[SWP] lightning never strikes twice

[Lysander]

 
 
 


For a moment it is only the susurrus of their breathing, only the feel of Isra’s skin against his and the warmth of their little group in the dark. It could be a universe then, their cave, and the monster waiting outside the worry of another world. There is the tang of copper and of gold on his tongue when he breaths and it reminds him of being a god. Sleeping under soil, waiting to rise; offerings of minerals and spices and blood.

When Isra steps toward the water Lysander almost holds his breath - but of course nothing happens. (A unicorn’s horn had always been used to purify, after all, and water more than anything). Still he makes no movement, only watches the slow fall of water drop by drop from the shining tip of her horn to spread in the pool.

After that he follows, winding through the steam, smiling his secret smile. What dim light there is splinters on the surface of the pool and throws up strange shapes like ripples of color on all their skin, and there in the heart of the mountain with the storm outside they are made into things as magic as the rift could have dreamed.

He only hesitates once more, at the edge of the pool as the stranger drinks. There is a laugh in the line of his lips when Katniss speaks, a laugh that falls out soft as fog when she says she does not mean them harm.

“It is not you I fear,” he answers, and steps into the water.

It is Isra he follows, and when she offers her story he meets her eyes and tilts his head to her, the smile softening to something secret - something that speaks of a long and bloody night beneath a baleful moon, bark wound into bandages like straw spun gold.

His gaze does not leave her again, not as thunder makes the cave quake like the belly of a beast and water streams down his sides hot as blood.

Lysander only waits for the storyteller to carry him away once more, worlds in worlds in worlds like a pool in a cave on a mountain in a land that the gods have forsaken.

we wake with bright eyes now
ours is a white lies town

@Isra @Katniss

[Isra]

Isra of thunder snow

' where souvenirs of tears are tucked away inside your soul. '


Isra is lost to the ripples of water as the other two watch each other like hawks and mice where neither is sure who is prey and who is predator. She only sees the ripples of lightning-light and the things created in that endless space between the darkness and the light.

It's the light she watches and the thunder that roars just as Isra starts her story. “There is a stag in the woods with spider-drawn webs between the tines of his antlers. Each web holds different universes that live in the droplets of blood that hang on the silken threads when a weaver has been lazy, foolish or too reckless with his art.” She pauses and smiles to herself in the darkness between bolts of lightning. And when she pauses she licks her lips and tastes blood, antiseptic and almost death.

“Between those tines though, there was one web that held not a spider but a corpse. One of the weavers gave his life for his universes, bled himself out to create life so that a lonely and sad bird could know love. For years his web was empty of new worlds, new universes, new lives. All the universes that lived on that web withered and died, without the god-spider.” Another bolt of lightning breaks up the darkness and reflects like torch-light off the tip of her horn. The following thunder seems almost like something besides thunder, something like how the shiver of a web might sound to a fly when a stag walks through the woods and his steps create a small breeze.

“It was during a winter storm-- not unlike this storm—that a butterfly came across the stag and his web-coated tines. “Could I take shelter in your tines until the storm passes? The winds have carried me far, far from my home where the sun always shines and the flowers always bloom. This forest seems dark and cold and empty.”

The stag, being a noble creature of webs and spiders and not of words only nodded and lifted his web-coated tines towards that bright, freezing butterfly. The butterfly picked the web with a corpse and dried drops of blood that held only dead universes in them.

He was a foolish butterfly, made stupid by the cold and he was quick to rest his weary wings. And when he was caught something strange happened to his wings. They became not wings but--” Outside the cave the lightning grows weak and distant and the thunder could be the rumble of a house cat's belly instead of a lion's fury.

In that silence that seems almost strange after the storm Isra rouses from her story, looks to Katniss and to Lysander and laughs. “It seems the storm has passed.” She shivers as she walks from the water in a swirl of steam and weak, almost nonexistent moonlight. To her it feels strange to lead the way back to the mountain from the darkness, to walk towards that thing that might still be circling and still feel the foolish bravery of a butterfly brush against her soul.

