Legions of horses are crossing the bridge built on the bones of a creature she once knew the melody of. In each of their gazes, as Warset looks down upon them, there lives an echoing reflection of a cave carved out of the bones of a galaxy. From above them she can draw constellations out of the brightness of their wondrous looks. She can whisper melodies to the way their lashes flutter over the brightness until each face is fat with two lost and flickering stars.
Deep in her chest, below the fresh memory of bloodletting, something trembles and remembers an agony deeper and crueler than a mortal body can understand.
And with that suffering crashing through her soul, shaping it, changing it, she crosses to the city by way of the hollow rib-cage beneath the bridge.
She can taste the musk and rot on her tongue (and it tastes like a cave buried in the snow). The tips of her wings brush the convex curls of bone in whispering eulogies of a song she once sung to the creature’s forgotten name. Warset imagines she can feel that same song in her ribcage, where bone brushes muscle and muscle the blood of a star. No one remembers that song either, no one but the curse in her necklace reflecting her shining eyes in tangles of red and silver on a canvas of death.
And she does not sing, does not whisper in more than wing language, until her hooves whisper against the devious streets of the city. She remembers a galaxy that looked like this once, fields of rainbow dust and glowing kaleidoscope gazes. She remembers how it unfolded into a creature that was a dragon but also so much more than a dragon. She remembers the color of its teeth.
So she knows better, she really does, than to wander the streets with the legions of horses that do not know better. And she knows better than to meander in and out of the shops like another fly begging to be caught between the fangs of a story-telling spider. But she wanders with the horses anyway, and lets her sorrow turn to song in the weeping store (because her own sorrow is not deep enough to make her wail, and wail, and wail, until the world cracks with the coldness of it).
The stones turn to lapis, and quartz, and gold-leaf that gilds the tips of her too long hair as she walks. Marble echoes beneath her hooves as the bloody not-sun, shifts across the cave ceiling until it is joined by a twin. Her own lips tingle with the echo of the same song, the one that lives in the belly of a beast she can almost not remember (as if this body is too frail to hold the weight of such a name).
Her lips tingle, and her belly hums, and her blood races like a sparrow in a storm. But her lips do not make a single sound until she stands in the million gaze of castle doors. The door-eyes blink at her and she at them. And she knows they remember all the things she cannot name but that she can sing of.
The sound her wings make as they snap open is not unlike a bone breaking in the dead-of-night-- death followed by the weighted silence of nothing. Her gilded hair drags across the steps as she alights on the first flight of them. The eyes of the door blink again.
And so do the eyes of Warset when she turns with the sigh of a cosmic song on her lips (instead of smile) to look at the horse that has joined her out of the legions of them.
It all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end.
hen Momma told me about the island, she said it was like a jungle. There was grass as tall as trees, nearly blocking out the sun as they swayed in the breeze. Her magic changed too and she could manipulate water instead of fire. She told me it would be fun to explore and I wouldn't have to worry about her fire appearing suddenly. She knows how scared I get, although I'm trying to be better about it.
But when we made it here, it didn't look at all like the magical land she told me about. Instead, it looked and smelled like death. The caves were dark and menacing, everything seemed to be made from bone. I've never seen anything more terrifying in my life.
Then we were separated.
It all happened so fast. We were together and then something happened where the sun was gone (although I'm not totally sure that was the sun). I lost track of where Momma was and I couldn't smell her because of the strong death smell. I wandered around blindly until the light came back, but by then she was gone. I thought I heard her voice in the distance, but I couldn't figure out what direction it was in. I tried to scream for her, but I think my voice got lost in this place. It's like the monster swallowed it up in a big yawn.
So I've been wandering since. Everything in me feels tired and scared and hurt. My throat is so sore from trying to call out for Momma and my eyelids are heavy from how much I've been crying. It all just took so much energy out of me and… I… just want… to…
I jerk my head awake. No, I can't sleep here. I don't know where here is. I don't know what's here or where Momma is. If I fall asleep, I'm afraid I'll never wake up. I don't want something to gobble me up when I'm not looking or for Momma to finally get close but I don't hear her.
My legs are trembling as I cross the bone bridge. I look up at the large ribcage and it feels like I'm really walking into the belly of the beast now. Only this looks like a lost city- maybe what used to be a Court but was eaten by the monster. Somehow there are other horses here, but they shoo me away or shake their head when I ask if they've seen Momma. No one knows her here. I'm doomed.
So when I see a woman made of the night sky and stardust with magnificent wings, my eyes grow wider. I'm desperate, so I come up to her with hope in my eyes and more tears.
"P..please…" I start to say, my voice so raspy from my sore throat. "Do you know where the Regent of Night Court is? Morrighan? She's-" I have to cough. My throat hurts so, so much. "She's my momma. I just want to go home…" I feel defeated and so tired. I just want to find Momma so we can curl up in the coziness of our castle, not whatever this place is. I never want to be here again.
