[AW] [Fall] Glitterbomb

[Willfur]

Willfur


There's always been something fascinating to the mule about the way light and color take on such an ethereal quality when surrounded by contrasting darkness, so it's without even the slightest forethought or hesitation that he trots toward the meadow, eyes fixed on its carpet of phosphorescent white and periwinkle blue blossoms, curiosity and a joyful wonder his only driving forces.

The roughly oval space is utterly transformed, a layer of veiling shadow sandwiched between starlight above and the flowers dim glow beneath, their light most intense in the blooms centers and fading to a pale gleam toward the tips of their petals. Lowering his head, the stallion takes a moment to examine them closer, noting the grainy texture of the glowing substance, as if a powder of some sort had been poured over them to create the glimmering effect, rather than a natural process of the plants themselves.

Overenthusiastic, he presses his nostrils too close and inhales a choking breath of powder, the dry particles irritating his airway and making him sneeze forcefully. "sh-CHEW!" Snorting, he rubs his muzzle on one knee, leaving behind a gleaming smear that visibly fades as he watches. "Oh!"

Well, it doesn't taste like poison and he can see the silhouettes of other equids moving about the meadow who have presumably been exposed to the blossoms longer than he, so the risk of a bad reaction is probably low...

With a feral grin and his knees and hocks held high, the mule prances through the flowers, coating his lower legs in a bright, light blue radiance that flares and fades with the movement of his steps.

[Erasmus]

In the glee and the quiet of the dusky meadows, there seems to be an utmost peace that cannot be broken. It swings from the trees, lively and full as magnolia blooms, tossing their heads in the spree of summer light. It sways with the tall grasses in the breeze, dancing with each fine firelight and flutter of romantic gambol. Every breath and canticle unto the presence of life itself is swollen with harmonious verve, splendorous laughter echoing from each corner. Lovers engaged in play, friends gathered in a court of rapport, even strangers gallivanting in the pleasant yard – and it seems endless then, suspended in a moment of joy and childish coterie.

Erasmus is a black hole at its edge.

He stands in the shadow of an outcropping of trees, his silhouette a shroud among the spattering of autumnal leaves. Black marble wraith, predatory and leering, his hungry eyes carving each sight like burning, waxing crescents at the brink of the world. He watches each one – as a child may observe insects, with wonder and virginal cruelty that cannot be so wholly bad – contented by the quiet and the ethereal display before him. The meadows are a splendor even he cannot deny, though he has much still to comprehend.

And it is without particular persuasion that he changes his fixations, not unlike a carnivorous touring gaze, as each one fades and returns from the heavy-lidded darkness that stretches the misty borders of the meadow. It is a galaxic dance, one of blue-studded stars in a myriad place, its grasses, fireflies, and celestial bodies that pass one another in a whole cycle that he watches and watches and wonders what they know.

One close creature expels an odd noise, and the burning bright eyes tick to him instead.

The fellow is suspended for a small moment, before a curious eruption into a parade prance that waxes and wanes the luminescence that dines on each flex and frisk. Erasmus, not one to play favorites in the field, begins to return his sentry voyeur, when he sees that he is within the dancer's direct line of vision.

If sight would not betray the fellow, he would see the bay leaned against a young oak, or he would find the unmistakable beads of gold that hone intensely in their raptor sharpness. The dark vagrant would allow silence to clamber the space between them, but without the need for dramatics – he knows no better, where another may find it polite to look another direction or correct the inelegance by means of honorable small talk. Erasmus simply stares, apathetic, and the shadows crawl meekly at his heels.

He then reaches for the depths of the Erasmus-That-Was, for gauging encounters such as this came with some appropriation, certainly. The words evade him, but he does not blunder to grasp at each syllable: weather talk, political speak, simple greetings, all at once meaning nothing. When at last one may question his existence or sanity, he relents a noise in greeting.

In a way, it sounds like “Tell me," but it is too much of a growl that it comes out odd, clotted with misplaced vitriol and an uneven dialect, and it sounds more like barreling starfire than it does Erasmus. 

@Willfur ; hi, he sucks at introductions.

[Willfur]

Willfur


A rough call pulls the mules steps up short and draws his head around in a quick rotation. The sound is harsh in his oversize ears and demanding of attention, but as he peers over one shoulder and then the other, no accompanying face steps forward to meet his searching eyes.

"Who...?" He wonders aloud, but the darkness that saturates his senses as he comes to a standstill is like deep water all around him, daunting and unknowable, seeping up to the very stems of the flowers between his hooves and even there, only briefly held at bay by their dim, fleeting light.

