m o i r a
as you start to walk out on the way,
the way appears
the way appears
T
his world she wakes to, it seems a distant thing, a foreign thing. All at once it is too large and too small and too sad. The tragedy of everything crashes upon her as tides rise and fall with the changing of the moon. But the healer girl is too detached, too lost, to feel anything more than her own breaking again and again. Her tiger rumbles and growls, her protector looming ever closer, sweeping in with a warmth to fill the coldness left from the stars. And how that space above takes too much, how those stars chip away, harder and faster and more fiercely than before, until the phoenix is a screaming, burning thing without the sense to know who she is anymore. She is a smoldering amalgamation of skin and thoughts put back together all wrong.
The white upon her shoulder tells her she is wrong. The purring of Neerja tells her she will survive.
Moira does not expect another, not so soon, to cross her path. Katniss walks before her, turning and asking of Morpheus, of Asteria, of Erebus and Hypnos. Of those distant things and forgotten history lessons that plague her, tormenting her, shattering her when she wakes and sleeps. The wicked do not rest, yet she has never thought herself Evil.
Golden eyes take but a moment to focus, to come back down from the skies tugging her into oblivion. A shiver snakes down her spine as she realizes the sweat upon her coat, the iron taste still clinging to her tongue. What monster will these times make of her? Like their follower, the sparrow-boned girl still spiraling from her descent in the sky, Moira nods. "We're not alone," she says instead, soft voice rougher tonight as though parched or smoke-stained or dying.
She doesn't know which is the most truthful of the three.
Beside them, the tiger moves, circling back behind the other Pegasus until she is at their side. Only then does she look at the ragtag bunch, the women of Denocte who hold their heads high and claim this as their home, their battleground, their future. And she wonders, ever so briefly as only a flickering star can, do they ever look up and dream?
Moira never did before Denocte.
"It is a good night to not be alone," is all she says at last, offering the ghost of a smile, a haunted thing, to the two that have found her. "We haven't met you, not really. Welcome to the Night Court, I am Moira Tonnerre." For what more can she say when still pulling herself from halls full of horrors, from courtyards of carnage? Her string has been clipped, and how she sores through the clouds as a hot air balloon, unable to land and oh so willing to crash - almost.
@Ianthe @Katniss | "speaks" | notes: I'm so sorry this took way too long; these lovely ladies delight me and I really look forward to their discovery !
