"And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.”
Once the press of bodies in winter would have made her long for shadows and summer brine. How far she's come, that she moves between the crowds and brushes shoulders with them like nothing more than another spire of life filling Denocte. Isra is full of wonder to behold the market. She does not think there will ever come a time when there is not some new magic hiding in the streets of her city
Tonight it is the lanterns waiting coiled and bright around the bonfires that feel like fresh magic. Stars dance between them, bright eyed and more mystical than she can ever hope to be. Jasmine and cedar rise up like dragons of spice offering themselves up to all the secrets of the universe. Music rings out, bloated with the sound of a flute and a soft voice. Her heart beats in time to a the low bass of a drum and she feels, for a moment, like everything in her skin is wild and loose upon the night sky.
Dragons twirl above her head and sometimes one brushes close enough to make her hair sweep away from the hollow curl of her horn. Fable, where he's slumbering on the castle turrets, dreams of being as fast as these small dragons. He dreams of making art out of each beat of his wings until he can shape the clouds with a curl of his neck and a wave of salted water. Each of his thoughts runs in the back of her mind, like the pages of a book turned by a storm. It makes the world around her seem more surreal, more magical.
Isra joins the dancers, pressing her shoulders against theirs. Tonight she moves not like a queen, but like another wild star fallen from the black sky. Tonight she moves like there is no war beating in her chest like that low drum beating beating beyond the fires. Stones glimmer like stars in each place she steps until the firelight is a kaleidoscope of red across her dark coat. It feels like freedom, losing herself in the crowd with nothing upon her brow but a pillar of bone.
Until her lungs feel like fire she dances. Until her bones feel like rust in her skin she twines like smoke between the crowd. Only then, only when she feels like she's about to collapse, does she take herself from the thick press of bodies around the fire.
Back in the shadows, she lifts her head to the sky just as the lanterns catch on a winter breeze and take flight. Isra smiles at the mist curling from her lips like dragon's breath. A step echoes on the stone beside her. She turns towards the sound just as the first fat snowflake falls across her nose.
And still that drum is beating beyond the fires and the lanterns are still rising like an army of light into the black night.
t's unclear what exactly drew her to the markets on this night. Normally all the commotion was something she'd rather stay away from. The Court's celebrations were unfamiliar and she was never one to love crowds anyway.
But something pulled her here. Perhaps it was the crackling of the fires or the unique blend of spices rising up through the smoke. There was music and dancing, which did not interest her that much. However, it almost felt like her heart was beating to the rhythm of the drums and it was an odd new feeling.
Morrighan stepped towards one of the bonfires. The magic inside her thrummed the closer to the flames that she got. It called out to the element, wanting her to reach out and take control. Unfortunately, she was not that powerful yet, although she would give anything to be back at her full potential. She would need to practice regularly and hopefully soon she could regain her skills.
A figure leaving the dancers caught her attention, breaking her out of the trance from the fire. Their head tilted upwards towards the sky and Morrighan followed to see the many lanterns floating up in the air. Such strange customs they had… though she would give them the credit of creating something beautiful and unique. It truly was mesmerizing to watch.
She stepped forward and joined the company of the one she saw, recognizing them as the Night Court queen, Isra. While still somewhat of a stranger, she was the one to let Morrighan in those months ago after first arriving. In some way, she owed a debt to the woman. This fact partially concerned her, but for now, she let herself get lost in the night.
"Your customs still confuse me…" she said, breaking the silence and meeting the mare's eyes. "What exactly are the lanterns for?"
@Isra I've just been kind of going with that they've met very briefly before when Morrighan arrived in Novus and Isra let her join, but they're still acquaintances. Hope that works!
"The sea is emotion incarnate. It loves, hates, and weeps."
“I have no idea.” The queen looks back to the lanterns drifting up slowly, like snow falling for gods. Smoke spirals around each drop of light in the black sky and Isra wonders if it's not smoke that fills up the light and lets them fly. Everything is smoke now, between her teeth, between her bones. Each night it's feeling less and less like fire and more like remnants and soot. It hurts to look at the the floating lights when she thinks of ash instead of brightness.
