and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
Calliope's energy built upon itself as though stoked by the magics permeating this holiest, unholiest of summits, vibrating through her skin and into his bones as she brushed along his side. Did these foreign gods know what fires burned in Calliope's breast, what need drove her?
Such a pretty trick as remodeling a mountaintop might awe the zealot or the agnostic, but the wildlings of Velius had learned to seize power at its source, free of interpretation or filtration. They authored their own fate and built their own legacy.
And Calliope was their queen.
The swarthy mare's words were building to a crescendo as she paced and spoke, and he could nearly see the lioness of her tugging at the sinews just beneath her oil-black skin, but he was not so enthralled by the display as to miss the flash of white just out of frame, soft and insistent as an upwelling of memory. Raymond knew Shrike's fate only by Calliope's word and by the expression on her face when he interrupted the rampage that would have claimed her life as well. That was a raw, red day, written in the ruins of edifice and fiend alike as the price of the painted mare's suffering was exacted from anything and everything that could feasibly die.
And now she was here, because the Rift binds all places and times into a single discordant melody, and death in such a world is far more complicated than it ought to be. Sometimes you stay dead, sometimes you become unstuck in time. Sometimes you become a bear and forget who you are.
The red stallion saw her - recognized her - only a moment before Calliope, and watched with a veiled expression as Calliope's mounting fervor flowed at once in a new direction like kerosene taking eagerly to flame. He said nothing - for now. Shrike's death had not been his burden to bear, and the torch of reunion was not meant first for his hand. But after a moment, as he listened for the affirmation that Calliope so desperately craved, a dark smile pulled at the corners of his mouth and eyes.
"Great time to get the band back together, I think."
Such a pretty trick as remodeling a mountaintop might awe the zealot or the agnostic, but the wildlings of Velius had learned to seize power at its source, free of interpretation or filtration. They authored their own fate and built their own legacy.
And Calliope was their queen.
The swarthy mare's words were building to a crescendo as she paced and spoke, and he could nearly see the lioness of her tugging at the sinews just beneath her oil-black skin, but he was not so enthralled by the display as to miss the flash of white just out of frame, soft and insistent as an upwelling of memory. Raymond knew Shrike's fate only by Calliope's word and by the expression on her face when he interrupted the rampage that would have claimed her life as well. That was a raw, red day, written in the ruins of edifice and fiend alike as the price of the painted mare's suffering was exacted from anything and everything that could feasibly die.
And now she was here, because the Rift binds all places and times into a single discordant melody, and death in such a world is far more complicated than it ought to be. Sometimes you stay dead, sometimes you become unstuck in time. Sometimes you become a bear and forget who you are.
The red stallion saw her - recognized her - only a moment before Calliope, and watched with a veiled expression as Calliope's mounting fervor flowed at once in a new direction like kerosene taking eagerly to flame. He said nothing - for now. Shrike's death had not been his burden to bear, and the torch of reunion was not meant first for his hand. But after a moment, as he listened for the affirmation that Calliope so desperately craved, a dark smile pulled at the corners of his mouth and eyes.
"Great time to get the band back together, I think."
@Calliope @Shrike
when the man comes around
aut viam inveniam aut faciam
