they say you are a virtue are you mostly wasted or more precious?
L
eaf-shadows dapple her sides, paint illusions upon her wings, make her into something darker and more sinister than she is. Were it not for the laughter that shines like candlelight and the golden curve of horns so small, so sweet, tucked gently behind pale ears, Juniper might appear as something sinister lurking in the swamps. Like her skin, like her smile, like the silken strands that drip like water behind her, she darkens with the darkening of the sky.
The sounds of slowly moving water hits her first, footsteps moving in with the tell-tale sloshing to follow. Something is about, something that could eat her or simply pass her by. There is a thrill in her blood, she feels it in the way that her heart quickens in anticipation, how her muscles tighten. Juniper is ready to fly or ready to dance, whichever comes first she is unsure of.
When the morning before last had dawned, bright and beautiful, full of autumnal colors that lit the sky, she was in the court. Walls caged her, people surrounded her, bodies hummed with restless anticipation for their new Queen. Asterion - that star-struck souls he'd met while painting - was gone and left another in his place. Queen, Empress, Overlord. The title matters little to the goddess-girl. Only the wind holds sway over her, only her teachers and sisters and lovers even have a taste of where she might go or how she would get there.
Boldly, fearlessly, the woman in white moves forward. These wet grounds are her home, the every changing trees held her long before Death ever thought to try and conquer a woman meant for both land and sky, made of more than air and stardust, made of courage and heart beyond measure. "Shadows cannot hold you forever," she calls lyrically, pale crown reaching forward to peer around the next tree, to look where the footsteps fall. "And I will find all in time, come out, come play, come talk and dance. Can't you hear the wind calling you to me?" She hums it, she is a siren of the sky, her voice full of prayers and litanies, a psalm upon her lips and beads upon her brow. Storm cloak shifts about her skin, swishes with the ghost of a breeze that moves through the swamps.
Who is it, she wonders. Will they come play?
@Leto | "speaks" | notes: I hope this is okay ! Don't mind me hogging three of your threads
Her voice is the soft of the surf. It is the bubbles of breath that the sea sighs along the crests of her waves.
Leto is a shadow amidst the mists of Tinea. Now she wades through the waters with no fear of their grasp or their endless deep. Her skin itches for the sea. She is salt slick but becoming washed clean of the sea by the stagnant waters of the Swamp.
As she rises like a god from the depths of the water, her ebony skin gleams with the white of soaked stars. Silver scales are blooming along her throat and up her neck. They too gleam like starlight, they look to Leto’s shed-star skies and laugh. She is a triad now: shed-star, Ilati and kelpie in one. Leto is the earth, the sea, the sky. At last she is whole. At last she is right. Destiny feels right within her bones, it sings in silver notes through her blood.
Like the black glass of a midnight sea, the kelpie steps out from behind the brush. Her silver gaze lingers upon the goddess-girl and she slinks as the sea pours upon the shore. Shells and corals and ocean plants have now joined the pearls and golden leaves that hang from her mane. Even her bells have changed their song since they kissed the bottom of the ocean. Now they are plaintive whale song as they chime low and long amidst her mane.
Mine. That is the song of Anandi in her ear. The girl who made her breathes it out like a litany and how Leto’s bones hum with the song of her creator’s voice.
Mine, Leto thinks as she settles her galaxy gaze upon the ivory girl. The Change has seeped its way into her eyes as the sea and the stars swirl into one. One moment her gaze is the endlessness of stars swirling in galaxies and the next they are the whirling tumult of a storm savage sea. And at times they are both: A churning, storming sea of stars that foretell of oblivion.
Hunger pools upon her tongue and twines in threads of light through her sharpened teeth. Slim and feral, dark as the ocean’s deep, Leto reaches toward the girl like the tide toward the rocks. Golden sand gleams like fire in her lashes and along her cheeks. She wears her bloodsand as she wore her tribal markings. “Play, talk, dance…” Leto murmurs with the groan of the ocean tangled in her voice. “Is that all?” She whispers as waves upon Juniper’s skin.
The earth welcomes her home as she turns her gaze and presses her lips to the Ilati carvings upon the trees. Her brow presses to the trunk and her eyes close as the bark drinks in the water that drips from her skin.
@Juniper <3 You have a kelpie Leto - her first outing! -
<3| "speaks" | notes: table 2/2!! this was super fun to make
they say you are a virtue are you mostly wasted or more precious?
O
il dances against a tree, silver star-scales shimmer seductively atop it, and the girl with galaxy eyes stands before Vespera's Priestess as something beautiful and something strange. Breathtaking. It is the only way that Juniper knows to describe Leto in her waves or darkness and light.
Something about her is sacred.
Something about her is holy.
Something about her is strange and the goddess-girl wishes to know more.
Green, green, envious green eyes sweep over her from head to toe, flicking like fire upon each flame, each nuance of her body, and oh! how Juniper is starving for skin against skin that is not a part of the bustling streets. People jostle about Terrastella without really realizing whom they press into, whom they walk away from, whom they touch without any affection. It is a terrible feeling, a terrible thing, to so easily overcrowd and brush away the heart of a person without ever having tried to touch it (to taste it).
Golden antlers tip sideways, following the curious tilt to her crown, and what a piquant picture the girl paints among the swamp trees and grasses, with pale flowers and brush blooming at her feet, staring into the heart of a girl. Hunger echoes hunger, and they are for such wickedly different delights, but they call and answer in an endless song.
Like a siren, like the sky, Juniper cannot turn away, not yet. This body of water that shimmers behind Leto does not draw up a bucket from some well of fear that is still so young, so untapped. Only the sea and its endless surface, its endless depth, its endless unknowns can make her heart plummet. Now, Juniper is a bird, she is free.
"I can think of other things, or," a pause, "you could tell me of something, too," she murmurs as a falling star, as a the whisper of a cloud brushing against dark skin, and slowly steps from behind the tree. It is not the slowness of someone fearful and drowning, but the calculated grace of a girl who knows the beauty of the body, the way moonlight slips on pale skin, lights on dark eyes, dances on golden horns. Of a girl who practices seduction in the very way she breathes, knows pleasure just from the flutter of dark lashes. It is a dance centuries old, it is a welcoming, it is the start of a new adventure - and she breathes it in as the world breathes in the cosmos. Slowly, softly, anticipation a beast gnawing at her belly.
@Leto | "speaks" | notes: years later, we're back !
