[P] steep hills of vicodin tears,

[Rhoswen]

A spectre railing within the moon's embrace, a girl they did not know - for all the months Rhoswen had spent here in the desert and the sand, still she felt a stranger to the inhabitants. The sun praised her, danced with her, sang her a lullaby her heart longed to hear, but the biblical warriors with their long stares and cold eyes lingered on in her dreams at the break of twilight. And she had turned away, tracing endless roads on a map tucked into her pocket, in hope of redemption. There was none, nothing out there in the wild except freedom, and that in itself was a fickle promise. What was freedom if you had no-one to share it with? So at last she had returned, with a tepid colour of fatigue woven between her ribs. Rhoswen was tired of running and finding emptiness; she was a creature carved from the volcanic mountainside, not one destined for woe; all this languish, this brooding, it was chipping away at her resolve until she was but a flint of hard cool stone. Sharpened and dormant. Rhoswen drew closer, the shadow of the great castle appearing through the darkness - imposing as ever. With Maxence gone the Court needed her now more than ever, and this time she had no intentions of absconding. 


@Raum i know it's TINY but i just wanted to get up a starter <3 am going easy on my muse! 

[Raum]

 

He had felt the ground tremble. Her presence was a seismic tremor that set his bones chattering. He waits for her in the shadow and black, the cool of night laying languidly across his spine.
 
The Crow makes no move towards her, as she pours like lava over exposed rock. Even tired, even thin with fatigue she is a dangerous creature to behold. His heart knows it and rakes its corvine claws down his breastbone.
 
“When not even the sun can keep you, what will, Rose?” His eyes trail over her, water over lava and the shadows hiss the sound of steam between them.
 
In silence he turns to move beside her, feeling the ripple of her impending storm. She is the storm painted ominous red with the setting sun. He is not sure of which she is anymore: returning by night, leaving by day.
 
Rhoswen is the wind he will never tame and he can only spread his crow wings and endure her. “Your king is dead.” He breathes to her, ‘but you already knew that, didn’t you.” There is no question there, he knew she would return- but not at night… for she is the girl who dances beneath Solis’ sun.
 
There is silence, as thick as the black between them as they return to stormy cloud and silver sea. “I have missed you.” He longs for those words to be a weapon, a knife upon her skin, but the only one they hurt is him. He sighs from the pain and the soft confession of his words. They are his wound.

@Rhoswen - quality not quantity! <3

 

[Rhoswen]

Rhoswen feels him, hears him - his breath falling into the night like cascading smoke. It seemed as though her presence alone could summon him from the underworld of darkness from whence he came; Lucifer chasing her through the shadows. A demon she craved, insidiously. And then he appeared, spilling forth - his coat gleaming like a knife threatening to draw her blood, the waterfall behind his eyes churning and roaring; Rhos struggled to suppress a shudder from racing down her spine. But she does not fear him, or his ghoulish lore. Neither pause, and so onward into the night they glide; a sea of flames. 

It feels natural to beside this tall bewitching man again, as though, after all this time they had spent not a single moment apart. Two roots from the same tree, gnarled and intrinsically entwined. They had shared a childhood, after all; countless afternoons she had pulled him (laughing, spinning, breathless) into shards and swathes of daylight - showing him the beauty of the sun and all that it gifted to the world: carpets of flowers, the warmth of a forest clearing doused in aurulent rays, a daffodil gifted to his bedchamber at the break of dawn. Raum, nevertheless, had coaxed her into the moon's silver hymn; leading her farther, deeper, into the dark until there was no choice but to slip her hand into his so that he might guide her safely home. Rhoswen remembers, of course she remembers, the coolness of his skin; even at that tender age she had sensed something akin to magic running through his blood. 