“Perhaps another night I'll finish the story..” And then Isra is gone, faded into the darkness like a wild unicorn instead of a queen.


@Katniss @Lysander

Art

[Lysander]

 
 
 


There is a stag in the woods with spider-drawn webs…

At the beginning of the story a smile winds itself like ivy across his dark lips, and only grows as she continues. When he closes his eyes he might not be in a pool in a cave in the black mountains at all, but beneath a fir tree with a stone as a pillow and the pain from a kelpie’s teeth fading from his side.

Lysander is perfectly content, then, with everything forgotten but the Storyteller and the tale she weaves. (Though he wonders, not for the first time, if she is the stag or the spider or the blood or each of them, weaving and weaving. Most of all he hopes she is not the corpse.)

She finishes too soon, he thinks - but of course all time is lost, there in the dark and the water and the storm. He lifts his muzzle, dripping with a sound like copper bowls ringing, from where he had been tracing it on the water’s surface, lost to the rhythm of her words.

The antlered stallion says nothing, but he lifts a brow at her, as if to say you would leave us here, Isra? But there is no anger in him, no frustration in that grin. “So it seems,” he says, and makes no mention of but, of an impression of huge wings in the near-darkness, of a presence waiting above the clouds, beyond the lightning.

If the storm has passed, the monster likely has, too.

He follows the unicorn up out of the water and shakes himself, boy-like, dog-like, spraying dark droplets against the cool dripping walls of the cavern. Lysander only cuts his gaze once more toward Katniss, and there is little readable in his green eyes before he turns away again.

For a moment, at the mouth of the cavern, he watches Isra go - but without a word of good-bye he turns back toward the Dusk Court, and lets his thoughts drift from spiders and butterflies to larger, more tangled webs.

we wake with bright eyes now
ours is a white lies town

closing this swp thread up to make room for more swp threads :p

[Katniss]

Katniss cannot figure why this stallion has so much distrust in her. She has never offered him a reason to doubt the words she is saying and yet, he seems content to question her every word. He looks up at Isra as if she is the all-knowing being, as if she is the one who can tell if Katniss can be trusted. What he doesn’t know is that Isra doesn’t really know her either. She just showed up wanting to help not too long ago. Perhaps something has happened that prevents them both from trusting strangers just wanting to help. Katniss wished that she knew what had happened to break their trust with strangers, but she does not ask this. Instead, she simply enters the water, hoping her actions can speak louder than her words. Even as she enters the water and looks back to him, his eyes are only on Isra. As he enters the waters, his eyes are fixated on her and Katniss can only sigh softly to herself. She is not going to force the stallion to trust her. He’s either going to trust her or he isn’t, but she is not going to go out of her way to prove herself to him. She will just continue on the path she has chosen and if it leads itself to him, then so be it. If it leads her away, then she’s lost nothing. So instead of focusing her time and energy on Lysander, she turns to listen to Isra’s story. It’s a long narrative that makes her pause and wonder. She says nothing, only listens. She is aware that the storm still rages on, that the lightening and thunder still echo in the cave. She is also aware when it begins to fade. It seems Isra has heard the fading storm because she too has stopped. Eyes watch as the mare begins to walk away. Katniss stands there, watching her wander. She watches the stallion follow Isra out of the cave and for a moment, she stands still. As the sound of hoof beats fade into the distances, Katniss listens to the sounds of the cave. The dripping water, the howling of wind, the flapping of wings by the resident bats. All of it is a soothing music to her ears and so she waits. It is only after a few long moments of silence that Katniss sighs to herself and exits the pool. She stays in the shelter of the cave until the water has dripped from her coat. Only then does she continue through the cave towards the exit.  Perhaps she would meet the other two again…perhaps not. @Lysander @Isra