She hums her swansong, soft as the wind, gentle as the rolling clouds. Juniper has been to Day. Oh yes, long, long ago. Before she met El Rey, before he held her in his arms and called her his little dove, before their souls brushed just as the night kissed the day good morning. Then, she'd fallen asleep and crashed into a pool of water, rising, glistening as any goddess-girl does, to see the eyes of a man full of questions and life.
His vitality, his curiosity, it appealed to her and so she'd stayed for a time. However brief it had been, his spell over her wandering eyes did not last long, and Juniper left in the night, disappearing as a cloud of smoke... There is only the mystery of her left to that man now.
She is an enigma to so many.
Now, in a cloud of dust she arrives again, settling hooves unto the ground, glancing left, right, and tucking her stormy cloak close. Loosely it wraps about her throat, carefully it is worn as a hood, hiding golden horns that are so similar to El rey's and yet so different. Made of gossamer dreams and fairy dust, Juniper slips among the crowds of Solterra as any dancer would. Smooth, sleek, strong.
There and gone.
There
and
gone.
At last, she comes to the ring. Comes and watches the fighters fight, watches her dark bull as his skin is torn and sweat sticks sweetly to his neck. Back in their home, back in the swamps, it clung to him differently. There, it is much more humid than in the deserts of Day.
The little dove watches and waits, and when her bull is through with his fight, she turns to fight her own battle, surging through the crowds as well as any pickpocket, at last coming close to pull him near, draw her bull's cheek to her own, and urge him back into a shaded alcove where she could better see him away from the rumble of the people. They are people who demand his blood, his sweat, his death...
Vespera teaches her to love, and oh, she does! She loves him so tightly, so dearly!
So Juniper wonders... Is it Solis who teaches his children to hate?
@El Rey | "speaks" | notes: I NEED THEM IN MY LIFE AGAIN
Resolved as he'd been to die mere minutes ago, he is now more intent than ever on living. Screams and teeth and swords and hooves chase him, the crowd finally surging like a wave, as he'd imagined, foam pink with blood and waters red. When Juniper's cheek brushes against his, he almost gores her, until he sees - no, smells - his dove. Swampwater and daydreams. Into a shadowed alcove they go, hidden from the Solterran bloodlust, at least momentarily.
He is not happy to see her. What he feels - is dread. And even more than that - fear.
"Juniper, you - you - why are you here? You have to go! They will kill you." He hisses this into her ear, face pressed against her, chest heaving. The touch of her skin against his is all he wants, in eternity. But now is not when such eternity begins, and he thinks now that it might never begin at all.
@Juniper ”in blood the blade, to its golden hilt, I’ll drown,“ I pledge you now, to death they all are bound,
She is quiet as the sun in those moments when he follows. These are the moments that she listens to the wind as it whistles in and out of his lungs, panting, rushing, falling from his lips while he tries to calm himself. Even his beating heart is felt against her side when she presses so close to him, extending her wings up, up, up to block the entrance, up to hide her bull.
He falls into her skin like darkness.
She lets him rest there, lets his words slip on her spine as water over morning leaves still humming from a cool night and trying to keep warm. Juniper does that now, tries to keep warm, and lets her sister's love wash over her after El Rey is through.
"I could not stay where you were not." She soothes him, pressing her brow to his brow, sweeping one dusky wing forward to kiss his side gently just as she did when they met so long ago in the Night Markets, when those crowds overwhelmed him, too. Her heart sings to him, her blood is a river stopped up when the dark bull is not there.
With a tilted head and curious eyes, she traces the cuts on his skin and murmurs a prayer to sweet Vespera. "Tell me, my bull, would you have me stripped from your side so easily? I do not fear the hands of any man," and there is the goddess-girl he met again, shining and resplendent, shimmering even in their shadowed alcove. Hers is a voice full of calmness, full of faith. Hers is a temple still calling all travelers home, still welcoming them by her eternal fire.
sometimes things acquire a tenderness, a monstrous tenderness we don't expect from them.
He prays that her wing shields them from the crowd, from its sight. He wants to feel those feathers - her feathers - forever. She is everything. His heart slams in his chest as she speaks, saying such heart-wrenching words as only Juniper would. “I could not stay where you were not.”
Her love is unfathomable. But it is dangerous. “Oh, gods, but you should have.”
He thinks she is praying, too. He shivers, sweat turning clammy too soon. “I would not strip you from my side ever. You are as my own rib-bones. But you should fear them. They hate me. And they would take the opportunity to hate you.” El Rey pauses, blinking away sweat or tears. “And you, my love...are above all hate.” He kisses her brow, and glances at the spaces between her feathers. He thinks the crowd is beginning to quiet, to ebb in some direction that he was thought to go in. He hopes this above all other things; above all other things, he hopes this moment nestled in Juniper's wings lasts forever. In another time. Another place. “They-” he starts, then inhales shakily. “I know what you have said. What you feel. But they- would prosecute me for my crimes.” - though they were not crimes at the time - “Not even. Execute me. Without trial. Without thought for my reform. Without thought for whom I love,” he gazes into her eyes, “or who loves me.”
"I would not," she whispers in return, meeting his black gaze, her own fiery heart lurching up to pound and drum its fingers along her ribs, press petal-weights into her spine until it is steel, unbendable and unbroken. Dark nares flare as she takes in the scent of anger, the stench of his nerves. Even the sweat of him is sweet to her, but now, when he becomes soft and hard, worried for her safety and longing to push her away, she is an unfathomable beast.
Her smile is a scythe through stalks of corn, cutting easily into the world as though pulling a babe from a mother's heaving womb. "They would try, and you know what would happen, El Rey? Those mortals would fail." HIs kiss to her brow moments before does nothing to settle her, does not ease the anger of a woman scorned.
Who are they, after all, to take him from her?
He chose her and she chose him.
It is simple, the way they love. It is dark, the way they care. And she would bleed a thousand throats of their sanguine jewels to keep him safe, to keep him sane. Juniper knows what it is to see a creature die. She remembers the sacrifices left on Vespera's alter. She remembers the corpses beasts in her swamp left. Some, when she found them, were still warm. Some, when she pried open their ribs, still held their dear heart beating.
Juniper knows death, has tasted its stench upon her skin. She would not have him pulled to a place she would not follow. And so she buts his shoulder, for that is as high as she can reach when he looks down upon her like a child. "I won't let you go alone," she tells him, stubborn as a girl losing her first tooth. He's adamant, but she's just as stubborn.
