i swallowed the sun and it burned my tongue and it burned my throat but it couldn't burn away your memory
She is a moon eclipsed by sorrow and emotion, a great chasm yawning, looming, jowls hung open to swallow her. For a month or two or three, the Emissary disappeared - out into the wilds, out without a trace. Even Neerja, her most beloved companion, had not been there to keep her safe, keep her fed. In that time, it is said strange lights flickered in the woods and in the desert sands further north. During those months, it is said strange, animal, sad screams and raging howls were heard at night - only at night - from something shredded by a thousand lives worth of grief.When the woman came back, her eyes were sunken and hollow and she was skinnier than the day she'd first arrived. Moira hadn't spoken more than necessary - to Antiope stiffly, to Neerja haltingly, to the startled guards quietly - and avoided so many for weeks on end. She'd become a ghost, stealing into the kitchens at night only to take enough scraps of food for the next day, avoiding the many bakeries and shops she'd once so frequently visited.
Even Bexley had disappeared while she'd been gone.
Everyone seemed to disappear.
Then, Antiope had come, full of anger and full of Denoctian pride - its regent, its Queen, its ruler as Isra - her dear, dear Isra, her sister-kin, her heart's other half - and put her in her place again. She'd been awful, a failure, neglecting everything and everyone, neglecting herself until not even she recognized herself. Neerja had near given up on the woman when she was not sleeping, choosing instead to curl against her in the night, keeping her shivering form from freezing over entirely.
Her room held marks of a war, marks of her night terrors howling and raging; bursts of light as shields and spears and bullets etched into the stone walls, leaving glowing traces for days and then dying at last as her heart had over and over. Neerja never really cried, but she mourned the loss of the heart her cub once held.
Now, whenever she reaches for the Pegasus, she finds only a cold and screaming wind racing over a winter plane.
Tonight is a bad night, one where the Tonnerre girl cannot sleep and cannot find comfort in the confines of the library. She feels shredded and raw and hollow, she feels disappointment in her bones and a great well of nothing where something should be.
Just after she's reached the kitchens, a single lantern full of her star-bright light flickering in the middle - silver instead of yellow, white instead of orange - there are footsteps outside. Briefly, soft as the fall of a cat's paw on autumn leaves, her heart stutter-steps and she freezes. Nothing moves, no muscles, not her eyes nor her chest nor her heart. There's a sorry excuse of a slice of bread hanging mid-air, a meager amount of honey-water tucked into a cup, and her silence to greet him.
Doors are shouldered open, silent from a fresh coat of oil that still burns her nose. She always applies it when she comes, and the ladies in the kitchen always know when she's been there because of it. Sometimes they try to leave her things, those nights, Moira never shows her face. Now, there's a golden ghost with soul-blue eyes and moonlight hair staring at her, as haunted on the surface as she feels on the inside, and she can't find the words to spit out, can't stop the choking noise in the back of her throat.
If her tears still came as they once flowed so easily, she is sure she would be a mess upon his shoulder, breathing him in to assure herself this wasn't some dream again and again and again. But they don't, and she doesn't move. Moira only stands there, pouring another mug of water and offering it to him.
She does not intend to stay.
She does not want to feel anything tonight.
