As Leonidas watches his sister dance, switching eerily from filly to colt and back again, he never thinks that he and Aspara would become like her, like it. With skin like gossamer, little more than a breath in the air, a strange mist his tines pass through. The child swirls where he strikes, his sister disappearing as readily as smoke in the breeze. When the silver mist reforms it is less Aster and more strangling colt.
More and more spirits bloom out of the darkness, bright with their firefly light. Their wings press upon his cheeks, his throat his shoulders. He feels the ring of them upon the tines of his antlers. It sings like he thinks stars might. Yet the noise echoes strangely, wrongly. He returns to Aspara, to the sound of their horns meeting which is more right, more perfect than the wrong, doppelganger noise of firefly wings upon his tines.
The child is soundless as it dances through the descending mist. It is a tribal dance, an ancient rollick abound with fetid magic. The wild-wood boy tastes it upon the air, he can almost feel a torn veil sigh its ragged pieces against him as it passes over. The mists entomb them, until their only world is the spot where they stand, a moonlight girl and a sunbright boy trapped within a deathless orb.
But their colour is fading. The glow of his antlers no longer outshines the fireflies. The spirits’ flesh becomes less ghostly and far more solid. His gaze snags onto Aspara, he expects to drown in blue, but her eyes are pale. She is a phantom beside him, her skin thin, thin, thin. Fear tangles up into his throat but already Aster is turning and fleeing. The words of the colt, who had smiled so brightly as he was rewarded with the chance to live again, chase at their heels.
It happens so fast, even as he runs. His magic stirs with his adrenaline. Faster, faster! it cries out through his every thread of existence. Every part of Leonidas was made to make time turn faster and the spirit magic eats away at his body. He and Aspara no longer run but float through the wood. He cannot feel his limbs. ”Hurry!” The boy implores his city girl as he presses his teeth to her flank urging her, begging her, quicker, quicker!.
What would he give to hear the way she once crashed through the brush? He yearns to drown himself in the dirty scents of the city that clung to her skin. Now Aspara makes no sound and there is no scent about her fading body. She is disappearing like snow beneath the sun.
When she leads him into the river, Apsara is little more than a phantom girl. Her skin pearlescent and translucent. Leonidas can see the midnight sky upon the mirrored surface of the water through her skin. A strangled cry escapes him at the sight of her. Only then does he realise the water around him does not ripple. He does not feel the heat or the cool of its touch. He does not feel the water at all.
Frantic, he reaches for Aspara, clutching for her as he had once clutched the air where his family had disappeared into another world. He felt nothing of them then, he feels nothing of Aspara now.
His laughter echoes in your ears, trickling down your spine like ice water. Perhaps it is rage, or disbelief, or panic -- perhaps it is even a mixture of all three -- that has you turning and racing for the river. Maybe it is only desperation, the realization that the stranger from the beginning of the maze was right, the sudden knowing that danger lurks in places you would not have imagined.
Through the grey-twilight forest you race like a wild thing set free and perhaps, in this moment, you are. There are no branches to snag your mane, no roots to catch the tips of your hooves. Your body passes harmlessly through them, mist exploding in all the places you might have bled before.
Maybe it is only now that you realize this is real, and no longer a game.
The forest feels endless, and the river a lifetime away, as the shadows creep ever deeper and mist floods the ground around your hooves. But step by step, stride by stride, you press on and on and on --
The river seems to be glowing in the moonlight, beckoning you to leap into her open arms.
Whether you leap from the rocks or you wade gently in from the shore, it will welcome you like a mother welcoming her prodigal child home. It will caress your sides and shush your trembling heart, and when your head lifts from the surface it sends a dozen fireflies to alight upon your skin in comfort (or is it an apology?). And yet when you look down --
Your reflection stares back at you from the water, but it seems different to you now. Like the world has been turned, and you are not looking down at the water -- but looking up from it.
You are not the same Leonidas, or the same Aspara, that began the trail tonight.
Even when the mist begins to drain from your body (be it now or tomorrow, when you leave the river or while you wander confused through the forest), something feels -- wrong. Like there is some part of you missing, some part that is still as formless as the mist.
Is it your heart? Your soul?
Or is it something more important than that?
The forest is unable to re-transform you, at least right away. And yet, the ghost-colt was not quite right in his prediction; the effects will not remain permanent. It is up to you how long it takes to transform back to a normal horse again (but please note if you'd like them to remain misty forever, it will require a passive magic purchase! please reach out to @sid to discuss if you would like to go this route), feel free to interpret this prompt however you wish!
@Aspara & @Leonidas have both been awarded +300 signos for finishing this quest! Thank you for participating!
