she did not want to move or to speak. she wanted to rest, to learn, to dream. she felt very tired
Through the cracks of consciousness she's listened to the world change time and time again. First, when Estelle led her into the wilds, when Estelle was her only star she had to follow, when she left Estelle and found her way...here. Then, Raum had been the first face she'd known. Silver and stunning and completely opaque. He was a fog she could not decipher, a lie she could never find the truth in. Even still, she sees his face in the moon when night comes, smiling like a scythe down on her upturned face. Next had come Caine and Asterion, marching into and out of her life like fireflies flickering on and off in the distance. Sometimes, they were beaming and bright and so near she could taste them. Sometimes, they were as distant as the cosmos that threw only coy glances her way now and again through high, vaulted library windows.
They left.
Bexley left.
Michael and Isra left.
Everyone left until it was just Moira standing in an empty room full of ghosts and mirrors and fog and shadows.
Now, Neerja plucks at the Emissary's tail lazily atop the mass of pillows and blankets, hidden behind the gossamer curtain that lets Moira see the world and keeps her hidden so completely from it save for teasing outlines and sultry peeks when the wind blows through her chamber. The tiger is purring, finally after months and months, telling the Pegasus of the cocoa-maker and bread-baker she has not visited in months. Neerja tells her of the white temple on the mountain that Moira still seeks solace in from time to time.
They are speaking again after ages. So why does the woman still feel so hollow and alone? The circles around her eyes is more than the darkness of her sclera; the fatigue in her body is more than the dulling of her coat and the poking of her hips and ribs. Moira is changed. Moira is devastated.
Eaten time and time again with loss, it is a heavy cross she has not borne well these past months.
She is expecting no guest, no visitors this late at night. Only the brave approach her chambers, and none ever have the courage to knock and disturb her moods. Neerja would frighten them away long before then. Tonight, it seems, would be a rare one when there is a tapping like a mouse demanding entrance. It is soft and it is slow and it is sad.
It sounds like the sorrow of her soul.
With a nod, a strand of light plucked from a candle in the distance spirals from the recesses of her room, curling around the door and pulling it open. The curtain around her billows out, and Moira is an arcane, flaming goddess in a sea of blue and black and gold, sitting atop her cushioned throne with an aching in her eyes that matches the aching in her throat.
Neerja wears a snarl, its match coming from her throat, and leaps from the bed to stand between the two. You, she snarls, but only the Tonnerre girl can hear.
There is no air in Moira's lungs, and the lights blaze and flare, pulled and strung from their candles and scones until they are strung as faerie-lights above the two. "It's late," is all she says, wanting so bad to dismiss him, not expecting the flare in her stomach, the stuttering of her heart or the tears and rage in her eyes. No, she pleads, those tears and that rage has all been burned out. Candles full of fury melted and melted and melted until they were no more. Not even the ash of them should remember that pain.
And still it does.
Still it does.
@Asterion
