[AW] the heart is a treacherous star

[Al'Zahra]

The Illuminated

“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”


She is dancing across the pathway of moonstones, and amethysts, and dragon dust.

Each of her hooves is an instrument of wonder singing in peels of metal and stone. Her body is singing like a blade on a battlefield. All her chains are a harpsichord that sounds like victory against her rib-bones and her hocks. In the song she is alive, a bit of horse, a bit of magic, a bit of wonder encased in something that beats with blood.

There is a story in each tangle of hair curling like a snake across the underside of throat. She looks like a world of magic caged, and beaten, and longing to be free. She looks like light in the darkness, slick with sweat, wild with all the forest and spice caught in her tail.

Al'Zahra looks like a song that the world did not know to sing. 

But it knows now in each eye trailing her like fire trails a pillar of smoke. It knows in the way the fires welcome her home like a sister. She inhales the smoke and spice. She exhales beauty, and softness, and a little bit of wickedness. There is a summer-storm on her lips that's salted with electricity and anointed in rain. History lives in the vibration of her lips tilting upwards with a secret only she knows. 

She is the oldest thing in the market and yet her skin is tender with youth. Her eyes are heavy with magic and yet her bones are dead with it. There are a hundred tangles of all the things that do not make sense twirling like seeds on the wind between this cage of flesh that traps her now.

Flesh is better than gold. Flesh can dance and gold never dies. 

The door appears like magic, as if it has been summoned by wonder of the way each inch of her sings, and sings, and sings. A scarab is crawling across the dead oak like it's feasting on magic instead of death. But of course she knows there is no magic in sin (and no real magic in this mortal wreckage). She opens the door anyway with a tap of card, and there is no magic in the warmth that rises like a cage to meet the winter kissing itself down her spine.

Even inside her steps are a dance across the wood and carpet. Her song is muted now and her chains are heavy without the snow and the wind brushing viciously through them.Al'Zahra lays down on a bed of pillows in a room full of horses that know nothing about magic (real magic) and each gold link of her chains press into her like small, hungry blades. 

She smiles and even in that she is still dancing.

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[Anatoly]

The Night Market is a place that Anatoly doubts he will ever tire of.

The air is rife with secrets, hidden amongst the hawked wares and buyers’ purses. Lovers brush against each other, exchanging notes and passing smiles as their parents or partners or children look obliviously past. Here and there pockets sit empty amongst the cobblestone where a canny thief has worked loose one of the many gleaming gems (Ana would not be surprised if half the coloured jewels were convincing fakes after so long a history).

And fire. For the rift that Caligo had torn between herself and her siblings, he can appreciate the warmth and light that burns everlasting in twisting iron lamps and the humble, urchin made bonfire. Night turns to day and day to night until you can scarcely tell the difference under the flames. How odd, how enchanting, that here in the heart of the Night Court’s capitol, in Caligo’s hard won shelter, light is grasped to more desperately than in any Day Court settlement.

Ah, but he’s not here to walk amongst the shopkeepers and customers, not here to listen to the whispers of the Denocte people. Tales had been told of some secret far more interesting than that of the common troubles and King Raum’s reign. He had wandered the streets, on and off again, wondering, but nothing had caught him as out of place, nothing had struck him as intriguing. And so he had bowed to the rumour's truth: no one found what they were looking for in Denocte’s Markets – it found them.

And find him it had, some mornings past. A green-eyed girl with a deft touch and a playing card gifted rather than stolen. A mystery he thought of but had no great anxiety to solve. It had waited until he wasn’t looking to offer it’s secrets, what was a day or two more until the great unveiling but a final drum roll?

So it was dusk that saw him stepping down a quiet street, dark of torches and lacking glimmer. That saw him arrive in front of ivory domes that make him think of the home he slipped in and out of like a thief (like he didn’t long for sun on his back and sand beneath his hooves). The door opens wide with a touch of the card, some magic turning it into a key, and he grins as he slips into the darkness.

The Night Court was a place of light, but here, in a shadowed monument to Solterra, darkness reigned. And what did that say?

Contradictions and mystery: Anatoly is charmed.

For tonight, revelry and luck hold no interest, so he slips away from the noise of the floor, works his way to the lounge (twisting up, grasping for the starlit candles far above his head) where he finds a woman, smiling an entertainer’s/politician’s/confidante’s smile. (A woman who taunts, and teases, knowledge and mischief all wrapped in a gleaming gold package.)

Anatoly meets her eyes, lowering himself into an opposite throne of pillows, and smiles back.

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Hope you don't mind me jumping in! This just screamed for Anatoly c: Also, I could not figure out how to tag her, sorry!