At least it didn’t hurt. I guess I’m thankful for that. In fact it was the opposite of pain- I didn’t feel much at all. You’d think it would feel cold, given all the ghost stories and such, but it was just… nothingness. Even when the fireflies came, something expressive and apologetic in the meandering path they took to land on us, I felt nothing. I looked to Leonidas and saw his ghostly image looking back at me, and my heart sank.
The strangest part about the whole ordeal was not knowing where I began and ended. I could still see my body, although just barely. It was transparent and colorless, not that there was much color in it to begin with, and although I could see straight through it there was a definite, if subtle, edge where my flesh ended. (If you could still call it flesh?) But even though I could look down and see the outline of my body, and know where it ended, where it touched the flowing water and where it met the cool air, I could not feel these things. Not only had I lost all sensation of temperature and texture, I had no sense of my body’s size or scale. I could be the river itself, or the earth or sky. With my eyes closed, I could be everywhere or nowhere- smile how could I know without feeling?
Leonidas’ touch went right through me, and my heart trembled with fear.
I moved what I thought was my cheek right up alongside his. When I stayed there and closed my eyes, I almost thought I could feel the warmth of him, reaching for the warmth in me. It wasn’t fair, we were just children. We had our whole lives ahead of us. Would we never again be able to feel the earth under our hooves? Would we never again touch another?
What had become of us? What would become of us? The river was supposed to make it better...
“Oh, it… we’re still… are we ghosts?” My voice sounded too casual. I think if I were alone I would have collapsed into a puddle of tears right then and there. The river would sweep me out to sea and I would become one with the waves. (It was not the worst fate- I had always secretly wanted to dance as they did.) But I was not alone, and I had to be strong for Leonidas just as I would be strong for my sister if she was there.
“Come on, I know a healer who lives in Delumine. I’m sure she can help us.” I didn’t personally know her, but Eik had told me of a friend named @Corrdelia, and that she had moved to Dawn. I also had no idea where to find her, but that was a problem that could be solved. I really just needed something to do, I needed action, or else the gravity of the situation would suck me in and I would be lost to despair.
I drew away from Leonidas, gave him the bravest smile I could muster, and turned to walk-float?- out of the river and toward the flickering lights of the court outskirts, where most of the populace was making merry. I envied them, all those strangers so sweetly oblivious to the terrors of the night. I couldn’t go back to that frame of mind. I never would.
Long after my body returned (solid, warm, and real; prone to tripping and bruising; kissable and breakable) I would think of that night and its deathliness, its deception, and something in me would sharpen on the whetstone of memory.
MAKE A BEAUTIFUL
FIRE!
@Leonidas thank you for a beautiful thread <3 I can't wait to write them together again!
It was typical. The wild-wood boy had spent as much of his life as he could remember remaining untouched. Yet, the one girl who touches him (and who Leonidas decides he enjoys touched by) at the conclusion of one night with him is utterly untouchable.
She is beside him, the boy can see where her faded body, silver and ghostly, should be pressed against his. He remembers (already) how her cheek should feel upon his. But there is no warmth to her touch. There is no soft skin, the likes of which he had never felt before. She pressed her body to his but there is nothing of her. He cannot feel himself and he cannot feel where he ends or she begins. The water runs through them and he does not feel that either.
There is no comfort to be found in their embrace. Aspara has become little more than air. He can see the stars where her eyes were once dark and lovely. The feral boy breathes a rattling, trembling breath. Breathing feels like nothing at all.
Apsara smiles at him, speaks and he wonders how her voice has become so strange. It echoes as if reaching him from another place. He wonders how she can speak at all when their bodies are fading to nothing and the waters are not helping.
When will he be able to feel the rains upon his back? Or the leaves across his sides? Or the way a butterfly lands and presses its small feet upon the curve of his cheek. He longs even for the fireflies that tangle in his hair. Now they only drift through him as if he is not there at all.
They were strangers at the start. He thought her pretty, he might have followed her for that alone. Yet circumstance has seen to bind them tighter yet. When she moves for the bank Leonidas follows, easy as an impulse, an answering beat of a heart. The Denocte girl speaks of healers and the boy is wary, he has seen healers plucking roots and leaves out of the grounds, he has seen their strange magics. Yet he follows her as she directs him too. The water does not sluice from his skin nor does it fall like tears. It was never even upon him to begin with. The water runs on as the children leaves it. Its place knows them no more, as if they had never even been there.
“Will you live with me in the woods?” The boy asks, “If we never get our bodies back?” For Leonidas thinks life might not be so different for him anyway. He never was noticed before. He just needs to get used to never feeling anything upon his body again. Yet he thinks he might miss her touch most of all.
Apsara turns to him and smiles. His is a reflection of her own: braver and brighter than they felt. The wild boy follows the city girl as she leads him away in search of a healer.
