[EXP] * unraveling the strands ''

[Moira]

YOU ARE SUCH A SOFT AND MESSY THING,
NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO TAKE CARE OF YOU

She is a god's sullen song, born to a wraith of fire and a ghost of moonlight, made to dance and sing, made to perform and smile, made to plead and beg and yell. She is an unrelenting force, a summer squall passing fast and hard on doorsteps, moving quicker and quicker with the beating of her heart. Tiger steps cannot keep up, not when there is a desperation, a need, a yearning to see that which calls to her.

Like the stars kiss the moon, so too do Moira Tonnerre's lips long to be pressed against another so intimately, so sweetly, and forever too far away. The atoms between them put too much space in the middle; only when electrons disappear and she can sink into his skin would she be content. Now, there is a monster roaring in her belly, there is a fire blazing in her blood, and she wonders, at last, if this is why her father risked his title, risked his family, risked his life for with her mother. Did they feel like this, or was it something lesser? Did she bend for him, to be a part of the Tonnerre clan no matter how shunned, because she knew that together they could withstand the shattering and remolding of worlds?

Moira thinks she might understand love better.

And so she rushes from her court, she rushes down cobbled, glittering streets; through celebrations and many cries that say Raum is dead, Raum is dead; not even those yells can stay her hand and pause her on her journey. Through the night, for she is a creature of darkness now - a flame in the dark, a pillar of burning fire to turn to when all the Stallions who Swallow the Light devour all from the skies from dawn to dusk - does she move from. Over the lands of Night and into the palms of Dusk she goes, quicker, quicker.

Phoenix heart pounds so fiercely she wonders if it will burst, but no, how could she ever fall when she knows he waits? Somewhere in the castle that looms much more quickly than it should have (how long has it been? A night? A day? Three? The Tonnerre girl cannot tell you if she's slept or where she's been, only that she knows where she must go) is a man of starlight that holds her heart. Does it flicker and warble and crackle like a merry flame, she wonders, or does it sigh at him and smile? Her chest feels tight for a moment, exhaustion almost tugs the corners of gold in black eyes down but is brushed away, pushed into the recesses of her mind as Asterion fills her world once more.

She'd left him there, upon that island, to return to Denocte when Raum was not found and she chose not to fight. There were other places she had to be, other things she must do. So the Pegasus left with promises on their lips, in their eyes, and so ready for the dream to be shattered, dashed upon the rocks of reality once more.

The Emissary wishes she'd have stayed. She tells herself that this could be a diplomatic visit - to ensure the hospital was properly stocked, to ensure that Dusk is recovering from the rippling news of Raum's death, to make sure of so many things. These are all lies, though, and she cannot hide the truth from herself.

Moira Tonnerre misses the boy-king of starlight and sorrow like she misses her missing cousin: fiercely, dearly, painfully and every minute they are apart. So she rushes into his court, into the streets he's walked and can almost imagine him running through them to greet her to. At last the girl stumbles, fatigue weighing limbs down. Moira does not realize she's stopped on the edge of a square, a bench beneath her and a kind soul throwing a blanket over her. she slips, feverish, in and out of dreams. Did it rain on her way here? She'd hardly felt a thing, and how funny it was that a healer might get sick, might not care for herself so she could care for others. At last, ethereal eyes close, their otherness hidden as she succumbs to the hands of a gentle repose.

There he stands before her, smiling in starlight, glistening like the sea. Asterion. In her sleep she calls for him, begs him to come quick, brows furrow when he turns away again and again. 

_{e-cho & tibet-lama | @Leonidas | please don't mind my ramblings here !}

[Leonidas]

I am not like any ordinary world

The boy is roaming as wild children do. He is a moon without a sun to call home, yet he turns and revolved and orbits his sister like she is his planet. Aster is the glue that holds the pieces of him together and yet, neither of them know it. Not when they are still wet with youth. They are fresh grasses learning of new seasons, watching how this world turns strange and beautiful and mysterious.


