It is the first time in a long time that Bexley is completely free, and the feeling is not, in the slightest, enjoyable.
She is free of responsibilities, and of torture, and of the way it felt to be part of something, and, too, free of love, free of desire, free of living-will, of blood: as the night closes in on her, both literally and figuratively, she finds herself free of purpose and is not sure what to say about it.
So what is left?
The sand has turned to a soft, liquid blue under the gaze of a dark and watchful night sky. Stars wink vaguely in the hard distance. In the not-light the dunes and the clouds melt into each other like so many braided ribbons. Bexley’s mouth is crusted with iron and salt. She wonders vaguely who or what is watching, if anything, and if it would be better to be ignorant of whatever does exist to punish. Only to punish.
Dear God, I hate you.
Her ribs are slatted and gaunt, too visible: her hips jut outward slightly: the ends of her usually pure-white hair are tinged with soot from a recent and particularly unpleasant visit to the markets. Dark circles bludgeon the skin under her eyes. A small pale sun bobs up and down at her side, fastidiously enthusiastic, and washes the path toward the Arma Mountains in thin rings of light. Bexley follows it with dead-eyed certainty.
Trees bristle hard against a deep-blue sky. A low wind moans against the rocks and the wood, bites and scrapes at the ex-regent’s skin. She locks her jaw against the chill. And from miles away, beyond the edge of the horizon, the sound of the cold, bright ocean crashing against the rocks mingles with the sound of a Denoctian horn announcing the arrival of the dawn and makes all the noise that announces something new, and Bexley’s heart slurs its beat in her chest until she cannot be sure whether she is alive or dead.
Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.
Time and again, Ianthe finds herself longing for the mountains. Her mind wanders in the still-aired chambers of the capitol and she thinks of ragged peaks. Her wing aches and she longs for narrow paths. When her sworn duty has no need for her (and this is often, for at least the moment) her feet carry her away until she’s looking up at jagged rock.
If she made it to the top, she knows how the air would taste. She knows how clouds would slip about her like thick mist and cover her in dew drops. She knows that depending on the height of whichever peak she made it to, she might be able to look out over the tops of clouds.
Ianthe does not climb. Not alone. She doesn’t dare.
For all her life she’s been jumping off mountains, off plateaus, off jagged cliffs. For all her life she’s known free fall and the comfort of wings that will catch her. Now, one wing tucked tight against her side, weakened and healing slowly, she has no safety net, no guarantee that if the urge to leap takes her…
Well, Ianthe has oaths to keep and gods to please. She hasn’t the time for such daydreams (she has too much time), nor any luck to test. So when she finds herself yet again at the mountain's base she wanders the paths closest to the ground where no sheer drops can tempt her. Wanders as she has wandered before, will wander again, with no expectation to be joined by anyone – and yet.
Truly, she has no luck. A heretic approaches, golden and starved, scarred and exhausted. Ianthe can’t help but to pity the woman who shivers against the wind’s bite, whose hair is blackened in spots with dirt. A refugee? She wouldn’t be surprised. The Night Court is slow to stir to war, for all their cries, but that doesn’t mean those outside these borders are so fortunate.
“Miss?” She calls out, swallowing a sneer and keeping her distance. This poor, wretched creature could be of use to her General, or at least what word she brings might be. Still, Ianthe is a good bit smaller than her, between predisposition and her still growing body, and she knows to be wary of those who are different. “My name is Ianthe.” She's getting better at this introduction thing. “Might I be able to direct you?”
Miss? sounds the voice from over the hill, and Bexley’s eyes snap toward it like she is expecting her name to come from the mouth of a knife: given recent events, it is more reasonable than not.
They burn with a hot, dark desperation, totally uncaring, nothing more than empty and disinterested. Pure blue sea glass -- pretty as it is useless. It is impossible to know whether she sees the girl or not. Her gaze slips right past the stranger so that it remains perfectly fixed on the place where the mountain slopes down, down down into Denocte, even as she crawls toward the girl, and Bexley is half there and half not, walking one way and watching another as if she is straddling the thin line between two overlapping universes.