§
she listens to wind secrets
and echoes of distant star songs
Each whisper of a gemstone eye gathers with its siblings until the castle doorway is singing a dirge. Warset remembers the song. Deep in the depths of her almost-gone star soul, she remembers. When she blinks (with her eyelids that know no dirge to sing) she can imagine it caught in the tongues of the star-lions and the comet-foxes. Her own lips vibrate with the memory, although the notes are not made for mortal things to sing and so the melody sounds broken when she answers the doorway.
But they blink back at her, with the same sort of language her wings understand, and grant her the entrance she did not remember asking for.
Her shadow is just falling on the third step when the child (innocent as all things free of agony are) rushes towards her. Her heart, that frail mortal thing in her chest, stumbles and stutters like a dead-bird falling through a summer rain. Behind her teeth she remembers the taste of this same panic, this same fear of death and forever solitude.
And she remembers pleading for death instead of help (and she tries not to hate this child for the memory).
“Hush.” She hums the word because she remembers too, in brief flashes between the blood-silver of agony, how her star sisters had clamoured and screamed each time one of them fell. On the outskirts of the city, where the noose of it swings in a knot, the bones of a star fall from the cleaning and dissentrage in the streets like wishes. The trembling of the streets feels like a fourth soul sinking into the wreckage of her.
Warset lifts a wing, unaware of the way she glitters like a beast in the gloaming eye-light. “Breathe.” A demand, spoken almost unkindly, because she cannot find in the aftermath of captivity the empathy for lost foals in the belly of monsters and dead stars. With the tip of her wing she brushes a tear from the child’s cheek (because she must move to silence the purring of a leopard in her chest).
It is better, she thinks, than roaring at each memory of agony running in shards through her heart.
“I will help you find her.” Another star-corpse falls and turns to dust at the echo of song in her voice as she turns once more to meet the many-gazes of the castle doors in their chanting dirge of blinking. And this time, when her shadow falls upon the third stair she does not turn away from the welcome in the doorway.
A mortal might have waited for the child to join her. A leopard does not think to pause. And a suffering dead-star feeling each blink like a reminiscence does not think of caution or the looming fear of a forever solitude.
She thinks only a home as a lost thing thinks of it.
It all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end.
here is something different to the way this lady comforts me. It's not a motherly kind of comfort, definitely not like how Momma is with me. Still, it's not entirely bad and I appreciate her being nice to me.
I'm admiring her wings as she lifts one to then wipe a tear from my cheek. The way she glitters like a starry sky is so mesmerizing to me. I start to wonder if she might be a Shed Star because she looks just like how they've been described to me. Plus, I'm always a little jealous of those born with wings. I dream of flying and soaring high above the sky, looking down on the world like my hawk does. It would definitely help to have that ability now when I've been so lost.
"T-thank you," I stutter when she says she'll help me find Momma. Finally, someone who can help me. It feels like a relief and so I let out a deep breath I didn't realize I was holding.
She walks into the castle and I follow her, feeling that fear creeping in again. "Do you think she came in here?" I ask, curious if she might somehow have stronger senses than me. I know that if Bram were here with me, he'd be able to pick up on scent trails in no time, but I'm assuming he's wherever Momma is.
"My name is Maeve by the way. What's yours? Where are you from?" While this place terrifies me and I don't like the way my footsteps echo here, I try to stay positive. At least now I'm no longer alone.
§
she listens to wind secrets
and echoes of distant star songs
Around her, as the castle unfurls like a body, the hallways do not feel like a horror of weight pressing in. Each of her steps, as they echo like a bass-beast, do not feel like a eulogy but a sonnet. Her feathers, as they sweep worms, and diamond dust, and red-eyed creatures, from the walls do not feel like weapons of flight. She feels, as the castle gloaming wraps around her, like the dead star in the center of a blackhole.
Warset feels like gravity, like an eclipse, like a tiny memory of the formless and mighty things she used to be. And for a moment, one single moment of glory, she feels inescapable when she snaps open her wings from wall to wall and the golden firelight in the hanging lamps turns her into not a girl, or a star, or a cursed thing, but a constellation.
In that single moment she forgets the other lost thing following closely behind. At that moment she is home.
But as all mortal things do, as she has discovered, the child shatters the revelation of home. It dissolves around her in fragments of light when her wings settle back against her still-frail ribs. “The city will make everyone come to the castle eventually.” Warset does not bother to explain the meaning only stars know in the spiraling streets and the shops that do not scream but sing a song long forgotten by the children of god.
They hallway starts to pitch downward before she speaks again and it’s easier to bury the reality of all the dreams she’s come so deep in the belly of Novus. “You may call me Warset and I am from a place very, very far from this one.” But it’s not so far, she thinks, now.
