[AW] [fall] disappearing easy as a breath,

[Red]

"nothing was clear"

She's lost in the embers rising up into the black sky like tiny birds and tiny seeds. There's this way they fade into the black-- flaring brighter for just a moment before they fade to ashen gray and start to drift lazily down to the earth like wishes. It's a strange pattern, this way of the fires, and it makes her think of death, the sea, and grapes crushed between her teeth. 

Maybe it should all make her think of home or of the way her house flares bright golden in the fall twilight. But each time she blinks and tries to tell her heart to be happy, to dance, to wander towards the merchants selling her wine, it only reminds her that even home doesn't feel like home anymore. 

It hasn't for years. Not since the rains came. 

And so she's wandering with her eyes caught on those dying embers and her heart caught in some iron fist she can never seem to loosen. If there are merchants calling her towards their booths she does not hear them. Another winemaker is ringing a bell somewhere in the distance and she knows what it means, she knows it means she should hurry over to see what dreamer thinks they know the language of the vines in the way she does. Yet tonight she cannot bring herself to feel hopeful that someone else knows the language her soul knows--

A poet starts to sing and her heart knows it's a rhythm of love given the shape and tone of words. Her spine starts to sway because some of those sad, lilting words sound a little like the hush of the sea over sharp shells. And her skin, her specked too-mortal skin, trembles like frost on a winter night has settled down upon it. Somewhere, in a memory so deep she can hardly remember how the light sat in the window, she is dancing between the old stone  walls to a song sung by her lost heart. 

Somewhere she is hopeful. But--

Tonight she can only look at those embers rising up like red, dying stars.  And if she is swaying to the sound of a love-song she knows it no more than she knows the sound of her own name spoken by a merchant waiting for her. 


"the moon peeled the ocean back"

[Daunt]

Warriors unfold whether we're young or old
Sometimes we take and we pillage for gold

From the shallows of the mountains she ventures further, deep into the weaving avenues of cobblestone paths lined with stalls, an array of characters hollering in a bid to sell their nourishments which sting the air with a scent of sweetness. Her wings treasure her pelt, protectively holding her torso as bodies bustle and barge whilst sweat leaked from her pits and she’s forced to brace her crown and push through the gaps.

Unescapable, she realises, the crowds rolled on and on. Her brows sink, ink eyes scan the hustle and the pearl Pegasus wonders – What a peculiar scene. Full of vibrancy and rush, no essence of grace and full of unfamiliar assortments.

But above all the hustle a softly hummed tune reaches her ears the sombre notes draw her chilled heart to sway in tune with the small gathering that embraced the poet’s woes. His lyrics reached her loins and drew a gentle bleed of emotion from her normally stale expression as she fell in sync with the group. It reminds her of the ceremonies back home in the heart of the Katharas family, how they would sing together in harmony and soon she becomes too settled.

Her eyes close, just for a split moment in her enjoyment of the pleasant scene. But then it came - The writhing imagery of flesh and flames and the echoing screams between her two lobes.

Eyes bigger then the ripe apple standing in the stalls behind, she staggers back in horror. The embers of the flames rip riot on her vision and the cries bellowed above the soft tunes and as she clumsily went back on herself she bumped into another. If her cheeks could beam red then they would have. The flustered mare hastily turns to the one behind, eyes shining whilst she presses her wings tightly to her sides to avoid being even clumsier and she addresses a young mare tinged with red splodged markings.  “I do apologise,” Muttering tones come from her tongue, careful not to interrupt the ongoing singing.



ooc: Hope you don't mind me popping in on this <3
tags: @Red

Titles deserved and the dead will not rise
It's kinda my fault when the childen all cry

[Red]

"nothing was clear"

The sad lament of a broken love song rings in her ears long enough for her to piece meaning to the words At fist there was only the hush of a voice, salted enough that it made her think of the sea. She had danced to that voice, swaying back and forth like a gull caught on a current. Her eyes, her spring-green eyes, never wavered from the embers drifting up like mist. She could feel them landing on her spine when the wind turned. It felt like the fire was crying out the last laments of its life across the young curl of her bones.

And as terrible as it was, to love the way the wood was dying, dying, dying around her, she reveled in the monstrous burning of the dead-wood.

This wood didn't talk to her anyway.