It's impossible to make out anything, so he calls again, louder this time, but with less conviction than before. "Hello?" The ochre stallion is out of his element and left to his own silent thoughts, the space behind his eyes is suddenly crowded with fears of having disturbed some unknown gathering. "I'm sorry if I've disturbed you..." Something glints to his left, a flash of moonlight reflected back at him for just a fraction of a second. "Oh!"

Now that he knows where to look, and with a good amount of squinting included, he can make out a rough silhouette among the trees ringing the meadow. The figure is big, even bigger than Willfur is, and just as stout. "I was just having a little fun. It's so beautiful like this! But I guess I do have a habit of getting carried away." He chuckles, then ducks his head in joint chagrin and apology. "I didn't mean to intrude on anyone. I hope you don't mind!"

@Erasmus

[Erasmus]

Who...

the utterance is an anomaly, it washes over him over and over and over again, and just as he scrapes the remnant of an answer, he is dropped back into the waters of ambiguity. Its grasp passes over a name, only: Erasmus, Erasmus, Erasmus. it pulses in his chest, feels hot in his throat, it tastes like death when he rolls it over his tongue and grins, savoring. But it doesn't answer. It can't help watching like a feral cat, amusedly pawing the air with flicking eyes when the mule strains and stretches in the dark.

His gaze peers over the trees, warily, and it watches. It doesn't know sympathy when the man apologizes, an honest inflection of regret clouding with curiosity. It pines for that curiosity, soaks in it, because it and hunger are the only things known. They are the only things that matter currently, the recurring dream of what and who and where and all the other wonderful w words that provide no relief at their namesake.

It is caught by the mule in his eventual head-eye swingings, and he feels obliged to step forward. The field of phosphorous bulbs greet him, bobbing, and one smashes its head against his knee. It feels like nothing, like a bubble of air burst against him. Something about the way it busts into a galaxy of blue so soundlessly is satisfying, and he watches the spellbound patrons create signals in the distance. They speak to him, wordless ramblings of joy and contentedness, and the breeze dances among them.

The mule apologizes again, and the thing furrows his brow. “intrude..." It murmurs softly, letting it roll off his tongue lately. And almost automated, the Erasmus mind gives meaning to the word. He complies with conversation, knowing that it comes with rules and etiquette, but not entirely knowing what those rules are but that one often responds, not only listens. but how much he does prefer listening, learning, and watching. “not intruding." the words come to him, broken by his baritone that almost seem guttural, a wolf whisper. “am i?" and almost too aggressive, without their proper inflections. beneath his dialect swarm a hundred tones, a distant accent of a many place, but above all: the voice of Erasmus that was triumphs. It's a young man's honey-lacquered tone, bated by something dark. something you've heard once, in your dream of handsome but questionable strangers.

He wades into the cool blue lights, more of them smacking their bulb-heads against his knees, his chest, a pleasant contrast against the earth-red of his belly. His spine turns silver in the moonlight, a haunting effect when it pulls over his expression as he raises his head and the depths of his eyes swarm endlessly as a black snake pit behind sharp twin moons. Tell me, tell me, “what is this?" 

@Willfur

[Willfur]

Willfur


The mules long ears flick forward and back, uncertainty coiling into nervous energy beneath his skin. There's a confusing mixture of tone and inflection in the strangers speech, almost as if each word is being pronounced by two different speakers - individual, but simultaneous - one neutral, the other... intimidating. A quality of warning rings through the dissonance, a low, guarded noise that might seem more familiar in the growl of a wild animal than a civilized, verbal exchange.

"Uhh-" He hesitates, weight sinking instinctively into his heels as Mr. Tall, Dark, and Daunting steps into the meadow, moonlight illuminating strong, impassive features. Is he mimicking? Mocking? But as he raises his gold smeared head, all Willfur can see behind those sharply focused pupils is want, hunger, pursuit. He's not at all sure that what he sees is the same type of desire that he feels, for knowledge and experience, but he's happy to oblige with what he can and relieved to start inching toward familiar ground.

"Ah! Well, as best as I can tell," One narrow hoof lifts and reaches out to brush an untouched bloom between them, gently enough not to damage it, but roughly enough to illicit the expected flare of light and color, the hair around his coronet band dusted with grainy, blue light radiating dust when he pulls it back again. "These flowers have some sort of phosphorescence to them; Phosphorescent rather than florescent because they continue to glow even after you agitate them, just not so brightly. So that means that they absorb and store energy from the sun during the day and then re-emit it at a lower, longer wavelength later on so that the glow is not so brilliant as a sun, but lasts quite a long time for so small a thing as a flower. It's probably meant to make their pollen seem more appealing to potential carriers."

