[P] only a star, only the sea

[Antiope]

Antiope.

Antiope cannot help but wonder what it says about her that the queen seems to leave rubies behind whenever they meet. Is it because of her, or is it because of their circumstance? She thinks of death a lot, it is a difficult thing to break herself of. If she is not thinking of Rezar or her daughter she is thinking of the gods or the lioness in her bones is prowling, prowling, prowling.

Antiope was made to create death, even if that is not what the gods had tricked themselves into believing.

But when Isra brushes her shoulder against the striped woman’s own, she can almost forget that. When the rubies beneath their hooves turn purple and shimmering white she can almost remember that she does not want to fight here, in this world. That she does not want to succumb to the lioness’ hunger, or the starving of black things like loss and oceans big enough to swallow even her.

She takes up Isra’s weight easily, the darkness of their coats blending together in the night. She takes up Isra’s weight as if to say, I will. Because she has no plans to leave, and nowhere else to go. Denocte is her new, her start again, her atonement. “Rezar,” his name is easier to say, always so much more willing to ride the edges of her thoughts, “I loved him. If I had had him long enough I would have made him my husband.”

Her heart catches on the words, like a hoof on a root or a rock. She trips over it, very ungracefully, very un-Antiope. She never had the chance to do such a thing, back then wouldn’t have even truly understood marriage or what it meant to make him her husband. But now she knows, and if he had suggested it she would have done it readily.

“Our daughter,” Antiope has to prepare the word, has to let it sit upon her tongue long enough to protect herself from the pain of it before she releases it into the world, “Chara.” Her sapphire-bright eyes close, shrouding the sea and shore and the sky in blackness. All she can see is her daughter, so small and fragile and innocent.

Antiope breathes in deeply, and her stomach swims in anger so deep like the ocean. But it is only a fraction of the anger that drew her to Corellon, that carried her to the steps of the temple on a river of self-righteous fire, that fueled her in a battle that ended with the death of 4 gods. And this, she thinks, must be why Isra turns the world to rubies when they are together, because she is a harbinger of the end.


"Speaking."

credits | @Isra <3