The stars are alive, child! Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purpose abroad!
Luvena has loved many places in her lifetime. She has loved the cascading willows and soft winds of Herstial. The songs that herstillian sung, that lilted over the wind, and carried a melody and harmony together, hauntingly beautiful tunes gliding through the kingdom.
She has loved the towering trees and dappled ground of the woods, and the deafening darkness at its center. With the Artax leaping through, hooves large enough to crush, and antlers that knocked down trees, making way for new life among their old and rotting roots.
She had even come to love the Red waste, with its sun shining brightly over towering rocks made of sandstone and strength. It’s oasis a beacon of hope in a harsh landscape, and it’s people good enough to take her at her worst, good enough to raise her children with hope.
She has even come to love the night court itself. Though it can be a harsh place, as any city can, with people unruly milling about among the kindest of them. Though the torches on the walls, that are lit at night make her skin prickle with unease, as she dances as far away from each one as she can. There is something about the court that makes her heart swell with pride to call it her home. Even the carvings of Caligo in the stone walls start to resonate with her, and she begins to see the goddesses presence in the moon and the stars. And she wonders if perhaps, it is time to pay the night deity a visit.
But she can not always look at it cheerfully. She can’t this night, when she spots a citizen unknown to her berating a beggar in some side alley. She makes her way over with haste, wobbling on thin legs. Without a word she dropped a silver coin into the beggars bag. It took only a moment for the belligerent stranger to start arguing with her as well.
“Why give to him? For sitting here? Doing nothing for the court!” “Because I know what it is to not be able to work”
They continued on like this for a few minutes, unaware of the woman entering the alley
assandra has not loved many places in her life, but she has loved the experience of enduring them. Her Folly Tower, the silver-barred, marbled globe of a prison where she spent her formative years, had been her home, but the kind of home that left a foul taste in her mouth. Obviously, if given the chance to return there-- to go back to the hatred, and silence, and being treated by everyone as though she was a foul witch-- she would say no. Denocte had opened it’s arms to her, a mystifying, dream-struck straggler, with very few applicable skills, and almost no way to be a benefit to society.
They’d made a home for her. At the time, Kassandra thought it so with open arms and open hearts. Now she wondered.
She wondered if she was invited in and looked at like a parasite, a bug; she wondered if she was invited in because they could not say no. They were all nice people, all of them, to a one-- but did they actually like her? She was plagued with the question-- one of many that filled her brain to buzzing like locusts. It kept her up at night, wandering the Court, taking stock of everything while not truly seeing.
(She avoids those self same carved eyes of Caligo because looking at them fills her with a heavy, blue sort of need to cry, and also anger, sapphire embers at the center of a fire where they burn the hottest. A ball of hot ink sitting deep in her gut where it threatens to burst into flame.)
She finds herself, instead, following the crescendo of steadily rising voices, Oculos at her side. Ducking down a side alley, she discovers the source of a conflict, a gathering of citizens. She tried to quickly assess the situation-- she was shit at it-- and, instead, locked eyes with Oculos.
The hound flicked his ears back and barked, a loud, piercing sound, which split the night and cut the voices off at the root. Kassandra stepped forward, then, filling the open space where the silence now was.
“What seems the be the problem here?” she asked. Her voice, surprisingly, did not shake-- but that was less so from confidence and moreso because she was quite tired.
The stars are alive, child! Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purpose abroad!
Though the man's voice rose quickly over hers, drowning hers out, not once did hers change in volume, hovering still just barely above a whisper. It was not fear that kept her quiet -though she did worry how she would make her way out of it if the man did turn violent, which began to seem imminent- but a remnant of diplomacy that had been early instilled inside of her, from the day she’d learned to speak.
It was her grandfather, Zoran, who always told her, that if she wanted people, to hear her, truly hear her, she had to make them listen. Force them to focus on her voice and only her voice. Some people he said, tried to do that by drowning out everything else. Those people, he said, were fools. It was a lesson she had never forgotten, not even all these years after Herstial ceased to exist.
The beggar had remained silent through the argument, scooting back, trying to keep herself out of reach of the stranger. Luvena too, had started slowly creeping backwards as he grew angry. Thankfully though, they were cut off by a sharp bark, that echoed through the alley for a moment, before letting silence follow.
The woman who had entered the alley was taller then Lu, but shorter than the other man. She sported a coat of dusky stars, one that, for a moment, Luvena envied, wishing her own pelt still did the same. She turned to the woman, taking the chance to put some distance between herself and the man. “He seems to think that an act of kindness, is not worth giving.” she replied simply
he situation began to lay itself before her and Kassandra felt a renewed feeling of exhaustion seeping through her bones. The harshness of the world was a stark reality that, for a long time, she had been able to avoid. A bubbling sense of innocence had once brewed at her core, but it had soured; still, she tended to look at things through rosy-hued vision; but at times like this, something popped her (much smaller) bubble, and everything dark and tiring washed in at once.
