[AW] the flowers say hello

[Raum]

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

 

After him come the others but Raum does not deign to turn and watch them gather.
 
In ice that claws and water that drowns, he holds the Dawn Court Regent in a choking blue gaze. There is no part of him that warms, no matter how the sun beats down and turns all around him into dust and death. He was cold long before Solterra. His soul was dead long before anyone came to recognize it so.
 
The dark of him is a prowling beast that claws at his skin and gnaws as his bones. He is a disfigured man, this Solterran King. He wears sin like a cloak and a crown like thorns. He bleeds and there is no salvation in it. He will die, and only then may salvation return, blinking in the midday light.
 
And alone. The first of them has come. She seeps out from amidst the crowd like poison from a gaping wound. She watches with leonine eyes and her words further end what he already has. She is not invited, he has not asked her to speak. Yet Raum does not chasten her, he does not lay punishment, like whip-cords, on the black of her skin, nor tie her tongue with wicked reprimands. Raum merely does not blink nor stir his concrete gaze from the Delumine man.
 
Yet this girl reaches with a foot, entitlement flashing like the sun along her gleaming limb that reaches to strike the basket from Ipomoea’s grasp. But oh the delumine boy is faster and at once Torstein is there. The meeting of hoof and flesh is a dull thud and all Raum thinks is how he knows it is not hoof and flesh and bone. He knows the cry of bone beneath hoof, high and achingly loud. Though the errant strike was mild, Raum knows there is nothing to break here, for Solterra is already glass shards swept in to the curbs of their barren streets.
 
When was the last time that Raum stood with Torstein? It was in a moment such as this, when, clinging to the edges of Veneror with religion in his blood, he had been just a Denocte crow with a soul of ink-black feathers and eyes honed for spying upon Solterra. Oh Torstein, did you ever think that this scarred Crow would stand a king before you now? Raum thinks it would have helped so many, for Torstein to kill him that moment when suspicion first gleamed, clotting dark, within the Warden’s blood red gaze.
 
And maybe Efphion’s presence is a valued thing, for as she strikes, childishly, foolishly at the Regent’s basket, he throws  it down. Fruits scatter into the dust. They roll until they are dirtied, until their soft flesh is bruised and spoiled.
 
Welcome to Solterra.
 
Only then does Raum blink and move – a millimeter in respect for a flower boy who grows a weapon. But, oh, it is wood and vines and not metal nor spikes. It does not sing a siren song like all blade should but hums like wind through hollowed wood. That wood-blade grows and grows and points its sharpened tip at Raum’s chest. His gaze bathes it in water, sinking it until he wonders if it will rot and turn soft. Better a weapon rust than rot away.
 
Your people.
 
Ipomoea spits the words into the dust at the king’s feet. Raum thinks it is a fitting place – for was that not where they all lay? There, beneath his feet, downtrodden, with their lungs full of dust and their knees bloody with kneeling? Raum hoped so.
 
You have no right
 
You have no right!
 
His accusations roll in like a storm to birth his ire upon Raum’s conscience. Yet Raum is no boy to be cowed. He is a Crow with wings made for storms and death. The water of Ipomoea’s discontent drips away from his wings and tumbles like tears to the earth. “Yet here I am.” Raum says, without delight, without the sated joy of a power hungry man. He speaks as it the words mean nothing and they fall like silk caught in the wind and frayed upon brush and bracken. He speaks as if he is numb – numb with cold, with drowning, with electricity. He is a man scarred by Solterra’s sun, scarred by the sun’s love, the sun’s hate. Upon his lips – the only thing that still means anything to him, is a litany, a name: Rhoswen.
 
Ghosts surround him with their haunted black eyes – he sees them each way he turns. He hears their howling and oh, still he feels nothing, and everything, and nothing at all.
 
Would you like to hear a secret? The Regent is bright and fierce and wicked in his fury. Ire is thorns upon Raum’s flesh, yet still the king does not wince for the speaking of such words.
 
Come here. Ipomoea coaxes, like a god of mockery and punishment. But Raum no longer kneels to any god. Ah to step forwards is to step into any trap the Regent might lay. To remain is to be seen a coward before the Solterran people. No wonder Delumine’s Regent stands with righteous fire scolding through his blood.
 
He might have spoken then but more come. They seep in like ants to a meal. First Senna. He speaks with a forked tongue and everything is as rich as amber whiskey. He drips blood and sunfire where he stands and Raum lets his words hang, he gives him and his words the weight of a moment and then:
 
“When will your righteousness burn you apart, Ipomoea?” Raum asks softly. “When will it become a poison? Does it already taste wrong upon your tongue? Will you truly be satisfied if I died upon that blade of yours? Is this-“ And he points to the Regent’s sword, his words, his ire, his very presence within Solterra, “- the voice of your guilt?  Will Delumine, who has sat and done nothing for Novus rejoice that at last they have done something of value beyond their incessant naval gazing?”
 
 
And now Raum looks away from Ipomoea for Bexley appears like the sun’s gilded lover. He meets the girl’s gaze in time to see her wink with mockery, mockery. Only Acton’s lover would be so bold. Only now can Raum see there would never have been a girl so right for the Magician. Though it would not have swayed the Ghost from his course. She made his brother weak (like the sun is fated to turn all Crows into Icarus).  Raum would have killed them both. He still could but, not yet, not yet, his own grief groans.
 
“Your tears have dried,” he murmurs like an accusation, like sympathy, like he does not care at all. “Acton would be pleased you do not cling to him.” And something feral prowls within his blue, blue gaze. It laughs like thunder and rattles their past like the cave they once brought down, together.
 
Do you still hurt, Bexley Briar?
 
And with no smile in his eyes, nor upon his lips, the king returns his gaze to Ipomoea and ignores the demon that lands with beak and claw and feather upon the girl’s gilded back. He does not flinch as a cry splits the air, as stone dust rises and statues groan for the coming of a second creature. Legion comes with great wings flared. His beak parts and a cry claws its way through the crowd, it scratches, creaking, screeching down the buildings that echo his call. Poison strings, slick and silver, between his parted fangs and his skull shakes to violently loose the azure scarf about his eyes. Yet nothing works that knot loose and the beast settles, his skull tilted avian and unearthly as it listens, listens listens. His muzzle lifts as he towers above his familiar, he reaches toward Bexley Briar and his beak parts, a hiss rips from his throat at the bird stood upon the girl’s spine. For only a monster could recognize a demon.

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@Ipomoea @Torstein @Efphion @Senna @Bexley @Seraphina