Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Aster shivers at the doorway to the castle, not in fear but expectant thrill.
How long has it been, since she was anything other than out-of-doors? The only roofs above her head have been clouds and starlight and the intertwining arch of branches. She remembers a small cottage, full of moss and jars and smells both wild and tame, that she went into as a girl with her twin by her side. That had been the last time.
But when the slender girl steps between the stone mouth, she finds it as lush with gardens as the world she left behind.
Aster laughs with delight, a loud, bright sound like bells against the hushed and sweet-smelling darkness. Light as a candle she drifts in the slow current of other horses, bending her head to blossoms and beds of ferns until they tickle her cheeks.
She does not yet look for the little-queen, the unicorn she had met by the seaside not so long ago. She wonders what she’s dreaming now.
And Aster wonders, too (for dimly, dimly she remembers that she was born a princess) if she might have had a castle like this, or grown gardens up the walls, or looked down at a sea of others who all bent their heads to her.
But she forgets these things as she wanders this forest both false and true, bars of moonlight striping her body.
that's the thing about you and me we're flying in the face of gravity
Kassandra dislikes castles.
The Furae palace had been a sprawling and silveresque expanse of turret towers and gunwalls, manned by guards at all hours. It was made up of multiple campuses, had at least sixteen gardens, (Queen Nethalandin had enjoyed flowers from all over the world), half as many kitchens, an entire wing dedicated to books (the king avoided it like the plague), and a secret sorcerer’s chamber in the basement where Kassandra would be dragged to do her readings.
And, of course, there was her tower.
She had come to the Dawn Court hoping to find Ipomoea and pass on her well wishes and congratulations. It was a foolish thought, now; she had met him once and only briefly, but his kindness and bravery had made a lasting mark. But who was she against this twice-King? Who was she to this boy with angel’s wings on his feet?
Far above, the ceiling was glass, lined with black iron seams. The sky beyond was aubergine. Hanging tendrils of ivy made dangling curtains that children ran through, giggling at the tickling sensation of the spade-shaped leaves dragging against their skin. The floor was covered in places in sphagnum, and the hallways were divided by glass vases filled with pearlescent royal lilies.
It was breathtaking, but Kassandra could not help looking for secret doors or hidden passages that may lead to a secret tower where an unfortunate prisoner languished away.
She thinks her made of flowers at first, some topiary crafted from white roses and wisteria, with antlers dipped in gilt. It is only as the moonlight shifts across her form, her beautiful face and graceful neck bending and moving to smell the blooms. She laughs against the pollen soft on her nose and moves amongst the other forms, all plain and unassuming as to be formless against her.
She is, with no doubt, the most beautiful creature Kassandra has ever seen.
So it is with much confidence and bated breath that she steps up to the ivory creature and asks, “Excuse me, are you the princess of this castle?” in a volume just shy of blurting.
"SPEECH" ! @ASTER i hope this is okay ;w;
12-22-2020, 10:16 PM
Played by
Sam [PM] Posts: 84 — Threads: 16 Signos: 525
er dreams have been haunted lately. Of great stone castles, white ravens, and crowns made of thorns. She has not told her mother of these dream wanderings, has not seen her father within them after she had asked him to shut the door between his dream walking and her dream worlds. She was entirely alone in them. So she shares with the universe in the form of paint and canvas. A raven flies through a castle where flowers both wilt and grow, a crown of thorns sits upon a throne made of ancient woods, reaching up and and up beyond the ends of her canvas. If it touches the sky, it will never be known. The worlds Elli creates only extends so far.
So much has change in her world, because unlike her canvas, she has learned this world extends beyond just Dusk Court and her mother's duties there, or Night Court and her father’s advising. She did not blink when her mother told her her cousin from a distant land would be staying with them and Nic. She did not cry when it has been so long since she has heard from Aeneas. And she has not shuddered when she learned the Dawn crown would be passed from the flower kissed palms of Ipomoea into the young, little ones of Danae. What did this mean for the rest of them? Elli’s world still does not extend that far.
That is why, at the end of things, Danae has a crown atop her head, and Elli weaves flowers in her hair.
She is not made of things like the new Dawn Queen is, but she feels a stirring in her chest all the same. An urge to wander, to grow with the world, watch life and death. She feels her pulse thrum in her chest, in her throat. And that is why she is in the gardens, Jack resting on her shoulders quietly. Laughter, reaches her and it gives Elliana wings on her feet as she skips through the moonlight towards it.
She knows it is not Danae.
It is not Isolt.
Made things don't laugh like that, only things born do.
