[P] into the wild (world out there)

[Atlas]

chasing all my demons out,
take me by the hand / through the doubt

Long ago, on a very different day, Atlas had stumbled off the deck of the Vis Vitalis, bid goodbye to his new friend, Captain Thunderclash, and became a longterm resident of a Terrastellan boarding house. He had crossed the Terminus Sea, through storm and strife, feeling at the end of his long journey. After all, he had traversed and survived the terrible Sadugal desert, survived all the challenges thrown his way, and arrived in a new land, scarred, humbled, and dragging his fair share of skeletons. He had found meager work as a scribe, copying lists, recording inventories, and acting as a stenographer for poets and actors of the spoken word.

For a long time, he’d hunched in his little boarding house, trying to convince himself he was content. But Atlas was a nomad at heart-- a harried wanderer, doomed to forever walk the land, and when he departed Terrastella, he left feeling that, while he certainly had a place to return to, it was not quite home. It was a thread, a theme, that would continue to play out in his journeys across Novus: he had places he felt comfortable revisiting, but nowhere he was truly connected, nowhere that would jump from his lips at the question “So, where are you from?”

He thinks that now as he looks out over the same sea which had brought him to Novus so very long ago. The gulls are loud in the summer night, and the stars are bright in a cloudless sky. He can name them all, now-- little Aladhfar, the golden centre of the Lyre; Amansizaya, the knot in the wooden canoe of the fisher-horse; bright red Diadem, the crown jewel of Vespera’s Tiara. He knows the stars, now, and he knows this sea; these cliffs; this castle. But is this his home?

Deep at the center of it all there is a question, and it is one of fear. Why is he so hesitant to settle? What terrifies him so about putting down roots, about returning home? On the surface, he argues it is because there is so much to discover. But in reality, the crux of the issue (there are nine stars in Crux, it rises in winter, and intersects the Tiara on an angle) is he is scared that, one day, like all his other days, there will be no home to return to; the people he knows and loves will be dead, or look at him as though he is a stranger; and though it is unlikely that Terrastella will suddenly crumble to the ground, surely Zukai also still stands, it’s halls full of ghosts?

He had a wife, once, and though he could not love her in that way, she was a friend; he’d a son (nephew), and brothers, and people whose company he enjoyed. He’d had Nashira. And when she’d cut the golden hair from his neck and bid him flee with his life everything had been severed by that one, single, swing of the blade. It was that easy.

He is on the ramparts, staring out at the sky through an embrasure in the castle wall, as the Terminus continues its quest to swallow the castle from below. The air is heavy with heat and salt. Terrastella’s singular tower looms behind him, a tall, black shadow, as poignant and stoic as the questions now raging within his mind.

@Elena,
he just wants to be useful

[Elena]

elena
—
« ♡ »

happiness is a butterfly, we should catch it while dancing

H

ow many places has the wind traveled? What has it seen? The cliffs it must have dove from, the cheeks it must have kissed, the trees it must have touched. Does it go and go and go until it settles in at the end, happy and content?

She would love to have those perfect endings, but she learned a long time ago that happiness in her life would be fleeting. She had moments of it, to be sure. She had beautiful, shining moments where it seemed that it would last forever—that she would be able to bask in the sunlight of her joy for the rest of her life—but they never lasted. Each and every one of them was accompanied by its own sunset and then the darkest of nights—the longest of midnights.

Which makes this brief interlude of peace all the more sweet, all the more terrifying. She shakes underneath that crown upon her head when she finds moments alone in her chambers, but out into the public eye, she is warm and confident, their fearless leader. She is not made to lead things. Is not meant for the role she has been given. She is not a warrior, but sometimes one must do what is needed. It is only with Azrael that she can let any of her guard down. Elena cannot remember Elliana’s first steps or their first kiss, but she would never forget how her heart only trembles in his hands. There, her heart flutters like a caught butterfly. She rests tucked close to his side, as she prefers to do, with her cheek pressed to the beating of his heart because sometimes this is the only sound that can lull her to sleep.

But now those blue eyes are open. She has not had nightmares in months, and she doesn’t know why they suddenly have chosen to return now.

It was near dawn when she was startled awake, her heart thundering wildly against her chest and her golden skin glistening with a cold sweat. She swears she can still feel the cold seeping into her skin, the ice wrapping around her.

She rises from bed. She walks. She looks out her window and onto the streets of Dusk Court. Her heart roars again, pride evident in her eyes. Lovely morning for a stroll. Lovely morning to clear one’s head. Elena transverses the quiet streets, looks to be little more than a ghost. Blue eyes spot another soul, standing in the shadows of the castle. “Are you lost?” She asks him, and despite the question, and the longing in her voice, there is a smile on her face.

@Atlas elena speaks

« r »

[Atlas]

chasing all my demons out,
take me by the hand / through the doubt

It is a hard thing to wrap one’s mind around the transient nature of eternity. That the wind is always blowing, even if you do not feel it. That the sun is always shining, even if you do not see it. To think about the size of an ocean, of a continent, of a planet; times and masses larger than human comprehension. To think that things so great and grand had a beginning. Where was the ‘start’? Of time, of growth? An unfathomable concept.

The opposite, then, the comforting trough of thought, of mind, and of heart, was to believe in a religion. That creatures of godly power held responsibility for our beginnings, and the beginnings of things wilder and more powerful than mortals would ever be. The ocean. The planet. The troubling thought that the sky had to come from somewhere was more easily digested by pointing a finger and saying a deity did it.

Physical things on this earth had starts and ends not visible to the eye; so, too, did feelings. Feelings were interwoven naturally in time, times of happiness, times of sadness, and it was all a continuity, it was all eternal, because even when Atlas would die someday there would still be feelings and there would still be happiness, sadness, the whole gambit, the entire spectrum. Was it an eternal, interconnected thread? Did elation, did sorrow, did they belong to any one person-- this happiness is mine, that happiness is yours?

Hard thoughts to think. He was going in circles, making his brain hurt, when he heard the soft sound of someone approaching. He stepped back from the castle walls and turned to see his new guest, only to find it was Elena, Dusk Queen, herself. “My lady,” he bid her welcome, giving his finest bow-- smooth and practiced, the flexing of muscles long unused but well worn in. When he lifted his head his pale golden hair flopped in his eyes; he removed it with a light toss of his head.

Are you lost, was her question, and it was simple and very complex at the same time. Every answer that sprung to his tongue was either a lie or extremely highfalutin. When had he turned into such a philosopher? “At the risk of sounding pompous, I’m not really lost, because I have nowhere to be.” Did he ever really have anywhere to be? Sometimes he felt like a mote of light on the wind, transient as the questions of time and space.

“It’s quite early, my lady,” he said, looking back to the horizon. The sun had just begun to lighten the sky, but had not stretched fingers over the horizon. “I hope you are well?”

@Elena,