The roughness of his voice dislocates the fragmented memories, bringing Rhoswen tumbling into the present. He speaks of Maxence, his death, and the girl takes her first sweeping glance at Raum. "Of course I knew." Solterra's daughter looks away, searching for something within herself that she might recognise as sorrow, or anguish; she finds nothing but the familiar roiling magma convulsing deep within the marrow of her bones. Rhoswen is fire, Rhoswen is charring steel. Her king was dead, and she couldn't bring herself to care. "No doubt Denocte knows, too, courtesy of your honourable self." A barb, soft and dangerous; what did he expect?

Then - I have missed you.

Silence. A gaping void. Though her pace still did not slow, the summer wolf stiffens involuntarily. Of all the words she expected to spill from Raum's lips, she could never have predicted those. Rhoswen's mind races, falling over itself as they crossed the border into a place she did not know, did not understand. Then, reluctantly, she asks herself: did I miss you? A dull pang hammers the empty hallways in her chest, daring her to let him in closer. Rhoswen raises her gaze to the star-scattered sky, ashen eyes flashing with a nebulousness even she cannot define. Her voice, thoughtful, slow and not at all unkind, carries in the stifling shadow, "It seems I have a habit of leaving you." 

@Raum  <3

[Raum]

 


He looks to her too many angles and fatigued eyes, for he cannot look away. Her hair tries to hide her; a veil of flames concealing and dancing, distracting him with beauty.  A tendril, pulled by the wind, reaches for him and it is fire along his skin. She will always be the inferno that lights his silver sea. Rhoswen takes his water, with its dangers, and makes him worse. She turns him to gasoline – always the fuel to her fire. Raum will make her burn hotter than the sun.
 
The past exists in the bonds that stretch like gossamer dreams between them. Memories of laughter and sunlight, darkness and intimacy twined their souls. Their bodies move together as if they had never been apart. They are one this night boy and his day girl for Raum is no longer whole without her and the revelation is both a poison and a cure within his heart.
 
Rhoswen knows of her king’s death – of course she did. It is why he waited for her, standing sentinel beside the grey, court walls, until she appeared like an avenging angel adorned in steel and wicked wildness. There is no empathy in her eyes, no loss for her king, and he thinks he might love her a little more just then. Oh this girl of passion and ferocity, it would not be a blade that would kill him, no adversary able enough to best him. No, it would be Rhoswen, when his heart least expected it.
 
No doubt Denocte knows too, courtesy of yourself. Were he another man, he might have smiled. But the fierce glint within the electric blue of his eyes betrays his pleasure. “Of course they do.” He purrs and growls as he steps closer to her, their sides brushing, hot against cold, a storm colliding with the sea. “The invasion is planned for a few days time.” Again he might have smiled, but the eyes he sets upon her promise to drown her in their mirth. Their smiles, their laughter was a rare thing, lost to daffodil dawns and hand-held nights. This is as close a the Crow dares to let them get.
 
He watches her body stiffen with his admission: I missed you. He has spoken them before – a millennia ago when a day might have passed before he saw her. He was too keen then, his boyish heart so full of her flames. But Rhoswen has since burned him and his heart bears the scars of her. Does she know how many nights he lay awake wondering how to rid her from his life? Oh peace, he prays – but it never comes.
 
She looks up to stars to the moon, anywhere but him. And then, It seems I have a habit of leaving you.
 
The Crow’s emotions are a tidal wave and he would laugh, were he not so furious. A lifetime of tempering his emotions down and this girl, this creature with her flames and her smoke, exposes every emotion he ever possessed with just a look, with a few well-chosen words.  A shudder, a sigh, a closing of too wild eyes until they open with blue waters so still, so dead. “You do.”
 
And then, “Don’t leave me again.” In those words is not a plea, but a vow that rings like the unsheathing of his knives. “Because if you do, I won’t be here when you return.” With those words he presses a knife to the first of their gossamer bonds.

