[P] pull out your heart to make it easy;

[Isra]

Isra of the embers

"and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.” 


It is a strange thing, Isra thinks, to see the night start to fade against the thin strip of blue across the horizon. All the bonfires have dimmed to soot and smoke. The treasures of the night markets have been locked up or tucked away beneath curtains of silk and shrouds of burlap. She watches the last of the court yawn, turn away and make their way back to their downy pillows and gold-dusted dreams. 

Soon almost every else but her is gone, just as the pinks and colds crest above that thin cold blue strip of day. In the solitude her skin feels too tight. Isra thinks there could be a million caterpillars changing beneath her skin for the way that her flesh seems to stretch and itch and burn. And so she paces through the quiet pathways, a lone sentinel guarding the night from the heat of the day.  

It's only when the black turns to golds and yellows that Isra lifts her eyes and realizes that she's not alone at all. Ahead another wanders the streets, darker than her against all the daylight. Isra wonders, as she draws closer, if the other mare feels like there is a beast alive beneath her skin. She wonders what keeps Katniss from dreaming away the day with the majority of the court. 

“Katniss.” She calls out and the wind whistles out a song between the curling hollows of her horn. When she draws close enough her lips twist in a smile as fragile as paper wings. Everything is different in the daylight and their last meeting was filled only with darkness, storm-clouds and a thing circling above their heads.

 Isra cannot help but think that the mare looks larger in the light when there are no shadows to swallow up her edges. 

“How have you been?” Her voice is a quiet thing, thick with the start of tiredness and lingering dreams. She hopes that perhaps they might not be strangers much longer, that they might soon share something more than a dark cave and a story without an end. 


@Katniss

[Katniss]

Katniss does not sleep with the others locked away in houses with beds. She feels strange with all these worldly goods. She’s so used to sleeping underneath the stars and listening to the bug chirp throughout the night. It is as if their music is soothing to her. She prefers it. Perhaps that is why she wanders the Night Markets. Perhaps she is restless because this is something she is not used to. Perhaps, even, she is restless because of the unknown. Whatever the reason, there is uneasiness in her soul tonight and she finds that the constant moving of her feet on patrol seems to keep her thoughts at bay. It is the sound of hoof beats that catches her attention. She can hear Isra approach before she can actually see the queen. It is now that her eyes look upward to already see the rising of the sun. How long had she been wandering here? Had she truly lost track of time all night? She hears her name upon the wind and she looks towards her left to see the figure of Isra stepping closer to her. She pausing her walking (more like pacing at this point) and turns to face the queen to give the mare her full attention. She is still cautious of the queen, unsure of her intentions. She supposed she has followed worse leaders. At least Isra appears to have the thought to make decisions based on her court’s needs. Perhaps she would prove herself to be a good and prudent queen. As the mare asks her how she has been, she offers the other a smile. While her body might stand taller than the other, she tries her best to keep their eyes level so not to appear as though she is talking down to the other. “Isra…” Her voice is a soft, soothing tone and she wants nothing more than to make the queen feel at ease. She is here to serve and she hopes that her new queen will see that in time. “I am well…as well as can be expected in a new place.” Her heart still aches for Metaphor and she finds a sort of yearning to talk to Asterion again. She finds his company pleasant and there is a part of her that desires companionship in the form of friendship. She has to admit she has not met many others yet. Her eyes hold steady, searching Isra for nothing in particular. Perhaps she should not let the mare’s title bother her so. It was hard adjusting from being queen to being just another member of society. Perhaps she needs to stop thinking it as such. Perhaps she should just start seeing Isra as a friend. “…and you? How have you faired since our last meeting?” She pauses a moment before continuing. “I did not mean to appear with false intentions that evening.” Katniss had only meant to come and offer aid. Perhaps that simple desire set her apart from the others and made her appear as someone wishing ill on the Night Court. The fact that they were scared by her kindness was sad, in a sense. @Isra

[Isra]

Isra of the humming thoughts

“No one is now what they were before the war. There’s just no getting any of it back.”


Around them the night markets go on, heedless of two mares meeting like ships in a dark and current-less sea. At their backs fires crackle and hiss. Isra picks out songs in the wood sound, stories in the way the smoke catches the corners of her gaze as it spirals up, up, up. For a moment each of them bubble up against her lips as furious bits of words that hum behind her teeth like bees and cicadas.