Trusting him enough - or distracted enough - in that moment to let his eyes lift and look past the other stallion's shoulder, roaming over the smattering of other horses gathered in the meadow, he poses his own question. "I wonder if they only bloom this way once a year? Maybe even less than that. The way everyone else has come to stroll and play makes it seem like a familiar, but special occurrence. Do you know?" He's not sure what to expect by way of answer, but having found another curious mind, he's eager to make more connections, build more bridges. "Oh! I'm Willfur, by the way. It's nice to meet you!"


@Erasmus

[Erasmus]

It is a predator's instinct to sense apprehension. It is a keen eye that sees the subtle body language, a precise ear that hears the hesitation in a breath or voice, a steady intuition that feels it in waves, in vibrations. The aether, a thing of appetite that has teethed its cravings on the hot halos of stars, of wandering space dust, of doe meat, of horseflesh, is no exception to the melodious croon of survival. It sees the mule draw back ever slightly, the uncertainty in twitchings, in the lilt of his voice. They are such delicate details that it is enticed by each nuance of alarm as one may observe an art: ponderously, admiredly. It does not encroach on the hint of fear like an imposing villain. It welcomes it warmly, though abstractedly, a patient devil in examination.

It is not aware that it is imposing, unearthly, abnormal. It does not know that each word breathes like wind through a hollow deadrot, not know that its eyes pierce like daggers, not know that it is unnatural to hunger the way it does. In fact, it does not know that mule is much unlike Erasmus – that they are, at all, separated by more than genes or appearances, by dentistry and digestion.

There is much it does not know. And perhaps this is to Willfur's advantage.

Because when Willfur unfolds before the thing that is Erasmus like a precious bloom of waiting, infinite knowledge, it does not look to the tender places between his words – the places that pulse, the places that blush, the places that bleed. It listens earnestly, genuinely, its ears far forward and eyes open for engagement, watching with a curiosity that is near sated in every explanation. It does hitch on the occasional definition – phosphorence, absorb, wavelength, pollen, but it splits open the mind of the Erasmus-That-Was, a broad memory bank ripe for explication.

If it had mastered any expression at all, it may have feigned the appropriate caricature of awe – for, truthfully, it did not find the mule's illustrations to be useless in the least, and supposed the appropriate term for him would be what the boy that was Erasmus deemed a scholar or a bookworm or a brainiac among others. The former seemed to elicit more merit than the others, (it appeared Erasmus was not a fan of many scholars) and it wondered what other harmless, or harmful, questions a scholar could answer. Was his mind boundless? Maybe he, too, once a thing of stardust and continuum, some imperial resource of cosmic waves in the heavens of Novus that had found itself the hapless possessor of equine flesh?

No, it thought, he would not have behaved in such a way. Would he?

But its mind was too full with the consummation of two worlds: that of novus, and that of aeons, an entire galaxy locked inside the sentient dust that was aether. It looked to the bright blue blooms, nudged another with a knee, watched as it sprung back – flickering, pulsing, and certainly still bright but faded. Like a dying sun. It kneed another, all the while listening intently. When Willfur stops, Erasmus opens his mouth to speak – but grows silent again when the mule is now asking it questions. Did they bloom this way once a year? Less? Was it familiar, or special? Something shifts in the aether-eyes, realizing that the scholar's mind was not, in fact, boundless. Where then, did it end? “they–" only exist here, it almost says, not thinking that this would have been a possibly abnormal thing to say, but is stopped by more words. Willfur.

meat.

no... meet.

it learned that they were men of different hungers. but tonight, it was one in the same.

for a moment, it contemplates the proper response - for there must be one, when one says a word that not even the erasmus understands, and says, meet, which apparently means something like making an acquaintance. one that he does not eat. not right away, at least. 

it searches, searches, all the while its hungry eyes filling like a reflection over black lakes when the clouds swallow the moon. it is a name that is proper, but the name still feels misplaced on its long tongue - though the thing that truly owned it had said it enough times. It had never had a name. In fact, it would not even know to call itself the aether, or aeons. The stones had their own name for it, and it could never be spoken on lips or tongues. "erasmus." it says, a sound like a wave rolling over the shore; almost ephiphanous, distant. it accepts the sound, the pronunciation matching all former records of it ever having been spoken. In fact, it even sounds better by the odd articulation, almost exotic. "how do you know so much?" in the back of his mind, he remembers the faces he carved, and the destination they gave before they no longer had jaws to speak. library, delumine. the mystic oracle. "is it... the 'library'?"

