and she embraced chaos, for it painted her life with purpose
She moves as a snake, sleek and smooth, tucked into orange and brown as though she should have been born among the Canyon instead of a grand Estate as a sin in a household of ice, not heat. But if she were a snake, she would be a sweaty one. It drips, slick and cooling, down orange and red sides, over starlit markings that would wink if only she knew the sunlight waiting in her bones. Moira pauses, weary head turns back to catch sight of chocolate skin and gossamer pink hair floating in her shadow. These walls are too narrow to walk side by side, and somewhere along the way the Pegasus that has no sense of direction got tired enough of frigid silence and occasional bickering to step in front when the pathway narrowed.
Of course, there may have been complaints, but the phoenix let her mind fly too high to hear any of them. What did mortal words matter anyway to a girl on fire, a girl learning to be covered in ice? Already Leonidas told her of Asterion's disappearance (death, disappearance, vanishing, what difference does it make?), already she felt herself shattering over and over and over.
Corn stalks held her close as she let herself get lost in their labyrinthine turns, let herself get lost in a well of emotions so deep she thought she might drown. And when the phoenix surfaced, when ashes were cast into the water, the surface turned to ice. Down, further and further that ice went until all but a single drop, a desolate, isolated, flicker of warmth remained.
She let herself shatter.
Moira Tonnerre left the maze as something less than what she was, a piece missing where it had only started to be found. The world deemed it time to remind her why emotions were fickle and terrible things, why she should distance herself - especially from girls with pretty snake smiles and glittering eyes. Girls like Minya once tried to swallow the Emissary whole when she was but a weanling, big-eyed and curious.
It worked until she stopped caring for their opinions, stopped giving them the time of day. If she weren't so hopeless with direction, perhaps this trek would have been made alone. Lips purse and she blinks once, pushing thoughts into containers, draping them across ice statues, closing doors and throwing away the key. “Watch for rock slides, Minya. I've read they come quick and hard, leaving no trace of the lives they take on their trip down." The warning is soft, careful not to awaken whatever sleeping spirits might lurk in the crevices above them. Every so often there is a cave, and the phoenix is almost tempted to step inside, but she remembers why she goes North.
Orestes.
A new king, a chance for good relations. The Emissary has a mission, has a reason to exist even with a gaping hole in her chest. And for a moment, she listens for any brooking of an argument, waits for words like she waits for Night once more. Perhaps they have run out of arguments on which direction to take, for at the moment there is only one way: forward.
