It's a slight detour from his main objective, but once he'd left the close, muted quarters of the forest for more open ground and spotted the orange and pink of sunset reflecting harshly off what must be water in the distance, the colors shimmering back at him through a low lying blanket of fog, the claybank mule just had to veer off course, turning sharply south to indulge his curiosity.
As he approaches, it's the odor that strikes him first, a mixture of algae, rotting wood, and stagnant water. A swamp! And an enormous one at that. Beneath his hooves the soil gradually becomes more saturated and less densely packed. The ferns, shrubs, and wide bladed grass of the plains and forest dwindle, giving way to longer stemmed aquatic varieties. Huge, smooth trunked trees rear up out of the water at regular intervals, their bases wide and insulated by moss and creeping vines. Everything is green; it's only the shades that differ, ranging from florescent chartreuse to deep olive.
The stallion makes a low, appreciative noise in his throat, watching as the last streaks of color fade from both sky and reflection, anticipating the beauty of moonlight captured in mist, stars twinkling all around him, mirrored by the still surface of the marsh. He steps knee deep into the muck, strings of neon green swirling around his legs and clinging to the tips of his fur. The water is warm against his skin, pleasant.
He murmurs to himself, resting one hind hoof on its toe beneath the surface. "I've got the best seat in the house."
05-30-2020, 01:37 PM
Played by
Berb [PM] Posts: 19 — Threads: 3 Signos: 30
This place begins to endear itself to her. She opens and closes, like the push and pull of a tide. Maybe it is what Hraefn had settled back down inside of her, the calmness of oblivion—the knowledge, at least, of impending doom. It has allowed her to begin to let go of all the things that had been caught inside of her like animals in a trap. All the insecurities, the loss and the disillusionment.
She is comfortable at the sill, on the margins between here and there. She is most familiar with the spaces between. He is the hinterland; the ultimate edge of the earth and she had found him once more, beside a mirror-still lake, and consigned herself, again, to the breathy existence of waiting for the stars and the darkness around them to take her. To hold her to their stygian skin like kin and kith.
She learns their names. She calls them Tigris Cauda and Cithara. She draws them in formations and illustrations on the calf-skin parchment that shifts gently inside its holder as she walks in graceful, careful steps between islands of firmer ground. Where once these new stars felt like strangers, like a compass she could not read, now she has started to understand their navigational pulls. She orients herself to them—knows what constellations settle in the western sky in Spring; what settles in the east by Winter. She finds her way back to familiar places—the mirror-still lake, the quietude of the mountain’s peaking observatories—by way of the night sky as much as by the paths she confirms to memory.
Her mane and tail have been braided and fixed up in buns. Still, wayward curls of bright-white hair shake loose, drawing through the green-brown mud and bright-green algae like a paintbrush loading colour. She doesn’t try to remain clean, muck spatters her belly and chest; she’ll have to wash herself and the wolf-pelt that lays along the length of her back. Each squelching, sucking footstep reminds her of her childhood, of back home in the north where the thick pine stands were occasionally interrupted by dead-tree bogs. And though they always did seem a bit eerie—like graveyards marked with stark, dead birches for tombstones—Kyrr and her always found ways to make these places beautiful.
Kyrr would point out a mushroom growing on a fallow, sodden log—Stella would say, look how the stars reflect, even in the mire. Lovely, still.
She curls around the smooth-barked giants, shifting past clutches of cattail that sway and tickle her ribs. Now and then, she glimpses up to the darkened sky between the spread of the canopy, and the quiet here—the squish of mud and mire, the splash of water, the sway of plants—is hers and hers alone until, as it goes, it is not. She sees him, earthy-toned and content, at the centre of a small, marshy galaxy. She stops—the chains on her harness jingle gently for a moment; her documents and telescope sway to a still—the water ripples from her sunken feel, distorting the mimic stars and she is almost apologetic when she finally speaks, soft and brightly curious, “lovely, isn’t it?”
She shifts her weight, deep, blue gaze moving around him, to the settling night sky as it reflects back, like a mirror to an ancient and extinct world, “even here…”on earth. Her eyes return to him, sturdy, like something rooted—it reminds her of Kyrr, ponderosa and earth, and she settles into that in-between, “I’m Stellanor—Stella.”
He hears her approach. How could he not, with such prodigious sensory organs? They rotate atop his head like huge, shell-shaped satellites, adjusting to narrow in their focus on the sounds of reed and water disturbed, even while the rest of him resists distraction, loathe to let go of the wonder around him. Rude, perhaps, but the journey here has been long and as often mentally taxing as physically. He can't help but cling to this moment of beauty and innocent joy, letting it wash over him, loosening tensions he hadn't noticed building until they pinched and cramped along his spine.
It's not until she speaks, more gently than he'd anticipated, no ring of demand or accusation in her tone, that he lets himself be turned, his outline softening, but somehow still held apart, as if acknowledging, but not yet fully accepting of her presence. "Yes." He agrees, murmuring, "Exceedingly lovely." Bowing his coarse head, the mule feathers a deeply held breath across the ripples crisscrossing between them, watching as the reflected constellations wink in and out of position, creating countless new, unnamed designs. "It's so peaceful here. I think I needed the quiet more than I realized."
Inhaling now, the scent of damp and the permeating warmth of the water settling in the spaces between his bones, his eyes finally settle on her and widen as he realizes his own lack of manners. "I'm sorry, I'm not usually so..." Air-headed? Sensitive? Forthcoming? Easily distracted? Yes, he is, and he knows it well enough, but it's not like him to let such things fester into melancholy. "Well, I'm Willfur. It's very nice to meet you, Stella!"
He notices her harness then, expertly crafted, padded and lined with hooks and loops and other apparatus for - he assumes - carrying things. "Oh! How clever!" The configuration of straps and attachments around her neck and shoulders is much better designed than the simple leather satchel he carries, all his items jumbling together inside in a single mass of fabric, herbs, and trinkets. "And a telescope! Are you an astronomer? This must be the perfect place for it."
