 It had been years since Rhos had prowled the plains of Eluetheria. Upon her travels between Solterra and Denocte, she'd had no reason to drift this far east toward Delumine - until now. Until the hands of time and fate had twisted the world into an unrecognisable painting with strokes of colour she could barely read. Dawn had begun to break overhead, brushing the muted blue sky with colourful promises of the coming day, and as the red woman traced a winding path carved into the ancient earth by generations of bison, she felt the memories unfolding like paper planes in the cortex of her mind.
Appearing first, pale and sure, was the desert queen she had left behind. Seraphina was a woman Rhoswen knew so little of, truly, but knew regardless that she would choose to trust her all the same. There were not many who might have won the respect and allegiance of such a spitfire - they instead have burned beneath her ire - but the child-solider-turned-empress was a creature of different ilk. There had been something measured in that steadying gaze, something bearing truth, and in Rhoswen's hour of need, Sera had been there. Rhos owed her the life of her child - could a stronger testimony exist? Feelings of uncertainty spread like ripples from a stone dropped in water: so many questions yet answered. Would the Sun queen trust her in return? Would she see past a heady girl's errors? Behind Seraphina there lurked a spectre, as wraithlike as the very mist that formed these visions in her mind. Blue eyes blinked; blue to drown the fire in her heart. Raum was an inescapable force that she had come to reckon with in more ways than one. How could she love someone as hard as this, and yet want, still, to rip him from her life like a plaster left too long on the skin. What was she hiding beneath that bandaid? A cut, a broken bone, a shard of shrapnel wedged deep into her flesh? Their affair had been wrought with complexity and conflict from the very first instance, culminating in bitter words and crimes she was working hard to unravel. A love like this was enough to shatter worlds. But Raum was not the last memory to spin like a bottletop round and round and round - there was another left to show its hand. One shrouded in a mire of guilt that Rhoswen had sidestepped for too long. Bexley Briar. She wondered what the scar looked like - whether it had altered her friend beyond repair. Was it bright and garish, or dark and ominous? Soon, the sun girl would see for herself. Her association with Acton's violation had born many sleepless nights, for there was something evil in the knowing - knowing she could have prevented this, and knowing her inertia had cost so very much. At last, Rhoswen reached the highest point of the plain, coming to a halt upon the swelling ground. She was a flickering flame over a sea of grass, like gasoline upon an oil-slicked ocean - a ballerina lost behind swathes of auburn hair and sharp, sharp lines. She knew the Deluminian owl had reached Bexley, for it would not otherwise have returned so soon, but upon it's descent it had carried not a word of reply. Rhoswen had come to the halfway land between Dawn and Day all the same - she owed Bexley that much, and so here she stood - a sanguine sentry against the backdrop of a new sky. |
Moments after it arrived in Solterra, a flurry of soft feathers and beating wings, Bexley had sent the owl away with a snarl and a gilded fuck you, and then she had stood holding the letter out of the window of her quarters, waiting to drop it into some howling nighttime wind, and had not been able to. She hated herself for it. Armageddon, then, in the long minutes that followed. Unwrapping the letter, pulling at that silver ribbon, already she felt that something inarguably wrong was to come from it, that this half-second was to be her penultimate of peace. The night was deep-blue and cool when that letter arrived, and for hours - perhaps until the sun rose, she couldn’t remember - Bexley turned circles in that sandstone tower, reread the lines of thin handwriting, feeling viciously unsettled by the reminiscence suddenly forced upon her. That crush of rocks - the gauzy dusted light, filtering in from overhead - each passover of the letter is one more pebble in her lungs, is another long-standing reminder of the scar on her face, moonlight and lace. She wanted to un-read it. To rip it, to burn it, to let it drift away. But reality is omnipresent, and Bexley is steel, is real, is tooth and claw, and it is with that sense of iron-will that she forces herself from Solterra in the first warm moments of the morning, hair braided, smelling of sandalwood, and strides alone toward Ruris. The sky is glowing gauzy-pink, shredded in places with purple and red; a cool breeze, the