Their eyes are full of time and endless space - as is their family way. Each member of their family was born in stars, bathed in time and magic and gilded by galaxies and moons and suns. Eternity is nothing to them, yet to this immortal boy still learning his body, still learning of this world, eternity feels incomprehensible.


He does not worry about stars or Time, except to wonder of the ghosts he has heard rumour of in Denocte. If he was to go there, would he see his parents or his uncle or any other kin he has? He wonders as he roams, as he skips from stone to stone and does not think of how his heart feels better now - for this is a boy living in his moment, this is a boy who thinks of only now and waits for time to slip just a little, little faster.


The cobbles he runs fleet-footed across are slick with rain. But Leonidas is the sun, he is the burnished fox sly upon his feet, quick and sure as he dances his way through his birthplace. Aster is behind him, so far behind that occasionally his cub pauses in its run at his heels. It stops and lifts its head, regarding the path they had come along with a wary and alert eye. Leonidas brushes his lips across the cub’s crown and murmurs, ‘Come, they are following.” Never does he think to question himself, never does he think for a moment his sister would not be there, for they are one, she and him. They are home.


His skin is slick with glittering raindrops thick as dew. He glitters like the sun that paints herself across the sea. The feathers and twigs and wild wood things in his hair dance in the wind as the boy suddenly stops. He beholds a girl upon a bench. She sleeps beneath the silent rain. It dampens the black of her mane that lies in a font of curls across the crimson of her skin. The boy wonders, if he should touch her, if it might be like touching the sun. Would he burn?


Slowly he edges to her and hears the rasp of her breath, thick with cold, deep with sleep. He looks over her, as if she were a statue - a divinely carved icon to be worshipped and adored. Her eyes stir beneath her eyelids and the boy wonders what dreams lie there, beyond his knowing. What worlds exist for her in sleep, what joy - for he traces a smile upon her lips.


He reaches out to touch her brow. It is cool and wet with night. She smells of strange and wonderful things he has no name for but he knows he might like to go there. His lips sweep her fringe from her eyes and her lashes that catch rain like tears. She glows like his mother did - what he can remember of her - for each day he forgets her just a little bit more. 


“Do you want to come home?” The boy murmurs to the woman asleep for his sister will be along soon and together they will find shelter from the midnight rain. Already his skin grows cool and already he yearns for a roof of twisted branches and covering leaves. There is no home for these siblings, except what their blood bond provides. They lie tangled in sleep as they had within their mother’s womb, they tangle their hearts and souls and roam Novus as she once traversed worlds.


@Moira

"Speaking."

credits

[Moira]

all I see are the people I could have been ~

The dew upon her skin is soft and light, cold kisses from a lover's lips pressed into the crevices where secrets are held, hands creeping along her ribs, her spine, into the heart of her where it settles into bird-light bones. Phoenix' brow draws together when a touch is pressed upon it, dream-fog moving so painfully slow as it leaves her.

Stillness covers the woman in red like the night or the rain, a seal upon her skin that refuses to shiver. Instead, goose-flesh is raised from the cold, from the autumnal season that hints so clearly of the oncoming winter. There is hot cocoa in her dreams and cider, there are dates upon wooden plates and gazebos to waltz within as the snow falls. Oh, the Emissary yearns for the touch of another, the brush of skin against skin like the lips upon her lashes.

Dark curls are removed from closed eyes, riotous and rebellious in their wildness. They've been days untended, falling out on her journey West so that Moira is an image of resplendence and wildness. It is the wildness upon his tongue and his brow, the twigs in his hair that touches her, too. A reckless abandon of wanting and needing and unknowing of the future, but willing to dive into it, willing to move forward without knowing exactly where that bend in the road might lead. So she goes, she goes and sighs and slowly opens golden eyes as whispered words reach her ears. Her ears are teardrops curling toward Leonidas, her eyes pass softly over genteel features so like Florentine's and someone else's. He is chocolate and gold, he is thin-boned and beautiful, he is a masterpiece enveloped in Night just as she is a daughter more fit for Solis' fire than the cool embrace of Caligo.

