[P] [FALL] Man of oil

[Antiope]

hold your breath, close your eyes, turn your ear to the sky

His question catches her off guard, for its forwardness and searching. It’s not a question any have asked of her yet, and for a moment she isn’t really sure how to answer it. She could tell him all the things she is: a killer of gods, a mother who has lost, an ex-warrior who wants to put the battlefield to rest. But is that what he wants to hear?

They walk in silence while she thinks, her sapphire eyes farther away than they were a moment ago, her steps less sharper. Someone’s shoulder in the crowd bumps up against her and she lifts her head, turning her attention back to the man at her side. “I was made from magic, carved from marble,” Antiope says.

She still remembers what it was like to breathe her first breath, to open her eyes to the world. Her birth was not so different from most others, but hers starts with nothing, not even a womb. “I am someone with regrets, and pain, and anger,” and a lot of it, enough to engulf an entire world. Enough to carry her through the hardest battle of her life. “But I also am someone who loves, and hopes.”

Who cares, miraculously, despite the things she has lost, and who continues to search for a place that she fits and a role that suits her that is different than anything she has ever done before. Antiope doesn’t know if those things answer his question, but she has a feeling he could figure out a lot more if he needed to.

When the crowd thickens to spectate the dancers with their finery and beauty, Antiope is stopped in her tracks. There are many things she can expect, many things her warrior life has taught her to be aware of. But it seems that Eik is one of the more unexpected things she has ever come across, and when his voice fills her mind her gaze lands sharply upon his face, turning away from the display before them. Magic, and Antiope is finding that this world is full of it.

“The first time I met Isra, I showed her the darker parts of me,” the Regent says, lifting her eyes momentarily to the sky. It was almost a year ago now, that night in the ice castle when they both had been burning for different reasons and making death a necessity. “And she still offered me this position, trusted me with something greater, something good,” Antiope breathes out, lowers her head.

“I can never truly repay her for that, but I can spend every day trying.” And then the woman smiles, something a little less serious, a little bit more wild, a little bit other. She shrugs the shoulder that bears her axe, and breathing in the energy of the world around them, pulls a little out of the breeze that flits across her back.

Her eyes begin to glow like ichor, just for a moment. Just blink and you’ll miss it, before Antiope releases the energy and they return to sharp sapphires; but her eyes never leave Eik. “Besides, I was made to be the perfect, indomitable warrior—if her safety from others is what you’re worried about.”

"Speaking."

@Eik <3

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