[P] kill the lights

[Blyse]

one sword out of many.

Time had a way of moving that defied the mind’s conception; sometimes so slowly that each day we ache with anticipation of the future.  Other times, even the most monumental of moments seem to slip away before we can grasp the gravity of them.  Even the sun and moon are held hostage by this phenomenon and seemingly unaware all the while.  It was when Blyse found himself wedged between those two dissident movements of time that he became truly convinced of them.  Because from the time he first unfurled his wings to leap from the dirt of his homeland for the very last time to the moment where he stood before a castle of stone that begged him to come nearer, there was just a blur.  But now, time stood almost so still that he thought he was the only thing in motion.  And oh how he ached with anticipation.  So much, that his steps quickened the nearer he got to her gates and even more so when he crossed her threshold. 

He knew that now was the time to banish the thought of a homeland other than Denocte.  He started growing in to a sense of belonging once he had discovered the ability of illusion in him that only his time in Denocte had brought out.  At first, he had denied it just as he denied coming to Denocte the first time he had the chance.  He didn’t know half of the things about Novus back then than he knew now.  And he still knew very little by comparison to its lifelong citizens.  To only himself would he admit that he was regretful for not following the delicate beast that first invited him to Denocte.  What is the saying?  Better late than never?  That, too, was a monumental moment that whisked by in the blink of an eye.  He hadn’t wanted a home yet.  He hadn’t wanted for much, in fact.

Now he wanted nothing more than to control his illusions as he controlled all other things in his life.  As he passed between the keep’s sentinels, he remembered where he first learned to take control: in the ranks of steel-minded militants.  Blyse believed discipline and grit would take his illusions where he desired them to go.  That is what he came for.  The keep beckoned him deeper in to her walls with promises of the future he wanted.  He eagerly obeyed.

In her walls, he found he was not the only thing moving after all.  Night brought the castle to life, so much so that in some parts the citizens brushed shoulders as they went about their business.  He didn’t care for the bustle or the noise, truth be told, but a thriving city gave promise to his purpose.  How dare he complain?  He studied faces, studied wings, studied carvings in the stone and the colors on the banners.  Time was creeping after all.  That made it feel like there was more of it to spare.  Blyse took it all in—the sights, the smells, and the sounds.  Faint whispers and loud cries and…the rattling of chains.

His eyes snapped in the direction of that familiar sound and through thinly-parted iron gates he saw only a silhouette.  He didn’t hesitate.  Blyse slipped between hurrying bodies and pushed passed the gate, which groaned in an angry protest.  He briefly wondered if sound could be masked with an illusion.  If it could, he would learn to do it.  What he saw beyond the gate was a garden, thick with dark green foliage and blooms of indiscernible colors.  This was no longer something strange as everything in Denocte thrived without light.   In its midst, caped in chains and wielding her dagger, an acquaintance that had been all too brief.

“Isra.” He said simply, his focused gaze bidding hers to come meet it.
 
@Isra 

[Isra]

"also troubled -

roses in the wind,”

 It feels a little strange to be home in the night garden. Once she loved the quiet of it, but now it feels empty and almost hollow. When did it become easier to be a weapon? When did she forgot how to be a queen with love and stories on her tongue, instead of fire and ice?

Jasmine is blooming around her, tangled around a trellis make of oak and antler. Each time she inhales the sharp sweetness of it she can't help but remember the taste of bloom and poison on her tongue. Isra quivers and it has nothing to do with the cool spring night. And when she closes her eyes she can see flashes of blades, and drops of blood, and teeth running across that blackness in great streaks of blindingly white monsters.

Another inhale, and this time it's wisteria on her tongue. When she opens her eyes it's to look at all the purple vines blooming upward towards the moonlight. She smiles, moves closer, and when she lays her nose against the thicket of flowers, some of them turn to silver with pearl-dust pollen. There is one that turns bright yellow, dotted with rusted, black metal (but she doesn't look at that one, she can't). The wound will always be too fresh, too new, too eager to make her back into a beast of war.

She starts to move through the garden, leaving wealth in her wake. A small evergreen tree turns into an apple tree, a willow by a fountain turns into a pear tree. The stone pathway turns to marble, bright white with knots of mica. The glitter of it arches out from her shadow, like rings of age deep within the trunk of an old, battered and ancient tree. If her chain is singing, and tolling out the sound of slavery, she does not notice it.