But Moira does not mind the dark, it has held her too fondly and safely to have fears of it now.

"I'd catch my death if I do not," she replies gently, caution thrown to the wind momentarily. There is still the taste of a dream on her tongue, the press of starlit skin against her side, a sigh begging for release.

Slowly she stretches, much like Neerja might, full-bodied with spine extended. Wings arch up, up, up into the heavens. High enough that starlight catches and glints and gleams along the brighter edges, capturing it and reflecting it and sparkling along the moist feathering. "Where is home then, little wolf?" She asks at last, head tilting toward him, wings safely against her side once more, and a galaxy of questions glowing in those golden eyes, those night-struck eyes that watch and wonder and turn and turn with something she doesn't quite know but it tickles nonetheless.

"Speaking."

credits @Leonidas

[Leonidas]

I am not like any ordinary world

Nova presses her front paws upon the lip of the bench as she reaches up and forward to sniff the bent knee of the horse that sleeps there. Yet the cub is wary where her familiar is not. Her whiskers and her lips do not touch where Leonidas’ do. Over her brow across the sweep of her lashes. He studies the girl like he does a flower he has never seen before.


But when she wakens both he and Nova retreat. Leonidas just a step, but Nova two and three and four - enough to carry her behind him. From about his hocks she peeks, where she bears a mane of golden horse hair cascading from Leonidas’ tail.


The girl rises from the bench like a phoenix from the ashes. She is gold and glowing crimson, embers upon a fire and, had he not already felt the cool of her skin, he might think the smallest touch would be enough to burn. She wakens with dreams still clinging to the vestiges of her sleep. They fog her cinder eyes and limn them in starlight.


The fae boy does not falter when her eyes find his. He does not think how strange he is with mud upon his feet and foliage tangled within his hair. Leonidas is the dawn creeping through the slumbering wood. He is bright and wild and his smile is tumbling, dappling light spilling upon the forest floor.


She speaks of death and how it catches her. It means little to a boy of the wood except that the word creates a twinge within his tummy. If death can catch her… can he catch it? Can he catch it and demand it return his parents - if they are even dead at all. Aster believed they would return and so they waited and waited until the island began to crumble and be reclaimed by the rising sea.


Now he did not believe they would ever return - and neither did Aster. He saw the way her eyes changed. The twins needed not to ask each other, it went unspoken, their mutual understanding: Their parents were never coming back. They would spend this life together and yet, alone.


Where is home, little wolf? The boy turns in the lamplight, his skin gleaming where raindrops sit upon his thick, winter-ready coat. He smiles lupine and feral. He likes such a name, how it makes him more than fae. It makes him bold and savage and enough to ward off girls who try to steal his forts and beasts that prowl in the night nursing a hunger for foals.


“With Aster,” Leonidas answers as he begins to lead her across the cobbled street, passed houses and shops and gates and beyond walls until habitation falls away and all that beckons them is the sea to the left and the wild woods before them. He does not stop to think how the phoenix beside him might think to imagine a place of walls and blankets, windows and doors. He walks beneath the boughs and pauses to check she follows. He breathes in the dew drenched wood and hear the mud and leaves that squelch beneath his small feet. Here he feels wild, here he feels at rest.


He leads Moira to a small thicket, where the rain does not reach the small flattened patch where two twin foals slept with their two twin cubs. He does not think how blankets are not leaves and moonlight and how boughs are not rooves. “We slept here last night, it should be safe again.” The boy murmurs confident and keen. “My sister should be here soon and we can sleep then. My name is Leonidas and this is, Nova, my cub.” The cheetah regards the Night woman with wary eyes and steps forward under the shelter of the thicket. She shakes, her coat puffing out thick and warm.

@Moira

"Speaking."

credits