"I'll help you." Aion promises her, he swears to her, and Ianthe could almost cry with relief. She doesn’t know what he can do for her, doesn’t know what his help will gain her, but the knowledge that she no longer has to do this alone is enough for now. Later there will be the time to think on what ifs, to worry about never flying again, of being so terribly, shamefully crippled, but for now she let’s the sharpest edges of her fear drift away.
When he steps closer to her, close enough to almost touch, she almost returns the gesture. Only the uncertainty she has in her own, trembling legs, and the wing draped against the ground is enough to stop her. She is not alone, but part of her doesn’t know it for certain, part of her wants to reach for him.
And she hates it. She is a fierce thing, a wild, independent thing. When she was two months old she knew nothing of fear, threw herself to what could have been her death if the fates were less kind. She has prided herself on her survival, on the heights she has reached and the dives she has pulled herself out of. She needs no one: not the mother who nursed her or the father who named her; not the age mates she ran and flew with; not the herd that left her behind. She needs none of them.
Why then, does she so desperately want them?
Why then, does she want to reach out to this stranger, to this outsider, to this god-favoured heretic? Aion has reduced her to the smallest parts of herself: the child, the doomed, the forsaken. Only it is not Aion who has done this at all. And she wants to hate him for it, but mostly she just wants.
Cold shakes her from her spiraling thoughts, from the fear and the yearning, and she flinches slightly at the onset. It’s… strange. A sensation not unlike snow, wrapped tight around the broken pieces of her wing, and at first it stings just as sudden cold ought, but then it seeps into her, until the sensations deaden. And that… that is nice. Already she can feel muscles once braced against the pain loosening, and without pain to remind her the nausea turning her stomach eases just the slightest bit.
When he speaks her head jerks back around to him, only just realizing that she had shifted to stare at her wing as if expecting a physical change. Of course there wouldn’t be change. He may have used some strange magic, but wings do not simply spring back into place. “Thank you.” At his question, she would offer up her wing in answer, but instead she can only try to reclaim some of her pride by lifting her head high and nodding. “As you will.”
At his next question she finds herself blinking, head dropping back into something less showy as she considers. “I don’t know. I’ve always believed in fate and the plans of gods.” But what a cruel plan it would be, to take her wing and let her plummet. What a cruel fate, to leave her alive and earthbound. What cruel luck, for that stallion to strike her wing at all.
“But is it better that someone be born for tragedies or for them to stumble into them? Is it kinder for someone to be gifted fortune, or to find it?” Were the countless foals who threw themselves off ledges but failed to catch their own wings fated to die? The elders seemed to believe as such, seemed to think it was an indication of the gods favour for the herd. But that... suddenly it seemed cruel to her, to be born only to die. And the gods were cruel, but she hoped they were not cruel like that. “I think I’d rather believe in bad luck than ill-fate,” she decides, “But I’m not sure about the good.” Maybe that’s sacrilegious, to not immediately tie the good to the gods, but Daphne is not around for her to ask.
@Aion I'm so sorry for the wait! The active magic works c=
When he steps closer to her, close enough to almost touch, she almost returns the gesture. Only the uncertainty she has in her own, trembling legs, and the wing draped against the ground is enough to stop her. She is not alone, but part of her doesn’t know it for certain, part of her wants to reach for him.
And she hates it. She is a fierce thing, a wild, independent thing. When she was two months old she knew nothing of fear, threw herself to what could have been her death if the fates were less kind. She has prided herself on her survival, on the heights she has reached and the dives she has pulled herself out of. She needs no one: not the mother who nursed her or the father who named her; not the age mates she ran and flew with; not the herd that left her behind. She needs none of them.
Why then, does she so desperately want them?
Why then, does she want to reach out to this stranger, to this outsider, to this god-favoured heretic? Aion has reduced her to the smallest parts of herself: the child, the doomed, the forsaken. Only it is not Aion who has done this at all. And she wants to hate him for it, but mostly she just wants.
Cold shakes her from her spiraling thoughts, from the fear and the yearning, and she flinches slightly at the onset. It’s… strange. A sensation not unlike snow, wrapped tight around the broken pieces of her wing, and at first it stings just as sudden cold ought, but then it seeps into her, until the sensations deaden. And that… that is nice. Already she can feel muscles once braced against the pain loosening, and without pain to remind her the nausea turning her stomach eases just the slightest bit.
When he speaks her head jerks back around to him, only just realizing that she had shifted to stare at her wing as if expecting a physical change. Of course there wouldn’t be change. He may have used some strange magic, but wings do not simply spring back into place. “Thank you.” At his question, she would offer up her wing in answer, but instead she can only try to reclaim some of her pride by lifting her head high and nodding. “As you will.”
At his next question she finds herself blinking, head dropping back into something less showy as she considers. “I don’t know. I’ve always believed in fate and the plans of gods.” But what a cruel plan it would be, to take her wing and let her plummet. What a cruel fate, to leave her alive and earthbound. What cruel luck, for that stallion to strike her wing at all.
“But is it better that someone be born for tragedies or for them to stumble into them? Is it kinder for someone to be gifted fortune, or to find it?” Were the countless foals who threw themselves off ledges but failed to catch their own wings fated to die? The elders seemed to believe as such, seemed to think it was an indication of the gods favour for the herd. But that... suddenly it seemed cruel to her, to be born only to die. And the gods were cruel, but she hoped they were not cruel like that. “I think I’d rather believe in bad luck than ill-fate,” she decides, “But I’m not sure about the good.” Maybe that’s sacrilegious, to not immediately tie the good to the gods, but Daphne is not around for her to ask.
@Aion I'm so sorry for the wait! The active magic works c=