The belligerent man’s voice was rising in volume, and his actions, gesticulating between the lowly beggar and the intervening woman, became more jagged and sudden. Oculos’ body was taut as a bowstring beside her-- she could feel his agitation, and she pressed the side of her leg into him for comfort. The wrong word, the wrong move, could set everything off, lighting a fire that would be difficult to put out. And Kassandra was too tired for such deeds this night.
She was no diplomat, though she had been schooled in the airs and graces of nobility by a long string of stuffy tutors ordained to her by her uncle, the king, before he had gone mad and set his kingdom alight. Or, madder.
“So he has chosen not only to go out of his way and abuse a citizen for a station often beyond his control,” she inferred, ears bordering on pinned, “and then shift the abuse to you for your kindness and generosity? Is this the case?” She did not care to hear the aggressor’s side of the story, but in a way, hoped he would speak himself into enlightenment, for so rarely did people listen when others tried to explain. “Surely he has a right to think this, as foul and wrong as it is; but he does not get to accost others, no matter their standing or differences of opinion.” She stepped forward, impeding upon his space. “Perhaps he is threatened by your kindness? I can think of no other reason as to why you would be so outspoken against another’s simple gesture.” She fixed her eyes on the instigator, brows raised like an eager mother expectative of a naughty child’s explanation for their deeds.
The stars are alive, child! Did you know that? Everything out there is alive, and there are grand purpose abroad!
She nodded, uncharacteristically timid, at the womans question. Though her gaze remained on the man, with a quick glance here and there to the hound, hoping it would move should the aggressor do anything cruel. She watched as the muscled woman pushed him back, and her ears swiveled back instinctively as the man grunted in response.
Though he seemed furious with the woman, she was larger than him, and it seemed that there would be little competition should things turn to bared teeth and flying hooves. The man sneered at her. “You aren’t worth my time” he sneered, swivelling his head towards everyone gathered in turn.
The beggar gave them a nod of thanks before scrambling off, newly uncomfortable with the area they had chosen. “Thank you” Luvena murmured, her heart still pounding in her chest, thoughts lingering on what could have become of her should things have gone any farther. “Luvena” she introduced herself “I wish I had something to give you in thanks, but I’m afraid that was the last of my change. I’ve… usually more spine than that but.” she paused, biting her tongue, mulling over her words. “I’m afraid I’d not have stood much of chance had things gone south with that man” The words were bitter, their tone denouncing everything he had stood for.
assandra fixed the man in a cold, silver stare, her eyelids dropping to a half-open position in a pointed, tired glare. “No?” She asked, false positivity woven into her words like silverite thread, a spider’s nest of strained grace. “Then, perhaps, you should find a better hobby than accosting strangers in the night.” She took a step forward and Oculos mirrored her, a vibration running down the length of his body, barely visible but tactile against Kassandra’s side. She let her weight sway gently into him, loose, now, requesting he relax and let the issue drop; she was far too exhausted for such nonsense and she wouldn’t have him getting injured for the stupidity of another.
Once the poor beggar had mumbled their thanks and hightailed it, Kassandra made a point of swinging her wide rear around and boxing out the vocal aggressor. She made a physical barrier between him and her new acquaintance, Luvena, blocking totally their view of each other with her expansive navy form. She affixed a worn smile on her features. Oculos ducked beneath her and sat down by her left side, haunch tucked beneath him, ears lifted, listening, but relaxed.
When Luvena offered to pay, Kas laughed. “Nonsense. You owe me nothing. There is no fee for being decent.” She noted the venom in Luvena’s tone as she expressed her contempt for the aggressor’s behavior. “Yes, well, some people are going to be assholes, and we do what we can about that. I’m no fighter either, to be honest, so if it had come to blows, I daresay it would have gone poorly on all accounts.” She’d never been in a physical altercation in her life. “My larger concern, however, is that we have a cause for begging in the Court. That, to me, is the reprehensible crime. I’ve a good mind to petition Ira and set him to fixing this nonsense.” The ferocity in her words came unbidden and surprised her; she had no relationship with Ira, not a one, and barely knew the new Sovereign besides at face value; surely, she had no right to march into his presence and demand rectification of the apparent state of poverty.
She stifled a yawn. “But that should probably wait until I’m less exhausted and more apt to bite my tongue.” Her next smile was genuine.