“If I had a pointed crown such as yours, I would cover it with tulips, of blue, so to match the sky,” she says when she approaches the duo in a way so carefree that it belongs to youth and to youth alone. “And maybe for you,” she says turning to the woman. “Black roses, like a starless night, clear and crisp.”
Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Aster does not laugh when the woman with the silver-moon face approaches her with a question.
Neither does she reply, at first. Instead she only regards the stranger the way she might an orchid, or a swan, or a constellation - something lovely and interesting and other. The fae girl’s lips bloom in a smile soft and slight as the curl of a calla lily, her eyes glinting gold as its center. Pollen still freckles her nose.
“If I am,” she says at last, as the sourceless music deepens to a hum, “are you one of my subjects?” Aster decides that she would like to have such a mare beside her, the cosmos dusting her haunches and her feet like cloud-soft snow.
Before she can decide which to let go from her tongue - the lie or the truth - another girl approaches, moving the way a moth flies, like the wind is the only thing she might pay attention to. Aster turns toward her, and when her antlers are mentioned she dips them in a stately bow. When she lifts her head again it’s to take in the other girl from the flowers in her hair to the marking on her shoulder.
“And if I had a moon like yours, I shouldn’t need a crown at all.” She almost reaches out to touch it with the barest glance of feathers. For now she keeps to herself, except for her gaze, which passes between them without an ounce of shyness. “Have you both come to dance?”
that's the thing about you and me we're flying in the face of gravity
Lassandra has never been good at reading people. The pale m are’s silence does little to calm the butterflies whipped to a frenzy in her stomach. She feels seen, uncomfortably so. Tendrils in her brain reach out for Oculos’ presence but he has gone missing chasing a magician’s rabbits; raw red instinct bleeds back into her and she shivers.
This strange and golden creature speaks in a voice like sugar and honey. The saccharine voice asks a poignant question of her. Kassandra considers, chewing lightly on her cheek. She feels a kinship, here, with this youth. Something familiar. “I have been a princess-not-princess,” she says, thinking of her mother-- a king’s sister (a lie)-- “and a caged bird. I would not like to be a subject, I think. Perhaps a friend?”
A breeze shakes the heavy air, so weighted with the perfume of flowers and the smokey grasp of incense as it burns away in skull-shaped thymiaterions and glass thuribles suspended from silverite chains. A new figure approaches, a slender youth, with skin the color and texture of unbothered sand at night. There is a golden mood emblazoned upon her shoulder; her hair floats out behind her like alabaster sargassum.
The golden moon sits heavy in Kassandra’s eye and she tenses to fight down a tremble. I will not have a Seeing, she thinks, not here. Not now.
She approaches and speaks of flowers. Flowers, not fatalities. Crowns and not cries of havoc. Stay here. Stay present.
She speaks her nerves instead of swallowing them. “Black roses seem so… dreary. Am I such a harbinger of doom?” She laughs at her own joke; she laughs at the irony.
“I would love to dance, if I am invited,” she says to the gilded-lily mare, the excitement of the opportunity causing her mind to calm. “Though to be honest I came here on a hope. A silly one, I wager, now.”
"SPEECH" ! @ASTER @Elliana whym i so bad at wriiiIIiIIIIting
12-24-2020, 02:01 PM
Played by
Sam [PM] Posts: 84 — Threads: 16 Signos: 525
lue eyes trace the curves and the points of the antlers as the girl bows her head. She had seen them before, on the top of a woodsman’s head. She told him it reminded her of the deer in her storybooks. She finds, looking at hers—they still do.
Maybe, if she were her mother, and was so much more attune to the living, she would have drawn two flowers from her mane and given it to each the girls as a memento of coronation night. Their own crowns upon their heads. “It is Caligo’s blessing,” she says, because it is one of the things she truly does know about herself. It is hard to learn about yourself from the dead, when they were gone before you were living. ‘Surely you knew me before,’ she would say to them, wherever children’s souls are kept before they are born. This, this question always made them leave. She has thought, what is so hidden in the answer that they cannot tell her.
When the other girl laughs, Elli’s gaze tightens to her starry skin. “Not a bringer of doom, no,” she says with breathy words. “Clarity,” she says, as if she knows how words are weighted and she were not just a child.
“A dance?” Elliana says turning to the girl with the pointed ensemble sitting atop her head. “I came here to see the young queen,” she says, and wants to say because I knew her when she wasn’t. But, that feels too uneasy in her mouth. Maybe Danaë had been a queen all along. “But my mother told me that dancing is perhaps the best thing for hopes and wishes,” she says and trots ahead. With a single flitter of blue eyes in her companions’ direction—she begins.
