[AW] ◭ rebirth

[Ophelia]

RUIN and RAVAGE
make me your priestess
rip me to pieces

♛

F

or days, the muck had been bubbling, oozing. A vile rot, abcessed around fleshless gilded bones that had been buried so, so long — their marrow now buzzing with a wild, dangerous electricity. The Tinea Swamp had been slowly pushing her out from its deepest depths, churning angrily against her skeleton which had nearly cemented itself beneath the gnarled, resentful roots of the Baldcypress and Tupelo trees. The swamp worked diligently hard to spit her out - a foul soul they no longer wished to keep, having overstayed its welcome by centuries. 

It was then the last marsh bubble popped, and it was as if the swamp finally heaved and regurgitated. There was a small glint — the slightest glimmer — as the muck parted. A single spear-like tine, its sharpest point akin to a needle.

The ascent of her bones from the muck was slow only until the surface was finally broken, when the swamp suddenly spewed up the rest of her gilded bones which joined the circlet of her horns in a frenzy. Laying in an unarticulated pile, the muck dripped from them — weeping out of the eye sockets of her skull and oozing along the sharp line of her jawbone. The swamp seemed to breathe a sigh of relief as its depths were free of her, for now.

---

Her eviction — the start of the rebirth — was messy and careless. What followed was much more methodical: weaving back together the seams of centuries past. The crayfish were the first to converge upon the aureate pile of bones; they seemed to almost work in a hivemind, headed by a giant freshwater crayfish nearly as old as Tinea itself. It hooked its chela into a golden orbital socket, dragging the skull — her skull — from the grasp of the Swamp and over to the base of a massive Baldcypress tree. All the smaller crustaceans drug her bones, one by one, until they fell in place. 

It was as if time itself stitched her back together, the Baldcypress weeping a continuous stream of wax that pooled and hardened around her golden bones. Eventually, she was whole enough to gather those no-longer-feeble legs underneath herself, to recline at the base of the tree that helped re-birth her back into the mortal world as the crayfish crawled back to their homes among the muck.

She had spent the days as the one hidden among the trees while her body fully re-composed itself. As she laid at the base of this same century-old tree, the golden crown above her head had overflowed and poured golden ichor over her eyes and skin. It burned, and she knew she was alive. 

And as she stood up and walked from the depths of this swamp - her skin's translucency as the mingling Tinean fog - she was certain that this world was not ready for her. 

"Speech." — (Thoughts.)
All welcome! ♥ 
<sub>I'd like to limit it to 1, maybe 2, characters max please! If someone snags this AW but you'd still like to thread, just ping me and Id be happy to start another thread with ya ♥ 

As a note, in this thread the 'rebuilding' of her mortal body is in due part to her immortality: she can be reformed and reborn from her bones after a period of abeyance following death (which can be a short period of time, or a centuries-long 'slumber')</sub>

♦︎  

[Raglan]

Raglan

may the bridges i burn light the way

He didn’t know what he had been expecting. 

A swamp was a swamp was a swamp, he supposed, and as the rich mud sucked at pale hooves, Raglan felt a bit of regret at deciding to explore this particular region of Terrastella. While the sun was still low enough in the sky to be considered morning, the mahogany stallion had been tromping about the shaded expanse of the Tinea Swamp since just after dawn. A thick fog still clung to the few shadowed reaches of the marsh and Raglan’s shoulders and back were damp with sweat — a definite perk in comparison to the frigid conditions closer to the perimeter of the territory. 

He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, or if anything could be found, but despite the bugs and the humidity, the child within him had to admit that the ugly slorping of the muck was rather fun. Nostrils flaring, the pegasus found that he was beginning to develop an understanding of how the swampy smell had been layered; there was new rot, old rot, moisture, gentle and pungent decay, mildew, and the sweet earthy aroma of mud mud mud. Even the murky water had a scent all it’s own, and Raglan wondered that if he spent enough time there amid the gnarled roots, whether he too would start to carry the smell in his skin. 

A gasp parted darkened lips as the horned stag pressed his hoof to what he had thought was a  patch of solid earth, only to have the leg dip down into a shallow hole. Luckily, he was able to recover his balance and yanked the aforementioned limb from the muck without much consequence, but the Crow began to test surfaces before he stepped fully. Part of him wondered at the life that thrived even in the dead of winter — was it magic or was it just the enduring quality of nature? 

What else thrived in the marsh? 
Would they think he was tasty?

A flash of light, of gold on the edge of his vision caused the stallion to whirl to his left, silvery eyes blinking rapidly. What the Crow beheld weaving between the trees with a primordial, horrifying grace, was something familiar enough to be understood as equine, but other enough that Raglan was forced to categorize the creature as simply ‘other.’ It stood shorter than him at the translucent shoulder, though the head was crowned with a sharp metal halo — a terrifyingly elegant sunstrike slashed with deadly barbs. Raglan watched, still as death, expression a mixture between horror and awe, as those golden bones glinted in the murky light.

Gods, he hoped he wasn’t tasty. 

The stallion swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, and tried his best to usher his sluggish thoughts into something coherent. 

If the creature saw him — and it would spy him between the greens and browns of this swamp; he burned near bright as it (She? He would have been lying if he said he hadn’t glanced down to check at least the physical gender of the Other) did, what with that blazing bay coat of his — it wouldn’t play in the Crow’s favor to be gawking like a babe. There was a sentience to the way it moved, even if the pace was leisurely, unrushed. Raglan had to hope that amid that sentience was mercy. 

“Fine day for swamp,” He called out lamely, a hopeful smile on his face, “Though I fear I may not possess the eye to truly appreciate it. How do you do?” 

Fine day for swamp, indeed.

@Ophelia — :) our first thred bb

"Talk"

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