[P] See the sun set in the hand of the man

[Raymond]

I'll be a stone, I'll be the hunter,
The tower that casts a shade

***

It was more difficult than Raymond liked to convince Ruth of the wisdom of staying hidden in the Arma Mountains. There was still so much of the headstrong and incorrigible kitten thriving inside the great beast that, now that no tether could possibly hold her and no threat could possibly coerce her obedience, even reason seemed a feeble weapon against her desires. The moment he'd expressed a desire to follow through on an old promise and pay a visit to the desert kingdom of Solterra, the furious debates had begun in earnest.

Logic did eventually win out - but not his logic, which should have made him proud but primarily gave him a headache.

I can carry you.

Ruth.

You're slow.

Ruth, no.

And so the conversation went back and forth with all the progress of a tennis match, until the red stallion caved more for the sake of his own sanity and offered a compromise. That was how he ended up lying cradled inside a cage of massive talons, his instinctive reservations about heights slowly giving way to intrigue as he watched the miles slip by under the Tarrasque's impressive stride.

She could indeed carry him - as easily as he could carry a feather - and the journey through the mountain ranges of Arma and Veneror took hours when it ought to have taken days. Only when the golden expanse of desert stretched out northward on the horizon and the mountains gave way to sandy foothills and the distant scar of Elatus Canyon did Ruth set him down again with a low, grating huff. He didn't have the heart to complain how the ride had left him sore in places he didn't even know existed, but she could probably tell anyway.

Thank you, my dear. That had been the compromise: that she would not enter Solterra but at the most desperate end of need. With the tip of her siege-breaking tail switching irritably in a most feline fashion she retreated, a wash of unhappily clashing color pouring through the link, and Raymond turned to face the desert alone.

Much had happened since Teiran had offered Raymond a tour of the desert kingdom, and he wondered if she would even remember as much should he saunter in from the wilderness. But the red stallion was not one to go back on his word, in this world or any other. He'd said he would come, and he'd come. Whatever happened next, he'd find his way through one way or another.

That's what he'd always done.

With a bit more stiffness in his step than usual, Raymond worked his way north toward the canyon's edge, eyes trained for the silhouettes of dangerous desert beasts on the horizon.

***

Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.

@Seraphina

[Seraphina]

I'M READY FOR THE FIGHT & FATE

--

Reports of some great, hulking, mountainous beast in the distance – visible just beyond the wide expanse of the Mors and the great, ribbon-like ridges of the Elatus – making its way towards the desert kingdom had sent the silver scurrying towards the borders.

She could not quite fathom the idea of a monster so large as the one that the guards had described, though, in the wake of recent events, Seraphina had learned not to discount anything, no matter how ridiculous it seemed in the moment. The gods walked the earth as mortals, and the landscape itself bent to their will; a lumbering mountain hardly seemed outside of the range of their capabilities, and it seemed like exactly the sort of punishment they might devise to constitute the mysterious “change” that Tempus claimed was coming for them – the land itself rising up to swallow them all whole.

But Seraphina is a creature of sand and sun, and the shifting dunes of the Mors ate travelers, unwary and experienced alike, with the comfortable regularity of a hungry predator. It crunched up corpses and left nothing to prove that the souls they belonged to had ever come wandering into its arid jowls in the first place.

When she reached the northern borders of the Elatus, whatever hulking mountain that her patrolling guards had described is gone – a trick of the light, she assumed, or perhaps she wanted to assume. (Perhaps, she thinks darkly, it was merely passing by. Circling, like a vulture.) Sweat beaded sticky trails down her sides, leaving her molten beneath the sun god’s light. She might as well have been burning.

Her eyes caught on an approaching shape, and she slowed her even pace to come to a halt a short distance away from him. Her head tilted forward and nostrils flared as she breathed in deep the scent he carried, beneath sand and sweat; she was greeted by the candle-and-perfume-honeyed scent of the Night Court and straightened. Visions of another visitor from the land of stars and smoke crept at the edge of her mind, and, before she can force them back, she was reminded again of the image of Bexley Briar caught beneath a heap of stones, all red and gold and grit. (Oh, she tried to trust Denocte, and she was not fool enough to believe that all of its inhabitants were like its former Sovereign and his Crows, but she knew of their ideals, and she knew what they were in war. With Reichenbach and his entire Regime gone, she knew not what the denizens of Night would have of their desert counterpart.) This one struck her as more capable than Acton, and more straightforward in stance – her eyes lingered on his muscular, fire-red frame, cropped mane, and scythe of a tail. If she had to guess from a rudimentary once-over, this one was more warrior than spy. “Denoctian.” Her voice is cool and crisp – though the observation invokes some indiscernible emotion in her that isn't-quite suspicion, it isn’t evident in her tone. “What brings you to Solterra?

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tags | @Raymond
notes | <3

@

[Raymond]

***

Strange, to be called Denoctian. Strange to be called anything at all, from where Raymond was standing, but he was nothing if not adaptable. If he should be named as one of a group, perhaps it suited that it should be as one of the forgotten few, the survivors and oppugnants of tyranny. He could accept, adapt, or subvert whatever preconceptions came along with the label in due time.

What must have happened between the kingdoms, that Denocte should be spoken of with such distance? It seemed nearly all of the horses he'd come across bearing the distinctive dry-dust scents of the desert were severe, no-nonsense types, from Teiran to Avdotya to this one, but that alone would not account for the distrust. When he smelled like the fens and fields of Terrastella, Teiran took more notice of his etiquette than his scent.

The red stallion paused as he was hailed, eyes flashing over the striped mare in a cursory appraisal as she did the same to him. She carried herself and spoke as one acclimated to a position of control - not just of herself, as Raymond was, but of others, though perhaps the tone of her voice carried with it a shade of something else.

She wore a gleaming silver collar, too, which itself was an implement curious enough to note. He had seen exactly one other garbing herself thus, and it was on her account that he had come at all.  At the Dawn Court festival, it had not seemed unusual, as the horses here seemed taken to displays that tended toward the garish and peculiar when compared to the austere trappings of Rendari custom, but two instances marked the beginnings of a pattern, the story behind which his curiosity demanded to hear.

"A promise," he replied readily. Raymond's easy, relaxed grin and gregarious tone flashed in sharp contrast to Seraphina's clipped voice. He never went anywhere as a stranger, whatever opinion they had of him. "Made to someone with similar fashion sense to your own, in fact. Teiran - dark hair, green eyes, suspicious of knives." Both striped, both collared, both watchful and ready.

Sure, she might have been watchful because he was an intruder, but give him his speculations.

With a demonstrative, sweeping glance at their surroundings, he concluded, "She was certainly right about all the sand."

***

Raymond
And at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
When the man comes around.

@Seraphina