FIRE-LIT, HALF SILHOUETTE AND HALF MYTH, THE WOLF CIRCLES MY PAST, TREADING THE LEAVES INTO A BED TILL HE SLEEPS, BLACK SNOUT ON EXTENDED PAWS. BLACK SNOUT ON SULPHUR BODY, HE NUDGED HIS WAY INTO MY CONSCIOUSNESS. THERE IS NOTHING THAT WON'T BE LIT UP IN THE DARK TORCH OF HIS EYES.
Orestes feels old.
He chips away at the journey, thinking of Antiope’s nonchalance in arriving to Solterra. It had not been a difficult for her, with her immortality, with her magic that put the life back into him. Orestes wonders if it is his absence of immortality that makes the trek so arduous, so long, or if it his reason for venturing so far.
Every man has his ghosts.
Some men let them lay.
But Orestes hunts his, even as he forgets them. He pursues the one thread that ties him to his old life with the hallowed reverence of a man still praying, despite having forgotten the reason.
That is what drives him to see Eventide arch. Wild rumours of an amorphous girl who lives by Denocte’s cliffs and hunts the forest with wild abandon, hunting but never killing. The rumours have not existed long, more fable than truth, but—there is an element to them that piques his curiosity, that blows air back into embers thought dead at the hollow of his Soul.
Ariel leads with tender care. There is a paternal quality to the great and terrible cat tonight; it reminds Orestes of how kind nature can be, if it wants.
Orestes hopes they are alone when he crests the final summit, when he sees the first graceful arc of the arch in the near distance—even as he thinks it he knows it isn’t true.
There is a girl and a man.
Orestes’s narrows his eyes in the dark that is not quite dark. So far from Solterra and in the deep of night, his tattoos do not glow with the same feverish intensity as they do in his homeland. Yet they smoulder with golden light that always seems to pour from within him. Ariel leaves charred footprints where he walks; sensing Orestes’s discomfort, the Sun Lion begins to glow bright enough to illuminate the clearing and send bright reflections across the other two patrons. The light streams the stained glass arch and turns the forest on the other side to brilliant, jagged colours.
Orestes recognises the girl; and the memory is one fond enough he cannot help but smile. He catches the tail end of her question.
“Aspara.” The greeting is quiet, but kind. Orestes does not recognise the man and, when he goes to introduce himself, he finds his tongue strangely heavy. There is a part of him that wants to lie. There is a part of him that wants to relinquish the name.
After a pregnant, awkward pause, Orestes relents to his duty. “Good evening, sir. I’m Orestes. I came to admire the arch. I apologise if I’m intruding..?”
Suddenly, the idea of being alone seems unbearable.
Ariel, at that moment, turns off his power. They are plunged back into natural darkness, with Orestes's tattoos a soft golden glow.
“Speech” || @
"THE WOLVES HAVE
BEEN SLAUGHTERED
NOW, A HEDGE OF
SMOKING GUN BARRELS
RINGS MY DAUGHTERS
DREAMS"
BEEN SLAUGHTERED
NOW, A HEDGE OF
SMOKING GUN BARRELS
RINGS MY DAUGHTERS
DREAMS"
