[AW] a prayer in perfect piety

[Jask]

“And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of mystery,
felt myself a pure part of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose on the wind.”

Here is the boy, bent like a priest at the altar. Here are the knees tucked under the chest just so, a black that slopes toward the ground and the tip of a horn on the street like a pike. It feels like ceremony, like the bright white light of salvation, like the sun on his back is a hand and the hand holds him down.

Like the hand of god pushes, and pushes, until he has shins in the dirt and there is no taste around but the grit of sand and the cloud of dust that follows him down.

It is still holy. It still draws a prayer from his lungs. Most everything is holy, he knows. Most everything is like living and dying and living and dying in the same breath. Most every empty space is full of the voice of God. When he stands it is with the languor of a reptile. He does not know how to be anything but the creaking of old houses and the swing of a chandelier. He does not know how to do anything but stand, and watch, as Solterra turns on a pin around him.

Spinning,
and spinning,
and spinning,
though none of them pray as they should. None of them are full of the same joy and fear that he is. He feels it. He feels it deep down in the core of him, where there is only empty space and the cavernous echo of a heart that cannot see itself.

He inhales again. Exhales.
Some deity sighs through the wind, hot in his face, like any wind from the desert should be. All around him the Court is alive with heat and sun and the groan of a nation in motion. The fountain is cool and white against the blocky, yellowed brick of the rest of the city. Its splashing sounds like laughter, like some beast from the deep.

It would move anyone. It does not move him. It cannot.
Though Jask stares, though he stares and he stares and he stares, there is nothing that stirs in him, saying maker help me, this is beautiful.

There is just... silence. Cold, black silence like the void.
He used to wonder what it is like, to be the void.
Now he knows.

@orestes et any, here is... this werid man

[August]

I'm the hero of this story
I don't need to be saved

August has never had so much time to himself, and the temptation to get into trouble is like a fly always buzzing just outside his reach.

He should have grown out of it by now. But maybe losing his childhood to the Scarab (to the war) had only postponed it until he found himself free of duties, and schedules, and anyone needing him. Or maybe he just resents Solterra enough that it’s turned him into a petulant boy in search of destruction, self or other.

At the moment he’s innocent, slouching hip-cocked in the shadows to avoid the afternoon sun, watching strangers like there’s something to learn from them. For a while now his bright silver gaze has been caught by a boy praying, one whose stillness can only speak to fervor. It might have made him uneasy, except that he thinks of Caligo’s monk in his mountain temple, kneeling in shadow the way this man is in harsh daylight. August had always thought money made a more agreeable god; it, at least, did as intended when you wielded it, could be touched and kept.

But it isn’t the boy’s piety that drew his gaze back, and back again. It is the robes, clearly significant but whose meaning August is ignorant of, and the black collar around his neck, and the scarred and staring eye in the middle of his forehead. Some passersby stare at him, and some ignore him utterly, but the only thing of the boy that moves at all is the fluttering of his robes in the breeze, until at length he straightens.

That might have been the end of it, except the unicorn still doesn’t move. August can make out the glint of a red eye from across the square, but not what it might be looking at. A few moments more and he finds himself crossing the sand and bricks, the fountain burbling nearer, the shadows of pigeons cutting across his path in crazed and twisting patterns.

Up close the boy is perhaps more unsettling, but August is familiar with things both stranger and worse. His feelings, instead, hover between pity and curiosity and that gnawing need for trouble.

“Hey,” he says, his voice soft over the laughing fountain. “Can I ask you something?”



@Jask

credits

[Jask]

you have heard the stories about how the dead have already cried, like crushed grass and wilted flowers and memories carved into stone, then forgotten.

Childhood.
They wonder, sometimes, what it must have been like, in the clenched fist of a church built on the black stone of fear. Jask has never answered.

There are many children without a childhood, many names by which to call an orphan, or a soldier, or a monk. Jask has never stopped to wonder what he would call himself if it is not 'servant.' He has never paused to look back through the annals of time to find what childhood he did or did not have, soaked through with blood and dread and prayer.