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[Al'Zahra]

The Illuminated

“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”


It feels like the moon is dead, that is always always been dead. Each time she looks up towards the candle-light pretending to be stars against a sky of wood, she can only see all the things that are not there. Magic, of course. But there is also only low music over a silence as thick as the sea. There is no laughter here, no life, only secrets and shadows that are black and stretched thin with more secrets.

She shivers, and it has nothing to do with the silk spooling out from her like red and purple ripples in a lake of wealth. Her shiver has everything to do with the gold twining about her between the shadows, and the smoke still clinging to her like dust. It has everything to do with laying still when she wants to rise like a billow of magic to dance among the not-stars in the not-sky above her head.

But this place is not made for girls who dance like the willow trees, or like feathers caught on a fast current.

This place is made for unicorns, like the one sitting across from her, with the devil in their smile. She does not remember the moment in which he joined her. She had been too distracted by that shiver in her skin telling her she was caught, caught, caught on a stage that could not dream of holding her. But when she tilts her head towards him there is a demon in her golden gaze to meet the devil is his.

Al'Zahra thinks of the sand, how it looked being made into dunes, and storms, and other things that pretended to be solid enough that the sea could not sweep them away.

Her smile turns into a moon and her skin stops quivering over sinew. “Have you come to tell me what mysteries these walls might hold?” She knows he doesn't work here, he smells too much like the sand that haunts her in every dream and in every pearl of dust shining in a ray of light. She still feels like a willow tree when she lets a little wickedness leak into the curl of her neck as she watches him (like a branch whipping in a storm, hungry for flesh).

“If only for a night.” Her nose reaches forward towards him, a greeting of the willow tree to the mountain of sand that could never hold roots in all the depth of it.

@Anatoly

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[Anatoly]

mothers make the man

“And what should I tell you?” He asks, smiling still, reaching forward in turn. A breath between them, a greeting between dragons and demons (between a mortal and the shell of one, though Anatoly will likely never know). He watches the slide of gold over the shiver of her skin, the give of silk beneath her body, the temptation in the curve of her neck. There is something almost familiar to her, something wicked and sinful and knowing.

It leaves him terribly at ease, even as his gaze grows more watchful. A well-dressed woman is a dangerous one, and here she is gilded in frivolity and softened with silken surroundings. The foolish might think a whore of her, but Anatoly knows that profession too well to mistake her for it. If she is anything close, she is a Geisha, but even that does not sit quite right. All the same, for all the secrets she asks of him, all the secrets she is surely aware he doesn’t know, she has a hundred more.

It has been… a very long time since he has met another alike to him.

So he lounges, neck curved like a snake about to strike, knowing she is not a mark as so many have been before but putting on the show anyway. “Should I tell you of the rumours down below? Of the fire wielder? Of the recluse or the golden?” He asks. He could ask if she wants to hear of the green-eyed girl (a refugee, some say, but others disagree), but though he does not look it he is well aware of the servants slipping like ghosts through rooms and halls.

Whoever is truly the power of this place, they are undoubtedly protective of the girl (the golden is half in love with her, people say), and he knows the kind of power necessary for gambling dens hidden so luxuriously in a court’s heart. He knows it is not a power he wants to tangle with for no good reason.

Regimes rise and fall, a King can be killed, but the shadows that cater to them are forever.

“Or perhaps you’re more interested in something a little further afield?” Despite this offer, he does not prepare to speak of how King Raum has lingered here, or how all accounts go unconfirmed. Currently he stands in the unique position to wander into that Queen killer’s, Queen stealer’s court with none knowing him to be an enemy. It would be unwise to tip anyone off about that little boon until he has lost all use for it. A shame: all the juiciest gossip seems to follow the King.

“And what might sharing secrets get me?” He asks, eyes hooded, smile wicked. Perhaps one might think him flirting (they would not be wrong). But it’s her mind he’s interested in tonight, not her body, and so he sees no reason to hide the teasing laughter in his eyes.

@"Al'Zahra"

anatoly

[Al'Zahra]

The Illuminated

“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”


She is fire enough to know the way a shadow moves like a snake. Her dreams of full of shadows, of ageless memories of how to make a shadow shed its darkness like skin. Something in her gaze promises the knowledge when she looks at his eyes. It's there in the glimmer of gold, flaked like rust, that she would be happy to help him shed all his gold and his sand so that he might really learn what's underneath it all.

And then she would tell him what's under the world and what's under all that blackness in the night sky.

All the silk below her feels like a sea when the curl of his neck starts to remind her of a cobra made of shadows. It ripples in waves with each song her body sings when she settles back into it. The smell of him is still a flavor on her lips when she smiles and curls her nose downward like a wilting flower. It is as much a lie as the sweet civility in way they are both reclined on pillows like house cats instead of lions.