But then a shadow drifts over them and Fable vibrates with his own sort of song and all the stories float away like gossamer webs in a storm. His wings rain down bits of silt and sea-brine as he dives between Katniss and Isra and curls onto pile of fabric on a merchant's table. Isra is momentarily caught in that tunnel of emotion between them; she can feel the fullness of his belly and glimpse briefly the soft, almost half dreaming imagine that run across the dragon's mind.

Only the gentle, kindness of Katniss's works brings her gaze back to the dark mare. Isra answers the look with a soft apology on her, like a mother who has forgotten there are other things in the world besides 'hers'. “I've been well.” She swallows down the words of blood and fangs. They taste as bitter as lemon peel and her teeth ache between her smile.

“I'm sorry I ever came off as unsure. I think that the gods brought with them skepticism and fear without any miracles to soothe the betrayal.” Her hooves ring across the stone as she closes the distance between them. Moonlight catches like bits of ice on her horn when she reaches her nose towards the other mare in warm apology. “But I am glad you came when you did.”

Beside them Fable sleeps on, carefree as a dragon can be in a world of gods of horses that mean nothing to him. For him there is only Isra and the sea, nothing else.

“Will you walk with me and tell me about where you came from?” And something in her eyes that glints like a star suggests that tonight there are things other than stories on the unicorn's mind.


@Katniss

[Katniss]

Her eyes catch the vision of the dragon as he dives between them. Katniss eyes him curiously for she has only seen creatures like him that were far larger in size. She remembers one that towered over her, his head far bigger than even her own body. He could have swallowed her in one bite, his fires charred her instantly. But this dragon is small, and admittedly, somewhat cute as he lays curled into a mountain of fabrics. It is the steady rhythm of Isra’s steps against the cobblestone that draw her attention back to the Queen of the Night Court. She hears the respectable words that come from her lips and Katniss is unsure if she means them. Such greetings demanded an answer and most, she had found, gave out what they thought needed to be said. Rarely did she come across someone who was truly genuine. She admittedly does not know Isra well enough to decide whether or not she speaks true. Her eyes remain soft, her posture relaxed even though she is anything but relaxed inside. Her body is strumming with pent-up energy that she cannot seem to displace. She longs for battle, something that would take her mind off the events surrounding her entrance into this land. Perhaps she should spar – perhaps it might take her mind off the thoughts that run rampant, if only for a moment. As Isra speaks, her eyes soften even more, as if she pities the other. What had these gods done that had caused the people here to fear newcomers rather than welcome them? Surely it was something great. “Your gods are strange to me…for where I came from, the gods generally brought peace and a reason for living…” She had only seen death and pain when it needed to occur. Never had she seen mindless actions that only brought skepticism and distrust. At the request of the queen to talk with her, Katniss finds the nod easy. It would do her some good to talk. She longed for easy conversation. It had come easy with Asterion. Perhaps it would come easy with Isra in time. She turns in the direction of Isra’s heading and slowly, her steps fall into line with the queen’s. She does not feel it prudent to tell the queen too much of her life-story for so many things that dwell in it and not all of them happy. Most of her memories are only to weigh heavily on her heart, not on the hearts of others. She sighs, the breath leaving her lungs and it almost appears as though a burden has been lifted from her shoulders. “I was born in a land called Nocturne. My mother was a kelpie…but the kindest you shall ever meet. She was a conscientious objector, choosing not to fight for her kingdom on principle. So I was born to fight for her. It was an easy, fulfilling life.” The scars that riddled her body were proof enough that she had seen many years of combat. The pain tucked away behind her eyes told a story her words would never be able to tell. “I lived there for many years, six or so…” She had lost count of the years. All she knew was that she had left her kingdom after she had abandoned the two children she had bore from her own womb. She had tried to be their queen, but the guilt of her treachery had weighed too heavily on her and so she had left. But she did not tell all of this to Isra. That was a personal pain that she had only shared with Metaphor. Only he had drawn those words from her lips. Her steps remain steady as her thoughts reflect on her life. In reality, she’s sorting through what she chooses to tell her queen. “…and then I moved to a land we called The Rift. I found purpose there…and much more.” Her heart ached for Elysian, for those that she sheltered and led. But most importantly, her heart ached for Metaphor. “That land was destroyed by magic, I would suppose. And so I am here. My story is not that interesting.” Ah…but perhaps it would be if the mare opened up about her queenships, her lover, or her children. But those were not the bedtime stories Isra wanted to hear.

[Isra]

Isra who counts her steps
“It is not so easy to always remember who you are.”