Solterra is spinning, spinning around Jask as he stands in a circle of perfect stillness, only the wind with its hand in his robes to call him back from the void. The sun sits in the dish of his face, pooling in the rut of his bright scar, spilled off the curve of eyelid after eyelid after eyelid. The fountain burbles, and burbles, and burbles and Jask watches each drop shine like gems in the midday sun.

He does not see August, at first--or, if he does, he does not seem to. Any soft gold in his periphery is met with the same unflinching quiet as everything else, the sharp red of an eye rolling in the other's direction only once he has said: can I ask you something?

Jask turns, head first, then body, and pulls his face into some uncanny facsimile of placid agreement. It is a practiced expression, and a mechanical one, and it might be whole and delighted if it were not so terribly empty like the desert around them.

"Of course," he says, the way mothers might say it: too warm, too quiet, a voice backlit by the red of his robes and the red of his eyes and the read of the sharp point of his horn thrust up toward the sky. "What do you need?"

He might have been anxious, if he could be anything at all.

jask

[Ezital]

EZITAL





Ezital is finally, honestly, truly lost. 


The towering trees had given way to prickly cacti, the mossy ground had turned to gritty, dry sand, and the sun beat down on his back, wetting his flanks with foamed sweat. He’d paused to sniff a heavy red cactus blossom, but it's sickly sweet scent churned his stomach and he wasn’t tempted to lick it. Not even a little bit. There is little else to do but keep walking and hope that the endless sand gives way to something better.


By now, he’s sick of this place. He hates the stale dry air and the way his thighs are sticking together. He hates the way the sand gives underfoot like that time he got himself stuck in a bog. He hates the tangled waves of forelock and mane that must be a mess of frizz. 


He stumbles on, grumbling, but his small ears begin to pick up familiar sounds, the sounds of horses. He perks up at the prospect of meeting someone, the prospect of something to break up the monotony of the last few days. Loosing a shrill whinny, he canters towards the hum of life before him.


He sees the fountain first.


“Oh thank god,” he groans, and plunges himself headfirst into the water, spraying diamond droplets in every direction. He drinks until he is full to bursting, then immediately throws himself to the ground and scrubs every sweaty inch of his body into the stone. He rolls himself completely over, tucking his forelegs tight into his chest, kicking up showers of dust heedlessly with his hind legs.


Finally sated, he settles into an ungainly sprawl, and flicks an ear at the horses nearby.


“Oh hey,” he says, yawning widely. “What’s up?”


@Jask @August

[August]

I'm the hero of this story
I don't need to be saved

His question was never going to be a proper, pious one, or really even one with any true curiosity behind it; August had been planning to give in to baser, childish instincts he’d never been able to fulfill, like a boy messing with ants in the backyard.

Almost at once his intent wavers. Up close the boy’s scar is grotesque, a long gnarled line that extends well beyond the milky blind eye, and the palomino’s sympathy outweighs his want for trouble. August opens his mouth to speak -

And closes it again when a whinny cuts through the dusty, wind-stirred air, turning with ears pricked with interest to watch a white-faced stallion come running down the street. August makes no attempt to temper the half-grin that spreads, incredulous, across his mouth as Solterrans scatter before the stranger, and when it becomes clear that the man’s path ends at the fountain August steps back, though not far enough to escape the spray of water. It feels cool against his skin, and silence descends on the plaza except for the slurping and splashing of the newcomer.

He’s still grinning when the man climbs from the fountain and immediately begins to roll on the brick, drawing stares both shocked and irate.

August looks back toward the unicorn, a brow arched. “Does this happen often? I was under the impression this fountain was holy.” By now there are clouds of dust rolling out, sticking to the places the water had dampened his skin, and the palomino turns again toward the antlered man. He can’t help it; he laughs at the sight of him, wet and caked with dust, and wonders if here is the kind of chaos he’s been waiting for.

“Hello, friend,” he says, making no move to step nearer. “Did that feel as good as it looked like it did?”




@Jask @Ezital

credits