this what death feels like? Perhaps it is the worry of some; that death is a void, a never ending loop. A soul’s insanity. But if my soul had somehow moved forward, I should have felt something. At least, that’s what I would have to assume. After all, even when making small journeys, just the right jolt to your corporeal form would cause some response, if not simply snap you back into place. But in all your planes you’ve felt the passage of time, and yet here, there is nothing. The idea was startling, but not necessarily upsetting. My intuition, my love for Gaia, they settled the rolling feeling in my abdomen. This place was some kind of in-between, of that I was sure. I seemed to step through endless stars, balancing on the unseen and my footing sure as could be in the vastness, always towards a soft glow on the horizon. Its distance from me changed imperceptibly, and it was this that sparked the thought that perhaps instead of lifting me to greater understanding, my earth mother had freed me from all earthly things. After all, I felt no pain, no hunger, no thirst, and no weariness to my bones. Perhaps this journey is to teach you patience, young one. Patience is key to fullness of understanding, and to a greater love of all things.
It was my distraction with this train of thought, almost like a meditation, that I failed to notice that I had been getting closer to my goal on the horizon. The soft light gradually filled the void space around me, populating it at first with sparse trees of coarse grey bark, tall as can be. As my steps took me further, the trees thickened, gaining individual personality, shape, varying hues of grey. Their branches twisted around each other like lovers, and I knew that in full splendor they were rich with leaves that would leave a thick canopy of shade, filtering a green dappled glow at mid-sun. There were remnants of bushes and foliage, curled upon themselves for the winter had settled a thick blanket of snow upon the land.
I had an urge to turn my head to look behind me, but I shook it with a twitch of my flank. I knew that the void would have faded with each step, and even if I had wanted to return to the in-between, I would be unable to. My audits flicked, listening to the silence of the forest around me, my pistons coming to a slow stop, reveling in the thick sound of days old snow crushed under-hoof. I had not realized how temperate the void space had been until I noticed the plume of warmth curling into the air from my nares as I breathed. My pelt twitched again, and the soft pressure of planes travel slowly faded, replaced by the brisk touch of the early morning atmosphere.
I saw to my left flank the sky fading to a soft lilac hue. That must be the east, and sunrise a short time away. Though the chill was beginning to seep into the silver I wore upon my neck, a small smile graced my lips. Sunrise and moonrise were perhaps my two favorite things to observe, and where better than a quiet forest muffled in snow?
It never failed to awe me how much snow could affect the environment around it. Not only could it dust any surface with glittering beauty, but it brought a stillness to the world wherever it went. Both in a literal and figurative sense. Snow, when either falling or when gathered in copious amounts did wonders to dampen sound. Some would say they could go mad surrounded by a snowy landscape, and I suppose that could be right. If the mind was unused to such measured stillness it could be rather unsettling. What sound was produced never traveled very far and always seemed just a touch warped, as if the snow itself wanted to hush your movements. And yet, there was a deep allure, a calm that brought troubled minds to seek beautiful spaces with thick blankets of it. I firmly believed that Gaia brought forth snow to provide others with a place of quiet contemplation. A place where they could whisper all their secrets and know they would be kept safe, and all their troubles would melt away with the coming dawn and that they would be free. What an exhilarating thought.
My pelt shivered once more, but less from the cold and more from excitement. My silver made a soft tinkling, as if fairies laughing with agreement, delighted by the thought. Something told me deep in my gut that I would be witnessing a most beautiful sunrise in a strange new land that could offer me the beginning of everything. The quiet determination that had settled in my gut flared with a bright new life. Gaia had brought me here to teach me all that I had asked of her, and much, much more.
”Shall we?” I breathed with merriment as I oriented towards the coming sunrise and set course for a clear view of what was sure to be a spectacular sight.
AND I KNOW THAT ROME WASN'T BURNT IN A DAY
BUT IT COULDN'T HAVE BEEN MORE THAN A WEEK
A
ndras follows her tracks through the woods: a single, meandering series of hoofprints pressed into the snow like a cup. He wonders why he expects them to be red, red, red as the poppy field or the moon seen through films of ash or--
He is a dark spot on the bleak winter sun, carving his way through the last browned leaves still clutching on to the canopy and watching them fall in his wake. The shadow he casts looks like a vulture, just another savage thing on the increasingly long list of savage things out here in the woods before sunrise. He follows her tracks, the path they slice through snow, and finds her just before the sun peeks the ends of its fingers over the distant mountain peaks. It will still be some time, he thinks.