The sun at her side flickers once, then booms. A flash of sickening white light cracks over the rock, then disappears as immediately as it came into sight, shattering into a million tiny pieces that are then swallowed by the cold air. If Bexley notices the sharp cracking sound it makes at least she does not flinch. Still her eyes are fixed on the middle distance, bloodshot and with vicious intensity: it has been years since she was here, or at least that’s what it feels like —
When did she become old? When did the years start passing like minutes? The first time she came to visit she was no more than a teenager, and Reichenbach had ruled, king of Crows and night and starlight. She was no more than a teenager, utterly vicious, and the chain around her neck had still been perfectly polished. She was no more than a teenager and not even the most practiced of seers could have predicted she would end up like this. She was magic-less: she had not met Acton. Nothing is the same.
Finally she snaps to attention. When her eyes finally meet the girl’s, they are unnervingly focused, as though Bexley can see right past her swallowed sneer and into her tiny bird-bones. “Ianthe.” Her voice is rough with a combination of anger and disuse. If it came down to it, Bexley thinks she might still win in a fight; her magic sizzles inside her like a fever, itching to be released, and if anything she’ll fight dirty because she has nothing left to lose.
But they can hope it doesn’t come to that.
“Bexley,” she offers, voice flat, and draws to a stop. “Where is Moira Tonnerre.”
It is not a question but a demand. Moira's name is a prayer in her mouth. With Solterra still in ruins and Acton's corpse still melting into the dirt, Moira might be the very last person on earth she would trust to -- well, to do anything at all to her. She will find Moira by sight or smell or divine intervention, with or without Ianthe’s help. But with can’t possibly hurt.
Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.
The woman stares and stares and stares. A thing half dead and hardly knowing it – a thing half dead and knowing it too well. “Our dead walk,” Daphne had told her once, casual and cruel with it. “Wings fail when spirits die, but the body can go on.” It was a terrible thing to say, Ianthe realizes now that she is trapped on the ground and living every moment of it, but she looks at this shell of a woman and feels a shiver of fear down her back all the same.
A sun explodes and all the air rushes from her lungs in a soundless exclamation. One wing flares wide and the other flinches violently until a different fear stills it. White splashes across her eyes and dots her vision even as she tries to blink it away, breathing a half-panicked rhythm. The dead walk, she can’t help but think hysterically, and she can’t see.
But the blindness it a temporary thing, and the woman stares through it, stares without seeing, and somehow that does nothing for Ianthe’s nerve. She raises her head and curls her neck, draws her one wing into threat position, and her feathers bristle in a combination of fear and warning. Don’t come closer, she says without saying and curses herself for wandering the mountain trails alone while she is still so vulnerable.
And then the woman is looking, responding with a voice made of gravel and rage. Bexley, the woman says, and it takes a moment to register it as a name, not helped by the demand that follows immediately after. Half dead, dragging herself through life, against that Ianthe knows she can win if it comes to a fight.
With that decided Ianthe huffs, drops her head and tucks in her wing, almost rolling her eyes. Really? The half dead heretic is going to act like this? What a tool.
“At the capitol, last I looked.” Slow moving or not, the General was currently organizing a war effort. Didn’t exactly lead to being able to trot hither and tither outside of important war meetings. “If you want a meeting I’m sure she’ll see you, but we should probably feed you before you die.” Rushing important information to Moira was one thing, getting part way through and leaving the rest to conjecture because you dropped dead was entirely another.
“You look awful.” She clarified, just in case Bexley hadn’t noticed.
The girl would be pretty, if she wasn’t so rude. She is built small and sturdy, like Bexley, and the soft sand of her skin is a pleasant contrast to the dark hair and leg barring. Bexley has always been a little jealous of pegasi, and this one is no different — she eyes the girl’s too-long wings with cold green envy and wonders how her life would be different if escaping was as easy as batting an eyelash, raising a feather. Acton might not be dead, she might not be starving, and Solis knows she wouldn’t be stuck here relying on this child to lead her to Moira.
She lets out a short, barking laugh at Ianthe’s remark. The sound rasps hard against her throat, fiery like a lit match, rough as pumice in the back of her mouth. It almost makes her cough, but she holds it in with gritted teeth. And it is while she’s focused on holding in the admission of weakness that she finally notices the limp way one of those pretty wings hangs at the girl’s side, cracked at a joint-seam, utterly useless if not an actual hindrance. Bexley tries to smile. It feels unnatural against the dryness of her mouth, but she is somewhat soothed by the knowledge she could, if needed, use the girl’s wing against her.
