the mind commands teh body and it obeys
Fire in flesh, the cooling embers that still simmer and hiss when water is too near, Juniper stood tall and proud throughout the aching night with Asterion by her side. Waves battered her ankles, pulling her toward the unknown in the darkness. Oh, but the sea is a place that Juniper so rarely goes. When dawn breaks, her heart lurches - not from that glistening, strange bridge that stretches like death's fingers into eternity. Not from the endless sky that begs her forward, pleading a sweet come, come my child. No.
Juniper balks at the sea that was nowhere to be found in her swamplands and marshy home. Green eyes go wide, her skin shrinks and shivers as she shies into the Dusk sovereign's side.
But he is surging with the bodies, he moves like a river. Away. Away Asterion slips and terror plunges greedy fangs into her lion-heart. Feet move, grappling with the black grounds and broken shells that glimmer as mermaid tears would. This is a forest made from the ocean, a walkway into the unknown. How long has she loved the unknown? Those adventures always came with shadows, with copses of sequoia and weeping willows and the press of cypress bodies so close to her own. They were covered, protected.
Athough her billowing stormy cloak now sheathes her and shields her, Juniper is naked.
Never before has she felt so exposed, not even when twirling in the skies, for clouds always came to whisper and sing to her with the wind high above.
She moves like a wild thing, like a shadow wraith. Slender body slips through the crowd, wings press tight to her sides until she sees the flash of brown and night sky. No one else is there, none other in her tunnel-vision until she is alongside the King. The King who painted with her and laughed when she did. Kaleidoscope pictures race in her mind's eye, she pants for a moment, oblivious to those that shy away from the wall or bite at it. Others just pray.
It is of no consequence and cannot compare to the sheer panic of this vastness that threatens to overwhelm her. The free girl, the swamp girl, the ephemeral girl looks to the shattered path and spray of green from hacking axes that falls at her feet. She stares and stares, divining the answers of eternity and the answers needed now in that concentration, and slowly Juniper pulls herself together piece by piece until she is no longer panting. But she still shivers, she still holds that sliver of fear when green eyes avoid the depthless sea below them and around them. She's not yet ready to be swallowed whole and drowned. Kelpies will not claim her yet. “Vespera, hold us in your heart and in your arms. Deity of Dusk and dying light, heart of my heart, cleanse the fear from me, pull it from my veins like water from a cup. I am yours and you are mine, I give myself unto you now today and forever more, I beg you do not abandon us now." It is a whisper, a murmur so hard to hear above the buzz and humming of the crowds meant only for herself and her brave-heart to consume.
With a last shudder, the girl stands tall at last. “Will it open?" she asks anyone who will listen, voice rising above the clamoring as she looks to the vines and thinks of those sinking temples, of masked stairways, and all that that was her playground as a girl.
Juniper balks at the sea that was nowhere to be found in her swamplands and marshy home. Green eyes go wide, her skin shrinks and shivers as she shies into the Dusk sovereign's side.
But he is surging with the bodies, he moves like a river. Away. Away Asterion slips and terror plunges greedy fangs into her lion-heart. Feet move, grappling with the black grounds and broken shells that glimmer as mermaid tears would. This is a forest made from the ocean, a walkway into the unknown. How long has she loved the unknown? Those adventures always came with shadows, with copses of sequoia and weeping willows and the press of cypress bodies so close to her own. They were covered, protected.
Athough her billowing stormy cloak now sheathes her and shields her, Juniper is naked.
Never before has she felt so exposed, not even when twirling in the skies, for clouds always came to whisper and sing to her with the wind high above.
She moves like a wild thing, like a shadow wraith. Slender body slips through the crowd, wings press tight to her sides until she sees the flash of brown and night sky. No one else is there, none other in her tunnel-vision until she is alongside the King. The King who painted with her and laughed when she did. Kaleidoscope pictures race in her mind's eye, she pants for a moment, oblivious to those that shy away from the wall or bite at it. Others just pray.
It is of no consequence and cannot compare to the sheer panic of this vastness that threatens to overwhelm her. The free girl, the swamp girl, the ephemeral girl looks to the shattered path and spray of green from hacking axes that falls at her feet. She stares and stares, divining the answers of eternity and the answers needed now in that concentration, and slowly Juniper pulls herself together piece by piece until she is no longer panting. But she still shivers, she still holds that sliver of fear when green eyes avoid the depthless sea below them and around them. She's not yet ready to be swallowed whole and drowned. Kelpies will not claim her yet. “Vespera, hold us in your heart and in your arms. Deity of Dusk and dying light, heart of my heart, cleanse the fear from me, pull it from my veins like water from a cup. I am yours and you are mine, I give myself unto you now today and forever more, I beg you do not abandon us now." It is a whisper, a murmur so hard to hear above the buzz and humming of the crowds meant only for herself and her brave-heart to consume.
With a last shudder, the girl stands tall at last. “Will it open?" she asks anyone who will listen, voice rising above the clamoring as she looks to the vines and thinks of those sinking temples, of masked stairways, and all that that was her playground as a girl.
@Asterion and everyone else nearby| "speaks" | notes: c:
rallidae | art
STAFF EDIT***
@Juniperhas rolled a 4, and has been awarded +100 signos!/blockquote>