She turns from the sky and it feels like tearing two magnets apart. The stars are still dancing before them, wild and carefree even though they have been chewed out of the night and dropped like heavy stones in the mortal sea. They could learn something from the stars she thinks, the queen and the warrior with fire smoldering deep in her eyes.
Isra smiles and it feels a little less like a lie when she meets together their gazes. “But I think it might have something to do with hope and wishes. Or maybe it's something about the way the night takes everything light and makes a constellation with it. Maybe it's about none of those things.” Once her smile would have been sad, but tonight her heart feels full with a story. Her lips are humming like honeybees over her teeth and she wants to sing a legend to life beneath the smoke, dragons and lanterns.
Around them gray stones turn to moonstones. Fallen bits of cloth make themselves into more lanterns waiting for the flame. Heads turn towards her, and Isra thinks she can see both fear in wonder in all the eyes shifting away from her almost as soon as they land. It breaks her heart a little more under that story blooming like flowers on her tongue.
“I'd like to think that for some of them,” Isra tosses her horn towards the dancers and the singers. Each body around the fire is brighter than her, more alive than her. “it's about coming home.” The ocean i her gaze swells with the firelight dancing before them, it makes her seems strange (more like a unicorn and less like a queen).
She wonders if Morrighan understands that swell of fire in her eyes. Sometimes Isra does not even think she understands all the dark things living like sorrow in the ocean of her.
er queen spoke in a curious way that left Morrighan contemplating. Hope, wishes- did anyone really put faith in that anymore? Were equines lighting off the lanterns for the sake of making a wish? It seemed like such a waste of time and resources, especially since there was no one for the wish to be answered by. The Novus Gods, perhaps, but she had yet to see much from them since her arrival here.
Even back in Ourania, she had lost almost all faith in any higher beings. She saw some pray and bless, but she personally never bothered. No one ever heard a response back as if you were having a real conversation. The Great War was the biggest proof that gods - if there were any in her home land - did not give a shit. They did not stop the canines from being power hungry and they certainly did not stop Morrighan from being kicked through some sort of portal. Likely, they did not stop the slaughter of her kingdom either.
Still, the lanterns were such a mystery that even Isra didn't know of their origin or purpose. One could only use their imagination. She spoke of constellations and the grullo mare glanced up at the night sky and its many twinkling stars. Supposedly there were meanings to all the constellations, but Morrighan didn't pay much attention.
The queen's last statement made the mare feel something. She wasn't sure what, but it almost felt like it was tugging at her heart. Isra's eyes went to the singers and dancers, but Morrighan's mind went to Ourania.
Home.
Home was not here, at least not to Morrighan. Maybe it should be by now since it was clear she would not be able to return to her birth land. But did Novus truly feel like home? Sure, she promised to fight their battle, but was that to help them or to satisfy her hunger for war? Many months had passed since she was in her own Great War, but it seemed without the sense of closure, she was restless.
"That must be nice for them," she replied dryly, although one could sense the jealousy as well. "Being naive, forgetting that the world around them is in turmoil." Feeling at home.
It took her a moment to realize the heat emanating from her hooves and she looked down to see the light stream of smoke rising from the ground. When she lifted her leg, there was a faint shape of a hoofprint where her foot was. There had been a time where she could control her magic, but it seemed she would have to do this all over again and not let her emotions do the controlling.
"we know where to find the white spaces, we live in magic."
There is a moment in which Isra realizes that she understands the warrior more than she thought she would. Once she looked at each solider and failed to understand how violence called to them as sweetly as any lover. She had begged them to explain and turn their hearts back to peace, and love, and everything that would not leave them dead. But now, looking at the lanterns and the embers smoldering both in and around Morrighan she understands.
Isra is burning like the lanterns rising into the sky wishing to be stars. She is smoldering and smoking and she's not sure what will be left of in the ash of all the black things roiling in her like tide.
Although this will always be her home (she has forsaken the primordial sea for a sky of constellations), when she looks at the warrior and cannot bring herself to smile again, she knows that they are the same. If only a little-- they are the same.
