*
It all starts with a ruby.
At first no one notices, for it is small and perfectly lodged among all the other stones in the street; and it is red, a color so at home here between the sunsets and the fires and the blood. But he notices, the thin grey stallion who trudges with his nose to the ground. He stops and he stares, motionless, for a long moment. Eventually a yearling slinks forward, catlike, from the shadows of a nearby awning. The youth looks with wide eyes from stone to stallion back to stone, and then begins to paw at the ruby to unearth it from the street. The man does not seem to see, for there is a faraway look growing wild behind his eyes.
The ruby was a message.
He tries to keep himself from running through the streets-- attention was not a good thing, these days or ever-- as he tracks its creator, following scent and sign. He quickly realizes, based on the patterns of her movement, that she is looking for him too. It is almost predatory, how they circle each other across the mazelike streets of the desert city, each leaving hidden messages-- hers fantastical (a ruby in the cobblestones, glass flowers in the cracks on the corner) and his bare-boned. (breadcrumbs of thought, the scent of mania and desperation, snippets of prayer to a god known only to the two of them)
Her messages grow brighter, louder, more reckless. They draw closer, closer. With every turn he expects to find her, but she is not there. Soon he's grasping at the night queen with his magic, flooding her with love and anger, feeling her come nearer until--
there--
His heart shudders in a way that makes him realize how funny it is that we have these hammers in our chests and we don't even realize they're there, most of the time, until it is impossible not to notice. He tastes metal on his tongue. And when he closes his eyes, his heartbeat races across the back of his eyelids. It colors the dark with streaks of yellow-blue-white-red. When they open she's there before him, improbable in the too-bright sun. A cruel mirage to a dying man. "Isra"
He expected time to stop. It doesn't. It lurches forward and he is aware of many things at once-- the strangers that surround them, the lick of the sun on his back, the ocean between them and how its currents draw them toward each other.
"You shouldn't be here," Eik hisses. The distance between them melts like hot sugar. He pushes his shoulder into hers with a roughness that is new to him, to them, and he presses her down one side alley and then another until there are in a neighborhood with less eyes.
She shouldn't be here because it is dangerous, and because her people need their queen, and, most simply and pressingly, he did not want her to see his city like this. He did not want her to count the ribs on the children she passed, or hear the strangled silence in the streets, the hush of fear and uncertainty. Eik had become quite attached to the heat and the maze and the character of the Solterran capital, and above all the headstrong persistence of its people, who reminded him of the better parts of himself. These are the things he wanted to share with her. Instead it is smoke and hunger, pyres and bones.
It's wrong, all wrong. It was not supposed to be like this.
He is ashamed, and angry, and so stupidly painfully in love-- and maybe what hurts the most is that he never expected to feel like this, to feel this deeply and this broadly for anyone or anything. Her nearness brings it all to the surface, all the things buried and hidden and tucked away. The enormity of his loss, the impossibility of a return to the way things used to be, the ache he strove so hard not to feel is suddenly very real and very present, all the rough edges brought into profile by the piercing blue of Isra's ocean eyes.
"What are you doing?" He grits his teeth in attempt to hold on to anger and callousness. To have the strength to drive her away to someplace she would be safer. Still he pushes against her, as though to remind himself she's here, she's really here, I am too. He might be mad with thirst or hunger or nature, but there is truth in touch, there is clarity and heat and love. All he wants is to fall to his knees and pray at her altar but he keeps them walking forward, shoulder hungrily to shoulder, afraid of the eyes in the shadows and all the things that will catch up to him if they stop moving.
*
@Isra <3It all starts with a ruby.
At first no one notices, for it is small and perfectly lodged among all the other stones in the street; and it is red, a color so at home here between the sunsets and the fires and the blood. But he notices, the thin grey stallion who trudges with his nose to the ground. He stops and he stares, motionless, for a long moment. Eventually a yearling slinks forward, catlike, from the shadows of a nearby awning. The youth looks with wide eyes from stone to stallion back to stone, and then begins to paw at the ruby to unearth it from the street. The man does not seem to see, for there is a faraway look growing wild behind his eyes.
The ruby was a message.
He tries to keep himself from running through the streets-- attention was not a good thing, these days or ever-- as he tracks its creator, following scent and sign. He quickly realizes, based on the patterns of her movement, that she is looking for him too. It is almost predatory, how they circle each other across the mazelike streets of the desert city, each leaving hidden messages-- hers fantastical (a ruby in the cobblestones, glass flowers in the cracks on the corner) and his bare-boned. (breadcrumbs of thought, the scent of mania and desperation, snippets of prayer to a god known only to the two of them)
Her messages grow brighter, louder, more reckless. They draw closer, closer. With every turn he expects to find her, but she is not there. Soon he's grasping at the night queen with his magic, flooding her with love and anger, feeling her come nearer until--
there--
His heart shudders in a way that makes him realize how funny it is that we have these hammers in our chests and we don't even realize they're there, most of the time, until it is impossible not to notice. He tastes metal on his tongue. And when he closes his eyes, his heartbeat races across the back of his eyelids. It colors the dark with streaks of yellow-blue-white-red. When they open she's there before him, improbable in the too-bright sun. A cruel mirage to a dying man. "Isra"
He expected time to stop. It doesn't. It lurches forward and he is aware of many things at once-- the strangers that surround them, the lick of the sun on his back, the ocean between them and how its currents draw them toward each other.
"You shouldn't be here," Eik hisses. The distance between them melts like hot sugar. He pushes his shoulder into hers with a roughness that is new to him, to them, and he presses her down one side alley and then another until there are in a neighborhood with less eyes.
She shouldn't be here because it is dangerous, and because her people need their queen, and, most simply and pressingly, he did not want her to see his city like this. He did not want her to count the ribs on the children she passed, or hear the strangled silence in the streets, the hush of fear and uncertainty. Eik had become quite attached to the heat and the maze and the character of the Solterran capital, and above all the headstrong persistence of its people, who reminded him of the better parts of himself. These are the things he wanted to share with her. Instead it is smoke and hunger, pyres and bones.
It's wrong, all wrong. It was not supposed to be like this.
He is ashamed, and angry, and so stupidly painfully in love-- and maybe what hurts the most is that he never expected to feel like this, to feel this deeply and this broadly for anyone or anything. Her nearness brings it all to the surface, all the things buried and hidden and tucked away. The enormity of his loss, the impossibility of a return to the way things used to be, the ache he strove so hard not to feel is suddenly very real and very present, all the rough edges brought into profile by the piercing blue of Isra's ocean eyes.
"What are you doing?" He grits his teeth in attempt to hold on to anger and callousness. To have the strength to drive her away to someplace she would be safer. Still he pushes against her, as though to remind himself she's here, she's really here, I am too. He might be mad with thirst or hunger or nature, but there is truth in touch, there is clarity and heat and love. All he wants is to fall to his knees and pray at her altar but he keeps them walking forward, shoulder hungrily to shoulder, afraid of the eyes in the shadows and all the things that will catch up to him if they stop moving.
*
set in one of the outer neighborhoods of Day Court
Time makes fools of us all