@Willfur

[Willfur]

Willfur


Silence lingers, the mule holding his tongue tight to afford his new companion a chance to respond, but the dark stranger moves slowly, ponderously, as if completely unaffected by the worlds bustling, frantic pace or the mule who asks so many questions. He might have thought the man slow-witted, if not for the keen intelligence that glints and stares squarely back at him from gilded pupils, challenging, forbidding any such notion. No, he decides, this slowness is an affectation of deep-seated confidence, the self-assuredness of one who knows no apprehension and thus, has no need to hurry, nor anything to prove.

A dangerous stoicism.

"Erasmus." He repeats, nodding politely. The name makes him think of similar sounding words like irascible, irrational, eradicate, but maybe that's just his inherited lizard-brain reacting to tiny micro-expressions with its own hair-pin trigger of fright and flight, quivering at the breakdown of superfluous decorum, but which seems more irrational, truly? He pushes the unwanted feelings away, silently reproaching his own thoughts. Since when has he allowed himself to be swayed and made to judge by such meaningless points?

Not today, at least.

"I do love the Library, and I've learned so much about Novus already by studying there, but most of my general knowledge I've been gifted by friends, family, experience, accidents - " He grins, lips parting and one ear flopping comically out to the side of his blocky head. "I sometimes let my curiosity get the better of me, you know, but what's life without a little misadventure now and then?"

Half a beat passes, but conversation not appearing to be the other's strong-suit and with his not seeming to have taken offense to Willfur's overenthusiasm yet either - as far as he can tell - the mule allows himself this one impertinence of carrying on without waiting for a reply, the question mostly being rhetorical anyway. "Are you interested in the Library as well? I know the way now, and could show you. Perhaps there's something written about these flowers in the botany section or..." He thinks a moment. "Somewhere in the cultural or religious studies, maybe, to do with recognized celebrations."


@Erasmus
Sorry I took so long with this one. <3

[Erasmus]

Erasmus, the name comes back to him over the waves of a fleeting dream – shards of memories cascaded over each layer of being, recollections of a boyhood and a warriorhood and the thrills of the rustling wilds tangled like burrs in his mane. Lines pull across the shadows of his contours, greeting each fold with a hunger and a restless light, and his eyes divine a hundred pyres that glimmer from the stead of an unending night. Erasmus, or the thing That Must Become, so grins as it must, or a flicker of something that may look like a grin, or a blade, or a spark. Forever the question: What would the boy do? What would Willfur do? What would the girl in the courtyard do? Its skin shudders imperceptibly, prickling over the remembered sensation of starfire and a cosmic, soundless black ocean. What would the crust of that world do, buckling to accept a name that would never fit?

It listens intently to the next part – essential for being, but unsure as for what being, for what purpose was there in horseflesh and a world of glowing bulb-flowers and cantankerous shopkeepers whose blood tasted like metal and salt and ire? Was it the Library from which all things flowed, knowledge spilling from its contents like creation from the womb of the universe? Friends, family, experience, accidents – and a pause then, as the Thing That Becomes Erasmus watches the comical nuance of a gesture it does not yet understand (humiliation? Friendship? Anger? Sadness?) It thinks to friends and struggles to place many faces with the proper descriptor; family is a word that ushers the thought of a cooing mother doting on her foal with tales of stone-slurping serpents and otherworldly constellations plucked from the sky, of rivers overflowing with black ichor and golden ridges.

The Thing That Becomes, turning over and over in the wasteland of an abandoned thought, turns its eyes on the field once more and the throngs of glimmering bulb-heads illuminating in the distance as dusk's light dims, dims, night unfolding in its violet veil. The silence between them waxes, the creature complacent with the quiet, until Willfur strikes up once more. The mention of the Library catches an ear and an eye, pupil honed and sharp with a tentative delight. The mule drawls of subjects as if they are casual happenstances within the hearth of wisdom, and the enigma that is such a place reveals itself as knowledge by whim - written, as it were, so that the image of some galaxic stronghold of deific intelligence no longer stands in its place. Written, as if by book or tome, the images of books gleaned only from the storage of memory provided by the creature's predecessor. There is some small disappointment that this world should be so physical, but humble.

“Yes,” at once, though there is a chance that the word may have cut short his companion's final sentence, it is calm but urgent, and he steps forward to reclaim its grace. “Show me.” Swimming through the ideals of the world that is, through customs and primaries of conversational engagement – it recognizes that an error was made with previous conspirators, as apparent by their dire reactions. Though hunger stead in his belly, Willfur was a necessary tool in discovering such a place as The Library, and it was made clear that devouring his brain would not provide him with the necessary knowledge. It adjusts, correcting, versing the platitudes of societal manners shelved in the bygones of less primal times. “If you would.”

exit, following willfur.

@Willfur ; don't sweat it, as you can see i'm the last person you need to apologize to for taking long haha. <3
we can end it here if you'd like.