“I wouldn't call it naivety.” She says and for a moment she feels older than her skin, like all her bones are filled with cobwebs instead of marrow. There is nothing she understands better than turmoil, and sorrow, and the way hope twists and chokes them both. “If it really is about coming home, or hope, turmoil is the best night sky on which a lantern should be lit. Maybe tonight the moon is listening to the sound of suffering and sending back to us something other than moonbeams.” Her smile returns then, shallow but bright with white teeth and caught firelight.
Isra lets her gaze fall, pointedly, to the half-moon of smoke left behind when Morrighan lifts her hoof from the stone. It rises between them like a small prayer, smaller than the bonfires, but large enough that neither of them could call it a trick of the mind. A tiny dragon cuts through the smoke between them and Isra wants to follow it and learn all the secrets of her city. There are so many she doesn't know yet and more heartbeats she needs to learn the pattern of.
She looks back at Morrighan with her small smoke and thinks that the warrior is the perfect place to start. The shallow smile on her face brightens to a moonbeam instead of a mirror. “Don't you believe in magic?”
And when the ground around her turns into wood, pitted and old, waiting to catch, something shines in her eyes. Magic maybe, or mystery. Whatever it is smolders.
sra didn't call it naivety, but that's what it was to Morrighan. They all danced and laughed and had a grand ol' time while the one they called Raum was plotting chaos around them. It was only a matter of time until a real war broke out and they wouldn't be smiling any longer. To her, this was a time to prepare, not a time to be goofing off. She shook her head.
The way Isra spoke of the moon and hope made her eyes roll. She knew many in her time who worshipped the moon and saw it as more than just a floating orb in the sky. To her, it was just that, something floating in the sky. Nothing more special than that. It didn't hear you when you spoke, it didn't give a shit. She had always thought those who spoke differently were having one too many hallucinogens and Isra was beginning to sound the same way.
Then the woman posed a question after seeing the trail of smoke from her hoof. Did she believe in magic? Morrighan snorted. Of course she did, it was the Gods that she felt skeptical about. They, whoever they were in either realm, had turned on her. Perhaps Caligo had been responsible for the return of some power here. She had certainly felt… something back during that snow storm. As much as she wanted to believe she imagined it, there had been something about the statue that didn't sit with her the right way. Then shortly after, here she was, able to wield fire again, although nothing near as grand as her former self.
Seeing the stone path turn to wood made her eyes hungry. She felt tempted to set the path ablaze, but she knew that her magic was no longer that powerful. All she could manage was a quick burst of flame only to disappear with a puff of smoke. The only marks left would be from her hooves burning into the wood grain, turning it from shades of brown to charcoal black. Her eyes narrowed.
"Of course I do. There was a time I could set this whole place on fire with a stomp of my foot. Now…" She was weak, vulnerable. The words felt like acid on her tongue. "Well, whatever brought me here took my magic with it. It's slowly coming back, but it's not the same." She didn't speak of the snow storm and the kid or the Caligo statue. That wasn't important. Plus, she didn't want to hear about Caligo's blessing or whatever since she was still skeptical.
"So, what, your ability is turning things into wood?" Morrighan asked, her lips curving into a smirk. It was partly a challenge but she was also curious what true abilities her queen possessed.
"Hearts rebuilt from hope resurrect dreams killed by hate."
All Isra can see when she looks, briefly, away from Morrighan is the night sky being eaten away by fire and moon-silver. The lanterns have flown away into the black and eyes are starting to stray back towards the dancers and the singers moving like pagans around the flames. But when she looks back, to the mare with hardness instead of wonder in her gaze, Isra still has that imprint of lanterns devoured by the black stinging in the space behind her eyes.
She wonders what imprints she leaves behind? Is it softness or war now? It is a dreamy story or the song of a drum beaten by bones? Once she wanted to know which. Now she's not so sure. Maybe it's better not to know that one has become a monster.
So all she does is look at the mare who leaves imprints at the back of her eyes and says honestly, “magic or no magic I'm glad you were brought here.” Because she wished that just once, when she was dying on the streets and hiding in the cobwebs, that someone would have looked at her and said they were glad she was home. Then, maybe then, she wouldn't have lost herself in the mountains with the flocks of animals destined to die.