(When did she become so terribly — terrible? When did life become a series of events bookmarked by tragedy? What has happened to her that she is no longer a pretty, foolish girl but a woman wrecked by blood and bone and love, wrecked so deep her heart must relearn how to beat? To die is an agony; to live, even worse.)
Thanks, she remarks dryly. I’m aware. She glances past Ianthe to the rise of the mountains behind them, black against the new blue of the sky. Her heart freezes a little in her chest. For the longest of times Denocte had been the enemy — it had taken away her Solterran freedom and kept hidden the love of her life. And now it is her only refuge. The only chance she has at returning to any semblance of a normal existence, be that whatever it may, the only opening to a path that would maybe, just maybe, fix her broken heart.
Bexley tightens her stance and starts to move again, further down the path to the city. Where are we going? she asks, though does not wait to begin her walk.
Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.
Ianthe flinches at the laugh, as subtly as she can manage. It’s a scathing thing, stone against stone, grinding and terrible. She wonders how the woman’s mouth isn’t dripping blood, producing sounds like that. But then, it’s hardly any of her business so long as Bexley keeps on keeping all her grime to herself, she’s hardly a healer after all, and if this was the sort she’d have to deal with then excuse her if she wasn’t going to rush out to fill that particular occupation.
And yet, as Bexley accepts her remark with what might be dry humour, as Bexley comes to her side and she turns to face the city, she can’t help the strange softening in her. “South.” She says, equally dry. South, as Aion had led her so she could be pieced together again. Perhaps that is it. Ianthe is a broken creature, mending slowly and beholden both to gods and a single mortal woman. Bexley is a broken creature too.
How terrible. She’s connecting with yet another heretic.
Rolling her eyes at herself, she swears to wash her hands of this entire mess the second she gets the chance. She is not going to go about getting attached or any silly little thing like that. It’s not like she can bring a wingless creature ho-… Well. She will be leaving eventually, and it’s better she not pollute herself with these heretics any more than she absolutely must for her duty. So, she’ll see Bexley to Moira and hopefully that’ll be the end of it.
She shakes herself. “We’ll make a detour to the lake, get some food and water in you before you collapse.” Itinerary thus set out, she tosses her head and eyes the band of gold fastened tight around Bexley’s neck. It’s glinting prettily enough in the dawn, but it hardly looks comfortable, and Ianthe does not understand it. “What’s the purpose of the gold?” She asks after a seconds too long silence. “I’d not seen a wink of any such ornaments before landing here, and now there’s a whole lot of you with shiny bits and bobs attached.” Honestly, the woman’s throat is struggling enough, the external pressure can not be helping. The entirety of it makes no logical sense.
South. Ha! What a girl. At least they are somewhat matched in wits; the trip down would be unbearably dull if she were subjected to the misfortune of meeting some tepid, smiling angel.
In the nighttime, they could both be ghosts. Their shadows are tiny against the gargantuan teeth of the mountain range they pass through. As Bexley begrudgingly follows her charge down the slope, she’s careful to pick only the steadiest stones to pass her weight over, and she watches each step like a child newly entranced by motion. The wind has picked up speed now, and voracity. It whips the thick waves of her hair into a frenzy until she can hardly see through the mass of white curls. It reminds her, in some vague, macabre way, of Solterra’s freakish blizzard all those seasons ago.
She shivers against the cold. It’s always been her enemy, but this is worse than she can remember—it cuts through her matted fur and down to the bone, and it sticks there, more stubborn than ever. Bexley grits her teeth and tries not to let her discomfort show. Ianthe is ahead of her, anyway, visibly only by the awkward shape her wing makes against the moonlight and the river of dark fur that follows her spine.
“It was a gift.” Maybe her voice is a little softer than it was, or maybe part of it has simply been lost in the breeze. The chain seems to curl tighter against her neck, until it feels like a noose. “From someone long gone. So.” It’s hardly a defense; then again, what does she have to prove to this girl?
Denocte’s lake shimmers in the distance ahead, as sweet and tempting as the image of the Oasis in the Mors. Bexley’s dry mouth lets out a kind of gasp. And with a playful flick of her tail against Ianthe’s side, she picks up her stride and bounds deeper into the darkness.
