Closed. The gates were closed.
He had stood dumbfounded before those beautiful, horrible, glorious, wretched gates for what felt like a lifetime. For a lifetime and longer, he gazed at the painstakingly wrought metal, willing it to open, praying that it was all an elaborate joke - that The Crows would burst from the trees and bushes that lined that impenetrable portal with laughter and jibes aimed at Raglan’s bruised heart.
That didn’t happen. The gates stood silent and permanent, not even creaking in the desolate wind that carried the scents of home upon its back.
So accompanied by a soul heavy with grief and a heart laden with questions, the lad had spread his wings and repeated the actions of a year ago; Raglan left Denocte behind. Soaring through cloud ridden skies, the Crow fled to the Dusk, chasing the essence of a darkening sky and the comfort of Denocte’s sister city. Terrastella, for all it’s beauty and all it’s grace, and despite it’s kinship to the Court of Eventide, still felt unfamiliar - not quite right, like an ill fitting coat or a blanket that is too short. It wasn’t that the Dusk Kingdom was lesser, no, it was just... Not Denocte.
As he glided above the capitol proper, having traversed the wrathful winds of the Praistigia Cliffs, Raglan began to feel acutely weary. Spiraling into a series of wide, lazy circles as he descended, the Silvertongue couldn’t help but heave a grateful sigh as his cream colored hooves pressed against the firm soil of Dusk’s main courtyard. Folding burgundy wings at his side, the bloody bay blinked blearily (you like what I did there?) at his surroundings, suddenly struck with a sensation of aimlessness as strong as any he had ever felt.
Beneath a lavender sky, with the air smelling nothing of smoke or jasmine, Raglan felt a question fall from his lips and to the earth at his hooves.
“What now?”
@Cynix
All my posting is from my phone now so Ye