There are no red prints the whole journey long. There is no blood-- and that's what he's expecting, blood on blood on blood--frozen to the bases of trees. There is no pit in the heart of the woods full of rare bones and furs.
He hates that a part of him is almost disappointed, a crawling feeling in his gut. He hates that he finds her, quiet and still in the woods, smiling fondly to herself, and Andras wishes for something more. He cannot quite tell if he craves the nightmare that was the past year, or if he is so used to it at this point that to see some face not twisted in misery feels strange and upsetting in a way he can't handle. The ferocity with which this strange mix of sadness and fear and anger hits him is alarming.
The warden lands in a cloud of snowflakes and lightning that sticks to his glasses, his back, and his face. It is smooth but not graceful."Where are you going?" he asks through clenched teeth. It feels like tepid anger. It feels like a blunted sword. When he follows her eyes toward the rising sun, it feels like something more rotten than he wants to remember.
his intent was to frighten me, then perhaps somewhere there is a person waiting to bestow a ribbon for best performance. I’d had only a moment to register the looming shadow as it passed over me, tickling my spine with an electric chill I didn’t quite understand until the frame of the beast dropped in front of me. Though, perhaps beast was not the proper term. A nightmare. A god. Yes, perhaps that. Though my frame was taller, his was built for war. For hard work, and harsh things. Underneath the black as black coat, underneath the dancing lightning and snow He must be a god, some nightmarish hell deity from beyond pure muscle rippled, coiled and posed to strike like a serpent in the grass. The only thing that perhaps made him seem mortal, something that brought my racing heart down from a terrified flutter to a more rhythmic pattern, was the presence of the spectacles. I’m sure my face contorted freely before him, from fear, to awe, to confusion.
And then he spoke. Not to a general presence he felt, not to my direction, not to the idea of me, to me. This, more than his sudden appearance That lightning, so pure and subtle and bright and crackling and is perhaps what startled me the most. No one, short of another Planes-Walker, had ever spoken directly to me before. But no Planes-Walker I had ever seen controlled the elements as he did. We had magic, incantations, potions, spells, but nothing like this. Only the gods could have mastery over elements, only the gods could take the universe into their being and manipulate it at will. Magic in my homeland was akin to a child asking permission to use their parents’ tools to demonstrate a parlor trick. And half the time those parents would chuckle at the attempt and give you a pat for your troubles, now run along and play nice with the others.
But if this being Regal, strong, frightening could see me, could address me, then regardless of my previous astral experiences, I must treat him with the utmost respect. I stepped back, and bowed deeply, the various silver on my body tinkling softly as a small brook in spring. I took a deep breath, bringing the cold air into my lungs, soothing the fiery ache in my chest and the roiling in my gut. I stayed low, grounding myself, finding my center and enveloping my thoughts in a cozy blanket of calm. When my lips moved, I made my words strong, clear and respectful.
”My apologies, Sir. I am a visitor in your realm and had not realized my presence would cause a disturbance.” I took another deep breath and rose again to my height, though I kept my stance perhaps a bit more slight, more delicate. I was not a threat, had never been, regardless of the sharp points on my crown. If he decided I was an enemy target that must be eliminated I stood no more chance than a rabbit did a hungry jackal. ”I have been traveling a long while and was simply looking forward to watching a beautiful sunrise.”
I tried to keep my eye contact brief. There is truth that they are windows to the soul, and the particularly astute can see a lot of things if one knows how to look. I have been told since a child that my tendency to keep eye contact can be very intimidating, and in this instance I feared my old habit may well get me into trouble. Still, it would be rude to avoid them entirely. For the moment that they connected, beyond the spectacles and between the flickers of lightning, the overwhelming sense rage filled me. Not necessarily directed at me, but a rage for existence, perhaps. Rage like that is not something we are often born with. That kind of hatred spawns from other things far deeper embedded to a person than could be uncovered from one glance. Emotion that pure could only be from the source, and the crawling in my spine that told me I may very well be dealing with a powerful entity only cemented.
I hoped that in those few seconds we held each other’s gaze that my dark pools were like an open well. I hoped that they did not hide secrets, and did not give him a reason to think my travel was an attempt to invade or be cross or disrespectful. I hoped that he could sense my genuine surprise, I hoped that he could sense the flutter of my heart in my chest, and I hoped above all else that he could sense I was at my core a gentle soul. I meant him and his lands no harm, and in one last bid to prove it I provided him with an answer to his final question. ”If it pleases you, Sir, you may call me Torielle.”
If my instincts were true, I had given my name, though not quite in the fae sense, but given nonetheless, to a god. Gaia preserve my soul if he chose to harm me with it now.
ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS DANCE OUT OF YOUR SKIN
INTO ANOTHER SONG NOT QUITE ABOUT HEROES,
BUT STILL A SONG WHERE YOU CAN LIFT THE SPEAR
AND SAY "YES" AS IT FLASHES."
She looks at him like he would look at himself: a
blur of confusion cut through by veins of black fear. She looks at him like he is a beast, a thing in the body of a horse that is not a horse, made of teeth and thunder and bottomless rage and nothing else.
Sometimes Andras thinks they aren't wrong. What's so impossible about sizzling with bile? What's the rush in breathing deep, closing your eyes? Often, he feels more like a storm than a pegasus, or a Warden, or whatever he has been in this or any other life. Oriens chuckles down at him.
Oriens is smiling when he turns to her, shakes the snow off his wings, and huffs so that a cloud of steam rises from his nostrils in plumes. Maybe instead of a horse he will be a dragon. Maybe instead of a dragon he will be something new, terrible. The woods certainly would not care.
Apologies, sir-- I have been traveling a long while and was simply looking forward to a beautiful sunrise. Andras stares at her for a moment, thinking. She doesn't seem dangerous. She doesn't seem like much of anything. He huffs again, but it sounds more like a sigh, drawn out on the ice crystals that cling to the rims of his glasses.
When he turns back to her sunrise, She need not fear, him, not really.
For all his rage and his pounding fists, he cannot quite will himself to attack someone being perfectly kind. Andras bites his tongue, screws his nerves to a point, deep down, and says, "No, you've done nothing wrong. Welcome to Delumine."
He must seem almost disappointed, perhaps that there are no arms to be drawn. He must seem like he's dying for a row.
Truly, as Andras carefully avoids meeting her eyes again, following Torielle through the trees, he thinks: should she fear me? Am I to be feared? with a sick feeling that tastes like his anger but a little too sharp. "Torielle, then." He sighs, again. "Can I watch your sunrise?"
He watched me, as if debating on exactly how to approach my candor. It seems to me that perhaps he is not often met with honesty and kindness, maybe not even from his own people. It then occurs to me, if only briefly, that perhaps this figure of lightning - alive, stunning, powerful, brooding- may be not as he seems. Though the stallion does not quite relax once he passes his judgement on me, the threat of danger and potential animosity no longer permeates the air. If anything, there may be the lingering of disappointment, though it seems that he has enough hospitality to cover that feeling with his politeness.
Delumine... I mull the title of the land over my tongue like a strange wine. It flows down my throat and settles into my stomach to warm me as the sun begins to climb higher. It’s a lovely name, I think, for a land that I think I may be seeing for a small while. I let it fill me with warmth and gratitude, even if it is a name I’ve never heard or read in all my years within our tribal archives. Perhaps the names that we give to the regions that we visit on our planes-walking are not the proper titles at all, though it would seem silly that those who observe would not be diligent enough to encounter someone who speaks of their home and find a way to catalogue it. Still, I suppose that there could be some error. Mayhaps I have heard of this place. A rose by any other name, after all.
I smile wholly, careful to not catch his eye, and bob my head, my bells giggling with excitement.“Yes, of course, Sir. If it pleases you, I would be delighted to share a sunrise in your beautiful Delumine.”I take a step forward and move around to his side, giving him a respectful berth, but nothing as to seem as if I am avoiding him. At this radius, I can feel the electric tingle against my flesh, the whisper of a thousand ghosts against my skin, all wanting to tell me their little secrets in a private place where we won't be disturbed.
“If you know of a particularly good place to view it, I would ask you to lead the way, else I might end up putting us in a spot with hardly a view at all.” I breathed a laugh, and though it was not quite as hearty as I would normally apply to a new meeting, it is still appropriate and genuine. Looking closer to his person, perhaps he is no god at all. Though the lightning at first I thought was born from him, it seems to cover him more like a blanket, a swath of armor meant to keep him safe from the cruelties of the world. Cruelties he must have surely seen in droves. The thought saddens me a bit, and I wonder what might have happened to this stallion if he may have led a life of anything other than the one he has.
I pause a moment, wondering if I should ask after a name that has yet been offered. It is normally inappropriate to inquire of your betters things that they don’t give freely. Or so I have been told to think of it. In this case, though, I feel the urge to ask him all the same, and I indulge it in the most polite way that I can.“And whom may I call my viewing companion?”
ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS DANCE OUT OF YOUR SKIN
INTO ANOTHER SONG NOT QUITE ABOUT HEROES,
BUT STILL A SONG WHERE YOU CAN LIFT THE SPEAR
AND SAY "YES" AS IT FLASHES."
