end but I figured now was a good time to begin closing this (as overdue as i am)? <3