Isra finds herself counting both her steps and memories are they start to walk between the booths full of silks and spices. She remembers that it took seven steps from stealing an apple to touch a boy with fire and sunshine in his eyes. It took a hundred and ten more to reach the end of the market pathways to the place where the shadows thickened and the wilderness beckoned. And when she pauses to look at a place where a moonstone has been washed loose by the tsunami she knows it's twenty paces from here to the dusty, molded corner she called home once.

She doesn't know how many steps it would take to get back to her homeland (there is no number high enough for how far she wants to be from that world).

There's something easy in walking next to Katniss, in the way her scars match all the ones on Isra's soul. Part of her knows that she could never survive as many worlds as Katniss has, not if all of them were like her first. As for the gods of this world, she has nothing more to say of them, the betrayal still cuts like a knife through her heart every time she thinks of it.

The sea was never so cruel, never so heartless and cold. Isra never had to wonder what the sea wanted because it took and took and took.

It's the talk of destructive magic that makes her break the silence and the one, two, three pattern of her counting. Something in her heart trembles to think of it and her own magic shivers out of her to shape the world around her (as if her magic denies the thought of leaving bodies and destruction instead of wonder). To think of it breaks her heart.

“Surely you're only being humble. I cannot imagine living in so many places or being born to fight.” She shifts the direction of her hooves and brushes her should against Katniss as if to say, there are secrets between us, and that's okay. It does not mean she trusts the mare any less, they all have secrets and heartbreaks that are too brutal to be formed into words and given power.

Isra knows better than most how brutal the power of words can be.

She turns towards the last bonfire of the night. The spiraled tip of her horn flashes in the red-light like a lantern when she turns back to look at Katniss. Her blue eyes follow the trail of scars across the warrior's skin. “Do you think you might be able to find purpose and more in Denocte?” Hope drips like rain from her words, so much hope that Isra could burst with it after so much heartbreak.

Fable, as if awoken from where he slept by the fire of hope in her chest, loops above the night markets in joyous spirals of flight.



@Katniss

[Katniss]

There is so much she wants to share about Nocturne and Rift, so many things she wants to get off her chest. But Katniss is slow to trust, her secrets held safe and close. She longs for a friend here, someone that she can share her secrets to and someone that can kept those secrets in turn. Despite the life she has lived, Katniss desires companionship – she wants that friend that she can tell anything to, that friend that will have her back no matter what the circumstance and who will never ask her questions, only ask what they can do to help. She desperately wants that relationship and so far, no one has really stepped up to that plate yet. No one has made her feel that comfortable here, perhaps aside from Asterion. But even he has his own secrets. Perhaps she will find that friend in time. Perhaps, even, that friendship has already started to blossom, but has not reached its bloom yet. It’s the way Isra’s shoulder brushes against her own that catches her attention, her ears focused once more on what the queen has to say. She offers a sweet smile and a slow dip of her head. “When that is all you know, it is not a hard life to live.” From the moment she hit the ground, her training began. She was taught strategy and weak points, how to use her magic (what little magic she did have) and how to outsmart her opponents. She was never taught how to make friends or cultivate meaningful relationships. She was never taught the dangers of love and lust. She learned those lessons the hard way. Unfortunately, her daughters had been witness to her lessons and the way she shied away from them. Her daughters paid for something that was not their fault and Katniss lived every moment from that day on regretting what she had done to her children. She needs to repay her debt and love another child…but Katniss cannot bring herself to get close enough to anyone to try. As their position slowly changes, Katniss looks ahead to the bonfire, her eyes dancing over the flames and it brings her a sort of peace that she hasn’t felt in a long while. It’s Isra’s eyes that she feels over her skin, as if the queen is analyzing each of her scares. They are not pretty to look at, but they tell a story of the life Katniss lived. She pauses her steps when Isra speaks. She can hear the hope that clings to the queen’s words. It’s a hope that she wants for herself. She wants to find purpose here. She wants to find love here. She wants to find motherhood again. But life is uncertain and she is unsure if any of those things will happen to her. But what choice did she have? She had to trust that if those things were meant to be, then they would be. “I hope to.” Her words are soft, almost hanging on edge. Her words drift off, as if the mare has not yet finished her thought. After a soft moment, Katniss knows that she has to trust her queen. She has to give Isra a reason to trust her. Withholding secrets was not the best way to start a relationship. “I have done many wrongs and I am eager to right those wrongs…to repay debts I’m not sure I can even afford.” She pauses a moment. “But I must try.” She has to try. What other choice does she have? She cannot let this regret eat her from the inside out. She must press onward and try to find purpose and meaning. She cannot give up. @Isra

[Isra]

Isra dissipating like smoke
“The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame.”