Isra only notices the way that she stands in the garden thick with silence, alone.

A sound, a soft whisper of a memory, draws her attention back towards the gate. She smiles at the darkness there, the way even his wings are a suggestion of something that could be either dangerous or soft. When she turns to walk towards him, and her hooves echo like blades on the marble underneath, she wonders if he can see the way she's all hard edges and dull hate now.

Now, she really is the most dangerous thing in the mountains. Overhead her dragon dips low, off again to the sea to eat until he's bloated and sleepy. It is easier for Fable to forgot how to be a weapon. Because Isra when she says, “Hello nameless stranger,” still cants her horn into the silver moonlight like a blade. And in that moment, she knows her heart will not forget.

Even the fireflies are leaving space between where their wings end and her skin begins.

---

@blyse // <3

CREDITS

[Blyse]

one sword out of many.

Nameless stranger she called him.  Oh yes, he did recall that he never gave her his name.  There was something powerful in a name, like some form of kinship granted simply by the knowledge of it.  He did not just hand that away to strangers in the mountains.  But now, he was in Denocte and planned to remain there, so he might as well have warmed up to the thought of fellowship and comraderie with its people.  He cocked his head, a perplexed look claiming his expression for a moment.  It was how she said it that struck that look upon his face.  It lacked all the joyous pleasure he recalled from their first meeting.  Her tone was hollow, an effigy of what he had imagined it would be.  Perhaps his memory of her was simply failing him.  Or perhaps it was just that time had changed her like it changes all things.

He had changed too little for his liking since then.  Magic did not come as easy to him as everything else had.  He had hoped that when he arrived at this place, his illusions would be battle-ready.  He could not even recreate the fiery mirage he had witnessed from the sentinel at the lake.

“It’s Blyse.”  He reveals, reclaiming his poised expression and straightening his stance as any soldier should when he declares himself to another.  It felt like only half a sentence without a ‘sir’ tacked on at the end.  Some habits are harder to break than they are to build.  But his hopes were that he did not need to cull it out of himself—that soon, not just one day, it would come of use to him again.  

But that was not here and now.  ”I’ve taken the long road home. “  He began again, confidently chosen prose disrupting the pervasive silence of the garden.  “Perhaps I would have been wiser to take the offer you gave me instead of letting it hang on the air.”  If Blyse ever did apologize, that was the closest thing to it that you would find.  He kept many emotions trained to stay at bay if they didn’t serve him well.  Any form of guilt, however meager, was one of them.  

What might have been missed was that he was trying the word home out for the very first time.  It tasted bittersweet.  He truly did want a place to belong and he was as sure as he would find it here as he was that the young, blade-bearing woman would have a whimsical retort.  It turns out you can miss something you never really had.


@Isra // sorry, I didn't give you much dialogue to work with ;o;

[Isra]

"maybe she suffers

for the thrill of it all”

 For a moment she wishes it was tall pine and oak rising around them instead of night-flowers and sticky, sweet air. There is something in the way the space between them feels cold that makes her think of winter, of snowflakes pooling into mountains in the valley of her spine. It's why she steps closer and smiles at the way his form straightens with a promise of hard, battle-ready poise. And maybe she smiles a little bit to remind herself that there are two stars growing inside of her now instead of a war.

But oh, some mornings when she looks at the dawn alone she wishes it was a war again. Happiness is a heavier weight to hold sometimes.

Her lips almost reach for him then, to tap his shoulder like a knight deserves to be welcomed. The fireflies are still outlining her, afraid to land on the quivering magic flowing just under her surface. Isra still does not know if her touch can change horses, if she might make an eagle or a mouse of him. So she learns back and only silently urges him to come deeper into the blooming garden.

“Then I should say welcome home, Blyse.” His name feels like a blade between her teeth and she relishes in the hardness of it. At her back a flower turns bright and glittering like a north star in the dark garden. Isra does not need to turn to look at it to know which way the petals of it are pointing-- she never has.

It's blackness for her, always has been. Night-black are her dreams and each hope and thought is forever shining through her like a constellation still learning its story. She doesn't know if she'll ever learn the end of it, and she wonders what Blyse might know of endings. “Will you tell me what the long road was like?” Because she wants to know, she wants to know the way the world went on even when her whole world was falling, and crumbling, and dying.

Maybe now she can take the long road. And maybe the long road doesn't have to be so black.

---

@blyse // <3

CREDITS