first of autumn, blows cool-bright against Bexley’s small body and pulls the sparkle of tears from her blue eyes. Her necklace clinks quietly in the buffeting wind. Head pulled down against her chest, white hair swirling in a loose cloud, she trudges toward the highest point of Eleutheria and fights the nausea so imminent in the pit of her stomach, so blackout and overwhelming. How long has it been since they’ve seen each other? Months and months, and who knows how Rhoswen has changed since returning to Denocte? Is she moon-bright now? Has she given up on Solis, on Solterra, on her love of the sun? Are either of them the same girls they were when the met in that aureate desert? Of course not. On the rise of the slope ahead of her, Bexley catches sight of a svelte silhouette, red and dark and red again, and her heart thrums wildly in the cage of her chest. Feral and anxious, she forces herself toward Rhoswen despite the lead in her legs, and when she speaks, it is strange and deep, uncertain and disembodied: Nice morning, hm? @rhoswen
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MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON. In the early morning they are both wraiths, the gold and red of Solterra’s flag blanched somewhat by a weak morning sun: even if Bexley wanted to use her magic, still so novel that she feels it as consciously as she would an extra limb growing from her ribs, it would take an effort in this cool dimness that she is already wasting on containing a vacuous anger. Trembling with just-suppressed emotion, she meets Rhoswen’s gray eyes with a dull bitterness. The dawn is violent and seemingly endless, and it runs a familiar course in Bexley’s heart, wild and red and unrelenting. You came. Her lip curls in something half-snarl, half-smile. Perhaps this whole thing would be easier if either of them knew what they wanted, or what they felt, or who they were - but Bexley still doesn’t know many of these things about herself, and something about looking at Rhoswen, seeing the silver-white gleam of light on her roaned skin and the storm of her eyes, convinces the Regent that Rhoswen knows about as much as she does. What do they want? A return to friendship? A return to normalcy? It’s been almost two years since Bexley found her way to Solterra, and not a single damned day has been normal - neither of them would know normalcy if it slapped them in the face. Is it normal for her to love the world that has beat her down and brought her back up again - the man who hurt her - the girl who allowed it? We are not strangers, Bexley points out. Her voice is strangely soft, near dissolving in the wide-open space between them. As much as I would want to pretend. Hurting someone is still an act of intimacy. Bexley stumbles into silence, and the wolfish howl of wind around them is overwhelming. There is no turning away from the history between them or the allowance Rhoswen has given her for anger - although Bex would be so anyway, if such permission had not been given. @rhoswen <3
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MADE A GRAVEYARD FROM THE BONE-WHITE AFTERNOON. She has always been vividly righteous, since her first breaths as a little girl - it might be the curse of her family or simply Bexley’s own brand of revenge as a religion, but there has not been a time she has let her enemies escape unscathed or her reputation go tarnished, and Gods-be-damned if she’ll start now - But it’s strange to look at her sister and feel fire taken over what was previously only an affectionate warmth. Now her heart simmers with anger, her nerves spark electric-wild. Bexley’s own azure gaze narrows in the bright sunlight, cast part in shadow by a layer of dark lashes, and she meets Rhoswen’s eyes with a blazing, terrible indecision, unsure how to reconcile with the emotions that war deep within her stomach. Anger, want, sorrow. If only there was some way to rewind the months that had passed, to cleave the scar from her face as easily as someone could peel the petal from a flower. If only - I’m just really fucking sorry. For everything. If only it were that easy. If only Bex could find a way to swallow that apology that wouldn’t make her feel sick on the way down. If only - her breath hitches in her chest, her nostrils flare, she grinds her teeth until her pulse blooms in her jaw with stunning loudness. What do you want, she says softly, voice almost carried away in the silver wind, and the hard look in her eyes is briefly replaced by something vulnerable and genuinely hurt. What are you expecting to happen? She doesn’t want to put words to it - what Rhoswen might be angling for - because what if she’s wrong? What happens then? @rhoswen <3
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