Al'Zahra's laughter rings like a pearl hung between a glass bell-curve. It's tainted with a little of the fire that still echoes and haunts her each time she closes her eyes and turns the world black. “So many options.” When she cants her body to the side her gold makes a hollow sound. Below that her pulse is a bass drum beating, beating, beating with a song only the center of the world knows how to sing.

She does not pause to wonder if he can hear it.

“If I said that I wanted each and every one of them, what would you ask of me in return?” Her smile in that wilted curl of her neck lifts and her teeth look like moons over a field of blood-red silk and dark, hot skin. She unfurls her neck and her gold blooms with it. A breath catches in her lungs. That smile pauses and trembles, but never waives.

And beneath all that her blood is still thrumming and her eyes are still promising to fold him back like dead snake-skin.

@Anatoly

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[Anatoly]

“Secrets for secrets, perhaps?” He laughs, shaking his head, and charms. “I do believe yours are worth far more than mine.” Not a lie, Anatoly knows secrets, of course, but the best, most powerful ones are also the most dangerous, the ones he dare not use until he is assured of his own strength, his own safety. The smaller ones he as offered are still humorous little anecdotes, gossip and tall-telling and fairy stories, but hardly worthy of a proper exchange of secrets.

And this woman knows Secrets. She looks at him under demure lashes with eyes brighter than the jewellery draped across her skin and stares into his soul. Her entire package is one of clever lies and misdirection and magic made true. Cassandra, false-true prophet once more in living skin and, oh, he would believe her. She looks at him with the promise of Secrets he will want to keep even from himself, and those are always the very best to uncover.

No, not secrets, he decides. Here with another like him for the first time in years he’s hardly about to waste first impressions on offering to trade whispered gossip for the Secrets in her smile. What then? No one like him will ever hand away anything for free, to do so smacks of ignorance or unspoken favours, and while one is rude the other is plain foolish.

Unless. “I would ask for a story. The best you’re willing to tell.” A story doesn’t have to be true after all, for all the glimmer of truth in the details. It’s like the little secrets, the gossip that he’s offered in that way, some of it might not be true, at least not fully, but look a little deeper and you’ll find something that bleeds. “Would you think that a worthy trade?”

And still he eases into and does not find ease in her presence. They are dangerous things, the both of them, dressed up in their finest pretenses with no where to go. They know too much and never enough, caught against each others familiarity and wondering how deep they could crawl into the others skin before they even noticed, wondering what the other would do when they did.

He plays up the devil may care attitude in his smile, the intensity of his stare, the almost-threat in the tilt of his chin. She stares right back at him through a smile that sings of heat or blood or both and promises she already knows everything he’s ever been and everything he could ever be without saying a single word.

All the best liars tell truths.

@Al'Zahra - i'm sorry for the wait!

[Al'Zahra]

The Illuminated

“both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end.”


A look in her eyes suggests that each secret, each part of her beneath all this earthy skin and golden shine, is worth more than any temple in which a god is trapped. She doesn't let her smile brighten, or let  anything more than a sigh slip past her lips (like a promise of a shiver). But it's there in the way she looks at him like he's a feast in a dark wood when the winter is blazing in over the mountains.

It' looks like hunger, like starvation, like she's not going to be quiet when she crawls between his bones.

She wants to lean forward and burn through all these mortal trappings like tables, and silk, and the candles on their table pooling soft light in their cracking smiles. She wants to be nothing more than two   wild-dogs in the desert with the dunes hot under their paws and sand an endless sting in their eyes. They could run, oh she can see it in his devilish smile and the garnets hanging from his horn like one long drop of blood defying gravity. They would run. And run, and run, and run.

Until his lungs exploded between his ribs.

“I would.” She says and her breath pushes the candle flame towards him like a small beast just learning that it's hungry. Smoke rises up between them, thin and black enough that her vision blurs when she stares too hard at the way it rises towards the ceiling. She blinks and in the black a million stories flash in flares of painful white. But--

But in the end there is only one thing she wants to tell him. It's a story, of course it is, but it's a promise too. It's a bit of sound that she knows will etch itself between all that bone and sinew she wants to learn. It'll burrow in like rot, like fire,like hunger (always like hunger). She rises up from her sea of silk like a wave, like a naked thing being born from sea-foam and ground down oyster shell.

Al'Zahra moves towards him like smoke, like a song. Her chains sing to him, a siren melody of treasure, and adventure, and a beast lurking in the black deep. When she's close enough she drops her nose to his ear. She inhales just once to smell the desert, blood-stone, and violence on him. And then she exhales.

“I could be a god.” And if there's a lie in her voice, it's only the way that her lips pull at his mane as if to say am instead of could.


@Anatoly

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