If anyone had told Andras, out loud and with the full earnestness such a thing demands, that his magic was a shield, not a sword, he would have laughed at them. How can an animal be anything but destructive when it is all teeth? How is he anything but a demolition waiting to happen? Andras might have smiled his wolfish smile, toothy and white, a continuation of the bleached hair of his chin.
He might have said to her, you're mistaken. I break things. It's my job. And maybe, truly, that would have said enough.
--but it is a shield, of course, and he pulls it close to his skin as he nods his affirmation and waves with one wing for her to follow. It is a shield as much as every other part of him is. Something to stand against the world that has not been particularly cruel but just does not seem to see eye to eye with him. He walks through it never quite knowing--who he is, what he is, why the sound of anyone else in the room sets his nerves running, why he often feels like a drum singing day and night about war--and because of that there is no other option.
"It's a forest," he says, as he carves his way through deer tracks that wind their way toward the direction he came, where the rolling back of the landscape is interrupted by deep ruts and mounds of roots almost as tall as his knees in places. "The oldest and tallest there is, without having to cross an ocean to see it. It doesn't quite let in the light like you'd hope."
The woods and its people lapse into silence, only the sound of the hooves on the packed dirt, or far-off birds fleeing the electric crackle of Andras' movement, or a stream that slices the trail in half as they go standing as a soundtrack to whatever strange moment is happening. "If you want to see the sunrise, you have to go toward the border."
Sure enough, dawn creeps its way closer to the horizon, turning the deep-ocean blue of the night sky to a slightly paler shade, framed here and there by the clouds that had gathered overnight. As Andras draws toward the border, where the woods fade into small, separate stands of young trees and the plains open up on their east end, there is nothing to stand in the way: only undulating grassland, far as the eye can see, and beyond that the rising dunes and rocky hills of the desert, still too far to reach its small hands all the way into the sky.
Around him everything is turning a dark shade of lavender. He watches it somberly, like a vigil. "I'm Andras. Here is your sunrise."
I follow his movements, and I realize that he has the confidence of someone who has walked these lands a hundred times. He is not exactly kind to me, not in the traditional way, but I feel that he is kind to me in the only way that he knows how. After all, I am but a stranger to his lands, and yet he has indulged me in my desire to see the sun lift himself into the sky. He tells me that the trees are akin to a tightly woven net, and even now, in the midst of winter, I can see their branches twining together. In the height of summer, I’m sure nearly no light at all makes their way through. The oldest forest, he says. And I can feel that in my very bones. Perhaps that is why this is the place from which I emerged from the nothing. It calls to me much like my heartsickness calls to home.
He brings me in amicable silence to the edge of the trees, and I am content to share the space of our walk this way. The longer I spend observing the pegasus, the more I feel that I may understand him. He may patrol these areas to keep them safe from intruders, but I feel that more so than that, he patrols these areas to keep his mind and heart safe from himself. From whatever chaos boredom and stillness would bring him. And why should it not be a place of some kind of peace for him? The forest and her children, no matter where someone is, they have always been good listeners. They swallow secrets and do not judge you- past, present or future.
The way that the sun rises over the plains is beautiful. Deep sleepy blues stirring into lilac, the stars winking out of sight. First slowly, and then by the dozens, as if each firefly light realizes their companions have gone away and they desire not to be left behind. The stallion tells me his name is Andras, and I mull the name over my tongue. It’s a strong name, and it suits him. I hold it in my mouth a while, watching the sun climb over the edge of the world, bringing with it striking colours of pink and orange and brilliant gold.
“Andras,” I say slowly, bowing my head slightly, the bells in my antlers chittering.“Well met.”I turn myself to look at him more fully, the most comfortable I have been since our meeting. I understand now that, while my skin tingles like an electric current, he is no more a god than I am. He is a man, destined for growth. Perhaps struggle and hardship, but ultimately, growth. Just as the sunrise has pulled glory from the twilight hours, he too shall have a day when the shadows of the night will be chased away by his light.
I smile, a gentle thing as I look back to the open plains. “Thank you for sharing this sunrise with me. And for showing me the beauty that is your home.”
I turn my eyes to him once more, watching his stoic form, searching perhaps for something. I’m not sure what, and the thought passes. I observe him for who and what he is.“Let me not keep you from your duties, Andras. If you have business to attend to, please feel free to see to it.”My blue orbs travel back to the horizon, the sun brushing just the edges of the earth, spilling gold and pink and lavender like an overturned teacup.“I think I shall stay here a while.”