Red is far enough back, encased in jasmine and citrus smoke, she cannot see the singer or the harpist. She cannot see anything but ash snowflakes falling and flames flickers strangle over the bodies around her. But she can still hear the way the poem starts to turn, the way it starts to sounds like a strangled death knell more than notes of sorrow. It runs like oil through her veins. It slows her down until there is only the blink, blink, blink of her eyes to show that the girl with wine and sea-salt in her soul is alive at all.

Someone bumps into her. She blinks. Her blood speeds up.

When she looks there is only the flash of bone-white feathers behind that stumbling voice. Red smiles, because she understands. The smile on her lips says, I know. I know what it's like to be the only one alone in a crowd.. It's a smile that's followed with a touch, nothing more than a brush of her muzzle against the girl's hip.

It's the same touch that seals give each other when the sea-weeds press them into great knots of flesh and sun-warm skin.

“Don't.” The word rings of her tongue like a bell, like ice falling off a vine on the first morning of spring. There is sea beneath it, there is always sea, but it's a sad sea (never angry). Because she's forgotten, oh she's forgotten, what it is like to be touched in any way her heart sparks and smolders like those embers floating away with wishes. She steps close enough to feel the brush of a feather against her rib-cage.

“I'm Red.” And she wonders how it feels to fly.



"the moon peeled the ocean back"

@Daunt

[Daunt]

Warriors unfold whether we're young or old
Sometimes we take and we pillage for gold

Wings cradle her ivory sides, sultry within the steamy breaths of the masses. The trail of smoke that flowed from her lungs shivered like the taught muscles of her body as she stood in the unfamiliarity, the ardour of her forlorn disposition seeping into her confidence and stealing her might; a bottle of white wine half empty with the black ink that welled through her veins.

Remember your name.

She rises her head and peers above the dozens of crowns which rock to the wistful warble before those sinking pools of abyss fall onto the duly named Red and comes her voice like silk dragged through a glacier.  

“Daunt,”

Her name burns in the slip of her throat, screaming to release but with nothing to follow. The harp strums a sombre solo as the poet comes to a pause and the sadness ricochets from the head to the rearmost souls whom swallow the cords in sync with their gentle sways and the poet begins again. His words bleed into the drums of her ears and she falls back into place against the reddened mare and carries her voice discreetly to the spotted women.

“His words, they are so sad,”

The seeds of her soul were rattled by the sorrowful vibrations that reached into her and drew cracks in the stone heart nestled in her chest. Reminders of family as he sang and the picturesque scape of home welcomed her vision but it was tainted. Tainted by the deed carried out by her hooves and all pleasure washed from the creases of her face and she was dry. Aweary from her descent down the mountains and solus in the new realm she found herself in despite the beating bodies around her.
But maybe loneliness was a beautiful thing.




ooc: 
tags: @Red

Titles deserved and the dead will not rise
It's kinda my fault when the childen all cry

[Red]

"nothing was clear"

Perhaps it is the way the crowd looks like a tide that makes her so eager to turn away when the poet pauses. The soft heart in her chest is aching and her lungs feel heavy with salt-water instead of spiced smoke. Her eyes linger on the girl, on the lines of her face pulled so tightly. It feels like she's cracked open her own skin before her mirror at home and looked at all the broken pieces floating sea-less beneath. The thought makes her sway closer until they are feathers and spots, sorrow and sea, sadness and wanting enough to die for.

Red remembers the way it felt to be tangled with her sister seals, watching bright-eyed below the water when the sailor's boats passed overhead. She remembers the fear of it, the thrill, the way this form of her wanted out of that form. It felt like a dream then. And now---

Now she's not sure what anything is supposed to feel like anymore.

So she smiles because it seems the normal thing to do, pretending like all the pieces are her aren't rolling like clouds inside her skin. “They are.” Her voice pauses, waivers like a gull in the breeze (or like a vine in late fall). Red thinks she should say something more, something profound, something about loneliness, hope or survival. She thinks--

The look on her face waivers between something sad and something almost feral. A piece of her that remembers the look of a shark swimming in great circles over her head trembles. It demands the wind in her hair, the feel of shadows nibbling at the edges of her until she's nothing more than a blur. She remembers what little she knows of poetry and how she loves it so.

A feather brushes against the hollow between one rib and the next.

“Would you like a drink?” Her look swings to the side of almost, almost, almost and the way her eyes look at Daunt's face seems like a poetry of its own.




"the moon peeled the ocean back"

@Daunt