@Rhoswen - sorry it's been agess

 

[Rhoswen]

 As they walked through the colourless night Rhoswen allowed her thoughts to run over a thousand different scenarios, on and on. They simmered and burned, branding their mark into the very synapses of her mind until it was all she could do but breathe. What if she had stayed, condemning herself to a lifetime of darkness with only a weary candle and a pair of blue eyes carved from a winter ocean; what then? Would the world have made more sense, would she have been free from the shackles around her porcelain throat? Would he have kissed her and led her to a salvation she had only dreamt of - to a place where gold ran like water and the moonlight did not taunt her with it's opalescent derision. 

No.

Rhoswen turned a sanguine cheek toward him once more, stealing a furtive glance as their flanks brushed, electricity coursing through her hot skin. It was as they approached the great stone steps leading up toward Solterra's ancient fortress that the red girl found herself flooded with familiarity, as though everything here had happened before. Her step did not falter but deep within, her heart beat tenfold, and she closed those grey eyes in memory of a forgotten time when she and Raum had once slipped home under the cover of a pearly midnight, not long before she had absconded. It seemed so long ago, so remote it almost felt as though she were imagining the lives of two strangers. But there were no strangers here, only a boy and a girl who's lives remained infinitely coiled together into a wreathe of the past, present and future. 

And she had done so much to change it all - to escape whatever path had been laid out for her by the universe - yet somehow, inexplicably, nothing truly had changed. They might have been standing in a different city, belonging to different societies and deities, but still here they were: walking side by side in the dark. As though no matter how hard they tried to fight it, this was always meant to be. 

They slow and pause as their hooves reach the steps, and Raum's voice bores into the all-consuming shadow, catching her attention like a hook. "The invasion is planned for a few days time." Rhoswen's stormborne eyes narrowed, alive and incredulous. How could he unleash this information unto her and expect her to do nothing in defence of her people, did he trust her that much? Where before the siren might have bitten back a response, this time she remained tight-lipped and soundless, keeping her cards close to her chest. There was still time to report this to Seraphina if she should so wish; there was no point discussing it with Raum.

The silence between them is chaotic and violent, and Rhoswen wants to smash it into a dozen sharp pieces so that she might drive one into his heart. It seems Raum got there first. 

"... if you do, I won't be here when you return."

Rhoswen stared at him, languidly processing his serrated words with an expression of malevolence. How dare he pass these unveiled threats, brandishing them high and low. Who was he to cast down the conditions within which they coexisted; what choice did she have in all of this? Confusion and dangerous pain flashed in her gaze, forcing Rhos to look away as her soft curls fell protectively over those marble cheekbones. For the first time, the lucid holes in her guard began to show. She lilted, her jaw clenching as a wave of nostalgia came calling - her brimstone heart cooling. 

"My father once told me a story of how the Sun loved the Moon so much he died every night just to let her breathe," a murmur, brittle and quiet, "could you imagine ever loving someone that much?"

@Raum her soft side is peepin 

[Raum]

 


This was why he should not make jokes.
 
Rhoswen’s eyes narrow at his words and then widen, incredulous. Stars snag in her silver eyes and tremble in the liquid there; they are depthless pools, mirrored beneath a waxing moon.  
 
Raum looks away, for the fury bites into his skin like a knife. Should he say it was a joke, or let this blade cut deep and tend his wound later? The Crow opts for the latter, and fights to quell the burn where her skin touched his.
 
This girl, this creature of his heart, looks at him with fury burning. Her anger is a wildfire to match the frost of his own gaze. His skin is pricked with the frozen spikes of their ire and like a trapped beast he fights and fights against their pain.
 
They watch each other as they walk, no, swim through this dim night of shadows and liquid silver. He has forgotten who he is in this moment, for all that consumes him is his threat. It was a serrated barb, meant to dig deep into her heart, her soul. He will forever remain true to it. If Rhoswen left again, he would not wait for her, not again. He couldn’t…
 
Rose looks away, her hair, the colour of dying suns, courses down her cheek. He looks to the angles of her face, to eyes heavy and sad. Oh that hideous twist of his stomach and the leap of his heart before it freefalls down: He wanted her hurt, he takes joy in it, but only for one brief, superficial moment. Then he just feels the blankness; this love has ruined him and he burns to ashes beneath the embers of her sorrow.
 