Maybe she would have been more than an accidental queen then surrounded by candidates far better suited then her.
Now she's a queen with a story on her tongue, and hope a dying song her heart is forgetting how to sing. Tonight it's the fires teaching her again-- the fires and her city that sings and dances even with war knock, knock, knocking at their torn down gates.
Isra smiles at Morrighan when she asks of her magic, and it's not as gentle as it was before. That imprint is still stinging when she closes her eyes for a second. When she opens them there is something almost wicked (as all true joy is a little wicked and feral). “No.” She answers. Her teeth shine against her black face more red than white when she steps towards the fires. The fires make a strange thing out of her-- not queen, not unicorn, but something else, something that loves a dragon.
Fable flies over head and the shadow he leaves behind seems blacker than the places the firelight does not go.
“It is more than that.” A building at her back turns to marble. A bit of stone turns to glass as black as the sky. A piece of wood in the fire turns to gold that runs molten like blood below the fire. A twist of wire curls up a totem where ribbon once was. The world around her quivers with the suggestion that it's all just a dream (that nothing but Isra is real in the sea of it).
She smirks back even though the gesture seems wrong on her face. But her eyes are still shining like the sea, happy just to wash against the shoreline of her pupils. Her eyes are not smirking, but whispering that they are glad, so glad, that the warrior mare is there to talk to her of things that make her mind sting. “I'm sure someday your magic will remember how to burn the world down. But until then, I will be happy to turn the ground to dead wood for you to practice with.”
Isra starts away, back towards the blackness where her dragon's shadow has long since faded. Fable is a low hum in her head, whispering to her that the snow is coming and that another part of her city has a fire that is cooling. She calls over her shoulder, “Find me when you're ready to practice”. And then her hooves kick up into a canter.
The darkness of Denocte swallows its queen like she's a lantern instead of a unicorn.
@morrighan // <3 thank you for a perfect prompt thread
t took her a moment to realize what Isra had said. At first, she thought the words had come through from the beat of the drums and the songs of the entertainers around them. But then when the drums faded to her own heartbeat, Morrighan's ear twitched and she looked at her queen. Her expression was genuine, but there was something more there that she couldn't figure out.
"Thanks," she replied, her voice seeming cracked and raspy, as if it hadn't been used in a while. Morrighan felt uncomfortable; she wasn't used to others appreciating her presence, or at least since she had been separated from her family. Essentially, the Night Court was her new family, even if she didn't know everyone by name and didn't nearly have the same level of respect for them all, or they to her. This is what she had now and it was certainly better than having nothing, as much as she would like to avoid admitting it.
When Morrighan had challenged Isra's magic, it was as if she and the world around them had shifted. A dragon flew overhead, likely her queen's companion, and she watched him fade into the night. When she looked back down, Isra had said that her abilities were much more and within seconds, that was made clear. Everything began to change into different surfaces and textures. It left Morrighan feeling in awe, but also slightly jealous since this was much more than her pathetic puff of smoke. She wanted to join in and display just how powerful she was too, but she was a long ways away from that now.
Once Isra was done, it was almost as if they had entered a dream - or had this been a dream all along? Perhaps someone had slipped something into her drink. A little bit of her felt desperate and wanted this all to be real because it was quite a sight.
Then, her queen reassured her that her magic would come back to its former glory some day. Until then, she'd be happy to help give her the dead wood to practice with. Her two-colored eyes glistened, mostly by the firelight, but the hunger from her magic was still there.
Before she could respond to that, Isra began to turn away. Morrighan stepped forward, almost asking her to wait and not leave yet, but she stopped herself.
"Find me when you're ready to practice," were the last words she said before heading off, leaving the grullo mare standing alone. Part of her felt cheated, but as the illusions her queen had created started to fade away, the more confused she felt.
Well, if that had been a serious offer, perhaps she would take her up on it. For now, she walked off into the opposite direction towards her house as the fires of the gathering were snuffed out.