“I admire you for it.” She whispers softly below the hiss and crack of the fire before them. The sound of her voice is almost nothing more than another spiral of smoke reaching up to the stars, dreaming that it might be more than smoke dissipating into the darkness. Isra makes out strange shapes in the fire. There's an ash dragon above where a stray flame reaches up in a wicked point like a blade might reach for flesh. Somewhere in there, hidden in all that warmth and smoke, is a daisy withering between the piles of kindling.

It's the first time she's wanted to snuff out the bonfires of Denocte, to smother them all in blankets of darkness and steel (thick and heavy enough that nothing will ever break through). And in that moment she understands a little of what the old regime felt, as much as she saw it as evil, hollow violence.

Above them Fable promises, there is no fire in me, only the sea. and she takes as much comfort in that thought as she can.

“Perhaps one day you can teach me to fight.” That fury steams through the ice of her sorrow and the soft warmth of her joy. The horn upon her brow aches like an old wound and her throat throbs to the beat of her heart. Isra wants to spiral down, down, down to all that rage and impotence coiling like a snake just below the surface of her skin. She wants to split her jaw open like an ouroboros and swallow up every evil thing in this world.

Fable starts to twist over and over above their heads, a pledge that only Isra will understand. Someday soon he will be her dragon to swallow up the dark world and salt the soil in the places where rot has festered and spread.

But then Katniss breaks the drowning, melancholy of her thoughts and she blinks back any traces of sorrow and rage from her ocean eyes. “I don't think any of us are free from debts to pay.” She thinks of all the other mares left in her homeland, left to die and suffer while she tried to drown and found a crown, magic and a dragon instead.

Someday, she promises herself, I will sail back there and Fable and I shall free them all and kill every slaver in the world. The promise is the only way she can stay sane sleeping in her castle surrounded by silk instead of blood and chains.

Isra turns from the fire to brush her nose against Katniss's shoulder (as if all those scars are each a crown of their own). “If you need a place to start the defenses of our home are almost non-existent after the disasters and the changing of the regime.” That horn of hers still aches as she turns to go, following Fable back towards the sea. “Think about it.” She pauses like a deer, one hoof lifted above the stone.

“We need you Katniss.” Isra offers the last part like a prayer, inhaling once before her hooves kick up into a run. Fable's already half way to the ocean. “Come find me if you decide.” And then she's gone, another wisp of smoke and dust lost to the heavy darkness of the night.


@Katniss 
<3 ending this one here, buts lets do another after her spar??

[Katniss]

War and fighting was not something she would have chosen on her own accord. If she had not been born to be a warrior and had grown up with more knowledge and education, she might have chosen differently. While she had a natural tendency to lead, her skill in battle had been something she was taught. But growing up in that life had offered her no way to escape and so she had simply come to accept her fate, perhaps even enjoy it when it was necessary. Hearing Isra ask her to teach her to fight was bittersweet. While Katniss had no qualms about teaching her queen to defend herself, there was a part of her that hoped she would never need her teachings. Isra should surround herself with friends that could defend her and aim her policies towards peace, not war. Perhaps then she would never need to know to fight. “Perhaps one day you won’t need to fight…no one will.” Katniss had always hoped and longed for peace, even if she knew peace was unlikely to be found. She was not naïve enough to think that everyone could live in perfect harmony. Everyone had conflict…but it was how one dealt with conflict that set them apart. But she knows that this dream is far off, that Isra will need to learn to fight because one day, she might need those skills much sooner than she might hope. At the mention of the debts she needed to repay, it seemed as though the queen understood her dilemma, that she understood the need Katniss felt to at least attempt to right her wrongs. She wasn’t sure she would ever match the price it demanded, but perhaps she might be able to make some sort of dent in the world. At her words, she offered Isra a soft nod. She would think about offering Denocte her services. Perhaps she could do some good here. Eyes watch as Isra begins to leave, leaving Katniss to her thoughts. But she pauses, taking time to pressure Katniss but in a gentle way. She wants to make a point that Denocte needs her – that this court needs someone to protect them. Perhaps Katniss had come at a good time. Perhaps it was her calling. It was definitely something that she would need to think about and process. It was a commitment that she had to be ready for. And then Isra and her dragon are gone, running off towards somewhere. Katniss sighs as she steps nearer to one of the bonfires to look into the flames in silent reflection. It was in that moment that she knew she would help Denocte. She would help them find peace. @Isra