[Quest] unaware of the chaos

[Random Events]

in the eye of the storm

The arrival of fall had brought with it dark clouds and fresh rain, wind and water lashing against the cliff face. The storm was unrelenting for days, a furious and powerful display of nature that drove many inhabitants, both equine and others, to seek shelter within the Court.  It is only the first of many storms to come in the following months, but it seems especially ferocious. 

Despite this, when the weather finally decides to lessen @Asterion will feel a tug at his very soul. Something that he can't quite place will draw him to the Cliffs, and guide him to a rocky path leading down to the shoreline. The Regent may not know what exactly he's doing there, but one thing is certain: he's there for a reason.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The rain was still falling—albeit at a gentler and steadier pace—when the Pallas’s Gull appeared. 

She drifted on lazy wings, allowing the wind to push her this way and that way as she drifted along the coastline. There was no fear in her eyes, nor worry that the storm might suddenly start up in force again. She was confident and strong in her flight; the slightest shift of her angled wings was more than enough to pull her from the gale’s grasp. Her flight was her own, and she was loathe to let nature dictate where she went. 

The gull was searching the beach for possible food—or shiny shells to collect, either would do—when Asterion appears on the beach.

He wasn’t the flashiest of creatures—she’d seen horses dubbed in the finest of silks, with the most intricate of braids and expensive jewelry piled upon their frames. He was simple, yes handsome, and perhaps that is what drew her to him. The wind slows, and she drifts ever nearer, floating in a sweeping arc around the wandering equine. Her eyes, as black as coal, size him up with an intensity that seems lost of him.

Once she’s made her decision, she wastes no time. 

The gull races down the shoreline, glancing over every rock and pebble and discarded shell she passes until—there. 

She swerves and dives, her body dropping to the ground so that she might collect her prize in her red-tipped bill. The shell is black and ordinary on the outside; some might go so far as to call it ugly. But she knows better. It’s the perfect shell, and she’s collected it for him.

With a few deft beats of her wings she’s back in the air, winging her way quickly back to the bay. The rain has all but stopped now, a bit of sun peaking through the rain clouds and illuminating Asterion in light. The Pallas’s Gull slows the closer she comes, until finally she is able to drop the shell at his hooves. It lands face up, so that its most vibrant and iridescent layer is exposed to the world. A diamond in the rough, much like Asterion himself.

She lands next to the shell, and looks up at the Dusk Court Regent expectantly.

Should he pick the shell up—accepting the avian’s offering—Asterion will have found himself a new friend in the Pallas’s Gull.

---

As the storm calms, @Asterion will find himself wandering the shores near Praistigia Cliffs. As he walks, he may notice the lone gull who seems to be wandering as aimlessly as himself: once he does, the gull will begin her quest to find the perfect mussel shell, and upon doing so will bring it back to Asterion, as a sort of peace offering. If he accepts the shell, he'll be bonded to the Pallas's Gull.

Asterion has met his bonded.


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Enjoy! -sid

[Asterion]

in sunshine and in shadow

There was no duty, no task that Florentine or any other could assign, that could keep him indoors when the first of the autumn storms finally broke.

For days wind had leaned against the capitol, and rain had lashed the windows, and in the brief moments Asterion was outside he imagined he could hear the howl and the crash of the sea. Oh! He had wanted to go to it even then, but there were so many things to plan, to discuss, to oversee. When at last the wind died down, when the rain became a patter and not a torrent, the Regent bid his sister goodbye and forced himself to a walk until he was beyond the walls, washed dark with rain.


A thousand times has he felt the pull of the sea, a constant yearning over his heart, but there is something about this one that is different. He does not amble beneath the slate-grey sky, but lopes, single-minded, for the cliffside. It is not the friends he’s met there that he thinks of, nor the gods he ponders, but something else – something like a piece of the storm still in his soul, wild and wind-tattered but oh, so alive.

It is difficult to be careful as he picks his way down to the shore, but the rocks are slick and the earth is soft and so he tries, but it is a relief when he reaches the sand. For a moment he only stands and watches the sea, still a roiling, silver thing with rain making mist above the waves, and the clamor of the seabirds is only background noise, familiar as his heartbeat.

A flash of white (he thinks then of Marisol’s wings) catches his dark-eyed gaze, but only for a moment, and then the gull is lost again in the curtain of rain. But something prickles within him, raising a strip of gooseflesh that has nothing at all to do with the cold rain, and the stallion takes a step toward where the bird has disappeared down the beach.

Strange, he thinks, for suddenly he is reminded of Ravos, and the thick and feral magic there. It is as if some piece of it has broken loose in the storm, and been swept up to the beach. (Perhaps instead Asterion should be thinking of what the commander had told him, of gods and their gifts, but the days of storm have left him half-feral, too).

For this reason he is not so surprised as he might have been to see the gull come winging back. When she swoops low, he leans away on instinct, unaware that the rain has stopped, focused only on the bright flash of her wings – and the glimmer of the thing she has dropped at his feet.

She lands beside it and the wind ruffles her feathers, but does nothing to disturb the keen serenity of her gaze, darker even than his own.

Asterion is not so appreciative of pretty things as most (he is too obtuse for most finery), but he draws in a breath when his gaze moves to the shell. It glimmers like an opal, like a butterfly’s wing, like a far-off cloud of starstuff, shapeless but becoming. It smells like salt and waves and wind, like all the treasures of his heart.

The bay stallion picks it up, wonderingly, and when his gaze moves to the gull (eye to eye, with his head lowered so) he could swear she’s smiling.

And then, more wondrous than anything:

Hello, she says, the word echoing with the clarity of a tide-pool in his mind, and Asterion knows the storm is truly over.

He had been drawn down to the beach alone, but he is not alone when he returns.

@Random Events  thank you so much, Sid, this was perfect!