Her eyes leave trails of silverlight on the walls when she looks back at Maeve. “Tell me of your mother. Will she look for you?” And she does not think the question strange at all, stars have no young to look for, or after, or sing too. They only sing to war, and dragons, and serpents circling the many worlds she still remembers how to name.
Warset has not forgotten the singing. Not yet.
It all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end.
his castle isn't like the one at home, not even close. As we walk through, it feels like it's a living being that we've walked into the mouth of. I don't know if it's my eyes tricking me, but it looks like the walls are breathing. It's so freaky and I don't understand how this lady isn't as weirded out as I am. She just stretches out her wings like she's getting comfortable. I cringe, but hope that maybe this means she really can help me.
I don't understand what she means- why would everyone want to come here? Is there some treasure in here that I don't know about? If so, that makes sense since everyone loves treasure, but otherwise I have no idea.
Warset, her name is exotic just like how she shimmers like the night sky. She says she's from far away and I wonder if maybe that's why she looks like a billion stars. I almost want to ask, but instead she asks me about Momma. I figure this is probably more important anyway, so I save the question for later.
"Oh yeah, she loves me a lot. She's probably worried sick right now… I feel really bad, but she's definitely looking for me. I just have to figure out where she's been looking," I explain, trying to stay positive that we'll find each other after all this. I don't want to be stuck here forever, it smells funny.
Actually, it didn't smell funny before. I don't even know how to explain it, but it's such a strong stench that it makes my nose crinkle. "Do you-" I start to ask Warset if she notices it too, but I'm cut off by the screeching of something. Then around the corner comes the scariest demon I've ever seen. It looks like it's made of shadows and nearly fills the entire space in front of us. Then I see the pearly white of its many teeth and its many eyes glow hungrily at the two of us.
I gulp. I want to scream and hide behind Warset. I hope the pegasus made of stars can fight for me since I don't know how to. I want to do a lot of things, but I'm frozen in fear instead.
§
she listens to wind secrets
and echoes of distant star songs
The darkness, as they slope down into the castle’s middle, seems without end. In it she can see the suggestion of shapes where the darkness has laid upon itself like a bruise. A five-headed lion walks across their path and Warset can almost hear the scratching whine of his eagle’s claws across the stone. A lamb chews itself out of the darkness and when she blinks the silver of her gaze refracts across those sorrowful, muted eyes. A star dances, a flash of silver brighter than her eyes, somewhere too distant to reach.
Her heart strains at the sight like a comet against the gravity of a moon.
Light from some strange source catches in the ivory of her wingtip. When she turns to find the source, distracted enough that she’s stopped listening to the child, there is only a darkening on the blackness to suggest there has been a thing there at all. Instincts, buried this deep into the daylight hour, start to rise the hair on her spine in warning. The leopard, and the star, know exactly how terrible the darkening of the blackness can be.
Perhaps it’s why she’s already baring her teeth at the darkness as it reaches towards them.
What is a star, a thing of fire and silver, but a brightness to swallow up the darkness down into the stone-pit of it?
Warset does not hear the child glup, nor step away from the darkness with its mouth of teeth. In the shape of it she can see the shape of a lion, a bear, a snake with seven heads, a hole searching for a key of music. Each shape makes her remember a name, a line of song, a thrilling harpsichord cry. Her wings snap out again, and again, and again, until she’s alive with light enough to blind. Even in the face of a dragon she had not bowed, and she will not bend her head at a monster now. Never again, she tells herself as she snarls at the dark demon, never again.
And when the monster streaks down, down, down into the yawning darkness where there is not a memory of a star to be seen, Warset gives chase (without a single thought spared for the child). And on her lips, as she gallops through the blackness, is a song that has the castle walls trembling as star-bones start to fall from the cavern walls.
It all seems like a horrible tragedy, with fate pressing on relentlessly to some destined end.
ime seems to move differently here. One moment, I am hiding behind Warset, the next she is running and I see the demon open its jaws so wide. I can see the sharp teeth glistening and its drool dripping down onto the floor. It's splattering the walls, or maybe that's blood or bones.
I don't know what's real anymore.
I am alone.
I think Warset ran towards it and not away, but I don't know anymore. I just want to get away, far away, from whatever this thing is. I want to find Momma, but I'm starting to lose hope.
So I run. I run as fast as I can. It feels like I'm being watched by Isolt again and I can feel the embers spark at my feet with each step. No, no, no.
I run to find a hiding place, anywhere that the demon thing can't find me. I hope that Momma is here somewhere and Isolt is wrong. I found Warset, so I hope Momma will find me next. Maybe this will all turn out to be one long nightmare that I'll wake up from soon.
I hope, I hope.
§
she listens to wind secrets
and echoes of distant star songs
