now the dark begins to rise, save your breath (it's far from over)
Sleep is but a phantom now, as escapable as death and defamation of the Tonnerre girl. She is a beacon, a smile in the dark when those of her court dance about their merry fires and tell tales by the moonlight. While Isra is gone, Moira can do no other than encourage them and reassure them that their unicorn, their sovereign, their friend will be home. Soon, her heart begs to tell them as she drifts from fire to fire, face to face.
She cannot tell the time when that war will be reined in and spring blossoms will pour from dark lips once more.
Instead, she laughs with her people and shares their bread by night, she brings around supplies to bandage wounds for those returning from their missions and those being sent off once more. So many faces turn like a wheel in the sky, a dizzying amount circling. Always circling.
Golden eyes do not expect a flame so bright so near, she is not ready for the denizens to scream and flee in terror. Denocte is under attack in the dead of night, during their witching hour which they treasure so dearly. This is their time. This is Caligo's hour. And she will not back away as her people run screaming, as they rush for buckets of water.
Neerja is the first beside her as the dragon comes overhead. Fable sweeps over them all as a giant sea-shadow from the heavens, dropping his unicorn from his claws and flying higher, higher, higher... Toward another fire that has sprung up and the sounds of running feet too and fro. There are snarls on their faces and a yowl in the tiger's throat. White jowls are pulled back and ugly, ready for a fight, ready for a meal, ready to devour whoever disturbed the peace in fair Denocte.
Moira lets Neerja free, watches as her slender form stalks into the shadows, listens as she disappears. Then, only when there is a silence howling in her veins like the flames crackling merrily before them, only then does the phoenix move. If Isra is fire and a story, and Runa is a dancer and a dreamer, then Moira is the water that flows between them all and the cosmos in their veins. She is stardust. She is a thought sprinting over the wind from body to body.
Red skin matches the red, red flames, oh but it is hot. Already Isra demands water and buckets are being filled. Runaveig, the sweet bird who offered to heal whoever she could when the worst is upon them, rises with her ice-filled dragon and they attack.
Moira Tonnerre remembers the lick of flames up her feathers, along her sides. She knows that heat like a lover, like a slave. Quick the phoenix is as her world burns, quick to run to a faucet and fetch a pale. Quicker to fill it and heave it back.
She has given up on tears when her heart went to Terrastella to mend itself. There is a calmness, a fierceness, a protective gleam claiming all of Night as hers. Her brothers and sisters and children. Each one as precious as a breathing star.
With the fury of her thundering heart, and with that echoing silence in her blood, the pale of water is tipped to the edges, tipped past her unicorn (her sister, her not-quite-blood), tipped into those flames that hiss and sizzle.
"He will not leave our borders, and she is unsure if it is a whisper or a scream that comes from her mouth to match that silent promise in her eyes. The Pegasus girl looks to the unicorns with matching horns and matching hearts. They were born for art, they were not born for this war.
She turns away and follows into the shadows her tiger heart that hunts even now. There is blood on her tongue and blood she is ready to have on her red, red lips.