She tells him a story of suns and moons, love and death. His blue eyes pull her in, like a tide tugging her out to shore. The Crow watches her lips as they form each word and with them paint a sky holding its two lovers. Raum had always adored her stories: this whimsical girl with her flighty heart.
 
Rhoswen finishes her fable with fragile words and a heavy silence. Could you imagine ever loving someone that much?Raum has stopped, those blue eyes drinking her in, the face he knows so well. He looks to her eyes with their myriad hues of silver. His gaze never wavers as the moonlight spotlights him, exposing his every terrible truth: A crow, a spy, an assassin and a boy so terribly, hopelessly in love.
 
“Yes.”

@Rhoswen - eeeeek, confessions ahoy.

 

[Rhoswen]

 The emotions that bloomed and snarled within Rhoswen's chest whenever she so much as glanced toward that blue-eyed boy were indecipherable, so she chose to name them herself as Loathing, Bitterness, and Anger. A triad she knew so well. They had bolstered her in the long dark night, kept her head above water when she would have otherwise drowned. There was no room for anything else; she could not let anything else in for fear of losing this blistering grip on her composure. And yet, when she looked at his godforsaken face - every choice she had ever made seemed to melt away into obscurity. Like a bird crippled by high winds she found herself faltering beneath the weight of her own beautifully ugly truth; how long could she keep up this lie? They had shared youth together as untouched children, gilded in gold and innocence and the sweet caress of shadow. Theirs was that magic moment between sunset and nightfall when the crescent moon hung upon a cobalt autumn sky. Rhos remembered it all: the feeling of the glassy Denoctian air biting at her lungs, the twilight shrouding boy and girl as they stood watching a haze of fireflies dancing across the lake: she had felt infinite, then, catching his eye in the black-gold light.

"Yes."

And suddenly she knew. Rhoswen clenched her jaw, eyes shut tight to conceal the fervor in her stormborne gaze, how could she bear to look at his expression a moment longer? It was gossamer, translucent - painfully so: his truth, so tragically identical to her own. But beneath her fear and beneath her bitterness there was something else; something she had not felt in years: since, perhaps, that moment by the lake when a young girl had felt the searching embrace of a boy's gaze, as though Raum were seeing her, truly, for the very first time. She felt infinite, just for that single second. 

Her eyes open at last, seeking his before she could turn to ascend the great stone steps away from Raum, for she cannot bear his presence a moment longer. A final parting whisper, gossamer and paperthin:

"Pain is the price we pay for love." 

@Raum o ma gaddddd edit to include rhos' departure!

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

And Rhoswen ascends in fire and light. Upon her skin she bears the weight of his confession as though it is the sun and she the wild red of its eternal heat. Oh, should he regret the word that slipped from his lips. It was a confession made from silk and it fell just as light, just as soft. It was so easy to speak such a word, yet his soul is fraying and it burns beneath Rhoswen’s swallowing sun.
 
He might have stood for a thousand years – turn to stone at the foot of those steps. But Raum is a Crow, he was not made to be still, to stare wantonly after a girl who both pulls him to pieces and binds him together. In silence the Denoctian turns  away. Her words chase him and a silver ear, fine and sharp as a blade twists to catch them. Oh yes, pain was the price they paid for love and this love of theirs was agony, terrible, terrible agony.
 
Solterra’s sun is a lance along his spine. It is close and how his skin itches with sand and dust. His soul begs for shadows, the silver of his skin for the deep, dark of night. Yet he is here, a spy, and he would not leave his post. Not now, not ever.
 
Raum turns as Rhoswen disappears and sets off for the canyon, where his brother waited.

---

--: heh, concluding this....